A Collection of Letters of Dickens, 1833-1870

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"VVl G.Bcwdoin

.

^ Coffection of

BttUxe of OicSene

(g Coittdion of

tttUxe of f)icften6

1833-1870

NEW YORK

CCarfCB ^ctiBncr'B §cm

• •

V

)

3 - l" V- 7

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The following Collection has been made from
the three volumes of Dickens's letters edited
by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, and
published nearly a decade ago. The publish-
ers believe that, valuable as the original edi-
tion must remain to many of Dickens's admirers,
^ there is, at present, another audience for whom

I the letters will gain rather than lose by compres-

sion. It is needless to say that no word of the
original has been changed, and that where omis-
sions have been made they have, in every case —
except that of entire letters — been indicated. In
order to lose none of the interest of the volumes
thus condensed, the work of selection has not
been confined to complete letters, but has distin-
guished between the parts of each, in this way
retaining, it is believed, everything essential in
the first edition. Everything characteristic of
the writer has especially been preserved — passages
relating to his domestic relations, his love for his

children, his religious views, his opinions on pol-
ities and public questions generally, his personal
adventures, and every reference of any import to
his books or the characters they contain. And
thus, although many letters have been curtailed
and many others omitted, neither the color, hu-
mor, nor personal accent of the original three
volumes has suffered. The American allusions
have been nearly all retained. A few of the
notes are such as it has seemed advisable to add
to those of the original editors, whose explana-
tory "Narrative" has been dropped. Tlie reader
will remark tlie necessary lack of chronological
continuity, but the chronological order has, of
course, been followed. The signature to the first
letter, which, though dateless, was written in 1835
— the days of Dickens's earliest authorship — is
given in f ac-simile, as is one of the last letters
ever written by him.

«Hb's |iiU f late,

liqiram b; ^otliettti, $tnl

^A-s^mU^ U.

LETTERS

^"aph^ *'-^»sy fAZ^tit, *it <* ♦

^/It ^^ 4M«^ ^^t0H^ tf< ffUA. /L«««t«^ ^

/SLv- ii6i^ .

Jff^ Ttu 7H*u^^6^^d.^ ^/At

^ Comciion of

Btthve of <^icUne

•833-1870

NEW YORK

C6<trfc8 ^crt6ncr'o ^one

PUBLISHERS' NOTE,

The following Collection has been made from
the three volumes of Dickens's letters edited
by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, and
published nearly a decade ago. The publish-
ers believe that, valuable as the original edi-
tion must remain to many of Dickens's admirers,
there is, at present, another audience for whom
the letters will gain rather than lose by compres-
sion. It is needless to say that no word of the
original has been changed, and that where omis-
sions have been made they have, in every case —
except that of entire letters — been indicated. In
order to lose none of the interest of the volumes
thus condensed, the work of selection has not
been confined to complete letters, but has distin-
guished between the parts of each, in this way
retaining, it is believed, everything essential in
the first edition. Everything characteristic of
the writer has especially been preserved — passages
relating to his domestic relations, his love for his

children, his religious views, his opinions on pol-
ities and public questions genei'ally, his personal
adventures, and every reference of any import to
his books or the characters they contain. And
thus, although many letters have been curtailed
and many others omitted, neither the color, hu-
mor, nor personal accent of the original three
volumes has suffered. The American allusions
have been nearly all retained. A few of the
notes are sucli as it has seemed advisable to add
to those of the original editors, whose explana-
tory "Narrative" has been dropped. The reader
will remark tlie necessary lack of chronological
continuity, but the chronological order has, of
course, been followed. The signature to the first
letter, which, though dateless, was written in 1835
— the days of Dickens's earliest authorship — is
given in f ac-simile, as is one of the last letters
ever written by him.

A COLLECTION OF

LETTERS OF DICKENS.

[TO MR. HENRY AUSTIN]*

Pubnival's Inn, Wednesday Night, past 12.

Dear Henry :

I have just been ordered on a journey, the length
of which is at present uncertain. I may be back on
Sunday very probably, and start again on the fol-
lowing day. Should this be the case, you shall hear
from me before.

Don't laugh. I am going (alone) in a gig ; and,
to quote the eloquent inducement which the pro-
prietors of Hampstead chays hold out to Sunday rid-
ers — "the genTm'n drives himself." I am going
into Essex and Suffolk. It strikes me I shall be spilt
before I pay a turnpike. I have a presentiment I
shall run over an only child before I reach Chelms-
ford, my £rst stage.

> .Afterwards the hushand of Dickens's second sister, Letitia.

4 ^j^tfcxB of ©icftene*

Let the evident haste of this specimen of I?ie
Polite Letter Write?' be its excuse, and
Believe me, dear Henry, most sincerely yours,

[TO MISS HOGARTH]!

Sunday Evening.

• • • • • •

I have at this moment got Pickwick and his
friends on the Bochester coach, and they are going
on swimmingly, in company with a very different
character'' from any I have yet described, who I flat-
ter myself will make a decided hit. I want to get
them from the ball to the inn before I go to bed ;
and I think that will take me until one or two
o'clock at the earliest. The publishers will be here
in the morning, so you will readily suppose I have
no alternative but to stick at my desk.

> Afterwards Mrs. Dickens.

> Alfred Jingle.

£effer0 of ®tc6en0. 5

[TO MASTER HASTINGS HUGHES]

DouGHTT Stbebt, LONDON, Deo. 12th, 1838.

'^d Sir :

ren Squeers one cut on the neck and two

ucou, at which he appeared much surpnsed

:au to cry, which, being a cowardly thing, is

1 1 should have expected from him — wouldn't

ifully done what you told me in your

1 ab and the two " sheeps " for the

)y have also had some good ale and

me wine. I am sorry you didn't say

ou would like them to have. I gave

y, which they liked very much, ex-

who was a little sick and choked a

nB was rather greedy, and that's the

ve it went the wrong way, which I

. light, and I hope you will say so

bis roast lamb, as you said he was

Dot eat it all, and says if you do not

ho should like to have the rest

TOW with some greens, which he is

so am L He said he did not like

■ hot, for he thought it spoilt the

him have it cold. You should have

: it. I thought he never would have

6 ^itttB of ^Bkfknti.

left off. I also gave him three pounds of money, all
in sixpences, to make it seem more, and he said di-
rectly that he should give more than half to his
mamma and sister, and divide the rest "with poor
Smike. And I say he is a good fellow for saying so ;
and if anybody says he isn't I am ready to fight hinr^
•whenever they like — there I

Fanny Squeers shsdl be attended to, depend upon
it Your drawing of her is very like, except that I
don't think the hair is quite curly enough. The
nose is particularly like hers, and so are the legs.
She is a nasty disagreeable thing, and I know it will
make her very cross when she sees it ; and what I
say is that I hope it may. Tou will say the same I
know — at least I think you wilL

I meant _to have written you a long letter, but I
cannot write very fast when I like the person I am
writing to, because that makes me think about
them, and I like you, and so I tell you. Besides, it
is just eight o'clock at night, and I always go to bed
at eight o'clock, except when it is my birthday, and
then I sit up to supper. So I will not say anything
more besides this — and that is my love to you and
Neptune ; and if you will drink my health every
Christmas Day I will drink yours — come.

I am,

Respected Sir,

Your affectionate Friend.

&eftet0 of ^SHcftenB. 7

P.S. — I don't write my name very ^lain, but you
know what it is you know, so never mind.

[TO MR. W. C. MACREADY]

Doughty Stbeet, Sunday.

My dear Macready :

I will have, if you please, three dozen of the ex-
traordinary champagne ; and I am much obliged to
you for recollecting me.

I ought not to be sorry to hear of your abdica-
tion,* but I am, notwithstanding, most heartily and
sincerely sorry, for my own sake and the sake of
thousands, who may now go and whistle for a thea-
tre — at least, such a theatre as you gave them ; and
I do now in my heart believe that for a long and
dreary time that exquisite delight has passed away.
If I may jest with my misfortunes, and quote the
Portsmouth critic of IVIr. Crummles's company, I say
that : " As an exquisite embodiment of the poet*s
visions and a realization of human intellectuality,
gilding with refulgent light our dreamy moments,
and laying open a new and magic world before the
mental eye, the drama is gone — perfectly gone."

With the same perverse and unaccountable feel-
ing which causes a heart-broken man at a dear
friend's funeral to see something irresistibly comical

> Of the manaKement of Ck)yent Garden Theatre.

8 iAit^B of <i)tcften0«

in a red-nosed or one-eyed undertaker, I receive

your communication with ghostly facetiousness ;

though on a moment's reflection I find better cause

for consolation in the hope that, relieved from your

most trying and painful duties, you will now have

leisure to return to pursuits more congenial to your

mind, and to move more easily and pleasantly among

your friends. In the long catalogue of the latter, I

believe that there is not one prouder of the name, or

more grateful for the store of delightful recollections

you have enabled him to heap up from boyhood,

than,

My dear Macready,

Yours always faithfidly.

[TO MR. GEORGE CATTERMOLE]

December 22d, 1840.

Dear George :

The child lying dead in the little sleeping-room,
which is behind the open screen. It is winter time,
BO there are no flowers ; but upon her breast and
pillow, and about her bed, there may be strips
of holly and berries, and such free green things.
Window overgrown with ivy. The little boy who
had that talk with her about angels may be by
the bedside, if you like it so ; but I think it will be
quieter and more peaceful if she is quite alone. I
want it to express the most beautiful repose and

feeftet0 of ®ic8en0* 9

tranquillity, and to have something of a happy look,
if death can.

2.

The child has been buried inside the church, and
the old man, who cannot be made to understand
that she is dead, repairs to the grave and sits there
all day long, waiting for her arrival, to begin an-
other journey. His staff and knapsack, her little
bonnet and basket, etc., lie beside him. "Shell
come to-morrow," he says when it gets dark, and
goes sorrowfully home. I think an hour-glass run-
ning out would help the notion ; perhaps her little
things upon his knee, or in his hand.

I am breaking my heart over this story, and can-
not bear to finish it.

Love to Missia

Ever and always heartily.

[TO REV. WILLIAM HARNESS]
Deyonshibe Tbbracb, Saturday Morning, Jan. 2d, 1841.

My dear Harness :

I should have been very glad to join your pleasant
party, but all next week I shall be laid up with a
broken heart, for I must occupy myself in finishing
the Curiosity Shop, and it is such a painful task
to me that I must concentrate myself upon it

10 feettet0 of ®icften0.

tooth and nail, and go out nowhere until it is
done.

I have delayed answering your kind note in a
vague hope of being heart-whole again by the
seventh. The present state of my work, however
(Christmas not being a very favourable season for
making progress in such doings), assures me that
this cannot be, and that I must heroically deny my-
self the pleasure you offer.

Always believe me,

Faithfully yours.

[TO MR. GEORGE CATTERMOLB]
DsvoNSHmE Terrace, Thursday, Jan. 14th, 1841.

My dear Cattermole :

I cannot tell you how much obliged I am to you
for altering the child, or how much I hope that my
wish in that respect didn't go greatly against the
grain.

I saw the old inn this morning. Words cannot
say how good it is. I can't bear the thought of its
being cut, and should like to frame and glaze it in
statu quo for ever and ever.

Will you do a little tail-piece for the Curiosity
story?— only one figure if you like — giving some
notion of the etherealised spirit of the child ; some-
thing like those httle figures in the frontispiece. If

feeftet0 of ©icftene. //

you will, and can despatch it at once, you "will make
me happy.

I am, for the time being, nearly dead with work
and grief for the loss of my child.

Always, my dear George,

Heartily yours.

[TO MR. GEORGE CATTERMOLE]
Devonshike Terbage, Thursday Night, Jan. 28th, 1841.

My dear George :

I sent to Chapman and Hall yesterday morning
about the second subject for No. 2 of Bamaby,
but found they had sent it to Browne.

