[248] I give the letter in which he put the scheme formally before me, after the renewed and larger offers had been submitted. "If there were reasonable hope and promise, I could make up my mind to go to Australia and get money. I would not accept the Australian people's offer. I would take no money from them; would bind myself to nothing with them; but would merely make them my agents at such and such a per centage, and go and read there. I would take some man of literary pretensions as a secretary (Charles Collins? What think you?) and with his aid" (he afterwards made the proposal to his old friend Mr. Thomas Beard) "would do, for All the Year Round while I was away, The Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down. If the notion of these speculators be anything like accurate, I should come back rich. I should have seen a great deal of novelty to boot. I should have been very miserable too. . . . Of course one cannot possibly count upon the money to be realized by a six months' absence, but, L12,000 is supposed to be a low estimate. Mr. S. brought me letters from members of the legislature, newspaper editors, and the like, exhorting me to come, saying how much the people talk of me, and dwelling on the kind of reception that would await me. No doubt this is so, and of course a great deal of curious experience for after use would be gained over and above the money. Being my own master too, I could 'work' myself more delicately than if I bound myself for money beforehand. A few years hence, if all other circumstances were the same, I might not be so well fitted for the excessive wear and tear. This is about the whole case. But pray do not suppose that I am in my own mind favourable to going, or that I have any fancy for going." That was late in October. From Paris in November (1862), he wrote: "I mentioned the question to Bulwer when he dined with us here last Sunday, and he was all for going. He said that not only did he think the whole population would go to the Readings, but that the country would strike me in some quite new aspect for a Book; and that wonders might be done with such book in the way of profit, over there as well as here."

[249] A person present thus described (1st of February 1863) the second night to Miss Dickens. "No one can imagine the scene of last Friday night at the Embassy . . . a two hours' storm of excitement and pleasure. They actually murmured and applauded right away into their carriages and down the street."



CHAPTER XII.

HINTS FOR BOOKS WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN.

1855-1865.

Book of MS. Memoranda—Home of the Barnacles—Original of Mrs. Clennam—River and Ferryman—Notions for Little Dorrit—Original of Hunted Down—Titles for Tale of Two Cities—Hints for Mutual Friend—Reprobate's Notion of Duty—Proposed Opening for a Story—England first seen by an Englishman—Touching Fancy—Story from State Trials—Sentimentalist and her Fate—Female Groups—Children Farming—Subjects for Description—Fancies not worked upon—Available Names—Mr. Brobity's Snuff-box.

DICKENS began the Book of Memoranda for possible use in his work, to which occasional reference has been made, in January 1855, six months before the first page of Little Dorrit was written; and I find no allusion leading me to suppose, except in one very doubtful instance, that he had made addition to its entries, or been in the habit of resorting to them, after the date of Our Mutual Friend. It seems to comprise that interval of ten years in his life.

In it were put down any hints or suggestions that occurred to him. A mere piece of imagery or fancy, it might be at one time; at another the outline of a subject or a character; then a bit of description or dialogue; no order or sequence being observed in any. Titles for stories were set down too, and groups of names for the actors in them; not the least curious of the memoranda belonging to this class. More rarely, entry is made of some oddity of speech; and he has thus preserved in it, verbatim et literatim, what he declared to have been as startling a message as he ever received. A confidential servant at Tavistock House, having conferred on some proposed changes in his bed-room with the party that was to do the work, delivered this ultimatum to her master. "The gas-fitter says, sir, that he can't alter the fitting of your gas in your bed-room without taking up almost the ole of your bed-room floor, and pulling your room to pieces. He says, of course you can have it done if you wish, and he'll do it for you and make a good job of it, but he would have to destroy your room first, and go entirely under the jistes."[250]

It is very interesting in this book, last legacy as it is of the literary remains of such a writer, to compare the way in which fancies were worked out with their beginnings entered in its pages. Those therefore will first be taken that in some form or other appeared afterwards in his writings, with such reference to the latter as may enable the reader to make comparison for himself.

"Our House. Whatever it is, it is in a first-rate situation, and a fashionable neighbourhood. (Auctioneer called it 'a gentlemanly residence.') A series of little closets squeezed up into the corner of a dark street—but a Duke's Mansion round the corner. The whole house just large enough to hold a vile smell. The air breathed in it, at the best of times, a kind of Distillation of Mews." He made it the home of the Barnacles in Little Dorrit.

What originally he meant to express by Mrs. Clennam in the same story has narrower limits, and a character less repellent, in the Memoranda than it assumed in the book. "Bed-ridden (or room-ridden) twenty—five-and-twenty—years; any length of time. As to most things, kept at a standstill all the while. Thinking of altered streets as the old streets—changed things as the unchanged things—the youth or girl I quarrelled with all those years ago, as the same youth or girl now. Brought out of doors by an unexpected exercise of my latent strength of character, and then how strange!"

One of the people of the same story who becomes a prominent actor in it, Henry Gowan, a creation on which he prided himself as forcible and new, seems to have risen to his mind in this way. "I affect to believe that I would do anything myself for a ten-pound note, and that anybody else would. I affect to be always book-keeping in every man's case, and posting up a little account of good and evil with every one. Thus the greatest rascal becomes 'the dearest old fellow,' and there is much less difference than you would be inclined to suppose between an honest man and a scoundrel. While I affect to be finding good in most men, I am in reality decrying it where it really is, and setting it up where it is not. Might not a presentation of this far from uncommon class of character, if I could put it strongly enough, be likely to lead some men to reflect, and change a little? I think it has never been done."

In Little Dorrit also will be found a picture which seems to live with a more touching effect in his first pleasing fancy of it. "The ferryman on a peaceful river, who has been there from youth, who lives, who grows old, who does well, who does ill, who changes, who dies—the river runs six hours up and six hours down, the current sets off that point, the same allowance must be made for the drifting of the boat, the same tune is always played by the rippling water against the prow."

Here was an entry made when the thought occurred to him of the close of old Dorrit's life. "First sign of the father failing and breaking down. Cancels long interval. Begins to talk about the turnkey who first called him the Father of the Marshalsea—as if he were still living. 'Tell Bob I want to speak to him. See if he is on the Lock, my dear.'" And here was the first notion of Clennam's reverse of fortune. "His falling into difficulty, and himself imprisoned in the Marshalsea. Then she, out of all her wealth and changed station, comes back in her old dress, and devotes herself in the old way."

He seems to have designed, for the sketches of society in the same tale, a "Full-length portrait of his lordship, surrounded by worshippers;" of which, beside that brief memorandum, only his first draft of the general outline was worked at. "Sensible men enough, agreeable men enough, independent men enough in a certain way;—but the moment they begin to circle round my lord, and to shine with a borrowed light from his lordship, heaven and earth how mean and subservient! What a competition and outbidding of each other in servility."

The last of the Memoranda hints which were used in the story whose difficulties at its opening seem first to have suggested them, ran thus: "The unwieldy ship taken in tow by the snorting little steam tug"—by which was prefigured the patriarch Casby and his agent Panks.

In a few lines are the germ of the tale called Hunted Down: "Devoted to the Destruction of a man. Revenge built up on love. The secretary in the Wainewright case, who had fallen in love (or supposed he had) with the murdered girl."—The hint on which he worked in his description of the villain of that story, is also in the Memoranda. "The man with his hair parted straight up the front of his head, like an aggravating gravel-walk. Always presenting it to you. 'Up here, if you please. Neither to the right nor left. Take me exactly in this direction. Straight up here. Come off the grass—'"

His first intention as to the Tale of Two Cities was to write it upon a plan proposed in this manuscript book. "How as to a story in two periods—with a lapse of time between, like a French Drama? Titles for such a notion. TIME! THE LEAVES OF THE FOREST. SCATTERED LEAVES. THE GREAT WHEEL. ROUND AND ROUND. OLD LEAVES. LONG AGO. FAR APART. FALLEN LEAVES. FIVE AND TWENTY YEARS. YEARS AND YEARS. ROLLING YEARS. DAY AFTER DAY. FELLED TREES. MEMORY CARTON. ROLLING STONES. TWO GENERATIONS." That special title of Memory Carton shows that what led to the greatest success of the book as written was always in his mind; and another of the memoranda is this rough hint of the character itself. "The drunken?—dissipated?—What?—LION—and his JACKALL and Primer, stealing down to him at unwonted hours."

The studies of Silas Wegg and his patron as they exist in Our Mutual Friend, are hardly such good comedy as in the form which the first notion of them seems to have intended. "Gibbon's Decline and Fall. The two characters. One reporting to the other as he reads. Both getting confused as to whether it is not all going on now." In the same story may be traced, more or less clearly, other fancies which had found their first expression in the Memoranda. A touch for Bella Wilfer is here. "Buying poor shabby—FATHER?—a new hat. So incongruous that it makes him like African King Boy, or King George; who is usually full dressed when he has nothing upon him but a cocked hat or a waistcoat." Here undoubtedly is the voice of Podsnap. "I stand by my friends and acquaintances;—not for their sakes, but because they are my friends and acquaintances. I know them, I have licensed them, they have taken out my certificate. Ergo, I champion them as myself." To the same redoubtable person another trait clearly belongs. "And by denying a thing, supposes that he altogether puts it out of existence." A third very perfectly expresses the boy, ready for mischief, who does all the work there is to be done in Eugene Wrayburn's place of business. "The office boy for ever looking out of window, who never has anything to do."

