Springtime and Other Essays Part 17

In this year, too, he gave his first public readings, which took place at Birmingham, and well would it have been for him had he never embarked on this exhausting occupation. He describes his reading:-"A vast intelligent a.s.semblage, and the success was most wonderful and prodigious-perfectly overwhelming and astounding altogether." No wonder that he was tempted to continue such a triumph! A pa.s.sage in a letter to Cerjat shows how celebrated he already was:-"He embarked at Calais for Dover, and the 'Fact of distinguished Author's being abroad, was telegraphed to Dover; thereupon authorities of Dover Railway detained train to London for distinguished author's arrival, rather to the exasperation of British public.'"

In November 1854 he speaks of being "used up" after writing _Hard Times_.

He had intended to take a long rest, "when the idea [of that book] laid hold of me by the throat, in a very violent manner, and because the compression and close condensation necessary for that disjointed form of publication gave me perpetual trouble. But I really was tired, which is a result so very incomprehensible that I can't forget it."

d.i.c.kens took pains with his style even in his letters, and it gives one a shock to find him writing that Adelaide Proctor "_don't_ live at the place to which her letters are addressed," where I should write "doesn't."

In 1855 he began _Little Dorrit_ in Paris, a book he originally christened _n.o.body's Fault_, and the change was certainly a wise one.

In this year we find him a.s.sisting at the birth of an admirable book:-"Sydney Smith's daughter {219} has privately printed the 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" (i., p. 390).

In planning his public readings about this time, he writes (29th January 1855, in regard to _David Copperfield_):-"I never can approach the book with perfect composure (it had such perfect possession of me when I wrote it)."

One of the many instances of his scrupulous honesty is his refusal of an invitation to a Lord Mayor's dinner. "I do not think it consistent with my respect for myself, or for the art I profess, to blow hot and cold in the same breath; and to laugh at an inst.i.tution in print, and accept the hospitality of its representative while the ink is staring us all in the face."

In returning from reading at Sheffield, "a tremendous success," he describes his experiences: "At two or three o'clock in the morning I stopped at Peterboro' again, and thought of you all disconsolately. The lady in the refreshment-room was very hard upon me, harder even than those fair enslavers usually are. She gave me a cup of tea, as if I were a hyena and she my cruel keeper with a strong dislike to me. I mingled my tears with it, and had a petrified bun of enormous antiquity in miserable meekness."

The Court of Chancery finds a place in more than one of his books. His strong feeling in regard to it is shown in the following extract from a letter to Wills: "It has become (through the vile dealing with those courts and the vermin they have called into existence) a positive precept of experience, that a man had better endure a great wrong than go, or suffer himself to be taken, into Chancery, with the dream of setting it right" (7th August 1856).

He wrote to Mrs Winter: "A necessity is upon me . . . of wandering about in my old wild way, to think. I could no more resist this on Sunday or yesterday than a man can dispense with food. . . . Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can't help it; I must go my way whether or no" (3rd April 1855).

In September 1855 he was at Folkestone, whence he wrote to Mrs Watson about _Little Dorrit_, to which he at the time intended to give the name _n.o.body's Fault_: "The new story is everywhere-heaving in the sea, flying with the clouds, blowing in the wind. . . . I settle to nothing, and wonder (in the old way) at my own incomprehensibility" (16th September 1855).

In 1857 he came into possession of Gad's Hill, and thus fulfilled the dream of his childhood.

There are many instances of his kindness to would-be authors. In a letter to a lady he says that he cannot tell her with what reluctance he gives an opinion against her story, in spite of much that is good in it.

And about an article by another lady he writes to F. Stone (who approached d.i.c.kens on her behalf). He says: "These Notes are destroyed by too much smartness. For the love of G.o.d don't condescend! Don't a.s.sume the att.i.tude of saying, 'See how clever I am, and what fun everybody else is.'"

In a letter to Miss Hogarth from Dublin he wrote: "The success at Belfast has been equal to the success here. Enormous! . . . and the personal affection there was something overwhelming. . . . I have never seen men go in to cry undisguisedly as they did at that reading yesterday afternoon. They made no attempt whatever to hide it, and certainly cried more than the women. As to the 'Boots' [at the Holly Tree Inn] at night, and 'Mrs Gamp' too, it was just one roar with me and them, for they made me laugh so that sometimes _I could not_ compose my face to go on."