The first subject of No. 3 I will either send to you
on Saturday, or, at latest, on Sunday morning. I
have also directed Chapman and Hall to send you
proofs of what has gone before, for reference, if you
need it

I want to know whether you feel ravens in gen-
eral and would fancy Bamaby's raven in particular.
Bamaby being an idiot, my notion is to have him
always in company with a pet raven, who is immeas-
urably more knowing than himself. To this end I
have been studying my bird, and think I could make
a very queer character of him. Should you like the
subject when this raven makes his first appearance ?

Faithfully always.

12 fieffers of ®ic8ens.

[TO MR. JOHN TOMIJN.]»

I, Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent's Pabs;
LoxDOX, Tuesday, Feb. 23d, IML

Dear Sir :

You are quite right in feeling assured that I
should answer the letter you have addressed to me.
If you had entertained a presentiment that it would
afford me sincere pleasure and deUght to hear from
a warm-hearted and admiring reader of my books
in the backwoods of America, you would not have
been far wrong.

I thank you cordially and hearfcUy both for your
letter and its kind and courteous term& To think
that I have awakened a fellow-feehng and sympathy
with the creatures of many thoughtful hours among
the vast soUtudes in which you dwell, is a source of
the purest delight and pride to me ; and beheve me
that your expressions of affectionate remembrance
and approval, sounding from the green forests on the
banks of the Mississippi, sink deeper into my heart
-and gratify it more than aU the honorary distinc-
tions that all the courts in Europe could confer.

It is such things as these that make one hope one
does not live in vain, and that are the highest re-
ward of an author's life. To be numbered among
the household gods of one's distant countrymen, and

1 PabUBhed by Foe in 1842.

feetters of ©icSene* 13

associated with their homes and quiet pleasures ; to
be told that in each nook and comer of the world's
great mass there lives one well-wisher who holds
communion with one in the spirit, is a worthy
fame indeed, and one which I would not barter for
a mine of wealth.

That I may be happy enough to cheer some of
your leisure hours for a very long time to come, and
to hold a place in your pleasant thoughts is the ear-
nest wish of " Boz."

And, with all good wishes for yourself, and with a
sincere reciprocation of all your kindly feeling,

I am, dear Sir,

Faithfully yours.

[TO MR R. MONCKTON MILNBS]
Dbvonshibe Terrace, Wednesday, March 10th, 1841.

My dear Milnes :

I thank you very much for the Nickleby corre-
spondence, which I will keep idv a day or two, and
return when I see you. Poor fellow I The long
letter is quite admirable and most affecting.

I am not quite sure either of Friday or Satur-
day, for, independently of the Olock (which forever
wants winding), I am getting a young brother off to
New Zealand just now, and have my mornings sadly
cut up in consequence. But, knowing your ways, I

14 Eeffers of <i)tcften0*

know I may say that I will come if I can ; and that

if I can't I won't.

That Nellicide was the act of Heaven, as you may

see any of these fine mornings when you look about

you. K you knew the pain it gave me — but what

am I talking of ? if you don't know, nobody does.

I am glad to shake you by the hand again auto-

graphically,

And am always,

Faithfully yours.

[TO MR. G. LOVEJOY] »

Bevonshibe Terrace, June 10th, 1841.

Dear Sir :

I am favoured with your note of yesterday's date,
and lose no time in replying to it.

The sum you mention, though small I am aware
in the abstract, is greater than I could afford for
such a purpose ; as the mere sitting in the House
and attending to my duties, if I were a member,
would oblige me to make many pecimiary sacrifices,
consequent upon the very nature of my pursuits.

The course you suggest did occur to me when I
received your first letter, and I have very httle doubt
indeed that the Government would support me —
perhaps to the whole extent. But I cannot satisfy
myself that to enter Parliament under such circum-

> With regard to a proposal to represent Beading in Parliament.

SijtttctB of ©icfiene* 15

stances would enable me to pursue that honourable
independence without which I could neither pre-
serve my own respect nor that of my constituents.
I confess therefore (it may be from not having con-
sidered the points sufficiently, or in the right light)
that I cannot bring myself to propound the subject
to any member of the administration whom I know.
I am truly obliged to you, nevertheless, and am,

Dear Sir,

Faithfully yours.

[TO MR. WASHINGTON IRVING] »

My dear Sir :

There is no man in the world who could have
given me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by your
kind note of the 13th of last month. There is no
living writer, and there are very few among the
dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to
earn. And vsrith everything you have written upon
my shelves, and in my thoughts, and in my heart
of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so. K you
could know how earnestly I write this, you would
be glad to read it — as I hope you will be, faintly
guessing at the warmth of the hand I autobiograph-
ically hold out to you over the broad Atlantic.

> Pablished in The Life anA Lettert of Washington Irving, edited by
his nephew, Pierre M. Irving.

i6 £effet0 of f)tcSeti0»

I wish I could find in your welcome letter some
liint of an intention to visit England. I can't. I
have held it at arm's length, and taken a bird's-eye
view of it, after reading it a great many times, but
there is no greater encouragement in it this way
than on a microscopic inspection. I should love to
go with you — as I have gone, God knows how often
— into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green
Arbour Court, and Westminster Abbey. I should
like to travel vnth you, outside the last of the
coaches down to Bracebridge Hall. It would make
my heart glad to compare notes with you about that
shabby gentleman in the oilcloth hat and red nose,
who sat in the nine-cornered back-parlour of the Ma-
sons' Arms ; and about Eobert Preston and the tal-
low-chandler's vridow, whose sitting-room is second
nature to me ; and about all those delightful places
and people that I used to walk about and dream of
in the daytime, when a very small and not over-par-
ticularly-taken-care-of boy. I have a good deal to
say, too, about that dashing Alonzo de Ojeda, that
you can't help being fonder of than you ought to
be ; and much to hear concerning Moorish legend,
and poor imhappy Boabdil. Diedrich Knicker-
bocker I have worn to death in my pocket, and yet
I should show you his mutilated carcass with a joy
past all expression.

I have been so accustomed to associate you with

1

&ettet0 of ^Bk&CM. 17

my pleasantest and happiest thoughts, and with my
leisure hours, that I rush at once into full confi-
dence with you, and fall, as it were naturally, and
by the very laws of gravity, into your open arms.
Questions come thronging to my pen as to the lips
of people who meet after long hoping to do so. I
don't know what to say first or what to leave un-
said, and am constantly disposed to break off and
tell you again how glad I am this moment has
arrived.

My dear Washington Irving, I cannot thank you
enough for your cordial and generous praise, or tell
you what deep and lasting gratification it has given
me. I hope to have many letters from you, and to
exchange a frequent correspondence. I send this
to say so. After the first two or three I shall settle
down into a connected style, and become gradually
rational.

You know what the feeling is, after having writ-
ten a letter, sealed it, and sent it oE, I shall pict-
ure your reading this, and answering it before it
has lain one night in the post-of&ce. Ten to one
that before the fastest packet could reach New York
I shall be writing again.

Do you suppose the post-office clerks care to re-
ceive letters ? I have my doubts. They get into a
dreadful habit of indiflference. A postman, I imag-
ine, is quite callous. Conceive his delivering one to
2

i8 iijtUtxz of ©icfiene.

himself, without being startled by a preliminary
double knock I

Always your faithful Friend.

[ TO MR. THOMAS MITTON ]

Tremont House, Boston, January Slat, 1843.

My dear Mitton :

• • ■ • ■ •

I can give you no conception of my welcome here.
There never was a king or emperor upon the earth
so cheered and followed by crowds, and entertained
in public at splendid balls and dinners, and waited
on by pubUc bodies and deputations of all kinds. I
have had one from the Far West — a journey of two
thousand miles! If I go out in a carriage, the
crowd surround it and escort me home ; if I go to
the theatre, the whole house (crowded to the door)
rises as one man, and the timbers ring again. You
cannot imagine what it is. I have five great public
dinners on hand at this moment, and invitations
from every town and village and city in the States.

There is a great deal afloat here in the way of sub-
jects for description. I keep my eyes open pretty
wide, and hope to have done so to some purpose by

the time I come home.

• ••■••

Always your faithful Friend.

&effet0 of ®tc8en& 19

[TO MR. WASHINGTON IRVING]
Washington, Monday Afternoon, March 2lBt, 1842.

My dear Irving :

We passed through — literally passed through —
this place again to-day. I did not come to see you,
for I really have not the heart to say " good-bye "
again, and felt more than I can tell you when we
shook hands last Wednesday.

You will not be at Baltimore, I fear ? I thought,
at the time, that you only said you might be there,
to make our parting the gayer.

Wherever you go, God bless you I What pleasure
I have had in seeing and talking with you, I will
not attempt to say. I shall never forget it as long
as I live. What would I give, if we could have but
a quiet week together I Spain is a lazy place, and
its climate an indolent one. But if you have ever
leisure under its sunny skies to think of a man who
loves you, and holds communion with your spirit
oftener, perhaps, than any other person alive — ^leis-
ure from listlessness, I mean — and will write to me
in London, you will give me an inexpressible amount
of pleasure.

Your affectionate Mend.

20 &ettet0 of IDic&mB.

CTO MR. W. C. MACREADY]

Baltimore, March 23d, 1843.

My dear Friend :

• •••••

My dear Macready, I desire to be so honest and
just to those who have so enthusiastically and
earnestly welcomed me, that I burned the last letter
I wrote to you — even to you to whom I would speak
as to myself — rather than let it come with anything
that might seem like an ill-considered word of dis-
appointment. I preferred that you should think me
neglectful (if you could imagine anything so wild)
rather than I should do wrong in this respect Still
it is of no use. I am disappointed. This is not the
republic I came to see ; this is not the republic of
my imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal mon-
archy — even with its sickening accompaniments of
court circles — to such a government as this. The
more I think of its youth and strength, the poorer
and more trifling in a thousand aspects it appears
in my eyea In everything of which it has made a
boast — excepting its education of the people and its
care for poor children — it sinks immeasurably be-
low the level I had placed it upon ; and England,
even England, bad and faulty as the old land is, and
miserable as millions of her people are, rises in tho
comparison.

You live here, Macready, as I have sometimes
heard you imagining ! You/ Loving you with all
my heart and soul, and knowing what your disposi-
tion really is, I would not condemn you to a year's
residence on this side of the Atlantic for any money.
Freedom of opinion ! Where is it? I see a press
more mean, and paltry, and silly, and disgraceful
than any country I ever knew. If that is its stand-
ard, here it is. But I speak of Bancroft, and am
advised to be silent on that subject, for he is "a
black sheep — a Democrat" I speak of Bryant, and
am entreated to be more careful, for the same rea-
son. I speak of international copyright, and am im-
plored not to ruin myself outright. I speak of Miss
Martineau, and all parties — Slave Upholders and
Abolitionists, "Whigs, Tyler Whigs, and Democrats,
shower down upon me a perfect cataract of abuse.
'^But what has she done? Surely she praised
America enough I " " Tes, but she told us of some
of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told
of their faults. Don't split on that rock, Mr. Dick-
ens, don't write about America ; we are so very sus-
picious."

Freedom of opinion ! Macready, if I had been
bom here and had written my books in tiiis coun-
try, producing them with no stamp of approval from
any other land, it is my solemn belief that I should
have lived and died poor, unnoticed, and a ''black

22 fiefiere of SIDiciens.

slieep " to boot. I never was more convinced of anjw
thing than I am of thai

The people are affectionate, generoua, open-
hearted, hospitable, enthusiastic, good-humoured,
poHte to women, frank and candid to all strangers,
anxious to oblige, far less prejudiced than they have
been described to be, frequently polished and re-
fined, very seldom rude or disagreeable. I have
made a great many friends here, even in public con-
veyances, whom I have been truly sorry to part
from. In the towns I have formed perfect attach-
ments. I have seen none of that greediness and in-
decorousness on which travellers have laid so much
emphasis. I have returned frankness with frank-
ness ; met questions not intended to be rude, with
answers meant to be satisfactory: and have not
spoken to one man, woman, or child of any degree,
who has not grown positively affectionate before we
parted. In the respects of not being left alone, and
of being horribly disgusted by tobacco chewing and
tobacco spittle, I have suffered considerably. The
sight of slavery in Virginia, the hatred of British
feeling upon the subject, and the miserable hints of
the impotent indignation of the South, have pained
me very much ; on the last head, of course, I have
felt nothing but a mingled pity and amusement ; on
the other, sheer distress. But however much I like
the ingredients of this great dish, I cannot but come

£efter0 of OtcSetve. 23

back to the point at' wliicli I started, and say that
the dish itself goes against the grain with me, and
that I don't like it.

