The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Ii Part 24

Please G.o.d you shall see it next summer occupying its allotted place of state in my brand-new bedroom here. You shall behold it then, with all cheerful surroundings, the envy of mankind.

My readings have been doing absolute wonders. Your d.u.c.h.ess and Princess came to hear first "Nickleby" and the "Pickwick Trial," then "Copperfield," at Brighton. I think they were pleased with me, and I am sure I was with them; for they are the very best audience one could possibly desire. I shall always have a pleasant remembrance of them.

On Wednesday I am away again for the longest part of my trip.

Yes, Mary dear, I must say that I like my Carton, and I have a faint idea sometimes that if I had acted him, I could have done something with his life and death.

Believe me, ever your affectionate and faithful JOE.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

QUEEN'S HEAD, NEWCASTLE, _Friday, Nov. 22nd, 1861._

I received your letter this morning, and grieve to report that the unlucky Headland has broken down most awfully!

First, as perhaps you remember, this is the place where the bills were "lost" for a week or two. The consequence has been that the agent could not announce all through the "Jenny Lind" time (the most important for announcing), and could but stand still and stare when people came to ask what I was going to read. Last night I read "Copperfield" to the most enthusiastic and appreciative audience imaginable, but in numbers about half what they might have been. To-night we shall have a famous house; but we might have had it last night too. To-morrow (knowing by this time what can, of a certainty, be done with "Copperfield"), I had, of course, given out "Copperfield" to be read again. Conceive my amazement and dismay when I find the printer to have announced "Little Dombey"!!!

This, I declare, I had no more intention of reading than I had of reading an account of the solar system. And this, after a sensation last night, of a really extraordinary nature in its intensity and delight!

Says the unlucky Headland to this first head of misery: "Johnson's mistake" (Johnson being the printer).

Second, I read at Edinburgh for the first time--observe the day--_next Wednesday_. Jenny Lind's concert at Edinburgh is to-night. This morning comes a frantic letter from the Edinburgh agent. "I have no bills, no tickets; I lose all the announcement I would have made to hundreds upon hundreds of people to-night, all of the most desirable cla.s.s to be well informed beforehand. I can't announce what Mr. d.i.c.kens is going to read; I can answer no question; I have, upon my responsibility, put a dreary advertis.e.m.e.nt into the papers announcing that he _is_ going to read so many times, and that particulars will shortly be ready; and I stand bound hand and foot." "Johnson's mistake," says the unlucky Headland.

Of course, I know that the man who never made a mistake in poor Arthur's time is not likely to be always making mistakes now. But I have written by this post to Wills, to go to him and investigate. I have also detached Berry from here, and have sent him on by train at a few minutes' notice to Edinburgh, and then to Glasgow (where I have no doubt everything is wrong too). Glasgow we may save; Edinburgh I hold to be irretrievably damaged. If it can be picked up at all, it can only be at the loss of the two first nights, and by the expenditure of no end of spirits and force. And this is the harder, because it is impossible not to see that the last readings polished and prepared the audiences in general, and that I have not to work them up in any place where I have been before, but that they start with a London intelligence, and with a respect and preparation for what they are going to hear.

I hope by the time you and Mamie come to me, we shall have got into some good method. I must take the thing more into my own hands and look after it from hour to hour. If such a thing as this Edinburgh business could have happened under poor Arthur, I really believe he would have fallen into a fit, or gone distracted. No one can ever know what he was but I who have been with him and without him. Headland is so anxious and so good-tempered that I cannot be very stormy with him; but it is the simple fact that he has no notion of the requirements of such work as this. Without him, and with a larger salary to Berry (though there are objections to the latter as _first_ man), I could have done a hundred times better.

As Forster will have a strong interest in knowing all about the proceedings, perhaps you will send him this letter to read. There is no very tremendous harm, indeed, done as yet. At Edinburgh I KNOW what I can do with "Copperfield." I think it is not too much to say that for every one who does come to hear it on the first night, I can get back fifty on the second. And whatever can be worked up there will tell on Glasgow. Berry I shall continue to send on ahead, and I shall take nothing on trust and more as being done.

On Sunday morning at six, I have to start for Berwick. From Berwick, in the course of that day, I will write again; to Mamie next time.

With best love to her and Mrs. B.

[Sidenote: Miss d.i.c.kens.]

QUEEN'S HEAD, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE, _Sat.u.r.day, Nov. 23rd, 1861._

A most tremendous hall here last night; something almost terrible in the cram. A fearful thing might have happened. Suddenly, when they were all very still over Smike, my gas batten came down, and it looked as if the room was falling. There were three great galleries crammed to the roof, and a high steep flight of stairs, and a panic must have destroyed numbers of people. A lady in the front row of stalls screamed, and ran out wildly towards me, and for one instant there was a terrible wave in the crowd. I addressed that lady laughing (for I knew she was in sight of everybody there), and called out as if it happened every night, "There's nothing the matter, I a.s.sure you; don't be alarmed; pray sit down;" and she sat down directly, and there was a thunder of applause.

It took some few minutes to mend, and I looked on with my hands in my pockets; for I think if I had turned my back for a moment there might still have been a move. My people were dreadfully alarmed, Boylett in particular, who I suppose had some notion that the whole place might have taken fire.

"But there stood the master," he did me the honour to say afterwards, in addressing the rest, "as cool as ever I see him a-lounging at a railway station."

A telegram from Berry at Edinburgh yesterday evening, to say that he had got the bills, and that they would all be up and dispersed yesterday evening under his own eyes. So no time was lost in setting things as right as they can be set. He has now gone on to Glasgow.

P.S.--Duty to Mrs. Bouncer.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

BERWICK-ON-TWEED, _Monday, Nov. 25th, 1861._

I write (in a gale of wind, with a high sea running), to let you know that we go on to Edinburgh at half-past eight to-morrow morning.