The poor wayward purposeless good-hearted master of the boy, Eugene himself, is as evidently in this: "If they were great things, I, the untrustworthy man in little things, would do them earnestly—But O No, I wouldn't!" What follows has a more direct reference; being indeed almost literally copied in the story. "As to the question whether I, Eugene, lying ill and sick even unto death, may be consoled by the representation that coming through this illness, I shall begin a new life, and have energy and purpose and all I have yet wanted: 'I hope I should, but I know I shouldn't. Let me die, my dear.'"

In connection with the same book, the last in that form which he lived to complete, another fancy may be copied from which, though not otherwise worked out in the tale, the relation of Lizzie Hexam to her brother was taken. "A man, and his wife—or daughter—or niece. The man, a reprobate and ruffian; the woman (or girl) with good in her, and with compunctions. He believes nothing, and defies everything; yet has suspicions always, that she is 'praying against' his evil schemes, and making them go wrong. He is very much opposed to this, and is always angrily harping on it. 'If she must pray, why can't she pray in their favour, instead of going against 'em? She's always ruining me—she always is—and calls that, Duty! There's a religious person! Calls it Duty to fly in my face! Calls it Duty to go sneaking against me!'"

Other fancies preserved in his Memoranda were left wholly unemployed, receiving from him no more permanent form of any kind than that which they have in this touching record; and what most people would probably think the most attractive and original of all the thoughts he had thus set down for future use, are those that were never used.

Here were his first rough notes for the opening of a story. "Beginning with the breaking up of a large party of guests at a country house: house left lonely with the shrunken family in it: guests spoken of, and introduced to the reader that way.—OR, beginning with a house abandoned by a family fallen into reduced circumstances. Their old furniture there, and numberless tokens of their old comforts. Inscriptions under the bells downstairs—'Mr. John's Room,' 'Miss Caroline's Room.' Great gardens trimly kept to attract a tenant: but no one in them. A landscape without figures. Billiard room: table covered up, like a body. Great stables without horses, and great coach-houses without carriages. Grass growing in the chinks of the stone-paving, this bright cold winter day. Downhills." Another opening had also suggested itself to him. "Open a story by bringing two strongly contrasted places and strongly contrasted sets of people, into the connexion necessary for the story, by means of an electric message. Describe the message—be the message—flashing along through space, over the earth, and under the sea."[251] Connected with which in some way would seem to be this other notion, following it in the Memoranda. "Representing London—or Paris, or any other great place—in the new light of being actually unknown to all the people in the story, and only taking the colour of their fears and fancies and opinions. So getting a new aspect, and being unlike itself. An odd unlikeness of itself."

The subjects for stories are various, and some are striking. There was one he clung to much, and thought of frequently as in a special degree available for a series of papers in his periodical; but when he came to close quarters with it the difficulties were found to be too great. "English landscape. The beautiful prospect, trim fields, clipped hedges, everything so neat and orderly—gardens, houses, roads. Where are the people who do all this? There must be a great many of them, to do it. Where are they all? And are they, too, so well kept and so fair to see? Suppose the foregoing to be wrought out by an Englishman: say, from China: who knows nothing about his native country." To which may be added a fancy that savours of the same mood of discontent, political and social. "How do I know that I, a man, am to learn from insects—unless it is to learn how little my littlenesses are? All that botheration in the hive about the queen bee, may be, in little, me and the court circular."

A domestic story he had met with in the State Trials struck him greatly by its capabilities, and I may preface it by mentioning another subject, not entered in the Memoranda, which for a long time impressed him as capable of attractive treatment. It was after reading one of the witch-trials that this occurred to him; and the heroine was to be a girl who for a special purpose had taken a witch's disguise, and whose trick was not discovered until she was actually at the stake. Here is the State Trials story as told by Dickens. "There is a case in the State Trials, where a certain officer made love to a (supposed) miser's daughter, and ultimately induced her to give her father slow poison, while nursing him in sickness. Her father discovered it, told her so, forgave her, and said 'Be patient my dear—I shall not live long, even if I recover: and then you shall have all my wealth.' Though penitent then, she afterwards poisoned him again (under the same influence), and successfully. Whereupon it appeared that the old man had no money at all, and had lived on a small annuity which died with him, though always feigning to be rich. He had loved this daughter with great affection."

A theme touching closely on ground that some might think dangerous, is sketched in the following fancy. "The father (married young) who, in perfect innocence, venerates his son's young wife, as the realization of his ideal of woman. (He not happy in his own choice.) The son slights her, and knows nothing of her worth. The father watches her, protects her, labours for her, endures for her,—is for ever divided between his strong natural affection for his son as his son, and his resentment against him as this young creature's husband." Here is another, less dangerous, which he took from an actual occurrence made known to him when he was at Bonchurch. "The idea of my being brought up by my mother (me the narrator), my father being dead; and growing up in this belief until I find that my father is the gentleman I have sometimes seen, and oftener heard of, who has the handsome young wife, and the dog I once took notice of when I was a little child, and who lives in the great house and drives about."

Very admirable is this. "The girl separating herself from the lover who has shewn himself unworthy—loving him still—living single for his sake—but never more renewing their old relations. Coming to him when they are both grown old, and nursing him in his last illness." Nor is the following less so. "Two girls mis-marrying two men. The man who has evil in him, dragging the superior woman down. The man who has good in him, raising the inferior woman up." Dickens would have been at his best in working out both fancies.

In some of the most amusing of his sketches of character, women also take the lead. "The lady un peu passee, who is determined to be interesting. No matter how much I love that person—nay, the more so for that very reason—I MUST flatter, and bother, and be weak and apprehensive and nervous, and what not. If I were well and strong, agreeable and self-denying, my friend might forget me." Another not remotely belonging to the same family is as neatly hit off. "The sentimental woman feels that the comic, undesigning, unconscious man, is 'Her Fate.'—I her fate? God bless my soul, it puts me into a cold perspiration to think of it. I her fate? How can I be her fate? I don't mean to be. I don't want to have anything to do with her—Sentimental woman perceives nevertheless that Destiny must be accomplished."

Other portions of a female group are as humorously sketched and hardly less entertaining. "The enthusiastically complimentary person, who forgets you in her own flowery prosiness: as—'I have no need to say to a person of your genius and feeling, and wide range of experience'—and then, being shortsighted, puts up her glass to remember who you are."—"Two sisters" (these were real people known to him). "One going in for being generally beloved (which she is not by any means); and the other for being generally hated (which she needn't be)."—"The bequeathed maid-servant, or friend. Left as a legacy. And a devil of a legacy too."—"The woman who is never on any account to hear of anything shocking. For whom the world is to be of barley-sugar."—"The lady who lives on her enthusiasm; and hasn't a jot."—"Bright-eyed creature selling jewels. The stones and the eyes." Much significance is in the last few words. One may see to what uses Dickens would have turned them.

A more troubled note is sounded in another of these female characters. "I am a common woman—fallen. Is it devilry in me—is it a wicked comfort—what is it—that induces me to be always tempting other women down, while I hate myself!" This next, with as much truth in it, goes deeper than the last. "The prostitute who will not let one certain youth approach her. 'O let there be some one in the world, who having an inclination towards me has not gratified it, and has not known me in my degradation!' She almost loving him.—Suppose, too, this touch in her could not be believed in by his mother or mistress: by some handsome and proudly virtuous woman, always revolting from her." A more agreeable sketch than either follows, though it would not please M. Taine so well. "The little baby-like married woman—so strange in her new dignity, and talking with tears in her eyes, of her sisters 'and all of them' at home. Never from home before, and never going back again." Another from the same manuscript volume not less attractive, which was sketched in his own home, I gave upon a former page.

The female character in its relations with the opposite sex has lively illustration in the Memoranda. "The man who is governed by his wife, and is heartily despised in consequence by all other wives; who still want to govern their husbands, notwithstanding." An alarming family pair follows that. "The playful—and scratching—family. Father and daughter." And here is another. "The agreeable (and wicked) young-mature man, and his devoted sister." What next was set down he had himself partly seen; and, by enquiry at the hospital named, had ascertained the truth of the rest. "The two people in the Incurable Hospital.—The poor incurable girl lying on a water-bed, and the incurable man who has a strange flirtation with her; comes and makes confidences to her; snips and arranges her plants; and rehearses to her the comic songs(!) by writing which he materially helps out his living."[252]

Two lighter figures are very pleasantly touched. "Set of circumstances which suddenly bring an easy, airy fellow into near relations with people he knows nothing about, and has never even seen. This, through his being thrown in the way of the innocent young personage of the story. 'Then there is Uncle Sam to be considered,' says she. 'Aye to be sure,' says he, 'so there is! By Jupiter, I forgot Uncle Sam. He's a rock ahead, is Uncle Sam. He must be considered, of course; he must be smoothed down; he must be cleared out of the way. To be sure. I never thought of Uncle Sam.—By the bye, who is Uncle Sam?'"

