The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833-1856

I have been so hard at work (and shall be for the next eight or nine months), that sometimes I fancy I have a digestion, or a head, or nerves, or some odd encumbrance of that kind, to which I am altogether unaccustomed, and am obliged to rush at some other object for relief; at present the house is in a state of tremendous excitement, on account of Mr. Collins having nearly finished the new play we are to act at Christmas, which is very interesting and extremely clever. I hope this time you will come and see it. We purpose producing it on Charley's birthday, Twelfth Night; but we shall probably play four nights altogether – "The Lighthouse" on the last occasion – so that if you could come for the two last nights, you would see both the pieces. I am going to try and do better than ever, and already the school-room is in the hands of carpenters; men from underground habitations in theatres, who look as if they lived entirely upon smoke and gas, meet me at unheard-of hours. Mr. Stanfield is perpetually measuring the boards with a chalked piece of string and an umbrella, and all the elder children are wildly punctual and business-like to attract managerial commendation. If you don't come, I shall do something antagonistic – try to unwrite No. 11, I think. I should particularly like you to see a new and serious piece so done. Because I don't think you know, without seeing, how good it is!!!

None of the children suffered, thank God, from the Boulogne risk. The three little boys have gone back to school there, and are all well. Katey came away ill, but it turned out that she had the whooping-cough for the second time. She has been to Brighton, and comes home to-day. I hear great accounts of her, and hope to find her quite well when she arrives presently. I am afraid Mary Boyle has been praising the Boulogne life too highly. Not that I deny, however, our having passed some very pleasant days together, and our having had great pleasure in her visit.

You will object to me dreadfully, I know, with a beard (though not a great one); but if you come and see the play, you will find it necessary there, and will perhaps be more tolerant of the fearful object afterwards. I need not tell you how delighted we should be to see George, if you would come together. Pray tell him so, with my kind regards. I like the notion of Wentworth and his philosophy of all things. I remember a philosophical gravity upon him, a state of suspended opinion as to myself, it struck me, when we last met, in which I thought there was a great deal of oddity and character.

Charley is doing very well at Baring's, and attracting praise and reward to himself. Within this fortnight there turned up from the West Indies, where he is now a chief justice, an old friend of mine, of my own age, who lived with me in lodgings in the Adelphi, when I was just Charley's age. He had a great affection for me at that time, and always supposed I was to do some sort of wonders. It was a very pleasant meeting indeed, and he seemed to think it so odd that I shouldn't be Charley!

This is every atom of no-news that will come out of my head, and I firmly believe it is all I have in it – except that a cobbler at Boulogne, who had the nicest of little dogs, that always sat in his sunny window watching him at work, asked me if I would bring the dog home, as he couldn't afford to pay the tax for him. The cobbler and the dog being both my particular friends, I complied. The cobbler parted with the dog heart-broken. When the dog got home here, my man, like an idiot as he is, tied him up and then untied him. The moment the gate was open, the dog (on the very day after his arrival) ran out. Next day, Georgy and I saw him lying, all covered with mud, dead, outside the neighbouring church. How am I ever to tell the cobbler? He is too poor to come to England, so I feel that I must lie to him for life, and say that the dog is fat and happy. Mr. Plornish, much affected by this tragedy, said: "I s'pose, pa, I shall meet the cobbler's dog" (in heaven).

Georgy and Catherine send their best love, and I send mine. Pray write to me again some day, and I can't be too busy to be happy in the sight of your familiar hand, associated in my mind with so much that I love and honour.

Ever, my dear Mr. Watson, most faithfully yours.Mrs. HorneTavistock House, Tavistock Square, Oct. 20th, 1856.

My dear Mrs. Horne,

I answer your note by return of post, in order that you may know that the Stereoscopic Nottage has not written to me yet. Of course I will not lose a moment in replying to him when he does address me.

We shall be greatly pleased to see you again. You have been very, very often in our thoughts and on our lips, during this long interval.

