The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Iii Part 44

DEAR MR. EELES,

I must thank you for the admirable manner in which you have done the book-backs in my room. I feel personally obliged to you, I a.s.sure you, for the interest you have taken in my whim, and the prompt.i.tude with which you have completely carried it out.

Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Gaskell.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Thursday Afternoon, Dec. 5th, 1851._

MY DEAR MRS. GASKELL,

I write in great haste to tell you that Mr. Wills, in the utmost consternation, has brought me your letter, just received (four o'clock), and that it is _too late_ to recall your tale. I was so delighted with it that I put it first in the number (not hearing of any objection to my proposed alteration by return of post), and the number is now made up and in the printer's hands. I cannot possibly take the tale out--it has departed from me.

I am truly concerned for this, but I hope you will not blame me for what I have done in perfect good faith. Any recollection of me from your pen cannot (as I think you know) be otherwise than truly gratifying to me; but with my name on every page of "Household Words," there would be--or at least I should feel--an impropriety in so mentioning myself. I was particular, in changing the author, to make it "Hood's _Poems_" in the most important place--I mean where the captain is killed--and I hope and trust that the subst.i.tution will not be any serious drawback to the paper in any eyes but yours. I would do anything rather than cause you a minute's vexation arising out of what has given me so much pleasure, and I sincerely beseech you to think better of it, and not to fancy that any shade has been thrown on your charming writing, by

The unfortunate but innocent.

P.S.--I write at a gallop, not to lose another post.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Gaskell.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, December 21st, 1851._

MY DEAR MRS. GASKELL,

If you were not the most suspicious of women, always looking for soft sawder in the purest metal of praise, I should call your paper delightful, and touched in the tenderest and most delicate manner. Being what you are, I confine myself to the observation that I have called it "A Love Affair at Cranford," and sent it off to the printer.

Faithfully yours ever.

[Sidenote: Mr. Peter Cunningham.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _December 26th, 1851._

MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM,

About the three papers.

1st. With Mr. Plowman of Oxford, Wills will communicate.

2nd. (Now returned.) I have seen, in nearly the same form, before. The list of names is overwhelming.

3rd. I am not at all earnest in the Savage matter; firstly, because I think so tremendous a vagabond never could have obtained an honest living in any station of existence or at any period of time; and secondly, because I think it of the highest importance that such an a.s.sociation as our Guild should not appear to resent upon society the faults of individuals who were flagrantly impracticable.

At its best, it is liable to that suspicion, as all such efforts have been on the part of many jealous persons, to whom it _must_ look for aid. And any stop that in the least encourages it is one of a fatal kind.

I do _not_ think myself, but this is merely an individual opinion, that Savage _was_ a man of genius, or that anything of his writing would have attracted much notice but for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's reference to his mother. For these reasons combined, I should not be inclined to add my subscription of two guineas to yours, unless the inscription were altered as I have altered it in pencil. But in that case I should be very glad to respond to your suggestion, and to snuff out all my smaller disinclination.

Faithfully yours ever.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] Mr. Charles Knight was writing a series of papers in "Household Words," called "Shadows."

1852.

NARRATIVE.

In the summer of this year, Charles d.i.c.kens hired a house at Dover for three months, whither he went with his family. At the end of this time he sent his children and servants back to Tavistock House, and crossed over to Boulogne, with his wife and sister-in-law, to inspect that town and its neighbourhood, with a view of making it his summer quarters in the following year. Many amateur performances were given in the provinces in aid of the fund for the Guild of Literature and Art; Charles d.i.c.kens, as usual, taking the whole management on his own shoulders.

In March, the first number of "Bleak House" appeared, and he was at work on this book all through the year, as well as being constantly occupied with his editors.h.i.+p of "Household Words."

We have, in the letters for this year, Charles d.i.c.kens's first to Lord John Russell (afterwards the Earl Russell); a friend whom he held in the highest estimation, and to whom he was always grateful for many personal kindnesses. We have also his first letter to Mr. Wilkie Collins, with whom he became most intimately a.s.sociated in literary work. The affectionate friends.h.i.+p he had for him, the high value in which he held him as a brother-artist, are constantly expressed in Charles d.i.c.kens's own letters to Mr. Collins, and in his letters to other friends.