There are several such sketches as that, to set against the groups of women; and some have Dickens's favourite vein of satire in them. "The man whose vista is always stopped up by the image of Himself. Looks down a long walk, and can't see round himself, or over himself, or beyond himself. Is always blocking up his own way. Would be such a good thing for him, if he could knock himself down." Another picture of selfishness is touched with greater delicacy. "'Too good' to be grateful to, or dutiful to, or anything else that ought to be. 'I won't thank you: you are too good.'—'Don't ask me to marry you: you are too good.'—In short, I don't particularly mind ill-using you, and being selfish with you: for you are so good. Virtue its own reward!" A third, which seems to reverse the dial, is but another face of it: frankly avowing faults, which are virtues. "In effect—I admit I am generous, amiable, gentle, magnanimous. Reproach me—I deserve it—I know my faults—I have striven in vain to get the better of them." Dickens would have made much, too, of the working out of the next. "The knowing man in distress, who borrows a round sum of a generous friend. Comes, in depression and tears, dines, gets the money, and gradually cheers up over his wine, as he obviously entertains himself with the reflection that his friend is an egregious fool to have lent it to him, and that he would have known better." And so of this other. "The man who invariably says apposite things (in the way of reproof or sarcasm) THAT HE DON'T MEAN. Astonished when they are explained to him."

Here is a fancy that I remember him to have been more than once bent upon making use of: but the opportunity never came. "The two men to be guarded against, as to their revenge. One, whom I openly hold in some serious animosity, whom I am at the pains to wound and defy, and whom I estimate as worth wounding and defying;—the other, whom I treat as a sort of insect, and contemptuously and pleasantly flick aside with my glove. But, it turns out to be the latter who is the really dangerous man; and, when I expect the blow from the other, it comes from him."

We have the master hand in the following bit of dialogue, which takes wider application than that for which it appears to have been intended.

"'There is some virtue in him too.'

"'Virtue! Yes. So there is in any grain of seed in a seedsman's shop—but you must put it in the ground, before you can get any good out of it.'

"'Do you mean that he must be put in the ground before any good comes of him?'

"'Indeed I do. You may call it burying him, or you may call it sowing him, as you like. You must set him in the earth, before you get any good of him.'"

One of the entries is a list of persons and places meant to have been made subjects for special description, and it will awaken regret that only as to one of them (the Mugby Refreshments) his intention was fulfilled. "A Vestryman. A Briber. A Station Waiting-Room. Refreshments at Mugby. A Physician's Waiting-Room. The Royal Academy. An Antiquary's house. A Sale Room. A Picture Gallery (for sale). A Waste-paper Shop. A Post-Office. A Theatre."

All will have been given that have particular interest or value, from this remarkable volume, when the thoughts and fancies I proceed to transcribe have been put before the reader.

* * * * *

"The man who is incapable of his own happiness. Or who is always in pursuit of happiness. Result, Where is happiness to be found then? Surely not Everywhere? Can that be so, after all? Is this my experience?"

* * * * *

"The people who persist in defining and analysing their (and everybody else's) moral qualities, motives and what not, at once in the narrowest spirit and the most lumbering manner;—as if one should put up an enormous scaffolding for the building of a pigstye."

* * * * *

"The house-full of Toadies and Humbugs. They all know and despise one another; but—partly to keep their hands in, and partly to make out their own individual cases—pretend not to detect one another."

* * * * *

"People realising immense sums of money, imaginatively—speculatively—counting their chickens before hatched. Inflaming each other's imaginations about great gains of money, and entering into a sort of intangible, impossible, competition as to who is the richer."

* * * * *

"The advertising sage, philosopher, and friend: who educates 'for the bar, the pulpit, or the stage.'"

* * * * *

"The character of the real refugee—not the conventional; the real."

* * * * *

"The mysterious character, or characters, interchanging confidences. 'Necessary to be very careful in that direction.'—'In what direction?'—'B'—'You don't say so. What, do you mean that C——?'—'Is aware of D. Exactly.'"

"The father and boy, as I dramatically see them. Opening with the wild dance I have in my mind."

* * * * *

"The old child. That is to say, born of parents advanced in life, and observing the parents of other children to be young. Taking an old tone accordingly."

* * * * *

"A thoroughly sulky character—perverting everything. Making the good, bad—and the bad, good."

* * * * *

"The people who lay all their sins negligences and ignorances, on Providence."

* * * * *

"The man who marries his cook at last, after being so desperately knowing about the sex."

* * * * *

"The swell establishment, frightfully mean and miserable in all but the 'reception rooms.' Those very showy."

* * * * *

"B. tells M. what my opinion is of his work, &c. Quoting the man you have once spoken to as if he had talked a life's talk in two minutes."

* * * * *

"A misplaced and mis-married man; always, as it were, playing hide and seek with the world; and never finding what Fortune seems to have hidden when he was born."

"Certain women in Africa who have lost children, carry little wooden images of children on their heads, and always put their food to the lips of those images, before tasting it themselves. This is in a part of Africa where the mortality among children (judging from the number of these little memorials) is very great."

* * * * *

Two more entries are the last which he made. "AVAILABLE NAMES" introduces a wonderful list in the exact following classes and order; as to which the reader may be left to his own memory for selection of such as found their way into the several stories from Little Dorrit to the end. The rest, not lifted into that higher notice by such favour of their creator, must remain like any other undistinguished crowd. But among them may perhaps be detected, by those who have special insight for the physiognomy of a name, some few with so great promise in them of fun and character as will make the "mute inglorious" fate which has befallen them a subject for special regret; and much ingenious speculation will probably wait upon all. Dickens has generally been thought, by the curious, to display not a few of his most characteristic traits in this particular field of invention.

First there are titles for books; and from the list subjoined were taken two for Christmas numbers and two for stories, though Nobody's Fault had ultimately to give way to Little Dorrit.

"THE LUMBER ROOM. SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE. TO BE LEFT TILL CALLED FOR. SOMETHING WANTED. EXTREMES MEET. NOBODY'S FAULT. THE GRINDSTONE. ROKESMITH'S FORGE. OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. THE CINDER HEAP. TWO GENERATIONS. BROKEN CROCKERY. DUST. THE HOME DEPARTMENT. THE YOUNG PERSON. NOW OR NEVER. MY NEIGHBOURS. THE CHILDREN OF THE FATHERS. NO THOROUGHFARE."

Then comes a batch of "Christian names": Girls and Boys: which stand thus, with mention of the source from which he obtained them. These therefore can hardly be called pure invention. Some would have been reckoned too extravagant for anything but reality.

"Girls from Privy Council Education lists.

"LELIA. MENELLA. RUBINA. IRIS. REBECCA. ETTY. REBINAH. SEBA. PERSIA. ARAMANDA. DORIS. BALZINA. PLEASANT. GENTILLA.

"Boys from Privy Council Education lists.

"DOCTOR. HOMER. ODEN. BRADLEY. ZERUBBABEL. MAXIMILIAN. URBIN. SAMILIAS. PICKLES. ORANGE. FEATHER.

"Girls and Boys from Ditto.

"AMANDA, ETHLYNIDA; BOETIUS, BOLTIUS."

To which he adds supplementary lists that appear to be his own.

"More Boys.

"ROBERT LADLE. JOLY STICK. BILL MARIGOLD. STEPHEN MARQUICK. JONATHAN KNOTWELL. PHILIP BROWNDRESS. HENRY GHOST. GEORGE MUZZLE. WALTER ASHES. ZEPHANIAH FERRY (or FURY). WILLIAM WHY. ROBERT GOSPEL. THOMAS FATHERLY. ROBIN SCUBBAM.

"More Girls.

"SARAH GOLDSACKS. ROSETTA DUST. SUSAN GOLDRING. CATHERINE TWO. MATILDA RAINBIRD. MIRIAM DENIAL. SOPHIA DOOMSDAY. ALICE THORNEYWORK. SALLY GIMBLET. VERITY HAWKYARD. BIRDIE NASH. AMBROSINA EVENTS. APAULINA VERNON. NELTIE ASHFORD."