With regard to the crowds at his readings he wrote to Miss d.i.c.kens: "Arthur {221} told you, I suppose, that he had his s.h.i.+rt-front and waistcoat torn off last night. He was perfectly enraptured in consequence. Our men got so knocked about that he gave them five s.h.i.+llings apiece on the spot. John pa.s.sed several minutes upside against a wall, with his head among the people's boots."

We hear of his readings in a letter to John Forster: "I cannot tell you what the demonstrations of personal regard and respect are; how the densest and most uncomfortably packed crowd will be hushed in an instant when I show my face."

And again to the same friend:-"At Aberdeen we were crammed to the street twice every day. . . And at the end of _Dombey_ yesterday afternoon at Perth, in the cold light of day, they all got up . . . and thundered and waved their hats with that astonis.h.i.+ng heartiness and fondness for me . . .

that they took me completely off my legs."

Elsewhere he speaks of being overwhelmed with proposals to read in America, and adds, "Will never go, unless a small fortune be first paid down in money on this side of the Atlantic."

In the autumn he writes to Regnier, enclosing proofs of _A Tale of Two Cities_: "I want you to read it for two reasons. Firstly, because I hope it is the best story I have written. Secondly, because it treats of a very remarkable time in France; and I should very much like to know what you think of its being dramatised for a French theatre. . . . The story is an extraordinary success here" (15th Oct. 1859).

He felt strongly about public executions. Forster describes how d.i.c.kens saw the hanging of the Mannings, and says that "with the letter which d.i.c.kens wrote next day to the _Times_ descriptive of what we had witnessed on that memorable morning, there began an active agitation against public executions," which was finally successful. But in 1860 the evil still existed; he wrote, 4th September 1860, to W. H. Wills: "Coming here from the station this morning, I met, coming from the execution of the Wentworth murderer, such a tide of ruffians as never could have flowed from any point but the gallows. Without any figure of speech it turned one white and sick to behold them" (4th Sept. 1860).

In December he wrote:-"Pray read _Great Expectations_. I think it is very droll. It is a very great success, and seems universally liked-I suppose because it opens funnily, and with an interest too."

In July 1861 he writes to Forster, telling him that he has altered the end of _Great Expectations_. This was done at the suggestion of Bulwer Lytton, who objected to Pip being left "a solitary man." The curious may read the original ending in Forster's _Life_, vol. iv., p. 336.

We meet many instances of d.i.c.kens' sensitiveness to the character of his audience. Thus he writes:-"I could have done perfectly if the audience had been bright, but they were an intent and staring audience."

"An excellent house to-night, and an audience positively perfect . . . an intelligent and delightful response in them, like the touch of a beautiful instrument."

He showed presence of mind, too, on an occasion. "The gas batten came down and it looked as if the room were falling. A lady in front row of stalls screamed and ran out wildly. He addressed her laughing, and saying 'no danger,' and she sat down to a thunder of applause."

I like his references to his children. He writes: "Why a boy of that age should seem to have on at all times a hundred and fifty pair of double-soled boots, and be always jumping a bottom stair with the whole hundred and fifty, I don't know."

"Will you give my small Admiral, on his personal application, one sovereign? I have told him to come to you for that recognition of his meritorious services."

And to Miss Boyle: "The little Admiral has gone to visit America in the _Orlando_ . . . he went away much gamer than any giant, attented by a chest in which he could easily have stowed himself and a wife and family of his own proportions" (28th Dec. 1861).

Dogs were to d.i.c.kens almost as dear as children. In 1863 he writes to Percy Fitzgerald like a flattered parent: "I have been most heartily gratified by the perusal of your article on my dogs. It has given me an amount and a kind of pleasure very unusual, and for which I thank you earnestly. . . . I should be delighted to see you here. . . . I and my two latest dogs, a St Bernard and a bloodhound, would be charmed with your company."

At Boulogne, in 1856, he received a present of "the nicest of little dogs," which its master, a cobbler, could not afford to pay tax for. The dog escaped and got killed, and "I must lie to him-the cobbler-for life, and say that the dog is fat and happy" (ii., p. 58).