You know that I am truly a Liberal. I believe I
have as little pride as most men, and I am conscious
of not the smallest Minoyance from being "hail
fellow well met " with everybody. I have not had
greater pleasure in the company of any set of men
among the thousands I have received (I hold a
regular levee every day, you know, which is duly
heralded and proclaimed in the newspapers) than in
that of the carmen of Hartford, who presented them-
selves in a body in their blue frocks, among a crowd
of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and bade me
welcome through their spokesman. They had all
read my books, and all perfectly understood them.
It is not these things I have in my mind when I say
that the man who comes to this country a Eadical
and goes home again with his opinions unchanged,
must be a Radical on reason, sympathy, and reflec-
tion, and one who has so well considered the sub-
ject that he has no chance of wavering.

■ •••••

As my pen is getting past its work, I have taken
a new one to say that

I am ever, my dear Macready,
ypur faithful Friend.

24 Eeftors of ®ic8en&

[TO MR THOMAS MTTTOlif]

Bai^tim ORE, Unitkd States, Muoh 22d, 1842.

My dear Friend :

We have been as far sonth as Richmond in Yir-
ginia (where they grow and manufacture tobacco,
and where the labour is all performed by slayes),
but the season in those latitudes is so intensely and
prematurely hot, that it was considered a matter of
doubtful expediency to go on to Charleston. For
this tmexpected reason, and because the countiy be-
tween Eichmond and Charleston is but a desolate
swamp the whole way, and because slavery is any-
thing but a cheerful thing to live amidst, I have al«
tered my route by the advice of Mr. Clay (the great
political leader in this country), and have returned
here previous to diving into the far West, We
start for that part of the coimtry — which includes
mountain travelling, and lake travelling, and prairie
travelling — the day after to-morrow, at eight o'clock
in the morning ; and shall be in the West, and from
there going northward again, tmtil the 30th of April
or 1st of May, when we shall halt for a week at
Niagara, before going further into Canada. We
have taken our passage home (God bless the word)
in the George Washington packet-ship from New
York. She sails on the 7th of June.

I have departed from my resolution not to accept

any more public entertainments; they have been
proposed in every town I have visited — in favour of
the people of St. Louis, my utmost western point.
That town is on the borders of the Indian territory,
a trifling distance from this place — only two thou-
sand miles ! At my second halting-place I shall be
able to write to fix the day ; I suppose it will be
somewhere about the 12th of ApiiL Think of my
going so far towards the setting sun to dinner I

In every town where we stay, though it be only
for a day, we hold a regular levee or drawing-room,
where I shake hands on an average with five or six
himdred people, who pass on from me to Kate, and
are shaken again by her. Maclise's picture of our
darlings stands upon a table or sideboard the while ;
and my travelling secretary, assisted very often by
a committee belonging to the place, presents the
people in due form. Think of two hours of this
every day, and the people coming in by hundreds,
all fresh, and piping hot, and full of questions, when
we are literally exhausted and can hardly stand. I
really do believe that if I had not a lady with me, I
should have been obliged to leave the country and
go back to England. But for her they never would
leave me alone by day or night, and as it is, a slave
comes to me now and then in the middle of the
night with a letter, and waits at the bedroom door
for an answer.

26 ijiH/^ti of <S)i

It was so hot at Eichmond that we could scarcely
breathe, and the peach and other fruit trees were in
full blossom; it was so cold at Washington next
day that we were shivering ; but even in the same
town you might often wear nothing but a shirt and
trousers in the morning, and two greatcoats at
night, the thermometer very frequently taking a lit-
tle trip of thirty degrees between sunrise and sun-
set

• •••••

We were at the President's drawing-room while
we were in Washington. I had a private audience
besides, and was asked to dinner, but couldn't stay.

Parties — parties — parties — of course, every day
and night. But it's not all parties. I go into the
prisons, the police-offices, the watch-houses, the hos-
pitals, the work-houses. I was out half the night in
New York with two of their most famous constsr
bias ; started at midnight, and went into every
brothel, thieves' house, murdering hovel, sailor's
dancing-place, and abode of villainy, both black and
white, in the town. I went incog, behind the scenes
to the little theatre where Mitchell is making a for-
tune. He has been rearing a Httle dog for me, and
has called him **Boz." lam going to bring him
home. In a word I go everywhere, and a hard life
it is. But I am careful to drink hardly anything,
and not to smoke at all. I have recourse to my

£efter0 of %kStcM. 27

medicine-chest whenever I feel at all bilious, and
am, thank God, thoroughly welL

When I next write you, I shall have begun, I
hope, to turn my face homeward. I have a great
store of oddity and whimsicality, and am going nov/
into the oddest and most characteristic part of this
most queer country.

Always direct to the care of David Golden, Esq.,
28, Laight Street, Hudson Square, New York. I
received your Galedonia letter with the greatest joy.

Kate sends her best remembrances.

And I am always.

[TO MR HENRY AUSTIN]
Niagara. Falls (EngliBh Side), Sunday, May let, 184a

A^ dear Henry :

■ ■••••

Is it not a horrible thing that scoundrel book-
sellers should grow rich here from publishing books,
the authors of which do not reap one farthing from
their issue by scores of thousands ; and that every
vile blackguard and detestable newspaper, so filthy
and bestial that no honest man would admit one
into his house for a scullery door-mat, should be
able to publish those same writings side by side,
cheek by jowl, with the coarsest and most obscene
companions with which they must become cou<*

^8 ijtit^B of 9DicSen&

nected, in course of time, in people's minds ? Is it
tolerable that besides being robbed and rifled an
author should be forced to appear in any form, in
any vulgar dress, in any atrocious company; that
he should have no choice of his audience, no con-
trol over his own distorted text, and that he should
be compelled to jostle out of the course the best
men in this country who only ask to live by writ-
ing ? I vow before high heaven that my blood so
boils at these enormities, that when I speak about
them I seem to grow twenty feet high, and to swell
out in proportion, " Bobbers that ye are," I think
to myself when I get upon my legs, " here goes I "

The places we have lodged in, the roads we have
gone over, the company we have been among, the
tobacco-spittle we have wallowed in, the strange cus-
toms we have complied with, the packing-cases in
which we have travelled, the woods, swamps, rivers,
prairies, lakes, and moimtains we have crossed, are
all subjects for legends and tales at home ; quires,
reams, wouldn't hold them.

• •••••

We purpose leaving this on Wednesday morning.
Give my love to Letitia and to mother, and always
believe me, my dear Henry,

Affectionately yours.

fietters of HHcSiens. 29

[TO MR. THOMAS LONGMAN]

Athen^um, Friday Afternoon.

My dear Sir :

If I could possibly have attended the meeting yes-
terday I would most gladly have done so. But I
have been up the whole night, and was too much
exhausted even to write and say so before the pro-
ceedings came on.

I have fought the fight across the Atlantic with
the utmost energy I could command ; have never
been turned aside by any consideration for an in-
stant ; am fresher for the fray than ever ; will battle
it to the death, and die game to the last.

I am happy to say that my boy is quite well again.
From being in perfect health he fell into alarming
convulsions with the surprise and joy of our return.

I beg my regards to Mi*s. Longman,

And am always,

Faithfully yours.

[TO MISS PARDOE]

Devonshibe Tbbbacb, York Gate, Regent's Pabe,

July 19tli, 1843.

Dear Madam :

I beg to set you right on one point in reference
to the American robbers, which perhaps you do not
quite understand.

30 S^UtxB of ®ic6ens.

The existing law allows them to reprint any Eng-
lisli book, without any communication whateyer with
the author or anybody else. My books have aU been
reprinted on these agreeable terms.

But sometimes, when expectation is awakened
there about a boo7s before its publication, one firm
of pirates will pay a trifle to procure early proofs of
it, and get so much the start of the rest as they can
obtain by the time necessarily consumed in printing
it. Directly it is printed it is common property,
and may be repiinted a thousand times. My cir-
cular only referred to such bargains as these.

I should add that I have no hope of the States do-
ing justice in this dishonest respect, and therefore
do not expect to overtake these fellows, but we may
cry "Stop thief!" nevertheless, especially as they
wince and smart under ii

Faithfully yours always.

[TO MRS. TROLLOPE]

1, Devonshirb Tebba.ce, Yobk Gate, Rboent*s Pabk,

December 16th, 1842.

My dear Mrs. Trollope :

Let me thank you most cordially for your kind
note, in reference to my NoteSy which has given me
true pleasure and gratification.

As I never scrupled to say in America, so I can
have no delicacy in saying to you, that, allowing for

£efter0 of <S)icfienB. ^i

the change you worked in many social features of
American society, and for the time that has passed
since you wrote of the cotmtry, I am convinced that
there is no writer who has so well and accurately (I
need not add so entertainingly) described it, in many
of its aspects, as you have done ; and this renders
your praise the more valuable to me. I do not rec-
ollect ever to have heard or seen the charge of ex-
aggeration made against a feeble performance, though
in its feebleness, it may have been most imtrue. It
seems to me essentially natural, and quite inevitable,
that common observers should accuse an uncommon
one of this fault, and I have no doubt that you were
long ago of this opinion ; very much to your own
comfort.

Mrs. Dickens begs me to thank you for your kind
remembrance of her, and to convey to you her best
regards. Always believe me,

Faithfully yours.

[TO PR0FE3SS0R FBLTON]

1, Dbvonbhibb Terbacb, Tobk Gate, Regent's Fare,

London, 81st December, 18i3.

My dear Felton :

Many and many happy New Tears to you and
yours ! As many happy children as may be quite
convenient (no more !), and as many happy meetings
between them and our children, and between you

32 Sij^ifttB of ®ic8en0.

and us, as the kind fates in their utmost kindness
shall favourably decree I

The American book (to begin with that) has been
a most complete and thorough-going success. Four
large editions have now been sold and paid for, and
it has won golden opinions from all sorts of men,
except our friend in F , who is a miserable creat-
ure ; a disappointed man in great poverty, to whom
I have ever been most kind and considerate (I need

scarcely say that) ; and another friend in B , no

less a person than an illustrious gentleman named

, who wrote a story called . They have done

no harm, and have fallen short of their mark, which,
of course, was to annoy me. Now I am perfectly
free from any diseased curiosity in such respects,
and whenever I hear of a notice of this kind, I never
read it ; whereby I always conceive (don't you ?) that
I get the victory. With regard to your slave-owners,
they may cry, till they are as black in the face as
their own slaves, that Dickens lies. Dickens does
not write for their satisfaction, and Dickens will not
explain for their comfort. Dickens has the name
and date of every newspaper in which every one of
those advertisements appeared, as they know per-
fectly well; but Dickens does not choose to give
them, and will not at any time between this and the
day of judgment. . . .

I have been hard at work on my new book, of

feettete of IDkStcM. 33

which the first number has just appeared. The Paul
Joneses who pursue happiness and profit at other
men's cost will no doubt enable you to read it, almost
as soon as you receive this. I hope you will like it.
And I particularly commend, my dear Pelton, one
Mr. Pecksniff and his daughters to your tender re-
gards. I have a kind of liking for them myself.