And then come the mass of his "available names," which stand thus, without other introduction or comment:

"TOWNDLING. MOOD. GUFF. TREBLE. CHILBY. SPESSIFER. WODDER. WHELPFORD. FENNERCK. GANNERSON. CHINKERBLE. BINTREY. FLEDSON. HIRLL. BRAYLE. MULLENDER. TRESLINGHAM. BRANKLE. SITTERN. DOSTONE. CAY-LON. SLYANT. QUEEDY. BESSELTHUR. MUSTY. GROUT. TERTIUS JOBBER. AMON HEADSTON. STRAYSHOTT. HIGDEN. MORFIT. GOLDSTRAW. BARREL. INGE. JUMP. JIGGINS. BONES. COY. DAWN. TATKIN. DROWVEY. PUDSEY. PEDSEY. DUNCALF. TRICKLEBANK. SAPSEA. READYHUFF. DUFTY. FOGGY. TWINN. BROWNSWORD. PEARTREE. SUDDS. SILVERMAN. KIMBER. LAUGHLEY. LESSOCK. TIPPINS. MINNITT. RADLOWE. PRATCHET. MAWDETT. WOZENHAM. SNOWELL. LOTTRUM. LAMMLE. FROSER. HOLBLACK. MULLEY. REDWORTH. REDFOOT. TARBOX (B). TINKLING. DUDDLE. JEBUS. POWDERHILL. GRIMMER. SKUSE. TITCOOMBE. CRABBLE. SWANNOCK. TUZZEN. TWEMLOW. SQUAB. JACKMAN. SUGG. BREMMIDGE. SILAS BLODGET. MELVIN BEAL. BUTTRICK. EDSON. SANLORN. LIGHTWORD. TITBULL. BANGHAM. KYLE—NYLE. PEMBLE. MAXEY. ROKESMITH. CHIVERY. WABBLER. PEEX—SPEEX. GANNAWAY. MRS. FLINKS. FLINX. JEE. HARDEN. MERDLE. MURDEN. TOPWASH. PORDAGE. DORRET—DORRIT. CARTON. MINIFIE. SLINGO. JOAD. KINCH. MAG. CHELLYSON. BLENNAM—CL. BARDOCK. SNIGSWORTH. SWENTON. CASBY—PEACH. LOWLEIGH—LOWELY. PIGRIN. YERBURY. PLORNISH. MAROON. BANDY-NANDY. STONEBURY. MAGWITCH. MEAGLES. PANCKS. HAGGAGE. PROVIS. STILTINGTON. STILTWALK. STILTINGSTALK. STILTSTALKING. RAVENDER. PODSNAP. CLARRIKER. COMPERY. STRIVER-STRYVER. PUMBLECHOOK. WANGLER. BOFFIN. BANTINCK. DIBTON. WILFER. GLIBBERY. MULVEY. HORLICK. DOOLGE. GANNERY. GARGERY. WILLSHARD. RIDERHOOD. PRATTERSTONE. CHINKIBLE. WOPSELL. WOPSLE. WHELPINGTON. WHELPFORD. GAYVERY. WEGG. HUBBLE. URRY. KIBBLE. SKIFFINS. WODDER. ETSER. AKERSHEM."

The last of the Memoranda, and the last words written by Dickens in the blank paper book containing them, are these. "'Then I'll give up snuff.' Brobity.—An alarming sacrifice. Mr. Brobity's snuff-box. The Pawnbroker's account of it?" What was proposed by this must be left to conjecture; but "Brobity" is the name of one of the people in his unfinished story, and the suggestion may have been meant for some incident in it. If so, it is the only passage in the volume which can be in any way connected with the piece of writing on which he was last engaged. Some names were taken for it from the lists, but there is otherwise nothing to recall Edwin Drood.

FOOTNOTES:

[250] From the same authority proceeded, in answer to a casual question one day, a description of the condition of his wardrobe of which he has also made note in the Memoranda. "Well, sir, your clothes is all shabby, and your boots is all burst."

[251] The date when this fancy dropped into his Memoranda is fixed by the following passage in a letter to me of the 25th of August 1862. "I am trying to coerce my thoughts into hammering out the Christmas number. And I have an idea of opening a book (not the Christmas number—a book) by bringing together two strongly contrasted places and two strongly contrasted sets of people, with which and with whom the story is to rest, through the agency of an electric message. I think a fine thing might be made of the message itself shooting over the land and under the sea, and it would be a curious way of sounding the key note."

[252] Following this in the "Memoranda" is an advertisement cut from the Times: of a kind that always expressed to Dickens a child-farming that deserved the gallows quite as much as the worst kind of starving, by way of farming, babies. The fourteen guineas a-year, "tender" age of the "dear" ones, maternal care, and no vacations or extras, to him had only one meaning.

EDUCATION FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.—Terms 14 to 18 guineas per annum; no extras or vacations. The system of education embraces the wide range of each useful and ornamental study suited to the tender age of the dear children. Maternal care and kindness may be relied on.—X., Heald's Library, Fulham-road.



CHAPTER XIII.

THIRD SERIES OF READINGS.

1864-1867.

Death of Thackeray—Dickens on Thackeray—Mother's Death—Death of his Second Son—Our Mutual Friend—Revising a Play—Sorrowful New Year—Lameness—Fatal Anniversary—New Readings undertaken—Offer of Messrs. Chappell—Relieved from Management—Greater Fatigues involved—A Memorable Evening—Mrs. Carlyle—Offer for more Readings—Result of the Last—Grave Warnings—At Liverpool—At Manchester—At Birmingham—In Scotland—Exertion and its Result—An Old Malady—Audiences at Newcastle—Scene at Tynemouth—In Dublin—At Cambridge—Close of the Third Series—Desire in America to hear Dickens read—Sends Agent to America—Warning unheeded—For and against reading in America—Decision to go—Departure.

THE sudden death of Thackeray on the Christmas eve of 1863 was a painful shock to Dickens. It would not become me to speak, when he has himself spoken, of his relations with so great a writer and so old a friend.

"I saw him first, nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw him last,[253] shortly before Christmas, at the Athenaeum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three days . . . and that he had it in his mind to try a new remedy which he laughingly described. He was cheerful, and looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died. The long interval between these two periods is marked in my remembrance of him by many occasions when he was extremely humorous, when he was irresistibly extravagant, when he was softened and serious, when he was charming with children. . . . No one can be surer than I, of the greatness and goodness of his heart. . . . In no place should I take it upon myself at this time to discourse of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his subtle acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of his delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of his mastery over the English language. . . . But before me lies all that he had written of his latest story . . . and the pain I have felt in perusing it has not been deeper than the conviction that he was in the healthiest vigour of his powers when he worked on this last labour. . . . The last words he corrected in print were 'And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss.' God grant that on that Christmas Eve when he laid his head back on his pillow and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness of duty done, and of Christian hope throughout life humbly cherished, may have caused his own heart so to throb, when he passed away to his Redeemer's rest. He was found peacefully lying as above described, composed, undisturbed, and to all appearance asleep."

Other griefs were with Dickens at this time, and close upon them came the too certain evidence that his own health was yielding to the overstrain which had been placed upon it by the occurrences and anxieties of the few preceding years. His mother, whose infirm health had been tending for more than two years to the close, died in September 1863; and on his own birthday in the following February he had tidings of the death of his second son Walter, on the last day of the old year in the officers' hospital at Calcutta; to which he had been sent up invalided from his station, on his way home. He was a lieutenant in the 26th Native Infantry regiment, and had been doing duty with the 42nd Highlanders. In 1853 his father had thus written to the youth's godfather, Walter Savage Landor: "Walter is a very good boy, and comes home from school with honorable commendation and a prize into the bargain. He never gets into trouble, for he is a great favourite with the whole house and one of the most amiable boys in the boy-world. He comes out on birthdays in a blaze of shirt pin." The pin was a present from Landor; to whom three years later, when the boy had obtained his cadetship through the kindness of Miss Coutts, Dickens wrote again. "Walter has done extremely well at school; has brought home a prize in triumph; and will be eligible to 'go up' for his India examination soon after next Easter. Having a direct appointment he will probably be sent out soon after he has passed, and so will fall into that strange life 'up the country' before he well knows he is alive, or what life is—which indeed seems to be rather an advanced state of knowledge." If he had lived another month he would have reached his twenty-third year, and perhaps not then the advanced state of knowledge his father speaks of. But, never forfeiting his claim to those kindly paternal words, he had the goodness and simplicity of boyhood to the last.

Dickens had at this time begun his last story in twenty numbers, and my next chapter will show through what unwonted troubles, in this and the following year, he had to fight his way. What otherwise during its progress chiefly interested him, was the enterprise of Mr. Fechter at the Lyceum, of which he had become the lessee; and Dickens was moved to this quite as much by generous sympathy with the difficulties of such a position to an artist who was not an Englishman, as by genuine admiration of Mr. Fechter's acting. He became his helper in disputes, adviser on literary points, referee in matters of management; and for some years no face was more familiar than the French comedian's at Gadshill or in the office of his journal. But theatres and their affairs are things of a season, and even Dickens's whim and humour will not revive for us any interest in these. No bad example, however, of the difficulties in which a French actor may find himself with English playwrights, will appear in a few amusing words from one of his letters about a piece played at the Princess's before the Lyceum management was taken in hand.