And "she" is near you, is she? O I remember her well! And I am still of my old opinion! Passionately devoted to her sex as I am (they are the weakness of my existence), I still consider her a failure. She had some extraordinary christian-name, which I forget. Lashed into verse by my feelings, I am inclined to write:

My heart disownsOphelia Jones;

only I think it was a more sounding name.

Are these the tones —Volumnia Jones?

No. Again it seems doubtful.

God bless her bones,Petronia Jones!

I think not.

Carve I on stonesOlympia Jones?

Can that be the name? Fond memory favours it more than any other. My love to her.

Ever, my dear Mrs. Horne, very faithfully yours.The Duke of DevonshireTavistock House, December 1st, 1856.

My dear Duke of Devonshire,

The moment the first bill is printed for the first night of the new play I told you of, I send it to you, in the hope that you will grace it with your presence. There is not one of the old actors whom you will fail to inspire as no one else can; and I hope you will see a little result of a friendly union of the arts, that you may think worth seeing, and that you can see nowhere else.

We propose repeating it on Thursday, the 8th; Monday, the 12th; and Wednesday, the 14th of January. I do not encumber this note with so many bills, and merely mention those nights in case any one of them should be more convenient to you than the first.

But I shall hope for the first, unless you dash me (N. B. – I put Flora into the current number on purpose that this might catch you softened towards me, and at a disadvantage). If there is hope of your coming, I will have the play clearly copied, and will send it to you to read beforehand. With the most grateful remembrances, and the sincerest good wishes for your health and happiness,

I am ever, my dear Duke of Devonshire,Your faithful and obliged.Mr. Thomas MittonTavistock House, Wednesday, Dec. 3rd, 1856.

My dear Mitton,

The inspector from the fire office – surveyor, by-the-bye, they called him – duly came. Wills described him as not very pleasant in his manners. I derived the impression that he was so exceedingly dry, that if he ever takes fire, he must burn out, and can never otherwise be extinguished.

Next day, I received a letter from the secretary, to say that the said surveyor had reported great additional risk from fire, and that the directors, at their meeting next Tuesday, would settle the extra amount of premium to be paid.

Thereupon I thought the matter was becoming complicated, and wrote a common-sense note to the secretary (which I begged might be read to the directors), saying that I was quite prepared to pay any extra premium, but setting forth the plain state of the case. (I did not say that the Lord Chief Justice, the Chief Baron, and half the Bench were coming; though I felt a temptation to make a joke about burning them all.)

Finally, this morning comes up the secretary to me (yesterday having been the great Tuesday), and says that he is requested by the directors to present their compliments, and to say that they could not think of charging for any additional risk at all; feeling convinced that I would place the gas (which they considered to be the only danger) under the charge of one competent man. I then explained to him how carefully and systematically that was all arranged, and we parted with drums beating and colours flying on both sides.

Ever faithfully.Mr. W. C. MacreadyTavistock House, Saturday Evening, Dec. 13th, 1856.

My dearest Macready,

We shall be charmed to squeeze Willie's friend in, and it shall be done by some undiscovered power of compression on the second night, Thursday, the 14th. Will you make our compliments to his honour, the Deputy Fiscal, present him with the enclosed bill, and tell him we shall be cordially glad to see him? I hope to entrust him with a special shake of the hand, to be forwarded to our dear boy (if a hoary sage like myself may venture on that expression) by the next mail.

I would have proposed the first night, but that is too full. You may faintly imagine, my venerable friend, the occupation of these also gray hairs, between "Golden Marys," "Little Dorrits," "Household Wordses," four stage-carpenters entirely boarding on the premises, a carpenter's shop erected in the back garden, size always boiling over on all the lower fires, Stanfield perpetually elevated on planks and splashing himself from head to foot, Telbin requiring impossibilities of smart gasmen, and a legion of prowling nondescripts for ever shrinking in and out. Calm amidst the wreck, your aged friend glides away on the "Dorrit" stream, forgetting the uproar for a stretch of hours, refreshes himself with a ten or twelve miles walk, pitches headforemost into foaming rehearsals, placidly emerges for editorial purposes, smokes over buckets of distemper with Mr. Stanfield aforesaid, again calmly floats upon the "Dorrit" waters.