Blessed star of morning, such a trip as we had
into Cornwall, just after Longfellow went away!
The "we" means Forster, Maclise, Stanfield (the
renowned marine painter), and the Inimitable Boz.
We went down into Devonshire by the railroad, and
there we hired an open carriage from an innkeeper,
patriotic in all Pickwick matters, and went on with
post-horses. Sometimes we travelled all night,
sometimes all day, sometimes both. I kept the
joint-stock purse, ordered all the dinners, paid all
the turnpikes, conducted facetious conversations
with the post-boys, and regulated the pace at which
we travelled. Stanfield (an old sailor) consulted an
enormous map on all disputed points of wayfaring ;
and referred, moreover, to a pocket-compass and
other scientific instruments. The luggage was in
Forster*s department ; and Maclise, having nothing
particular to do, sang songs. Heavens! If you
could have seen the necks of bottles — distracting
in their immense varieties of shape — peering out of

the carriage pockets ! If you could have vdtnessed
3

34 £ett ere of ©icSene.

the deep devotion of the post-boys, the wild attacb-
ment of the hostlers, the maniac glee of the waiters !
If you could have followed us into the earthy old
churches we visited, and into the strange caverns
on the gloomy sea-shore, and down into the depths
of mines, and up to the tops of giddy heights where
the unspeakably green wate* was roaring, I don't
know how many hundred feet below ! If you could
have seen but one gleam of the bright fires by which
we sat in the big rooms of ancient inns at night,
until long after the small hours had come and gone,
or smelt but one steam of the hot punch (not white,
dear Felton, like that amazing compound I sent you
a taste of, but a rich, genial, glowing brown) which
came in every evening in a huge brown china bowl !
I never laughed in my life as I did on this journey.
It would have done you good to hear me. I was
choking and gasping and bursting the buckle off
the back of my stock, all the way. And Stanfield
(who is very much of your figure and temperament,
but fifteen years older) got into such apoplectic en-
tanglements that we were often obliged to beat him.
on the back with portmanteaus before we could
recover him. Seriously, I do beheve there never
was such a trip. And they made such sketches,
those two men, in the most romantic of our halt-
ing-places, that you would have sworn we had the
Spirit of Beauty with us, as well as the Spirit of

&etter0 of ®ic8en0. i5

Fun, But stop till you come to England — I say no
more.

The actuary of the national debt couldn't calculate
the number of children who are coming here on
Twelfth Night, in honour of Charley's birthday, for
which occasion I have provided a magic lantern and
divers other tremendous engines of that nature.
But the best of it is that Forster and I have pur-
chased between us the entire stock-in-trade of a con-
jurer, the practice and display whereof is intrusted to
me. And O my dear eyes, Felton, if you could see
me conjuring the company's watches into impossible
tea-caddies, and causing pieces of money to fly, and
burning pocket-handkerchiefs without hurting 'em,
and practising in my own room, without anybody to
admire, you would never forget it as long as you
live. In those tricks which require a confederate, I
am assisted (by reason of liis imperturbable good
humour) by Stanfield, who always does his part ex-
actly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of
all beholders. We come out on a small scale, to-
night, at Forster's, where we see the old year out and
the new one in. Particulars shall be forwarded in
my nexi

I have quite made up my mind that F really

believes he does know you personally, and has all
his life. He talks to me about you with such gravity
that I am afraid to grin, and feel it necessary to look

i<5 &etfer0 of ^teSene.

quite serious. Sometimes he tells me things about
you, doesn't ask me, you know, so that I am occa-
sionally perplexed beyond all telling, and begin to
think it was he, and not I, who went to America.
It's the queerest thing in the world.

The book I was to have given Longfellow for you
is not worth sending by itself, being only a Barnaby.
But I will look up some manuscript for you (I think
I have that of the American Notes complete), and
will try to make the parcel better worth its long
conveyance. With regard to Maclise's pictures, you
certainly are quite right in your impression of them ;
but he is " such a discursive devil " (as he says
about himself), and flies off at such odd tangents,
that I feel it difficult to convey to you any general
notion of his purpose. I will try to do so when I
write again. I want very much to know about

and that charming girl. . . . Give me full

particulars. Will you remember me cordially to
Sumner, and say I ttank him for his welcome let-
ter? The like to Hillard, with many regards to
himself and his wife, with whom I had one night
a little conversation which I shall not readily for-
get The like to Washington Allston, and all
friends who care for me and have outlived my
booL . . . Always, my dear Felton,

With true regard and affection, yours.

i/^tUtB of IDic&cnB. 37

[TO PROFESSOR FELTON]

1, Devomshibb Tebbace, York Gate, Regent's Park,
London, March 2d, 1843.

My dear Fdton :

I don't know where to begin, but plunge head-
long with a terrible splash into this letter, on the
chance of turning up somewhere.

Hurrah I Up like a cork again, with The North
American Eemew in my hand. Like you, my dear
— : — , and I can say no more in pmise of it, though
I go on to the end of the sheet. You cannot think
how much notice it has attracted here. Brougham
called the other day, with the number (thinking I
might not have seen it), and I being out at the time,
he left a note speaking of it, and of the writer, in
terms that warmed my heart. Lord Ashburton (one
of whose people wrote a notice in the Edinburgh
which they have since publicly contradicted) also
wrote to me about it in just the same strain. And
many others have done the like.

I am in great health and spirits and powdering
away at Chuzzlemt, with all manner of facetious-
ness rising up before me as I go on. . . . On
the 4th of Api-il I am going to preside at a public
dinner for the benefit of the printers ; and if you
were a guest at that table, wouldn't I smite you on
the shoulder, harder than ever I rapped the well-

38 &eft er0 of ©tcSene.

beloved back of Washington Irving at the City
Hotel in New York !

You were asking me — I love to say asking, as if
we could talk together — about Maclise. He is such
a discui-sive fellow, and so eccentric in his might,
that on a mental review of his pictures I can hardly
tell you of them as leading to any one strong pur-
pose. But the annual Exhibition of the Eoyal
Academy comes off in May, and then I will en-
deavour to give you some notion of him. He is a
tremendous creature, and might do anything. But,
like all tremendous creatures, he takes his own way,
and flies off at unexpected breaches in the conven-
tional wall.

Faithfully always, my dear Felton.

[TO MR. DAVID DICKSON]

1, Dbvonshirb Terrace, Tore Gate, Regent's Pare,

May 10th, 1843.

Sir :

Permit me to say, in reply to your letter, that
you do not understand the intention (I dare say
the fault is mine) of that passage in the Pickwick
Papers which has given you offence. The design
of " the Shepherd " and of this and every other allu-
sion to him is, to show how sacred things are de-
graded, vulgarized, and rendered absurd when per-

&^itctB of ©tcSene. 39

sons who are utterly incompetent to teacli the
commonest things take upon themselves to expound
such mysteries, and how, in making mere cant
phrases of divine words, these persons miss the
spirit in which they had their origin. I have seen a
great deal of this sort of thing in many parts of
England, and I never knew it lead to charity or
good deeds.

Whether the great Creator of the world and the
creature of his hands, moulded in his own image, be
quite so opposite in character as you beheve, is a
question which it would profit us little to discuss.
I like the frankness and candour of your letter and
thank you for it. That every man who seeks heaven
must be born again, in good thoughts of his Maker,
I sincerely believe. That it is expedient for every
hound to say so in a certain snuffling form of words,
to which he attaches no good meaning, I do not be-
lieve. I take it there is no difference between us.

Faithfully yours.

[TO PROFESSOR FELTON]

Broadstairs, Kent, September Ist, 1843.

My dear Felton :

If I thought it in the nature of things that you
and I could ever agree on paper, touching a certain
Chuzzlewitian question whereupon F tells me

40 iAtUxti of ^icftens.

you have remarks to make, I sliould immediately
walk into the same tooth and nail. But as I don't,
I won'i Contenting myself with this prediction,
that one of these years and days, you will write
or say to me : '* My dear Dickens, you were right,
though rough, and did a world of good, though you
got most thoroughly hated for it." To which I shall
reply : " My dear Felton, I looked a long way off
'and not immediately under my nose." ... At
which sentiment you will laugh, and I shall laugh ;
and then (for I foresee this will all happen in my
land) we shall call for another pot of porter and two
or three dozen of oysters.

Now, don't you in your own heart and soul quarrel
with me for this long silence ? Not half so much as
I quarrel with myself, I know ; but if you could read
half the letters I write to you in imagination, you
would swear by me for the best of correspondents.
The truth is, that when I have done my morning's
work, down goes my pen, and from that minute I
feel it a positive impossibihty to take it up again,
unta imaginary butchers and bakers wave me to my
desk. I walk about brimful of letters, facetious
descriptions, touching morsels, and pathetic friend-
ships, but can't for the soul of me uncork myself.
The post-office is my rock ahead. My average
number of letters that must be written every day is,
at the least, a dozen. And you could no more know

i/^iUtB of ^E)tcfien0. 41

■what I was writing to you spiritually, from the
perusal of the bodily thirteenth, than you could tell
from my hat what was going on in my head, or could
read my heart on the surface of my flannel waistcoat
This is a little fishing-place ; intensely quiet ; built
on a clifl^ whereon — in the centre of a tiny semicir-
cular bay — our house stands ; the sea rolling and
dashing under the windows. Seven miles out are
the Goodwin Sands (you've heard of the Goodwin
Sands ?) whence floating lights perpetually wink af-
ter darky as if they were carrying on intrigues with
the servants. Also there is a big lighthouse called
the North Foreland on a hill behind the village, a
•severe parsonic light, which reproves the young and
giddy floaters, and stares grimly out upon the sea.
Under the cliff are rare good sands, where all the
children assemble every morning and throw up im-
possible fortifications, which the sea throws down
again at high water. Old gentlemen and ancient
ladies flirt after their own manner in two reading-
rooms and on a great many scattered seats in the
open air. Other odd gentlemen look all day through
telescopes and never see anything. In a bay-window
in a one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentle-
man with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who
writes and grins as if he thought he were very funny
indeed. His name is Boz. At one he disappears,
and presently emerges from a bathing-machine, and

4^ feetter0 of ^&tXiM\&.

may be seen — a kind of salmon-colored porpoise —
splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be
seen in another bay-window on the ground-floor, eat-
ing a strong lunch ; after that, walking a dozen miles
or so, or lying on his back in the sand reading a
book. Nobody bothers him unless they know he is
disposed to be talked to ; and I am told he is very
comfortable indeed. He's as brown as a berry, and
they do say is a small fortune to the innkeeper who
sells beer and cold punch. But this is mere rumour.
Sometimes he goes up to London (eighty miles, or
so, away), and then I*m told there is a sound in Lin-
coln's Inn Fields at night, as of men laughing, to-
gether with a clinking of knives and forks and wine-
glasses.

• •••..

I very often dream I am in America again ; but,
strange to say, I never dream of you. I am always
endeavouring to get home in disguise, and have a
dreary sense of the distance. A propos of dreams,
is it not a strange thing if writers of Action never
dream of their own creations ; recollecting, I sup-
pose, even in their dreams, that they have no real
existence? / never dreamed of any of my own
characters, and I feel it so impossible that I would
wager Scott never did of his, real as they are. I had
a good piece of absurdity in my head a night or two
ago. I dreamed that somebody was dead. I don't

iiMittti of ^Qv^i^iM. 43

know who, but it's not to the purpose. It was a
private gentleman, and a particular friend ; and I
was greatly overcome when the news was broken
to me (very delicately) by a gentleman in a cocked
hat, top boots, and a sheet. Nothing else. " Good
God I *' I said; ** is he dead ? " " He is as dead, sii%"
rejoined the gentleman, "as a door-nail. But we
must all die, Mr. Dickens, sooner or later, my dear
sir/' " Ah ! " I said. " Yes, to be sure. Very true.
But what did he die of?" The gentleman burst
into a flood of tears, and said, in a voice broken by
emotion: "He christened his youngest child, sir,
with a toasting-fork." I never in my life was so
affected as at his having fallen a victim to this com-
plaint It carried a conviction to my mind that he
never could have recovered. I knew that it was the
most interesting and fatal malady in the world ; and
I wrung the gentleman's hand in a convulsion of
respectful admiration, for I felt that this explanation
did equal honour to his head and heart !

