On his return to England, just after the Christmas of 1853, Dickens
gave his first public readings. He had, as we have seen, read "The
Chimes" some nine years before, to a select few among his literary
friends; and at Lausanne he had similarly read portions of "Dombey and
Son." But the three readings given at Birmingham, on the 27th, 29th,
and 30th December, 1853, were, in every sense, public entertainments,
and, except that the proceeds were devoted entirely to the local
Institute, differed in no way from the famous readings by which he
afterwards realized what may almost be called a fortune. The idea of
coming before the world in this new character had long been in his
mind. As early as 1846, after the private reading at Lausanne, he had
written to Forster: "I was thinking the other day that in these days
of lecturings and readings, a great deal of money might possibly be
made (if it were not _infra dig._) by one's having readings of one's
own books. I think it would take immensely. What do you say?" Forster
said then, and said consistently throughout, that he held the thing to
_be_ "_infra dig._," and unworthy of Dickens' position; and in this I
think one may venture to assert that Forster was wrong. There can
surely be no reason why a popular writer, who happens also to be an
excellent elocutionist, should not afford general pleasure by giving
sound to his prose, and a voice to his imaginary characters. Nor is it
opposed to the fitness of things that he should be paid for his skill.
If, however, one goes further in Dickens' case, and asks whether the
readings did not involve too great an expenditure of time, energy,
and, as we shall see, ultimately of life, and whether he would not, in
the highest sense, have been better employed over his books,--why then
the question becomes more difficult of solution. But, after all, each
man must answer such questions for himself. Dickens may have felt, as
the years began to tell, that he required the excitement of the
readings for mental stimulus, and that he would not even have written
as much as he did without them. Be that as it may, the success at
Birmingham, where a sum of from £400 to £500 was realized, the
requests that poured in upon him to read at other places, the
invariably renewed success whenever he did so, the clear evidence that
a large sum was to be realized if he determined to come forward on his
own account, all must have contributed to scatter Forster's objections
to the winds. On the 29th of April, 1858, at St. Martin's Hall, in
London, he started his career as a paid public reader, and he
continued to read, with shorter or longer periods of intermission,
till his death. But into the story of his professional tours it is not
my intention just now to enter. I shall only stay to say a few words
about the character and quality of his readings.
That they were a success can readily be accounted for. The mere desire
to see and hear Dickens, the great Dickens, the novelist who was more
than popular, who was the object of real personal affection on the
part of the English-speaking race,--this would have drawn a crowd at
any time. But Dickens was not the man to rely upon such sources of
attraction, any more than an actress who is really an actress will
consent to rely exclusively on her good looks. "Whatever is worth
doing at all is worth doing well," such as we have seen was one of the
governing principles of his life; and he read very well. Of
nervousness there was no trace in his composition. To some one who
asked him whether he ever felt any shyness as a speaker, he answered,
"Not in the least; the first time I took the chair (at a public
dinner) I felt as much confidence as if I had done the thing a hundred
times." This of course helped him much as a reader, and gave him full
command over all his gifts. But the gifts were also assiduously
cultivated. He laboured, one might almost say, agonized, to make
himself a master of the art. Mr. Dolby, who acted as his "manager,"
during the tours undertaken from 1866 to 1870, tells us that before
producing "Dr. Marigold," he not only gave a kind of semi-public
rehearsal, but had rehearsed it to himself considerably over two
hundred times. Writing to Forster Dickens says: "You have no idea how
I have worked at them [the readings].... I have tested all the serious
passion in them by everything I know, made the humorous points much
more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; ... I learnt
'Dombey' like the rest, and did it to myself often twice a day, with
exactly the same pains as at night, over, and over, and over again."
The results justified the care and effort bestowed. There are,
speaking generally, two schools of readers: those who dramatize what
they read, and those who read simply, audibly, with every attention to
emphasis and point, but with no effort to do more than slightly
indicate differences of personage or character. To the latter school
Thackeray belonged. He read so as to be perfectly heard, and perfectly
understood, and so that the innate beauty of his literary style might
have full effect. Dickens read quite differently. He read not as a
writer to whom style is everything, but as an actor throwing himself
into the world he wished to bring before his hearers. He was so
careless indeed of pure literature, in this particular matter, that he
altered his books for the readings, eliminating much of the narrative,
and emphasizing the dialogue. He was pre-eminently the dramatic
reader. Carlyle, who had been dragged to "Hanover Rooms," to "the
complete upsetting," as he says, "of my evening habitudes, and
spiritual composure," was yet constrained to declare: "Dickens does it
capitally, such as _it_ is; acts better than any Macready in the
world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic, _theatre_ visible, performing
under one _hat_, and keeping us laughing--in a sorry way, some of us
thought--the whole night. He is a good creature, too, and makes fifty
or sixty pounds by each of these readings." "A whole theatre"--that is
just the right expression minted for us by the great coiner of
phrases. Dickens, by mere play of voice, for the gestures were
comparatively sober, placed before you, on his imaginary stage, the
men and women he had created. There Dr. Marigold pattered his
cheap-jack phrases; and Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig, with throats
rendered husky by much gin, had their memorable quarrel; and Sergeant
Buzfuz bamboozled that stupid jury; and Boots at the Swan told his
pretty tale of child-elopement; and Fagin, in his hoarse Jew whisper,
urged Bill Sikes to his last foul deed of murder. Ay me, in the great
hush of the past there are tones of the reader's voice that still
linger in my ears! I seem to hear once more the agonized quick
utterance of poor Nancy, as she pleads for life, and the dread
stillness after the ruffian's cruel blows have fallen on her upturned
face. Again comes back to me the break in Bob Cratchit's voice, as he
speaks of the death of Tiny Tim. As of old I listen to poor little
Chops, the dwarf, declaring, very piteously, that his "fashionable
friends" don't use him well, and put him on the mantel-piece when he
refuses to "have in more champagne-wine," and lock him in the
sideboard when he "won't give up his property." And I _see_--yes, I
declare I _see_, as I saw when Dickens was reading, such was the
illusion of voice and gesture--that dying flame of Scrooge's fire,
which leaped up when Marley's ghost came in, and then fell again. Nor
can I forbear to mention, among these reminiscences, that there is
also a passage in one of Thackeray's lectures that is still in my ears
as on the evening when I heard it. It is a passage in which he spoke
of the love that children had for the works of his more popular rival,
and told how his own children would come to him and ask, "Why don't
you write books like Mr. Dickens?"