With very best love to Miss Macready and all the rest,Ever, my dear Macready, most affectionately yours.Miss PowerTavistock House, December 15th, 1856.

My dear Marguerite,

I am not quite clear about the story; not because it is otherwise than exceedingly pretty, but because I am rather in a difficult position as to stories just now. Besides beginning a long one by Collins with the new year (which will last five or six months), I have, as I always have at this time, a considerable residue of stories written for the Christmas number, not suitable to it, and yet available for the general purposes of "Household Words." This limits my choice for the moment to stories that have some decided specialties (or a great deal of story) in them.

But I will look over the accumulation before you come, and I hope you will never see your little friend again but in print.

You will find us expecting you on the night of the twenty-fourth, and heartily glad to welcome you. The most terrific preparations are in hand for the play on Twelfth Night. There has been a carpenter's shop in the garden for six weeks; a painter's shop in the school-room; a gasfitter's shop all over the basement; a dressmaker's shop at the top of the house; a tailor's shop in my dressing-room. Stanfield has been incessantly on scaffoldings for two months; and your friend has been writing "Little Dorrit," etc. etc., in corners, like the sultan's groom, who was turned upside-down by the genie.

Kindest love from all, and from me.Ever affectionately.Mr. William Charles KentTavistock House, Christmas Eve, 1856.

My dear Sir,

I cannot leave your letter unanswered, because I am really anxious that you should understand why I cannot comply with your request.

Scarcely a week passes without my receiving requests from various quarters to sit for likenesses, to be taken by all the processes ever invented. Apart from my having an invincible objection to the multiplication of my countenance in the shop-windows, I have not, between my avocations and my needful recreation, the time to comply with these proposals. At this moment there are three cases out of a vast number, in which I have said: "If I sit at all, it shall be to you first, to you second, and to you third." But I assure you, I consider myself almost as unlikely to go through these three conditional achievements as I am to go to China. Judge when I am likely to get to Mr. Watkins!

I highly esteem and thank you for your sympathy with my writings. I doubt if I have a more genial reader in the world.

Very faithfully yours.PROLOGUE TO "THE LIGHTHOUSE."(Spoken by Charles Dickens.)Slow music all the time, unseen speaker, curtain downA story of those rocks where doomed ships comeTo cast them wreck'd upon the steps of home,Where solitary men, the long year through —The wind their music and the brine their view —Warn mariners to shun the beacon-light;A story of those rocks is here to-night.Eddystone lighthouse[Exterior view discovered.In its ancient form;Ere he who built it wish'd for the great stormThat shiver'd it to nothing; once againBehold outgleaming on the angry main!Within it are three men; to these repairIn our frail bark of Fancy, swift as air!They are but shadows, as the rower grimTook none but shadows in his boat with him.So be ye shades, and, for a little space,The real world a dream without a trace.Return is easy. It will have ye backToo soon to the old beaten dusty track;For but one hour forget it. Billows rise,Blow winds, fall rain, be black ye midnight skies;And you who watch the light, arise! arise![Exterior view rises and discovers the scene.THE SONG OF THE WRECKIThe wind blew high, the waters raved,A ship drove on the land,A hundred human creatures saved,Kneeled down upon the sand.Threescore were drowned, threescore were thrownUpon the black rocks wild,And thus among them, left alone,They found one helpless child.IIA seaman rough, to shipwreck bred,Stood out from all the rest,And gently laid the lonely headUpon his honest breast.And travelling o'er the desert wide,It was a solemn joy,To see them, ever side by side,The sailor and the boy.IIIIn famine, sickness, hunger, thirst,The two were still but one,Until the strong man drooped the first,And felt his labours done.Then to a trusty friend he spake,"Across the desert wide,O take this poor boy for my sake!"And kissed the child and died.IVToiling along in weary plight,Through heavy jungle, mire,These two came later every nightTo warm them at the fire.Until the captain said one day,"O seaman good and kind,To save thyself now come away,And leave the boy behind!"VThe child was slumb'ring near the blaze,"O captain, let him restUntil it sinks, when God's own waysShall teach us what is best!"They watched the whitened ashy heap,They touched the child in vain;They did not leave him there asleep,He never woke again.