What do you think of Mrs. Gamp ? And how do
you like the undertaker ? I have a fancy that they
are in your way. Oh heaven ! such green woods as I
was rambling among down in Yorkshire, when I was
getting that done last July ! For days and weeks we
never saw the sky but through green boughs ; and
all day long I cantered over such soft moss and turf,
that the horse's feet scarcely made a sound upon it

44 &efter0 of ®tc8en0.

We have some friends in that part of the country
(dose to Castle Howard, where Lord Morpeth's
father dwells in state, in his park indeed), who are
the jolliest of the jolly, keeping a big old country
house, with an ale cellar something larger than a
reasonable church, and everything, like Goldsmith's
bear dances, " in a concatenation accordingly." Just
the place for you, Felton ! We performed some
madnesses there in the way of forfeits, picnics, rustic
games, inspections of ancient monasteries at mid-
night, when the moon was shining, that would have
gone to your heart, and, as Mr. Weller says, " come
out on the other side." . . .

Write soon, my dear Felton ; and if I write to you
less often than I would, beheve that my affectionate
heart is with you always. Loves and regards to all
friends, from yours ever and ever.

Very faithfully yours.

[TO PROFESSOR FELTON]
Dbvonshisb Tjebracb, London, Jannary 2d, 1844

My very dear Felton :

You are a prophet, and had best retire from busi-
ness straightway. Yesterday morning. New Year's
Day, when I walked into my little workroom after
breakfast, and was looking out of window at the

£et^0 of <Qk&cnB. 45

snow in the garden — not seeing it particularly well
in consequence of some staggering suggestions of
last night, whereby I was beset — the postman came
to the door with a knock, for which I denounced
him from my heart Seeing your hand upon the
cover of a letter which he brought, I immediately
blessed him, presented him with a glass of whisky,
inquired after his family (they ai*e all well), and
opened the despatch with a moist and oystery twin-
kle in my eye. And on the very day from which the
new year dates, I read your New Year congratula-
tions as punctually as if you lived in the next house.
Why don't you ?

Now, if instantly on the receipt of this you will
send a free and independent citizen down to the
Ounard wharf at Boston, you will find that Captain
Hewett, of the Britannia steamship (my ship), has a
small parcel for Professor Felton of Cambridge ; and
in that parcel you will find a Christmas Carol in
prose ; being a short story of Christmas by Charles
Dicken& Over which Christmas Carol Charles Dick-
ens wept and laughed and wept again, and excited
himself in a most extraordinary manner in the com-
position ; and thinking whereof he walked about the
black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles
many a night when all the sober folks had gone to
bed. . • • Its success is most prodigious. And
by every post all manner of strangers write all man-

46 &eif er0 of ®ic8en0.

ner of letters to him about their homes and hearths,
and how this same Carol is read aloud there, and
kept on a little shelf by itself. Indeed, it is the
greatest success, as I am told, that this ruffian and
rascal has ever achieved.

• •••••

I wrote to Prescott about his book, with which I
was perfectly charmed. I think his descriptions
masterly, his style brilliant, his purpose manly and
gallant always. The introductory account of Aztec
civilization impressed me exactly as it impressed
you. From beginning to end the whole history is
enchanting and full of genius. I only wonder that,
having such an opportunity of illustrating the doc-
trine of visible judgments, he never remarks, when
Cortes and his men tumble the idols down the tem-
ple steps and call upon the people to take notice that
their gods are powerless to help themselves, that pos-
sibly if some intelligent native had tumbled down
the image of the Virgin or patron saint after them
nothing very remarkable might have ensued in con-
sequence.

Of course you like Macready. Your name's Fel-
ton. I wish you could see him play Lear. It is stu-
pendously terrible. But I suppose he would be slow
to act it with the Boston company.

Hearty remembrances to Sumner, Longfellow,
Prescott, and all whom you know I love to remem-

^jM^ti of ®tcften0. 47

ber. Countless happy years to you and yours, my
dear Felton, and some instalment of them, however
slight, in England, in the loving company of

The Proscribed One.

Oh, breathe not his name I

[TO MR. DOUGLAS JERROLD]

Cremona, Saturday Night, October 16th, 1844.

My dear Jerrold :

• •••••

I have never in my life been so struck ^by any
place as by Venice. It is the wonder of the world.
Dreamy, beautiful, inconsistent, impossible, wicked,

shadowy, d able old place. I entered it by

night, and the sensation of that night and the bright
morning that followed is a part of me for the rest
of my existence. And, oh God I the cells below the
water, underneath the Bridge of Sighs ; the nook
where the monk came at midnight to confess the
political offender; the bench where he was stran-
gled ; the deadly little vault in which they tied him
in a sack, and the stealthy crouching little door
through which they hurried him into a boat, and
bore him away to sink him where no fisherman dare
cast his net — all shown by torches that blink and
wink, as if they were ashamed to look upon the
gloomy theatre of sad horrors ; past and gone as

48 &effer0 of ^teSms.

they are, these things stir a man's blood, like a
great wrong or passion of the instant. And with
these in their minds, and with a museum there,
having a chamber full of such frightful instruments
of torture as the devil in a brain fever could scarcely
invent, there are hundreds of parrots, who will de-
claim to you in speech and print, by the hour to-
gether, on the degeneracy of the times in which a
railroad is building across the water at Venice ;
instead of going down on their knees, the drivellers,
and thanking Heaven that they live in a time when
iron makes roads, instead of prison bars and engines
for driving screws into the skulls of innocent men.
Before God, I could almost turn bloody-minded,
and shoot the parrots of our island with as little
compunction as Robinson Crusoe shot the paiTots

in hia

• •••••

Always your Friend and Admirer.

[TO MRS. CHARLES DICKENS]
Pabma, Albergo della. Posta, Friday, Nov. 8th, 1844.

My dearest Kate :

"If missis could see us to-night, what would she
say ? " That was the brave C.'s remark last night
at midnight, and he had reason. We left Genoa, as
you know, soon after five on the evening of my de-

fbtfUtB of ®tc6en0. 49

partirre ; and in company with the lady whom you
Baw, and the dog whom I don't think you did see,
travelled all night at the rate of four miles an hour
over bad roads, without the least refreshment imtil
daybreak, when the brave and myself escaped into a
miserable cafiES^ while they were changing horses, and
got a cup of that drink hot. That same day, a few
hoars afterwards, between ten and eleven, we came
to (I hope) the d— dest inn in the world, where,
in a vast chamber, rendered stUl more desolate by
the presence of a most offensive specimen of what
Disraeli calls the Mosaic Arab (who had a beautiful
girl with him), I regaled upon a breakfast, almost as
cold, and damp, and cheerless, as myself. Then, in
another coach, much smaller than a small Fly, I was
packed up with an old padre, a young Jesuit, a pro-
vincial avvocato, a private gentleman with a very red
nose and a very wet brown umbrella, and the brave
C. and I went on again at the same pace through
the mud and rain until four in the afternoon, when
there was a place in the coupe (two indeed), which
I took, holding that select compartment in company
with a very ugly but very agreeable Tuscan ** gent,"
who said ^^ gia" instead of "si," and rung some
other changes in this changing language, but with
whom I got on very well, being extremely conver-
sational. We were bound, as you know perhaps,
for Piacenza, but it was discovered that we couldn't
4

$0 &eff er0 of ©icfiene.

get to Piacenza, and about ten o'clock at night we
halted at a place called Stradella, where the inn was
a series of queer galleries open to the night, with a
great courtyard full of wagons and horses, and " ve-
lociferi" and what not in the centre. It was bitter
cold and very wet, and we all walked into a bare
room (mine !) with two immensely broad beds on
two deal dining-tables, a third great empty table,
the usual washing-stand tripod, with a slop^jasin on
it, and two chairs. And then we walked up and
down for three-quarters of an hour or so, while din-
ner, or supper, or whatever it was, was getting
ready. This was set forth (by way of variety) in the
old priest's bedroom, which had two more immensely
broad beds on two more deal dining-tables in it.
The first dish was a cabbage boiled in a great quan-
tity of rice and hot water, the whole flavoured with
cheese. I was so cold that I thought it comforta-
ble, and so hungry that a bit of cabbage, when I
found such a thing floating my way, charmed me.
After that we had a dish of very little pieces of pork,
fried with pigs' kidneys ; after that a fowl ; after
that something very red and stringy, which I think
was veal ; and after that two tiny little new-bom-
baby-looking turkeys, very red and very swollen.
Fruit, of course, to vnnd up, and garlic in one shape
or another in every course. I made three jokes at
supper (to the immense delight of the company).

Eeftere of ^Bic&enB. 5/

and retired early. The brave brought in a bush or
two and made a fire, and after that a glass of
screeching hot brandy and water ; that bottle of his
being full of brandy. I drank it at my leisure, un-
dressed before the fire, and went into one of the
beda The brave reappeared about an hour after-
wards and went into the other ; previously tying a
pocket-handkerchief roiind and round his head in a
strange fashion, and giving utterance to the senti-
ment with which this letter begins. At five this
morning we resumed our journey, still through mud
and rain, and at about eleven arrived at Piacenza ;
where we fellow-passengers took leave of one an-
other in the most affectionate manner. As there
was no coach on till six at night, and as it was a
very grim, despondent sort of place, and as I had
had enough of diligences for one while, I posted for-
ward here in the strangest carriages ever beheld,
which we changed when we changed horses. We
arrived here before six. The hotel is quite French.
I have dined very well in my own room on the sec-
ond floor; and it has two beds in it, screened off
from the room by drapery. I only use one to-night,
and that is already made. I purpose posting on to
Bologna, if I can arrange it, at twelve to-morrow ;
seeing the sights here first It is dull work this
travelling alone. My only comfort is in motion.

5^ iAffcvB of ®tc8en0.

Give my best love to Qeorgy, and my paternal

blessing to

Mamey,

Katey,
Charley,
Welly,
and
Chickenstalker.

P.S. — Get things in their places. I can't bear to
picture them otherwise.

P.P.S. — I think I saw Eoche sleeping with his
head on the lady's shoulder, in the coach. I couldn't
swear it, and the light was deceptive But I think
I did.

Alia sign*

Sign* Dickens.

Palazzo Peschiere, Genova. ♦

[TO Ma W. C. M ACRE AD Y]

HoTBL Bristol, Pabis, Thursday Night,
Nov. 28th, 18^, Half-past Ten.

My dearest Macready :

Since I wrote to you what would be called in law
proceedings the exhibit marked A, I have been
round to the Hotel Brighton, and personally exam-
ined and cross-examined the attendants. It is pain-

£effer0 of <SHcSen0. 53

fully clear to me that I shall not see you to-night,
nor until Tuesday, the 10th of December, when,
please God, I shall re-arrive here, on my way to
my Italian bowers. I mean to stay all the Wednes-
day and all the Thursday in Paris. One night to
see you act (my old delight when you little thought
of such a being in existence), and one night to read
to you and Mrs. Macready (if that scamp of Lincoln's
Inn Fields has not anticipated me) my little Christ-
mas book,* in which I have endeavoured to plant an
indignant right-hander on the eye of certain wicked
Cant that makes my blood boil, which I hope will
not only cloud that eye with black and blue, but
many a gentle one with crystal of the finest sort.
God forgive me, but I think there are good things
in the little story I

[TO MRS. CHARLES DICKENS]

Piazza Coffee House, Covent Garden,
Monday, Deo. 2d, 1S44.

My dearest Kate :

• • • • • •

The little book is now, as far as I am concerned,
all ready. One cut of Doyle's and one of Leech's I
found so unlike my ideas, that I had them both to
breakfast with me this morning, and with that win-

> The Chimet,

34 feeffere of ©icftene.

ning manner wliich you know of, got them with
the highest good humour to do both afresh. They
are now hard at it. Stanfield's readiness, dehght,
wonder at my being pleased with what he has done
is dehcious. Mac's frontispiece is charming. The
book is quite splendid ; the expenses will be very
great, I have no doubt.