"I have been cautioning Fechter about the play whereof he gave the plot and scenes to B; and out of which I have struck some enormities, my account of which will (I think) amuse you. It has one of the best first acts I ever saw; but if he can do much with the last two, not to say three, there are resources in his art that I know nothing about. When I went over the play this day week, he was at least 20 minutes, in a boat, in the last scene, discussing with another gentleman (also in the boat) whether he should kill him or not; after which the gentleman dived overboard and swam for it. Also, in the most important and dangerous parts of the play, there was a young person of the name of Pickles who was constantly being mentioned by name, in conjunction with the powers of light or darkness; as, 'Great Heaven! Pickles?'—'By Hell, 'tis Pickles!'—'Pickles? a thousand Devils!'—'Distraction! Pickles?'"[254]

The old year ended and the new one opened sadly enough. The death of Leech in November affected Dickens very much,[255] and a severe attack of illness in February put a broad mark between his past life and what remained to him of the future. The lameness now began in his left foot which never afterwards wholly left him, which was attended by great suffering, and which baffled experienced physicians. He had persisted in his ordinary exercise during heavy snow-storms, and to the last he had the fancy that his illness was merely local. But that this was an error is now certain; and it is more than probable that if the nervous danger and disturbance it implied had been correctly appreciated at the time, its warning might have been of priceless value to Dickens. Unhappily he never thought of husbanding his strength except for the purpose of making fresh demands upon it, and it was for this he took a brief holiday in France during the summer. "Before I went away," he wrote to his daughter, "I had certainly worked myself into a damaged state. But the moment I got away, I began, thank God, to get well. I hope to profit by this experience, and to make future dashes from my desk before I want them." At his return he was in the terrible railway accident at Staplehurst, on a day[256] which proved afterwards more fatal to him; and it was with shaken nerves but unsubdued energy he resumed the labour to be presently described. His foot troubled him more or less throughout the autumn;[257] he was beset by nervous apprehensions which the accident had caused to himself, not lessened by his generous anxiety to assuage the severer sufferings inflicted by it on others;[258] and that he should nevertheless have determined, on the close of his book, to undertake a series of readings involving greater strain and fatigue than any hitherto, was a startling circumstance. He had perhaps become conscious, without owning it even to himself, that for exertion of this kind the time left him was short; but, whatever pressed him on, his task of the next three years, self-imposed, was to make the most money in the shortest time without any regard to the physical labour to be undergone. The very letter announcing his new engagement shows how entirely unfit he was to enter upon it.

"For some time," he wrote at the end of February 1866, "I have been very unwell. F. B. wrote me word that with such a pulse as I described, an examination of the heart was absolutely necessary. 'Want of muscular power in the heart,' B said. 'Only remarkable irritability of the heart,' said Doctor Brinton of Brook-street, who had been called in to consultation. I was not disconcerted; for I knew well beforehand that the effect could not possibly be without the one cause at the bottom of it, of some degeneration of some function of the heart. Of course I am not so foolish as to suppose that all my work can have been achieved without some penalty, and I have noticed for some time a decided change in my buoyancy and hopefulness—in other words, in my usual 'tone.' But tonics have already brought me round. So I have accepted an offer, from Chappells of Bond-street, of L50 a night for thirty nights to read 'in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Paris;' they undertaking all the business, paying all personal expenses, travelling and otherwise, of myself, John" (his office servant), "and my gasman; and making what they can of it. I begin, I believe, in Liverpool on the Thursday in Easter week, and then come to London. I am going to read at Cheltenham (on my own account) on the 23rd and 24th of this month, staying with Macready of course."

The arrangement of this series of Readings differed from those of its predecessors in relieving Dickens from every anxiety except of the reading itself; but, by such rapid and repeated change of nights at distant places as kept him almost wholly in a railway carriage when not at the reading-desk or in bed, it added enormously to the physical fatigue. He would read at St. James's Hall in London one night, and at Bradford the next. He would read in Edinburgh, go on to Glasgow and to Aberdeen, then come back to Glasgow, read again in Edinburgh, strike off to Manchester, come back to St. James's Hall once more, and begin the same round again. It was labour that must in time have broken down the strongest man, and what Dickens was when he assumed it we have seen.

He did not himself admit a shadow of misgiving. "As to the readings" (11th of March), "all I have to do is, to take in my book and read, at the appointed place and hour, and come out again. All the business of every kind, is done by Chappells. They take John and my other man, merely for my convenience. I have no more to do with any detail whatever, than you have. They transact all the business at their own cost, and on their own responsibility. I think they are disposed to do it in a very good spirit, because, whereas the original proposition was for thirty readings 'in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Paris,' they wrote out their agreement 'in London, the Provinces, or elsewhere, as you and we may agree.' For this they pay L1500 in three sums; L500 on beginning, L500 on the fifteenth Reading, L500 at the close. Every charge of every kind, they pay besides. I rely for mere curiosity on Doctor Marigold (I am going to begin with him in Liverpool, and at St. James's Hall). I have got him up with immense pains, and should like to give you a notion what I am going to do with him."

The success everywhere went far beyond even the former successes. A single night at Manchester, when eight hundred stalls were let, two thousand five hundred and sixty-five people admitted, and the receipts amounted to more than three hundred pounds, was followed in nearly the same proportion by all the greater towns; and on the 20th of April the outlay for the entire venture was paid, leaving all that remained, to the middle of the month of June, sheer profit. "I came back last Sunday," he wrote on the 30th of May, "with my last country piece of work for this time done. Everywhere the success has been the same. St. James's Hall last night was quite a splendid spectacle. Two more Tuesdays there, and I shall retire into private life. I have only been able to get to Gadshill once since I left it, and that was the day before yesterday."

One memorable evening he had passed at my house in the interval, when he saw Mrs. Carlyle for the last time. Her sudden death followed shortly after, and near the close of April he had thus written to me from Liverpool. "It was a terrible shock to me, and poor dear Carlyle has been in my mind ever since. How often I have thought of the unfinished novel. No one now to finish it. None of the writing women come near her at all." This was an allusion to what had passed at their meeting. It was on the second of April, the day when Mr. Carlyle had delivered his inaugural address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, and a couple of ardent words from Professor Tyndall had told her of the triumph just before dinner. She came to us flourishing the telegram in her hand, and the radiance of her enjoyment of it was upon her all the night. Among other things she gave Dickens the subject for a novel, from what she had herself observed at the outside of a house in her street; of which the various incidents were drawn from the condition of its blinds and curtains, the costumes visible at its windows, the cabs at its door, its visitors admitted or rejected, its articles of furniture delivered or carried away; and the subtle serious humour of it all, the truth in trifling bits of character, and the gradual progress into a half-romantic interest, had enchanted the skilled novelist. She was well into the second volume of her small romance before she left, being as far as her observation then had taken her; but in a few days exciting incidents were expected, the denouement could not be far off, and Dickens was to have it when they met again. Yet it was to something far other than this amusing little fancy his thoughts had carried him, when he wrote of no one being capable to finish what she might have begun. In greater things this was still more true. No one could doubt it who had come within the fascinating influence of that sweet and noble nature. With some of the highest gifts of intellect, and the charm of a most varied knowledge of books and things, there was something "beyond, beyond." No one who knew Mrs. Carlyle could replace her loss when she had passed away.

The same letter which told of his uninterrupted success to the last, told me also that he had a heavy cold upon him and was "very tired and depressed." Some weeks before the first batch of readings closed, Messrs. Chappell had already tempted him with an offer for fifty more nights to begin at Christmas, for which he meant, as he then said, to ask them seventy pounds a night. "It would be unreasonable to ask anything now on the ground of the extent of the late success, but I am bound to look to myself for the future. The Chappells are speculators, though of the worthiest and most honourable kind. They make some bad speculations, and have made a very good one in this case, and will set this against those. I told them when we agreed: 'I offer these thirty Readings to you at fifty pounds a night, because I know perfectly well beforehand that no one in your business has the least idea of their real worth, and I wish to prove it.' The sum taken is L4720." The result of the fresh negotiation, though not completed until the beginning of August, may be at once described. "Chappell instantly accepts my proposal of forty nights at sixty pounds a night, and every conceivable and inconceivable expense paid. To make an even sum, I have made it forty-two nights for L2500. So I shall now try to discover a Christmas number" (he means the subject for one), "and shall, please Heaven, be quit of the whole series of readings so as to get to work on a new story for the new series of All the Year Round early in the spring. The readings begin probably with the New Year." These were fair designs, but the fairest are the sport of circumstance, and though the subject for Christmas was found, the new series of All the Year Round never had a new story from its founder. With whatever consequence to himself, the strong tide of the Readings was to sweep on to its full. The American war had ceased, and the first renewed offers from the States had been made and rejected. Hovering over all, too, were other sterner dispositions. "I think," he wrote in September, "there is some strange influence in the atmosphere. Twice last week I was seized in a most distressing manner—apparently in the heart; but, I am persuaded, only in the nervous system."

In the midst of his ovations such checks had not been wanting. "The police reported officially," he wrote to his daughter from Liverpool on the 14th of April, "that three thousand people were turned away from the hall last night. . . . Except that I can not sleep, I really think myself in very much better training than I had anticipated. A dozen oysters and a little champagne between the parts every night, seem to constitute the best restorative I have ever yet tried." "Such a prodigious demonstration last night at Manchester," he wrote to the same correspondent twelve days later, "that I was obliged (contrary to my principle in such cases) to go back. I am very tired to-day; for it would be of itself very hard work in that immense place, if there were not to be added eighty miles of railway and late hours to boot." "It has been very heavy work," he wrote to his sister-in-law on the 11th of May from Clifton, "getting up at 6.30 each morning after a heavy night, and I am not at all well to-day. We had a tremendous hall at Birmingham last night, L230 odd, 2100 people; and I made a most ridiculous mistake. Had Nickleby on my list to finish with, instead of Trial. Read Nickleby with great go, and the people remained. Went back again at 10 o'clock, and explained the accident: but said if they liked I would give them the Trial. They did like;—and I had another half hour of it, in that enormous place. . . . I have so severe a pain in the ball of my left eye that it makes it hard for me to do anything after 100 miles shaking since breakfast. My cold is no better, nor my hand either." It was his left eye, it will be noted, as it was his left foot and hand; the irritability or faintness of heart was also of course on the left side; and it was on the same left side he felt most of the effect of the railway accident.