This song was sung to the music of "Little Nell," a ballad composed by the late Mr. George Linley, to the words of Miss Charlotte Young, and dedicated to Charles Dickens. He was very fond of it, and his eldest daughter had been in the habit of singing it to him constantly since she was quite a child.

END OF VOL. I

1

The little dog – a white Havana spaniel —was brought home and renamed, after an incidental character in "Nicholas Nickleby," "Mr. Snittle Timbery." This was shortened to "Timber," and under that name the little dog lived to be very old, and accompanied the family in all its migrations, including the visits to Italy and Switzerland.

2

Life Insurance Office.

3

Mr. Macready's – so pronounced by one of Charles Dickens's little children.

4

T. P. Cooke, the celebrated actor of "William" in Douglas Jerrold's play of "Black-eyed Susan."

5

This alludes to a theatrical story of a second-rate actor, who described himself as a "chained lion," in a theatre where he had to play inferior parts to Mr. Macready.

6

"The Battle of Life."

7

LETTER OF BARON TAÜCHNITZ

Having had the privilege to see a letter which the late Mr. Charles Dickens wrote to the author of this work upon its first appearance, and which there was no intention to publish in England, it became my lively wish to make it known to the readers of my edition.

I therefore addressed an earnest request to Mr. Forster, that he would permit the letter to be prefixed to a reprint not designed for circulation in England, where I could understand his reluctance to sanction its publication. Its varied illustration of the subject of the book, and its striking passages of personal feeling and character, led me also to request that I might be allowed to present it in facsimile.

Mr. Forster complied; and I am most happy to be thus enabled to give to my public, on the following pages, so attractive and so interesting a letter, reproduced in the exact form in which it was written, by the most popular and admired-of writers – too early gone.

Taüchnitz.

Leipsic,

May 23, 1873.

8

The last illness of Mrs. White's mother.

9

Dr. Gottfried Kinkel, a distinguished scholar and Professor in the University of Bonn, who was at that time undergoing very rigorous State imprisonment in Prussia, for political reasons. Dr. Kinkel was afterwards well known as a teacher and lecturer on Art in London, where he resided for many years.

10

The part of the lawyer in "Used Up." It was not played after all by Mr. Watson, but by Mr. (now Sir William) Boxall, R.A., a very old and intimate friend of Mr. and Mrs. Watson, and of Charles Dickens.

11

This part, finally, was played by Charles Dickens, junior.

12

Mr. Stafford and Mr. Stopford, who both acted in the plays at Rockingham.

13

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

14

The great Duke of Wellington's funeral.

15

Meaning Mr. W. H. Wills himself.

16

The poet "Barry Cornwall."

17

"Hide and Seek."

18

On the occasion of the Prince Consort's visit to the camp at Boulogne.

19

Mr. Egg.

20

The inscription on the house in Rochester known as "Watts's Charity" is to the effect that it furnishes a night's lodging for six poor travellers – "not being Rogues or Proctors."

21

Captain Cavendish Boyle was governor of the military prison at Weedon.

22

Wife of the late Sir Joseph Olliffe, Physician to the British Embassy.

23

Of Mr. Wilkie Collins.

24

This note was written after hearing from Mr. Forster of his intended marriage.