Anybody who has heard it has been moved in the
most extraordinary manner. Forster read it (for
dramatic purposes) to A'Beckett. He cried so much
and so painfully, that Forster didn't know whether
to go on or stop ; and he called next day to say that
any expression of his feeling was beyond his power.
But that he believed it, and felt it to be — ^I won't
say what.

As the reading comes off to-moiTow night, I had
better not despatch my letters to you until WedneS"
day's post. I must close to save this (heartily tired
I am, and I dine at Gore House to-day), so with
love to Georgy, Mamey, Katey, Charley, Wally, and
Chickenstalker, ever, believe me,

Yours, with true affection.

P.S. — If you had seen Macready last night, undis-
guisedly sobbing and crying on the sofa as I read,
you would have felt, as I did, what a thing it is to
have power.

&efter0 of ©icSene. 55

[TO MR. MACVEY NAPIER ]»

1, Deyonshibe Tebbacb, Jaly 28th, 1845.

My dear Sir :

As my note is to bear reference to business, I will
make it as short and plain as I can. I think I could
"write a pretty good and a well-timed article on the
Punishment of Death, and sympathy with great crim-
inals, instancing the gross and depraved curiosity
that exists in reference to them, by some of the out-
rageous things that were written, done, and said in
recent cases. But as I am not sure that my views
would be yours, and as their statement would be
quite inseparable from such a paper, I will briefly
set down their purport that you may decide for
yourself.

Society, having arrived at that state in which it
spares bodily torture to the worst criminals, and hav-
ing agreed, if criminals be put to death at all, to kill
them in the speediest way, I consider the question
with reference to society, and not at all with refer-
ence to the criminal, holding that, in a case of cruel
and deliberate murder, he is already mercifully and
sparingly treated. But, as a question for the delib-
erate consideration of aU reflective persons, I put

> Pablistaed In Selection from the Correspondence of the late Maevey
Napier, Biq,» editor of The Edinburgh Beview, edited by hie Bon, Macvey
Napier.

5^ ijttUtn of <i)tcSen0.

this view of the case. With such very repulsive and
odious details before us, may it not be well to in-
quire whether the punishment of death be beneficial
to society ? I believe it to have a horrible fascina-
tion for many of those persons who render them-
selves liable to it, impelling them onward to the ac-
quisition of a frightful notoriety ; and (setting aside
the strong confirmation of this idea afforded in indi-
vidual instances) I presume this to be the case in
very badly regulated minds, when I observe the
strange fascination which everything connected with
this punishment, or the object of it, possesses for
tens of thousands of decent, virtuous, well-conducted
people, who are quite unable to resist the published
portraits, letters, anecdotes, smilings, snuff-takings,
of the bloodiest and most unnatural scoundrel with
the gallows before him. I observe that this strange
interest does not prevail to anything like the same
degree where death is not the penalty. Therefore
I connect it with the dread and mystery surrounding
death in any shape, but especially in this avenging
form, and am disposed to come to the conclusion
that it produces crime in the criminally disposed,
and engenders a diseased sympathy — morbid and
bad, but natural and often irresistible — among the
well conducted and gentle. Regarding it as doing
harm to both these classes, it may even then be right
to inquire, whether it has any salutary influence on

fieff er0 of ®te8enc. 57

those small knots and specks of people, mere bubbles
in the living ocean, who actually behold its infliction
with their proper eyes. On this head it is scarcely
possible to entertain a doubt, for we know that rob-
bery, and obscenity, and caUous indifference are of
no commoner occurrence anywhere than at the foot
of the scaffold. Furthermore, we know that all ex-
hibitions of agony and death have a tendency to bru-
talise and harden the feelings of men, and have al-
ways been the most rife among the fiercest people.
Again, it is a great question whether ignorant and
dissolute persons (ever the great body of spectators,
as few others will attend), seeing that murder done,
and not having seen the other, will not, almost of
necessity, sympathise with the man who dies before
them, especially as he is shown, a martyr to their
fancy, tied and bound, alone among scores, with
every kind of odds against him.

I should take all these threads up at the end by a
vivid little sketch of the origin and progi'ess of such
a crime as Hocker's, stating a somewhat parallel case,
but an imaginary one, pursuing its hero to his death,
and showing what enormous harm he does after the
crime for which he suffers. I should state none of
these positions in a positive sledge-hammer way,
but tempt and lure the reader into the discussion of
them in his own mind ; and so we come to this at
last — whether it be for the benefit of society to ele-

$8 feeff et0 of ®icften0.

vate even tliis crime to the awful dignity and no-
toriety of death ; and whether it would not be much
more to its advantage to substitute a mean and
shameful punishment, degrading the deed and the
committer of the deed, and leaving the general com-
passion to expend itself upon the only theme at
present quite forgotten in the history, that is to say,
the murdered person.

I do not give you this as an outline of the paper,
which I think I could make attractive. It is merely
an exposition of the inferences to which its whole
philosophy must tend.

Always faithfully yours.

[TO MR. W. H. WILLS]

Deyonshirb Tebracb, Maroh 4th, 1846.

My dear Mr. Wills :

• •••••

Tell PoweU (with my regards) that he needn't
*' deal with " the American notices of the CrickeL
I never read one word of their abuse, and I should
think it base to read their praises. It is something
to know that one is righted so soon ; and knowing
that, I can afford to know no more.

Ever faithfully yours.

[TO MR. W. C. M ACRE AD Y]

Geneva, Saturday, October 34th, 1846.

My dear Macready :

The welcome sight of your handwriting moves me
(though I have nothing to say) to show you mine,
and if I could recollect the passage in Virginius I
would paraphase it, and say, " Does it seem to trem-
ble, boy ? Is it a loving autograph ? Does it beam
with friendship and affection ? " all of which I say,
as I write, with — oh Heaven ! — such a splendid im-
itation of you, and finally give you one of those
grasps and shakes with which I have seen you make
the young Icilius stagger again.

Here I am, running away from a bad headache as
Tristram Shandy ran away from death, and lodging
for a week in the Hotel de I'ficu de Geneve, wherein
there is a large mirror shattered by a cannon-ball in
the late revolution. A revolution, whatever its mer-
its, achieved by free spirits, nobly generous and
moderate, even in the first transports of victory, ele-
vated by a splendid popular education, and bent on
freedom from all tyrants, whether their crowns be
shaven or golden. The newspapers may tell you
what they please. I believe there is no country on
earth but Switzerland in which a violent change
could have been effected in the Christian spirit
shown in this place, or in the same proud, indepen-

6o £etfer0 of ^S)k&enB.

dent, gallant style. Not one lialfpeunywortli of
property was lost, stolen, or strayed. Not one atom
of party malice survived the smoke of the last gun.
Nothing is expressed in the Government addresses
to the citizens but a regard for the general happiness,
and injunctions to forget all animosities ; which they
are practically obeying at every turn, though the late
Government (of whose spirit I had some previous
knowledge) did load the guns with such material as
should occasion gangrene in the wounds, and though
the wounded do die, consequently, every day, in the
hospital, of sores that in themselves were nothing.

• . . • • •

It is a great pleasure to me, my dear Macfeady, to
hear from yourself, as I had previously heard from
Forster, that you are so well pleased with Domhey^
which is evidently a great success and a great hit,
thank God ! I felt that Mrs. Brown was strong, but
I was not at all afraid of giving as heavy a blow as
I could to a piece of hot iron that lay ready at my
hand. For that is my principle always, and I hope
to come down with some heavier sledge-hammers
than that

• . • • • •

Kate and Georgy send their best loves to Mra
and Miss Macready, and all your house.

Your most affectionate Friend.

£efter0 6f HHc&enti. 6i

[TO MR. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR]

Pabis, Sunday, November 22d, 1846.

Young Man :

I will not go there if I can help it. I have not
the least confidence in the value of your introduction
to the DeviL I can't help thinking that it would be
of better use ** the other way, the other way," but I
won't try it there, either, at present, if I can help it.
Your godson says, is that your duty ? and he begs

me to enclose a blush newly blushed for you.
• •••••

Don't be hard upon the Swiss. They are a thorn
in the sides of European despots, and a good whole-
some people to Hve near Jesuit-ridden kings on the
brighter side of the mountains. My hat shall ever
be ready to be thrown up, and my glove ever ready
to be thrown down for Switzerland. If you were the
man I took you for, when I took you (as a godfather)
for better and for worse, you would come to Paris
and amaze the weak walls of the house I haven't
found with that steady snore of yours, which I once
heard piercing the door of your bedroom in Devon-
shire Terrace, reverberating along the bell-wire in
the hall, so getting outside into the street, playing
Eolian harps among the area railings, and going
down the New Hoad like the blast of a trumpet

62 £effet0 of ®feften0.

I forgive you your reviling of me : there*s a shov-
elful of live coals for your head— does it burn ? And
am, with true affection — does it burn now ? —

Ever yours.

[TO BBV. EDWARD TAGART]

Fabis, 48, Rue de Coubcelles, St. Honob^
Thursday, Jan. 28th, 1847.

My dear Sir :

• • • • • •

I was at Geneva at the time of the revolution.
The moderation and mildness of the successful party
were beyond all praise. Their appeals to the peo-
ple of all parties — printed and pasted on the walls
— ^have no parallel that I know of, in history, for
their real good sterling Christianity and tendency
to promote the happiness of mankind. My sympa-
thy is strongly with the Swiss radicals. They know
what Catholicity is ; they see, in some of their own
valleys, the poverty, ignorance, misery, and bigotry
it always brings in its train wherever it is trium-
phant ; and they would root it out of their chil-
dren's way at any price. I fear the end of the strug-
gle will be, that some Catholic power will step in to
crush the dangerously well-educated republics (very
dangerous to such neighbours) ; but there is a
spirit in the people, or I very much mistake them,

£efter0 of ®tc8en0. 6^

that "will trouble the Jesuits there many years, and

shake their altar steps for them.

• •••••*

Ever believe me,

Cordially and truly youra

[TO MR W. C. MACRBADY]
Devonshire Tbbrage, Tuesday Morning, Nov. 23d, 1847.

My dear Macready :

I am in the whirlwind of finishing a number with
a crisis in it ; but I cannot fall to work without say-
ing, in so many words, that I feel all words insuffi-
cient to tell you what I think of you after a night
like last night. The multitudes of new tokens by
which I know you for a great man, the swelling
within me of my love for you, the pride I have in
you, the majestic reflection I see in you of all the
passions and affections that make up our mystery,
throw me into a strange kind of transport that has
no expression but in a mute sense of an attachment,
which, in truth and fervency, is worthy of its sub-
ject

What is this to say ? Nothing, God knows, and
yet I cannot leave it unsaid.

Ever affectionately yours.

P.S. — ^I never saw you more gallant and free than
in the gallant and free scenes last night It was

64 £ef^0 of ®ic6en0.

perfectly captivating to behold you. However, it
shall not interfere with my determination to address
you as Old Parr in all future time.

[ TO MR. W. C. MACRBADY ]
Junction House, Brighton, March 2d, 184a

My dear Macready :

• •••••

I think Lamartine, so far, one of the best fellows
in the world ; and I have lively hopes of that great
people establishing a noble republic. Our court
had best be careful not to overdo it in respect of
sympathy with ex-royalty and ex-nobility. These
are not times for such displays, as, it strikes me, the
people in some of our great towns would be apt to
express pretty plainly.

However, well talk of all this on these Sundays,

and Mr. — — shall not be raised to the pinnacle of

fame.

Ever affectionately yours.

My dear Macready.

[TO MR. ALEXANDER IRELAND]

Devonshibe Terrace, May 23d, 1848.

My dear Sir :

You very likely know that my company of ama-
teurs have lately been playing, with a great reputa-

&etf et0 of ®ic6en0. 6$

tion, in London here. The object is, " The endow-
ment of a perpetual curatorship of Shakespeare's
house, to be always held by some one distinguished
in literature, and more especially in dramatic litera-
ture," and we have already a pledge from the Shake-
speare House Committee that Sheridan Knowles
shall be recommended to the Government as the
first curator. This pledge, which is in the form of
a minute, we intend to advertise in our country
bills.