A most ridiculous room was designed for me in this odd out-of-the-way place. An immense Corn Exchange made of gla.s.s and iron, round, dome-topped, lofty, utterly absurd for any such purpose, and full of thundering echoes, with a little lofty crow's-nest of a stone gallery breast high, deep in the wall, into which it was designed to put _me_! I instantly struck, of course, and said I would either read in a room attached to this house (a very snug one, capable of holding five hundred people) or not at all. Terrified local agents glowered, but fell prostrate.

Berry has this moment come back from Edinburgh and Glasgow with hopeful accounts. He seems to have done the business extremely well, and he says that it was quite curious and cheering to see how the Glasgow people a.s.sembled round the bills the instant they were posted, and evidently with a great interest in them.

We left Newcastle yesterday morning in the dark, when it was intensely cold and froze very hard. So it did here. But towards night the wind went round to the S.W., and all night it has been blowing very hard indeed. So it is now.

Tell Mamie that I have the same sitting-room as we had when we came here with poor Arthur, and that my bedroom is the room out of it which she and Katie had. Surely it is the oddest town to read in! But it is taken on poor Arthur's principle that a place in the way pays the expenses of a through journey; and the people would seem to be coming up to the scratch gallantly. It was a dull Sunday, though; O it _was_ a dull Sunday, without a book! For I had forgotten to buy one at Newcastle, until it was too late. So after dark I made a jug of whisky-punch, and drowned the unlucky Headland's remembrance of his failures.

I shall hope to hear very soon that the workmen have "broken through,"

and that you have been in the state apartments, and that upholstery measurements have come off.

There has been a horrible accident in Edinburgh. One of the seven-storey old houses in the High Street fell when it was full of people. Berry was at the bill-poster's house, a few doors off, waiting for him to come home, when he heard what seemed like thunder, and then the air was darkened with dust, "as if an immense quant.i.ty of steam had been blown off," and then all that dismal quarter set up shrieks, which he says were most dreadful.

[Sidenote: Miss d.i.c.kens.]

WATERLOO HOTEL, EDINBURGH, _Wednesday, Nov. 27th, 1861._

Mrs. Bouncer must decidedly come with you to Carlisle. She shall be received with open arms. Apropos of Carlisle, let me know _when_ you purpose coming there. We shall be there, please G.o.d, on the Sat.u.r.day in good time, as I finish at Glasgow on the Friday night.

I have very little notion of the state of affairs here, as Headland brought no more decisive information from the agents yesterday (he never _can_ get decisive information from any agents), than "the teeckets air joost moving reecht and left." I hope this may be taken as satisfactory.

Jenny Lind carried off a world of money from here. Miss Glyn, or Mrs.

Dallas, is playing Lady Macbeth at the theatre, and Mr. s.h.i.+rley Brooks is giving two lectures at the Philosophical Society on the House of Commons and Horace Walpole. Grisi's farewell benefits are (I think) on my last two nights here.

Gordon dined with me yesterday. He is, if anything, rather better, I think, than when we last saw him in town. He was immensely pleased to be with me. I went with him (as his office goes anywhere) right into and among the ruins of the fallen building yesterday. They were still at work trying to find two men (brothers), a young girl, and an old woman, known to be all lying there. On the walls two or three common clocks are still hanging; one of them, judging from the time at which it stopped, would seem to have gone for an hour or so after the fall. Great interest had been taken in a poor linnet in a cage, hanging in the wind and rain high up against the broken wall. A fireman got it down alive, and great exultation had been raised over it. One woman, who was dug out unhurt, staggered into the street, stared all round her, instantly ran away, and has never been heard of since. It is a most extraordinary sight, and of course makes a great sensation.

[Sidenote: Miss d.i.c.kens.]

WATERLOO HOTEL, EDINBURGH, _Friday, Nov. 29th, 1861._

I think it is my turn to write to you, and I therefore send a brief despatch, like a telegram, to let you know that in a gale of wind and a fierce rain, last night, we turned away a thousand people. There was no getting into the hall, no getting near the hall, no stirring among the people, no getting out, no possibility of getting rid of them. And yet, in spite of all that, and of their being steaming wet, they never flagged for an instant, never made a complaint, and took up the trial upon their very shoulders, to the last word, in a triumphant roar.

The talk about "Copperfield" rings through the whole place. It is done again to-morrow night. To-morrow morning I read "Dombey." To-morrow morning is Grisi's "farewell" morning concert, and last night was her "farewell" evening concert. Neither she, nor Jenny Lind, nor anything, nor anybody seems to make the least effect on the draw of the readings.

I lunch with Blackwood to-day. He was at the reading last night; a capital audience. Young Blackwood has also called here. A very good young fellow, I think.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

CARRICK'S ROYAL HOTEL, GLASGOW, _Tuesday, Dec. 3rd, 1861._

I send you by this post another _Scotsman_. From a paragraph in it, a letter, and an advertis.e.m.e.nt, you may be able to form some dim guess of the scene at Edinburgh last night. Such a pouring of hundreds into a place already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, such a rending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humour on the whole. I never saw the faintest approach to it. While I addressed the crowd in the room, Gordon addressed the crowd in the street. Fifty frantic men got up in all parts of the hall and addressed me all at once. Other frantic men made speeches to the walls. The whole Blackwood family were borne in on the top of a wave, and landed with their faces against the front of the platform. I read with the platform crammed with people. I got them to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau or gigantic picnic; one pretty girl in full dress lying on her side all night, holding on to one of the legs of my table. It was the most extraordinary sight. And yet from the moment I began to the moment of my leaving off, they never missed a point, and they ended with a burst of cheers.