In the winter of 1862 he was reading at Cheltenham. Macready was in the audience, and d.i.c.kens writes: "I found him quite unable to speak, and able to do nothing but square his dear old jaw all on one side, and roll his eyes (half closed), like Jackson's picture of him." Macready said: "I swear to heaven that, as a piece of pa.s.sion and playfulness-er-indescribably mixed up together, it does-er-no, really, d.i.c.kens! amaze me as profoundly as it moves me. . . . How is it got at-er-how is it done-er-how one man can-well? It lays me on my-er-back, and it is of no use talking about it!" (ii., p. 196).

d.i.c.kens seems to have been thought to have done a wrong to Jews in general by his character f.a.gin in _Oliver Twist_. He wrote, 10th July 1863, to a Jewish lady that it "unfortunately was true of the time to which the story refers, that that cla.s.s of criminal almost invariably was a Jew." The real reply to her letter was Riah in _Our Mutual Friend_.

Of that book he says: "It is a combination of drollery with romance, which requires a great deal of pains and a perfect throwing away of points that might be amplified, but I hope it is _very good_" (ii., p.

225).

In speaking of his public readings he refers to wearing a flower given him. This doubtless explains why, when he read at Cambridge, he wore first a red rose and then a white one in his b.u.t.tonhole, which to my undergraduate mind seemed "dandiacal." Of this occasion he wrote: "The reception at Cambridge last night was something to be proud of in such a place. The colleges mustered in full force from the biggest guns to the smallest, and went far beyond even Manchester in the roars of welcome and the rounds of cheers. . . . The place was crammed, and the success the most brilliant I have ever seen" (ii., p. 284).

In 1867 we again come across a reference to the exhaustion caused by his public readings. "On Friday night I quite astonished myself; but I was taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa at the hall for half an hour."

In spite of protestations he went to America, and in regard to his visit he wrote in 1867: "I do not expect as much money as the calculators estimate, but I cannot set the hope of a large sum of money aside."

And from Boston he wrote to his daughter: "At the New York barriers, where the tickets are on sale, . . . speculators went up and down offering twenty dollars for anybody's place. The money was in no case accepted" (ii., p. 310).

And again: "At nine o'clock this morning there were two thousand people in waiting, and they had begun to a.s.semble in the bitter cold as early as two o'clock" (ii., p. 311).

And to Miss Hogarth, 16th December 1867, N.Y.:-"Dolby continues to be the most unpopular man in America (mainly because he can't get four thousand people into a room that holds two thousand), and is reviled in print daily."

d.i.c.kens returned from America in April 1868, but soon made another visit.

He wrote to Wilkie Collins from Boston:-"Being in Boston . . . I took it into my head to go over the medical school, and survey the holes and corners in which that extraordinary murder was done by Webster" (12th Jan. 1868).

This must be the man who (as I was told in the U.S.) said to his daughters, "What should you say if I were the murderer?" They were looking at the notice of a reward for the detection of the murderer. I think the body was burnt by Webster in his laboratory.

In regard to his readings, he wrote: "It was but this last year that I set to and learned every word of my readings; and from ten years ago to last night, I have never read to an audience but I have watched for an opportunity of striking out something better somewhere" (11th Feb. 1868).

He was evidently overstrained and was only kept going by stimulants. He wrote to Miss d.i.c.kens (29th March 1868): "I have coughed from two or three in the morning until five or six, and have been absolutely sleepless. I have had no appet.i.te besides, and no taste."

And again, to the same correspondent, he writes that he has established this system:-"At seven in the morning (in bed) a tumbler of new cream and two tablespoonfuls of rum. At twelve, a sherry cobbler and a biscuit.

At three (dinner-time) a pint of champagne. At five minutes to eight, an egg beaten up in a gla.s.s of sherry. Between the parts, the strongest beef-tea that can be made, drunk hot. At quarter past ten, soup, and anything to drink that I can fancy. . . . Dolby is as tender as a woman and as watchful as a doctor" (2nd April 1868).

On the return voyage he was asked to read, and "I respectfully replied that sooner than do it, I would a.s.sault the captain, and be put in irons."

When he arrived at home the two Newfoundland dogs behaved exactly as usual: this may remind us of another C.D. My father used to tell us how, after his five years' voyage in the _Beagle_, he went into the yard at his Shrewsbury home and whistled in a particular way, and the dog came for a walk as if he had done the same thing the day before. Two of d.i.c.kens' dogs were, however, greatly excited: the faithful Mrs Bouncer being one of them.

A letter to Cerjat (1868) gives an echo from the great railway accident in which d.i.c.kens had so lucky an escape:-