"Those gallant men" (in the letter to Mr. J. Crofton Croker) had reference to an antiquarian club, called the Noviomagians, who were about to give a dinner in honour of Sir Edward Belcher and Captain Kellett, the officers in command of the Arctic Exploring Expedition, to which Charles d.i.c.kens was also invited. Mr. Crofton Croker was the president of this club, and to denote his office it was customary to put on a c.o.c.ked hat after dinner.

The "lost character" he writes of in a letter to Mrs. Watson, refers to two different decipherings of his handwriting; this sort of study being in fas.h.i.+on then, and he and his friends at Rockingham Castle deriving much amus.e.m.e.nt from it.

The letter dated July 9th was in answer to an anonymous correspondent, who wrote to him as follows: "I venture to trespa.s.s on your attention with one serious query, touching a sentence in the last number of 'Bleak House.' Do the supporters of Christian missions to the heathen really deserve the attack that is conveyed in the sentence about Jo' seated in his anguish on the door-step of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts? The allusion is severe, but is it just? Are such boys as Jo' neglected? What are ragged schools, town missions, and many of those societies I regret to see sneered at in the last number of 'Household Words'?"

The "Duke of Middles.e.x," in the letter we have here to Mr. Charles Knight, was the name of the character played by Mr. F. Stone, in Sir E.

B. Lytton's comedy of "Not so Bad as we Seem."

Our last letter in this year, to Mr. G. Linnaeus Banks, was in acknowledgment of one from him on the subject of a proposed public dinner to Charles d.i.c.kens, to be given by the people of Birmingham, when they were also to present him with a salver and a diamond ring. The dinner was given in the following year, and the ring and salver (the latter an artistic specimen of Birmingham ware) were duly presented by Mr. Banks, who acted as honorary secretary, in the names of the subscribers, at the rooms of the Birmingham Fine Arts a.s.sociation. Mr.

Banks, and the artist, Mr. J. C. Walker, were the originators of this demonstration.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _January 31st, 1852._

MY DEAR MACREADY,

If the "taxes on knowledge" mean the stamp duty, the paper duty, and the advertis.e.m.e.nt duty, they seem to me to be unnecessarily confounded, and unfairly too.

I have already declined to sign a pet.i.tion for the removal of the stamp duty on newspapers. I think the reduced duty is some protection to the public against the rash and hasty launching of blackguard newspapers. I think the newspapers are made extremely accessible to the poor man at present, and that he would not derive the least benefit from the abolition of the stamp. It is not at all clear to me, supposing he wants _The Times_ a penny cheaper, that he would get it a penny cheaper if the tax were taken off. If he supposes he would get in compet.i.tion two or three new journals as good to choose from, he is mistaken; not knowing the immense resources and the gradually perfective machinery necessary to the production of such a journal. It appears to me to be a fair tax enough, very little in the way of individuals, not embarra.s.sing to the public in its mode of being levied, and requiring some small consideration and pauses from the American kind of newspaper projectors.

Further, a committee has reported in favour of the repeal, and the subject may be held to need no present launching.

The repeal of the paper duty would benefit the producers of periodicals immensely. It would make a very large difference to me, in the case of such a journal as "Household Words." But the gain to the public would be very small. It would not make the difference of enabling me, for example, to reduce the price of "Household Words," by its fractional effect upon a copy, or to increase the quant.i.ty of matter. I might, in putting the difference into my pocket, improve the quality of the paper a little, but not one man in a thousand would notice it. It _might_ (though I am not sure even of this) remove the difficulties in the way of a deserving periodical with a small sale. Charles Knight holds that it would. But the case, on the whole, appeared to me so slight, when I went to Downing Street with a deputation on the subject, that I said (in addressing the Chancellor of the Exchequer) I could not honestly maintain it for a moment as against the soap duty, or any other pressing on the ma.s.s of the poor.

The advertis.e.m.e.nt duty has this preposterous anomaly, that a footman in want of a place pays as much in the way of tax for the expression of his want, as Professor Holloway pays for the whole list of his miraculous cures.

But I think, at this time especially, there is so much to be considered in the necessity the country will be under of having money, and the necessity of justice it is always under, to consider the physical and moral wants of the poor man's home, as to justify a man in saying: "I must wait a little, all taxes are more or less objectionable, and so no doubt are these, but we must have some; and I have not made up my mind that all these things that are mixed up together _are_ taxes on knowledge in reality."