Now, on Monday, the 6th of June, we are going
to play at Livei*pool, where we are assured of a warm
reception, and where an active committee for the
issuing of tickets is already formed. Do you think
the Manchester people would be equally glad to see
us again, and that the house could be filled, as be-
fore, at our old prices ? Jf yes, would you and our
other friends go, at once, to work in the cause f The
only night on which we could play in Manchester
would be Saturday, the 3d of June. It is possible
that the depression of the times may render a per-
formance in Manchester unwise. In that case* I
would immediately abandon the idea.

• • • • • •

Faithfully yours always.

66 &et^0 of ^DicSetui.

[TO MR W. a MACRBADY]

Bboadstaibs, Kbnt, Saturday, August 26th, 1848.

My dear Macready :

I was about to write to you when I received your
welcome letter. You knew I should come from a
somewhat longer distance than this to give you a
hearty God-speed and farewell on the eve of your
journey. What do you say to Monday, the fourth,
or Saturday, the second ? Fix either day, let me
know which suits you best — at what hour you ex-
pect the Inimitable, and the Inimitable will come
up to the scratch like a man and a brother.

Permit me, in conclusion, to nail my colours to
the mast. Stars and stripes are so-so— showy, per-
haps ; but my colours is the union jack, which I am
told has the remarkable property of having braved
a thousand years the battle and the breeze. Like-
wise, it is the flag of Albion — the standard of Brit-
ain ; and Britons^ as I am informed, never, never,
never — will — be — slaves I

My sentiment is : Success to the United States as
a golden CEimp^igning ground, but blow the United
States to 'tamal smash as an Englishman's place of
residence. Gentlemen, are you all charged ?

Affectionately ever.

[TO MISS DICKENS]
Devonshibb Tbrracb, Tuesday Night, Feb. 27th, 1840.

Afy dearest Mamey :

I am not engaged on the evening of your birth-
day. But even if I bad an engagement of the mosi;
particular kind, I should excuse myself from keeping
it, so that I might have the pleasure of celebrating
at home, and among my children, the day that gave*
me such a dear and good daughter as you.

Ever affectionately youra

[TO M. CERJAT]
Dbvonshire Tbbracb, Saturday, Dec 29th, 1849.

My dear Cerjat :

I received your letter at breakfast-time this morn-
ing with a pleasure my eloquence is unable to ex-
press and your modesty unable to conceive. It is
so delightful to be remembered at this time of the
year in your house where we have been so happy,
and in dear old Lausanne, that we always hope to
see again, that I can't help pushing away the first
page of Copperfield No. 10, now staring at me with
what I may literally call a blank aspect, and plung-
ing energetically into this reply.

What a strange coincidence that is about Blun-
derstone House I Of all the odd things I ever heard

68 ijMtxB of ^tcfiene.

(and their name is Legion), I think it is the oddest
I went down into that part of the country on the
7th of January last year, when I was meditating the
story, and chose Blunderstone for the sound of its
name. I had previously observed much of what you
say about the poor girls. In all you suggest with
so much feeling about their return to virtue being
cruelly cut off, I concur with a sore heart I have
been turning it over in my mind for some time, and
hope, in the history of little Emly (who must fall —
there is no hope for her), to put it before the
thoughts of people in a new and pathetic way, and
perhaps to do some good. You will be glad to hear,
I know, that Copperfield is a great success. I think
it is better liked than any of my other books.

We had a most delightful time at Watsons' (for
both of them we have preserved and strengthened a
real affection), and were the gayest of the gay.
There was a Miss Boyle staying in the house, who
is an excellent amateur actress, and she and I got
up some scenes from The School for Scandal and
from Nicklehy, with immense success. We played
in the old hall, with the audience filled up and run-
ning over with servants. The entertainments con-
cluded with feats of legerdemain (for the perform-
ance of which I have a pretty good apparatus^ col-
lected at divers times and in divers places), and we
then fell to country dances of a most frantic de-

£effer0 of ^SMknB. 69

scription, and danced all night. We often spoke of
you and Mrs. Cerjat and of Haldimand, and wished
you were all there. Watson and I have some fifty
times "registered a vow" (like O'Connell) to come
to Lausanne together, and have even settled in what
month and week Something or other has always
interposed to prevent us ; but I hope, please God,
most certainly to see it again, when my labours-
Gopperfieldian shall have terminated.

You have no idea what the hanging of the Man-
nings really was. The conduct of the people was
so indescribably frightful, that I felt for some time
afterwards almost as if I were living in a city of
devils. I feel, at this hour, as if I never could go
near the place again. My letters have made a great
to-do and led to a great agitation of the subject;
but I have not a confident belief in any change
being made, mainly because the total abolitionists
are utterly reckless and dishonest (genei-aUy speak-
ing), and would play the deuce with any such pro-
position in Parliament, unless it were strongly sup-
ported by the Government, which it would certainly
not be, the Whig motto (in office) being ^'laissez
allerJ* I think Peel might do it if he came in.
Two points have occurred to me as being a good
commentary to the objections to my idea. The first
is that a most terrific uproar was made when the
banging processions were abolished, and the cere-

70 iAttevB <3f Hfk&tnB.

mony shrunk from Tyburn to the prison door. The
second is that, at this very time, under the British
Government in New South Wales, executions take
place mlhin the prison walls, with decidedly im-
proved results. (I am waiting to explode this fact
on the first man of mark who gives me the oppor-
tunity.)

• •••••

I do hope that we may all come together again
once more, while there is a head of hair left among
us ; and in this hope remain, my dear Oerjat,

Your faithful Friend.

C TO MR. CHARLES KNIGHT ]

Devonshiius Tehbace, Febniaxy 8th, 1850.

My dear Knight :

Let me thank you in the heartiest manner for
your most kind and gratifying mention of me in
your able pamphlet It gives me great pleasure, and
I sincerely feel it.

I quite agree with you in all you say so well of
the injustice and impolicy of this excessive taxation.
But when I think of the condition of the great mass
of the people, I fear that I could hardly feel the
heart to press for justice in this respect, before the
window-duty is removed. They cannot read with-
out light They cannot have an average chance of

life and health without it. Much aa we feel our

wrong, I fear that they feel their wrong more, and

that the things just done in this wise must bear a

new physical existence.

I never see you, and begin to think we must have

another play — say in Cornwall — expressly to bring

us together.

Very faithfully yours.

[TO MISS MARY BOYLE]
Devonshibb Terrace, Friday Night, late, Feb. 21iit, 1851.

My dear Miss Boyle :

I have devoted a couple of hours this evening to
going very carefuUy over your paper (which I had
read before) and to endeavouring to bring it closer,
and to lighten it^ and to give it that sort of compact-
ness which a habit of composition, and of disciplin-
ing one's thoughts like a regiment, and of studying
the art of putting each soldier into his right place,
may have gradually taught me to think necessary.
I hope, when you see it in print, you will not be
alarmed by my use of the pruning-knif e. I have tried
to exercise it with the utmost delicacy and discre-
tion, and to suggest to you, especially towards the
end, how this sort of writing (regard being had to the
size of the journal in which it appears) requires to be
compressed, and is made pleasanter by compression.

^2 %/tiitx% of ®tcften0.

This all reads very solemnly, but only because I want
you to read it (I mean the article) with as loving an
eye as I have truly tried to touch it with a loving
and gentle hand. I propose to call it " My Mahog-
any Friend." The other name is too long, and I
think not attractive. Until I go to the office to-
morrow and see what is actually in hand, I am not
certain of the number in which it will appear, but
Georgy shall write on Monday and tell you. We are
always a fortnight in advance of the public, or the
mechanical work could not be done. I think there
are many things in it that are very 'pretty. The
Katie part is particularly well done. If I don't say
more, it is because I have a heavy sense, in all cases,
of the responsibility of encouraging anyone to enter
on that thorny track, where the prizes are so few and
the blanks so many ; where

But I won't write you a sermon. With the fire
going out, and the first shadows of a new story hov-
ering in a ghostly way about me (as they usually be-
gin to do, when I have finished an old one), I am in
danger of doing the heavy business, and becoming
a heavy guardian, or something of that sort, instead
of the light and airy Joe.

So good-night, and believe that you may always
trust me, and never find a grim expression (towards
you) in any that I wear.

Ever vours.

£etter0 ^ ^Bic&cns. 7)

[TO THE HON. MBS. WATSON]

Bboadstairs, Kent, July 11th, 1851.

My dear Mrs. Watson :

• •••••

To go to the opposite side of life, let me tell you
that a week or so ago I took Charley and three of
his schoolfellows down the river gipsying. I se-
cured the services of Charley's godfather (an old
friend of mine, and a noble fellow with boys), and
went down to Slough, accompanied by two immense
hampers from Fortnum and Mason, on (I believe) the
wettest morning ever seen out of the tropics. It
cleared before we got to Slough ; but the boys, who
had got up at four (we being due at eleven), had
horrible misgivings that we might not come, in con-
sequence of which we saw them looking into the car-
riages before us, all face. They seemed to have no
bodies whatever, but to be all face ; their counte-
nances lengthened to that surprising extent. When
they saw us, the faces shut up as if they were upon
strong springs, and their waistcoats developed them-
selves in the usual places. When the first hamper
came out of the luggage-van, I was conscious of their
dancing behind the guard ; when the second came
out with bottles in it, they all stood wildly on one leg.
We then got a couple of flys to drive to the boat-

74 iMtttn of <iHcften0.

house. I put them in the first, but they couldn't
sit still a moment, and were perpetually flying up and
down like the toy figures in the sham snuff-boxes.
In this order we went on to " Tom Brown's, the
tailor's," where they aU dressed in aquatic costume,
and then to the boat-house, where they all cried in
shrill chorus for *' Mahogany " — a gentleman, so
called by reason of his sunburnt complexion, a water-
man by profession. (He was likewise called during
the day " Hog " and " Hogany," and seemed to be
unconscious of any proper name whatsoever.) We
embarked, the sun shining now, in a galley with a
striped awning, which I had ordered for the purpose,
and all rowing hai'd, went down the river. We
dined in a field ; what I suffered for fear those boys
should get drunk, the struggles I underwent in a
contest of feeling between hospitahty and prudence,
must ever remain untold. I feel, even now, old with
the anxiety of that tremendous hour. They were
very good, however. The speech of one became
thick, and his eyes too like lobsters' to be comfort-
able, but only temporarily. He recovered, and I
suppose outlived the salad he took. I have heard
nothing to the contrary, and I imagine I should have
been implicated on the inquest if there had been
one. We had tea and rashers of bacon at a public-
house, and came home, the last five or six miles in
a prodigious thunderstorm. This was the great sue-

cess of the day, whicli they certainly enjoyed more
than anything else. The dinner had been great, and
Mahogany had informed them, after a bottle of light
champagne, that he never would come up the river
" with ginger company " any more. But the getting
so completely wet through was the culminating part
of the entertainment. You never in your life saw
such objects as they were, and their perfect uncon-
sciousness that it was at all advisable to go home
and change, or that there was anything to prevent
their standing at the station two mortal hours to
see me off, was wonderful. As to getting them to
their dames with any sort of sense that they were
damp, I abandoned the idea. I thought it a success
when they went down the street as civilly as if they
were just up and newly dressed, though they really
looked as if you could have rubbed them to rags

with a touch, like saturated curl-paper.

. • • •

[ TO MR. EELES ]

** Household Words " Office,
Wednesday Evening, Oct. 23d, 1S51.

Dear Mr. Eeles :

I send you the list I have made for the book-
backs. I should like the History of a Short Chan-
eery Suit to come at the bottom of one recess, and
the Catalogue of Stat ices of the Duke of Wellingtm
at the bottom of the other. If you should want

76 &etter0 of ^itiMi^m%.

more titles, and will let me know how many, I will

send tliem to you.