Everything was done to make easier the labour of travel, but nothing could materially abate either the absolute physical exhaustion, or the nervous strain. "We arrived here," he wrote from Aberdeen (16th of May), "safe and sound between 3 and 4 this morning. There was a compartment for the men, and a charming room for ourselves furnished with sofas and easy chairs. We had also a pantry and washing-stand. This carriage is to go about with us." Two days later he wrote from Glasgow: "We halted at Perth yesterday, and got a lovely walk there. Until then I had been in a condition the reverse of flourishing; half strangled with my cold, and dyspeptically gloomy and dull; but, as I feel much more like myself this morning, we are going to get some fresh air aboard a steamer on the Clyde." The last letter during his country travel was from Portsmouth on the 24th of May, and contained these words: "You need have no fear about America." The readings closed in June.

The readings of the new year began with even increased enthusiasm, but not otherwise with happier omen. Here was his first outline of plan: "I start on Wednesday afternoon (the 15th of January) for Liverpool, and then go on to Chester, Derby, Leicester, and Wolverhampton. On Tuesday the 29th I read in London again, and in February I read at Manchester and then go on into Scotland." From Liverpool he wrote on the 21st: "The enthusiasm has been unbounded. 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. I attribute it to my distressing inability to sleep at night, and to nothing worse. Everything is made as easy to me as it possibly can be. Dolby would do anything to lighten the work, and does everything." The weather was sorely against him. "At Chester," he wrote on the 24th from Birmingham, "we read in a snow-storm and a fall of ice. I think it was the worst weather I ever saw. . . . At Wolverhampton last night the thaw had thoroughly set in, and it rained furiously, and I was again heavily beaten. We came on here after the reading (it is only a ride of forty miles), and it was as much as I could do to hold out the journey. But I was not faint, as at Liverpool. I was only exhausted." Five days later he had returned for his Reading in London, and thus replied to a summons to dine with Macready at my house: "I am very tired; cannot sleep; have been severely shaken on an atrocious railway; read to-night, and have to read at Leeds on Thursday. But I have settled with Dolby to put off our going to Leeds on Wednesday, in the hope of coming to dine with you, and seeing our dear old friend. I say 'in the hope,' because if I should be a little more used-up to-morrow than I am to-day, I should be constrained, in spite of myself, to take to the sofa and stick there."

On the 15th of February he wrote to his sister-in-law from Liverpool that they had had "an enormous turnaway" the previous night. "The day has been very fine, and I have turned it to the wholesomest account by walking on the sands at New Brighton all the morning. I am not quite right within, but believe it to be an effect of the railway shaking. There is no doubt of the fact that, after the Staplehurst experience, it tells more and more (railway shaking, that is) instead of, as one might have expected, less and less." The last remark is a strange one, from a man of his sagacity; but it was part of the too-willing self-deception which he practised, to justify him in his professed belief that these continued excesses of labour and excitement were really doing him no harm. The day after that last letter he pushed on to Scotland, and on the 17th wrote to his daughter from Glasgow. The closing night at Manchester had been enormous. "They cheered to that extent after it was over that I was obliged to huddle on my clothes (for I was undressing to prepare for the journey) and go back again. After so heavy a week, it was rather stiff to start on this long journey at a quarter to two in the morning; but I got more sleep than I ever got in a railway-carriage before. . . . I have, as I had in the last series of readings, a curious feeling of soreness all round the body—which I suppose to arise from the great exertion of voice . . ." Two days later he wrote to his sister-in-law from the Bridge of Allan, which he had reached from Glasgow that morning. "Yesterday I was so unwell with an internal malady that occasionally at long intervals troubles me a little, and it was attended with the sudden loss of so much blood, that I wrote to F. B. from whom I shall doubtless hear to-morrow. . . . I felt it a little more exertion to read, afterwards, and I passed a sleepless night after that again; but otherwise I am in good force and spirits to-day: I may say, in the best force. . . . The quiet of this little place is sure to do me good." He rallied again from this attack, and, though he still complained of sleeplessness, wrote cheerfully from Glasgow on the 21st, describing himself indeed as confined to his room, but only because "in close hiding from a local poet who has christened his infant son in my name, and consequently haunts the building." On getting back to Edinburgh he wrote to me, with intimation that many troubles had beset him; but that the pleasure of his audiences, and the providence and forethought of Messrs. Chappell, had borne him through. "Everything is done for me with the utmost liberality and consideration. Every want I can have on these journeys is anticipated, and not the faintest spark of the tradesman spirit ever peeps out. I have three men in constant attendance on me; besides Dolby, who is an agreeable companion, an excellent manager, and a good fellow."

On the 4th of March he wrote from Newcastle: "The readings have made an immense effect in this place, and it is remarkable that although the people are individually rough, collectively they are an unusually tender and sympathetic audience; while their comic perception is quite up to the high London standard. The atmosphere is so very heavy that yesterday we escaped to Tynemouth for a two hours' sea walk. There was a high north wind blowing, and a magnificent sea running. Large vessels were being towed in and out over the stormy bar, with prodigious waves breaking on it; and, spanning the restless uproar of the waters, was a quiet rainbow of transcendent beauty. The scene was quite wonderful. We were in the full enjoyment of it when a heavy sea caught us, knocked us over, and in a moment drenched us and filled even our pockets. We had nothing for it but to shake ourselves together (like Dr. Marigold), and dry ourselves as well as we could by hard walking in the wind and sunshine. But we were wet through for all that, when we came back here to dinner after half-an-hour's railway drive. I am wonderfully well, and quite fresh and strong." Three days later he was at Leeds; from which he was to work himself round through the most important neighbouring places to another reading in London, before again visiting Ireland.

This was the time of the Fenian excitements; it was with great reluctance he consented to go;[259] and he told us all at his first arrival that he should have a complete breakdown. More than 300 stalls were gone at Belfast two days before the reading, but on the afternoon of the reading in Dublin not 50 were taken. Strange to say however a great crowd pressed in at night, he had a tumultuous greeting, and on the 22nd of March I had this announcement from him: "You will be surprised to be told that we have done WONDERS! Enthusiastic crowds have filled the halls to the roof each night, and hundreds have been turned away. At Belfast the night before last we had L246 5s. In Dublin to-night everything is sold out, and people are besieging Dolby to put chairs anywhere, in doorways, on my platform, in any sort of hole or corner. In short the Readings are a perfect rage at a time when everything else is beaten down." He took the Eastern Counties at his return, and this brought the series to a close. "The reception at Cambridge 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 beyond even Manchester in the roars of welcome and rounds of cheers. The place was crammed, and all through the reading everything was taken with the utmost heartiness of enjoyment." The temptation of offers from America had meanwhile again been presented to him so strongly, and in such unlucky connection with immediate family claims threatening excess of expenditure even beyond the income he was making, that he was fain to write to his sister-in-law: "I begin to feel myself drawn towards America as Darnay in the Tale of Two Cities was attracted to Paris. It is my Loadstone Rock." Too surely it was to be so; and Dickens was not to be saved from the consequence of yielding to the temptation, by any such sacrifice as had rescued Darnay.

The letter which told me of the close of his English readings had in it no word of the farther enterprise, yet it seemed to be in some sort a preparation for it. "Last Monday evening" (14th May) "I finished the 50 Readings with great success. You have no idea how I have worked at them. Feeling it necessary, as their reputation widened, that they should be better than at first, I have learnt them all, so as to have no mechanical drawback in looking after the words. 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; cultivated a self-possession not to be disturbed; and made myself master of the situation. Finishing with Dombey (which I had not read for a long time) I learnt that, 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." . . . Six days later brought his reply to a remark that no degree of excellence to which he might have brought his readings could reconcile me to what there was little doubt would soon be pressed upon him. "It is curious" (20th May) "that you should touch the American subject, because I must confess that my mind is in a most disturbed state about it. That the people there have set themselves on having the readings, there is no question. Every mail brings me proposals, and the number of Americans at St. James's Hall has been surprising. A certain Mr. Grau, who took Ristori out, and is highly responsible, wrote to me by the last mail (for the second time) saying that if I would give him a word of encouragement he would come over immediately and arrange on the boldest terms for any number I chose, and would deposit a large sum of money at Coutts's. Mr. Fields writes to me on behalf of a committee of private gentlemen at Boston who wished for the credit of getting me out, who desired to hear the readings and did not want profit, and would put down as a guarantee L10,000—also to be banked here. Every American speculator who comes to London repairs straight to Dolby, with similar proposals. And, thus excited, Chappells, the moment this last series was over, proposed to treat for America!" Upon the mere question of these various offers he had little difficulty in making up his mind. If he went at all, he would go on his own account, making no compact with any one. Whether he should go at all, was what he had to determine.

One thing with his usual sagacity he saw clearly enough. He must make up his mind quickly. "The Presidential election would be in the autumn of next year. They are a people whom a fancy does not hold long. They are bent upon my reading there, and they believe (on no foundation whatever) that I am going to read there. If I ever go, the time would be when the Christmas number goes to press. Early in this next November." Every sort of enquiry he accordingly set on foot; and so far came to the immediate decision, that, if the answers left him no room to doubt that a certain sum might be realized, he would go. "Have no fear that anything will induce me to make the experiment, if I do not see the most forcible reasons for believing that what I could get by it, added to what I have got, would leave me with a sufficient fortune. I should be wretched beyond expression there. My small powers of description cannot describe the state of mind in which I should drag on from day to day." At the end of May he wrote: "Poor dear Stanfield!" (our excellent friend had passed away the week before). "I cannot think even of him, and of our great loss, for this spectre of doubt and indecision that sits at the board with me and stands at the bedside. I am in a tempest-tossed condition, and can hardly believe that I stand at bay at last on the American question. The difficulty of determining amid the variety of statements made to me is enormous, and you have no idea how heavily the anxiety of it sits upon my soul. But the prize looks so large!" One way at last seemed to open by which it was possible to get at some settled opinion. "Dolby sails for America" (2nd of July) "on Saturday the 3rd of August. It is impossible to come to any reasonable conclusion, without sending eyes and ears on the actual ground. He will take out my MS. for the Children's Magazine. I hope it is droll, and very child-like; though the joke is a grown-up one besides. You must try to like the pirate story, for I am very fond of it." The allusion is to his pleasant Holiday Romance which he had written for Mr. Fields.

Hardly had Mr. Dolby gone when there came that which should have availed to dissuade, far more than any of the arguments which continued to express my objection to the enterprise. "I am laid up," he wrote on the 6th of August, "with another attack in my foot, and was on the sofa all last night in tortures. I cannot bear to have the fomentations taken off for a moment. I was so ill with it on Sunday, and it looked so fierce, that I came up to Henry Thompson. He has gone into the case heartily, and says that there is no doubt the complaint originates in the action of the shoe, in walking, on an enlargement in the nature of a bunion. Erysipelas has supervened upon the injury; and the object is to avoid a gathering, and to stay the erysipelas where it is. Meantime I am on my back, and chafing. . . . I didn't improve my foot by going down to Liverpool to see Dolby off, but I have little doubt of its yielding to treatment, and repose." A few days later he was chafing still; the accomplished physician he consulted having dropped other hints that somewhat troubled him. "I could not walk a quarter of a mile to-night for L500. I make out so many reasons against supposing it to be gouty that I really do not think it is."

So momentous in my judgment were the consequences of the American journey to him that it seemed right to preface thus much of the inducements and temptations that led to it. My own part in the discussion was that of steady dissuasion throughout: though this might perhaps have been less persistent if I could have reconciled myself to the belief, which I never at any time did, that Public Readings were a worthy employment for a man of his genius. But it had by this time become clear to me that nothing could stay the enterprise. The result of Mr. Dolby's visit to America—drawn up by Dickens himself in a paper possessing still the interest of having given to the Readings when he crossed the Atlantic much of the form they then assumed[260]—reached me when I was staying at Ross; and upon it was founded my last argument against the scheme. This he received in London on the 28th of September, on which day he thus wrote to his eldest daughter: "As I telegraphed after I saw you, I am off to Ross to consult with Mr. Forster and Dolby together. You shall hear, either on Monday, or by Monday's post from London, how I decide finally." The result he wrote to her three days later: "You will have had my telegram that I go to America. After a long discussion with Forster, and consideration of what is to be said on both sides, I have decided to go through with it. We have telegraphed 'Yes' to Boston." Seven days later he wrote to me: "The Scotia being full, I do not sail until lord mayor's day; for which glorious anniversary I have engaged an officer's cabin on deck in the Cuba. I am not in very brilliant spirits at the prospect before me, and am deeply sensible of your motive and reasons for the line you have taken; but I am not in the least shaken in the conviction that I could never quite have given up the idea."

The remaining time was given to preparations; on the 2nd of November there was a Farewell Banquet in the Freemasons' Hall over which Lord Lytton presided; and on the 9th Dickens sailed for Boston. Before he left he had contributed his part to the last of his Christmas Numbers; all the writings he lived to complete were done; and the interval of his voyage may be occupied by a general review of the literary labour of his life.

FOOTNOTES:

[253] There had been some estrangement between them since the autumn of 1858, hardly now worth mention even in a note. Thackeray, justly indignant at a published description of himself by the member of a club to which both he and Dickens belonged, referred it to the Committee, who decided to expel the writer. Dickens, thinking expulsion too harsh a penalty for an offence thoughtlessly given, and, as far as might be, manfully atoned for by withdrawal and regret, interposed to avert that extremity. Thackeray resented the interference, and Dickens was justly hurt by the manner in which he did so. Neither was wholly right, nor was either altogether in the wrong.

[254] As I have thus fallen on theatrical subjects, I may add one or two practical experiences which befell Dickens at theatres in the autumn of 1864, when he sallied forth from his office upon these night wanderings to "cool" a boiling head. "I went the other night" (8th of October) "to see the Streets of London at the Princess's. A piece that is really drawing all the town, and filling the house with nightly overflows. It is the most depressing instance, without exception, of an utterly degraded and debased theatrical taste that has ever come under my writhing notice. For not only do the audiences—of all classes—go, but they are unquestionably delighted. At Astley's there has been much puffing at great cost of a certain Miss Ada Isaacs Menkin, who is to be seen bound on the horse in Mazeppa 'ascending the fearful precipices not as hitherto done by a dummy.' Last night, having a boiling head, I went out from here to cool myself on Waterloo Bridge, and I thought I would go and see this heroine. Applied at the box-door for a stall. 'None left sir.' For a box-ticket. 'Only standing-room sir.' Then the man (busy in counting great heaps of veritable checks) recognizes me and says—'Mr. Smith will be very much concerned when he hears that you went away sir'—'Never mind; I'll come again.' 'You never go behind I think sir, or—?' 'No thank you, I never go behind.' 'Mr. Smith's box, sir—' 'No thank you, I'll come again.' Now who do you think the lady is? If you don't already know, ask that question of the highest Irish mountains that look eternal, and they'll never tell you—Mrs. Heenan!" This lady, who turned out to be one of Dickens's greatest admirers, addressed him at great length on hearing of this occurrence, and afterwards dedicated a volume of poems to him! There was a pleasanter close to his letter. "Contrariwise I assisted another night at the Adelphi (where I couldn't, with careful calculation, get the house up to Nine Pounds), and saw quite an admirable performance of Mr. Toole and Mrs. Mellon—she, an old servant, wonderfully like Anne—he, showing a power of passion very unusual indeed in a comic actor, as such things go, and of a quite remarkable kind."

[255] Writing to me three months before, he spoke of the death of one whom he had known from his boyhood (ante, i. 47-8) and with whom he had fought unsuccessfully for some years against the management of the Literary Fund. "Poor Dilke! I am very sorry that the capital old stout-hearted man is dead." Sorrow may also be expressed that no adequate record should remain of a career which for steadfast purpose, conscientious maintenance of opinion, and pursuit of public objects with disregard of self, was one of very high example. So averse was Mr. Dilke to every kind of display that his name appears to none of the literary investigations which were conducted by him with an acuteness wonderful as his industry, and it was in accordance with his express instructions that the literary journal which his energy and self-denial had established kept silence respecting him at his death.

[256] One day before, the 8th of June 1865, his old friend Sir Joseph Paxton had breathed his last.

[257] Here are allusions to it at that time. "I have got a boot on to-day,—made on an Otranto scale, but really not very discernible from its ordinary sized companion." After a few days' holiday: "I began to feel my foot stronger the moment I breathed the sea air. Still, during the ten days I have been away, I have never been able to wear a boot after four or five in the afternoon, but have passed all the evenings with the foot up, and nothing on it. I am burnt brown and have walked by the sea perpetually, yet I feel certain that if I wore a boot this evening, I should be taken with those torments again before the night was out." This last letter ended thus: "As a relief to my late dismal letters, I send you the newest American story. Backwoods Doctor is called in to the little boy of a woman-settler. Stares at the child some time through a pair of spectacles. Ultimately takes them off, and says to the mother: 'Wa'al Marm, this is small-pox. 'Tis Marm, small-pox. But I am not posted up in Pustuls, and I do not know as I could bring him along slick through it. But I'll tell you wa'at I can do Marm:—I can send him a draft as will certainly put him into a most etarnal Fit, and I am almighty smart at Fits, and we might git round Old Grisly that way.'"

[258] I give one such instance: "The railway people have offered, in the case of the young man whom I got out of the carriage just alive, all the expenses and a thousand pounds down. The father declines to accept the offer. It seems unlikely that the young man, whose destination is India, would ever be passed for the Army now by the Medical Board. The question is, how far will that contingency tell, under Lord Campbell's Act?"

[259] He wrote to me on the 15th of March from Dublin: "So profoundly discouraging were the accounts from here in London last Tuesday that I held several councils with Chappell about coming at all; had actually drawn up a bill announcing (indefinitely) the postponement of the readings; and had meant to give him a reading to cover the charges incurred—but yielded at last to his representations the other way. We ran through a snow storm nearly the whole way, and in Wales got snowed up, came to a stoppage, and had to dig the engine out. . . . We got to Dublin at last, found it snowing and raining, and heard that it had been snowing and raining since the first day of the year. . . . As to outward signs of trouble or preparation, they are very few. At Kingstown our boat was waited for by four armed policemen, and some stragglers in various dresses who were clearly detectives. But there was no show of soldiery. My people carry a long heavy box containing gas-fittings. This was immediately laid hold of; but one of the stragglers instantly interposed on seeing my name, and came to me in the carriage and apologised. . . . The worst looking young fellow I ever saw, turned up at Holyhead before we went to bed there, and sat glooming and glowering by the coffee-room fire while we warmed ourselves. He said he had been snowed up with us (which we didn't believe), and was horribly disconcerted by some box of his having gone to Dublin without him. We said to one another 'Fenian:' and certainly he disappeared in the morning, and let his box go where it would." What Dickens heard and saw in Dublin, during this visit, convinced him that Fenianism and disaffection had found their way into several regiments.

[260] This renders it worth preservation in a note. He called it

"THE CASE IN A NUTSHELL.

"1. I think it may be taken as proved, that general enthusiasm and excitement are awakened in America on the subject of the Readings, and that the people are prepared to give me a great reception. The New York Herald, indeed, is of opinion that 'Dickens must apologise first'; and where a New York Herald is possible, anything is possible. But the prevailing tone, both of the press and of people of all conditions, is highly favourable. I have an opinion myself that the Irish element in New York is dangerous; for the reason that the Fenians would be glad to damage a conspicuous Englishman. This is merely an opinion of my own.

"2. All our original calculations were based on 100 Readings. But an unexpected result of careful enquiry on the spot, is the discovery that the month of May is generally considered (in the large cities) bad for such a purpose. Admitting that what governs an ordinary case in this wise, governs mine, this reduces the Readings to 80, and consequently at a blow makes a reduction of 20 per cent., in the means of making money within the half year—unless the objection should not apply in my exceptional instance.

"3. I dismiss the consideration that the great towns of America could not possibly be exhausted—or even visited—within 6 months, and that a large harvest would be left unreaped. Because I hold a second series of Readings in America is to be set down as out of the question: whether regarded as involving two more voyages across the Atlantic, or a vacation of five months in Canada.

"4. The narrowed calculation we have made, is this: What is the largest amount of clear profit derivable, under the most advantageous circumstances possible, as to their public reception, from 80 Readings and no more? In making this calculation, the expenses have been throughout taken on the New York scale—which is the dearest; as much as 20 per cent., has been deducted for management, including Mr. Dolby's commission; and no credit has been taken for any extra payment on reserved seats, though a good deal of money is confidently expected from this source. But on the other hand it is to be observed that four Readings (and a fraction over) are supposed to take place every week, and that the estimate of receipts is based on the assumption that the audiences are, on all occasions, as large as the rooms will reasonably hold.

"5. So considering 80 Readings, we bring out the net profit of that number, remaining to me after payment of all charges whatever, as L15,500.

"6. But it yet remains to be noted that the calculation assumes New York City, and the State of New York, to be good for a very large proportion of the 80 Readings; and that the calculation also assumes the necessary travelling not to extend beyond Boston and adjacent places, New York City and adjacent places, Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore. But, if the calculation should prove too sanguine on this head, and if these places should not be good for so many Readings, then it may prove impracticable to get through 80 within the time: by reason of other places that would come into the list, lying wide asunder, and necessitating long and fatiguing journeys.

"7. The loss consequent on the conversion of paper money into gold (with gold at the present ruling premium) is allowed for in the calculation. It counts seven dollars to the pound."



CHAPTER XIV.

DICKENS AS A NOVELIST.

1836-1870.

THE TALE OF TWO CITIES. GREAT EXPECTATIONS. CHRISTMAS SKETCHES. OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. DR. MARIGOLD AND TALES FOR AMERICA.

M. Taine's Criticism—What M. Taine overlooks—Anticipatory Reply to M. Taine—Paper by Mr. Lewes—Plea for Objectors to Dickens—Dickens a "Seer of Visions"—Criticised and Critic—An Opinion on Mr. and Mrs. Micawber—Dickens in a Fit of Hallucination—Dickens's Leading Quality—Dickens's Earlier Books—Mastery of Dialogue—Realities of Fiction—Fielding and Dickens—Universality of Micawber Experiences—Dickens's Enjoyment of his Own Humour—Origin of Tale of Two Cities—Title-hunting—Success—Method different from his Other Books—Reply to an Objection—Care with which Dickens worked—Tale of Two Cities characterized—Opinion of an American Critic—Great Expectations—Another Boy-child for Hero—Groundwork of the Story—Masterly Drawing of Character—Christmas Sketches—Our Mutual Friend—Germ of Characters for it—Writing Numbers in Advance—Death of Leech—Holiday in France—In the Staplehurst Accident—On a Tale by Edmund About—Doctor Marigold—Minor Stories—Edwin Drood—Purity of Dickens's Writings—True Province of Humour—Dickens's Death—Effect of the News in America—A Far-Western Admirer of Dickens.

WHAT I have to say generally of Dickens's genius as a writer may be made part of the notice, which still remains to be given, of his writings from The Tale of Two Cities to the time at which we have arrived, leaving Edwin Drood for mention in its place; and this will be accompanied, as in former notices of individual stories, by illustrations drawn from his letters and life. His literary work was so intensely one with his nature that he is not separable from it, and the man and the method throw a singular light on each other. But some allusion to what has been said of these books, by writers assuming to speak with authority, will properly precede what has to be offered by me; and I shall preface this part of my task with the hint of Carlyle, that in looking at a man out of the common it is good for common men to make sure that they "see" before they attempt to "oversee" him.

Of the French writer, M. Henri Taine, it has before been remarked that his inability to appreciate humour is fatal to his pretensions as a critic of the English novel. But there is much that is noteworthy in his criticism notwithstanding, as well as remarkable in his knowledge of our language; his position entitles him to be heard without a suspicion of partizanship or intentional unfairness; whatever the value of his opinion, the elaboration of its form and expression is itself no common tribute; and what is said in it of Dickens's handling in regard to style and character, embodies temperately objections which have since been taken by some English critics without his impartiality and with less than his ability. As to style M. Taine does not find that the natural or simple prevails sufficiently. The tone is too passionate. The imaginative or poetic side of allusion is so uniformly dwelt on, that the descriptions cease to be subsidiary, and the minute details of pain or pleasure wrought out by them become active agencies in the tale. So vivid and eager is the display of fancy that everything is borne along with it; imaginary objects take the precision of real ones; living thoughts are controlled by inanimate things; the chimes console the poor old ticket-porter; the cricket steadies the rough carrier's doubts; the sea waves soothe the dying boy; clouds, flowers, leaves, play their several parts; hardly a form of matter without a living quality; no silent thing without its voice. Fondling and exaggerating thus what is occasional in the subject of his criticism, into what he has evidently at last persuaded himself is a fixed and universal practice with Dickens, M. Taine proceeds to explain the exuberance by comparing such imagination in its vividness to that of a monomaniac. He fails altogether to apprehend that property in Humour which involves the feeling of subtlest and most affecting analogies, and from which is drawn the rare insight into sympathies between the nature of things and their attributes or opposites, in which Dickens's fancy revelled with such delight. Taking the famous lines which express the lunatic, the lover, and the poet as "of Imagination all compact," in a sense that would have startled not a little the great poet who wrote them, M. Taine places on the same level of creative fancy the phantoms of the lunatic and the personages of the artist. He exhibits Dickens as from time to time, in the several stages of his successive works of fiction, given up to one idea, possessed by it, seeing nothing else, treating it in a hundred forms, exaggerating it, and so dazzling and overpowering his readers with it that escape is impossible. This he maintains to be equally the effect as Mr. Mell the usher plays the flute, as Tom Pinch enjoys or exposes his Pecksniff, as the guard blows his bugle while Tom rides to London, as Ruth Pinch crosses Fountain Court or makes the beefsteak pudding, as Jonas Chuzzlewit commits and returns from the murder, and as the storm which is Steerforth's death-knell beats on the Yarmouth shore. To the same kind of power he attributes the extraordinary clearness with which the commonest objects in all his books, the most ordinary interiors, any old house, a parlour, a boat, a school, fifty things that in the ordinary tale-teller would pass unmarked, are made vividly present and indelible; are brought out with a strength of relief, precision, and force, unapproached in any other writer of prose fiction; with everything minute yet nothing cold, "with all the passion and the patience of the painters of his country." And while excitement in the reader is thus maintained to an extent incompatible with a natural style or simple narrative, M. Taine yet thinks he has discovered, in this very power of awakening a feverish sensibility and moving laughter or tears at the commonest things, the source of Dickens's astonishing popularity. Ordinary people, he says, are so tired of what is always around them, and take in so little of the detail that makes up their lives, that when, all of a sudden, there comes a man to make these things interesting, and turn them into objects of admiration, tenderness, or terror, the effect is enchantment. Without leaving their arm-chairs or their firesides, they find themselves trembling with emotion, their eyes are filled with tears, their cheeks are broad with laughter, and, in the discovery they have thus made that they too can suffer, love, and feel, their very existence seems doubled to them. It had not occurred to M. Taine that to effect so much might seem to leave little not achieved.