Faithfully yours.

LIST OF IMITATION BOOK-BACKS.

Tavistock Sbitse, 1851

Five Minutes in China. 3 vols. Paxton^s Bloomers. 5 vols.

Forty Winks at the Pyramids. On the Use of Mercury by the

2 vols. Ancient Poets.

Abemethy on the Constitution. Drowsy^s Recollections of Noth-

2 vols. ing. 8 vols.

Mr. Greenes Overland MaiL 2 Heavyside^s Conversations with

vols. Nobody. 3 vols.

Captain Cook^s Life of Savage. Commonplace Book of the Old-

2 vols. est Inhabitant. 2 vols.

A Carpenter's Bench of Bishops. Growler's GruflSology, with Ap-

2 vols. pendix. 4 vols.

Toot's Universal Letter- Writer. The Books of Moses and Sons.

2 vols. 2 vols.

Orson's Art of Etiquette. Burke (of Edinburgh) on the

Downeaster's Complete Calcu- Sublime and BeautifuL 2volfi.

lator. Teazer's Commentaries.

History of the Middling Ages. King Henry the Eighth's Evi-

6 vols dences of Christianity. 5

Jonah's Account of the Whale. ^<*^^-

Captain Parry's Virtues of Cold Miss Biffin on Deportment

q^ar. Morrison's Pills Progress. 2

Kant's Ancient Humbugs. 10 vols.

vols. Lady Godiva on the Horse.

Bowwowdom. A Poem. Munchausen's Modem Miraclea.

The Qaarrelly Review. 4 vols. 4 vols.

The Gunpowder Magazine. 4 Richardson's Show of Drama-

vols. tic Literature. 12 vols.

Steele. By the Author of Ion, Hansard's Guide to Refreshing

The Art of Cutting the Teeth. Sleep. As many volumes aa

Matthew's Nursery Songs. 2 possible.

vols.

feettetc of ^Bic&cnB. 77

[TO MRS. GASKELL]
Tavistock House, Thursday Afternoon, Deo. 5th, 1851.

My dear Mrs. Gashell :

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

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

75 &eftet0 of ®(c8en0.

me so much pleasure, and I sincerely beseech
you to think better of it, and not to fancy that any
shade has been thrown on your charming writing,

by

The unfortunate but innocent.

P.S. — ^I write at a gallop, not to loose another
post

[ TO MRS. G ASKELL ]
Tavistock House, Sunday, December 21st, 1851.

My dear Mrs. Gaskell :

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

Faithfully yours ever.

[TO AN ANONYMOUS CORRESPONDENT]
Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, July 9tli, 1852.

Sir:

I have received your letter of yesterday's date, and
shall content myself with a brief reply.

There was a long time during which benevolent

feefters cf ^BuMms. 79

societies were spending immense sums on missions
abroad, when there was no such thing as a ragged
school in England, or any kind of associated en-
deavour to penetrate to those horrible domestic
depths in which such schools are now to be found,
and where they were, to my most certain knowl-
edge, neither placed nor discovered by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

If you think the balance between the home mis-
sion and the foreign mission justly held in the pres-
ent time, I do not. I abstain from drawing the
strange comparison that might be drawn between
the sums even now expended in endeavours to re-
move the darkest ignorance and degradation from
our very doors, because I have some respect for mis-
takes that may be founded in a sincere wish to do
good. But I present a general suggestion of the
still-existing anomaly (in such a paragraph as that
which offends you), in the hope of inducing some
people to reflect on this matter, and to adjust the
balance more correctly. I am decidedly of opinion
that the two works, the home and the foreign, are
not conducted with an equal hand, and that the
home claim is by far the stronger and the more
pressing of the two.

Indeed, I have very grave doubts whether a great
commercial coimtry, holding communication with
all parts of the world, can better Christianise the

8o Eefters <3f ®ic8en0.

benighted portions of it than by the bestowal of its
wealth and energy on the making of good Christians
at home, and on the utter removal of neglected and
untaught childhood from its streets, before it wan-
ders elsewhere. For, if it steadily persist in this
work, working downward to the lowest, the travel-
lers of all grades whom it sends abroad will be
good, exemplary, practical missionaries, instead of
undoers of what the best professed missionaries
can do.

These are my opinions, founded, I believe, on
some knowledge of facts and some observation. If
I could be scared out of them, let me add in all
good humour, by such easily-impressed words as
"antichristian" or "irreligious," I should think that
I deserved them in their real signification.

I have referred in vain to page 312 of Household
Words for the sneer to which you call my atten-
tion. Nor have I, I assure you, the least idea where
else it is to be found.

I am. Sir, your faithful Servant

[TO MR W. H. WILLS]
H6TEL DES Bains, Boulogne, Tuesday, Oct 12tli, 185SL

My dear Wills :

H. W.

I have thought of the Christmas number, but not

very successfully, because I have been (and still am)

gettere of ®icSene. 8i

constantly occupied with Bleak House, I purpose
returning home either on Sunday or Monday, as
my work permits, and we will, immediately there-
after, dine at the office and talk it over, so that you
may get all the men to their work.

The fault of 's poem, besides its intrinsic

meanness as a composition, is that it goes too glibly
with the comfortable ideas (of which we have had a
great deal too much in England since the Continen-
tal commotions) that a man is to sit down and make
himself domestic and meek, no matter what is done
to him. It wants a stronger appeal to rulers in gen-
eral to let men do this, fairly, by governing them
welL As it stands, it is at about the tract-mark
(Dairyman's Daughter, etc.) of political morality,
and don't think that it is necessary to write down to
any part of our audience. I always hold that to be
as great a mistake as can be made.

I wish you would mention to Thomas, that I think

the paper on hops extremely well done. He has

quite caught the idea we want, and caught it in the

best way. In pursuing the bridge subject, I think

it would be advisable to look up the Thames police.

I have a misty notion of some capital papers coming

out of ii Will you see to this branch of the tree

among the other branches ?
6

82 gsfifUxB of ®tc6en&

Mtself.

To Chapman I will write. My impression is that
I shall not subscribe to the Hood monument, as I
am not at all fayourable to such posthumous hon-
ours.

Ever faithfully.

[TO MR. W. H. WILLS]

HdTEL DEs Bains, Bouloonb,
Wednesday Kight, Got. 18th, 1852L

My dear IVills :

The number coming in after dinner, since my
letter was written and posted, I have gone over it.

I am grievously depressed by it ; it is so exceed-
ingly bad. If you have anything else to put first,
don't put 's paper first, (There is nothing bet-
ter for a beginning in the number as it stands, but
this is very bad.) It is a mista.ke to think of it as a
first article. The article itself is in the main a mis-
take. Firstly, the subject requires the greatest dis-
cretion and nicety of touch. And secondly, it is
all wrong and self-contradictory. Nobody can for a
moment suppose that '^ sporting " amusements are
the sports of the people ; the whole gist of the best
part of the description is to show that they are the
amusements of a peculiar and limited class. The
greater part of them are at a miserable discount

(horse-racing excepted, which has already been suf-
ficiently done in H. W.), and there is no reason for
running amuck at them at all. I have endeavoured
to remove much of my objection (and I think have
done so), but, both in purpose and in any general
address, it is as wide of a first article as anything
can well be. It would do best in the opening of
the number.

About Sunday in Paris there is no kind of doubt
Take it out. Such a thing as that crucifixion, imless
it were done in a masterly manner, we have no busi-
ness to stagger families with. Besides, the name is
a comprehensive one, and should include a quantity
of fine matter. Lord bless me, what I could write
under that head !

Strengthen the number, pray, by anything good
you may have. It is a very dreary business as it
stands.

The proofs want a thorough revision.

In haste, going to bed.

Ever faithfully.

P.S. — ^I want a name for Miss Martineaus paper.

TRinMPHA.NT Cjlrsiagbs (or Tbiumphal).
Dublin Stoutheartbdnbss.
Patience and Prejudiob.

Take which you like best

84 iAtttxB of 9tcfien6.

[TO MR. JOHN WATKINS]

Monday, October 18th, 1853.

Sir :

On my return to town I find the letter awaiting
me which you did me the favour to address to me, I
believe — for it has no date — some days ago.

I have the greatest tenderness for the memory of
Hood, as I had for himself. But I am not very
favourable to posthumous memorials in the monu-
ment way, and I should exceedingly regret to see
any such appeal as you contemplate made public,
remembering another public appeal that was made
and responded to after Hood's death. I think that
I best discharge my duty to my deceased friend,
and best consult the respect and love with which I
remember him, by declining to join in any such
pubUc endeavours as that which you (in all generos-
ity and singleness of purpose, I am sure) advance.
I shall have a melancholy gratification in privately
assisting to place a simple and plain record over the
remains of a great writer that should be as modest
as he was himself, but I regard any other monu-
ment in connection with his mortal resting-place as
a mistake.

I am, Sir, your feithful servant

getters of <S)ic6en0. 8$

I TO THE HON. MR& WATSON ]

Athbn^um, Monday, Kovember 22d, 1852.

My dear Mrs. Watson :

Having just now finished my work for the time
being, I turn in here in the course of a rainy walk,

to have the gratification of writing a few lines to
you. If my occupations with this same right hand
were less numerous, you would soon be tired of me,
I should write to you so often. You asked Cath-
erine a question about Bleak House, Its circula-
tion is half as large again as Copperfieldf I have
just now come to the point I have been patiently
working up to in the writing, and I hope it will
suggest to you a pretty and affecting thing. In
the matter of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1 partly though
not entirely agree with Mr. James. No doubt a
much lower art will serve for the handling of such a
subject in fiction, than for a launch on the sea of
imagination without such a powerful bark; but
there are many points in the book very admirably
done. There is a certain St. Clair, a New Orleans
gentleman, who seems to me to be conceived vdth
great power and originality. If he had not "a
Grecian outline of face," which I began to be a little
tired of in my earhest infancy, I should think him
unexceptionable. He has a sister too, a maiden

86 fieeeera of ®icSeiis.

lady from New England, in whose person the beset-
ting weaknesses and prejudices of the Abolitionists
themselves, on the subject of the blacks, are set
forth in the liveliest and truest colours and with the
greatest boldness.

• •■•••

I am ever, with the best and truest wishes of my
heart, my dear Mrs. Watson,

Your most affectionate Friend.

[TO MR W. WILKIB COLLINS]

Tavistock Housb, Monday, Dec. 20th, 18^

My dear Collins :

If I did not know that you are likely to have
a forbearing remembrance of my occupation, I
should be full of remorse for not having sooner
thanked you for Basil,

Not to play the sage or the critic (neither of
which parts, I hope, is at all in my line), but to say
what is the friendly truth, I may assure you that I
have read the book with very great interest, and
with a very thorough conviction that you have a
call to this same art of fiction. I think the proba-
bilities here and there require a little more respect
than you ore disposed to show them, and I have no
doubt that the prefatory letter would have been
better away, on the ground that a book (of all

fietfers of <S)ic6en0. Sj

fchings) should speak for and explain itself. Bat
the story contains admirable writing, and many
clear eyidences of a very delicate discrimination of
character. It is delightful to find throughout that
you have taken great pains with it besides, and
have "gone at it "with a perfect knowledge of
the jolter-headedness of the conceited idots who
suppose that volumes are to be tossed off like pan-
cakes, and that any writing can be done without
the utmost application, the greatest patience, and
the steadiest energy of which the writer is capable.
For all these reasons, I have made B(mL*8 ac-
quaintance with great gratification, and entertain a
high respect for him. And I hope that I shall be-
come intimate with many worthy descendants of
his, who are yet in the limbo of creatures waiting

to be bom.

Always faithfully yours.

[ TO MR. CLARKSON ST ANPIBLD ]

H.M.S. Tavistook, January 2d, 1858.

Yoho, old salt ! Neptun' ahoy ! You don't for-
get, messmet, as you was to meet Dick Sparkler
and Mark Porpuss on the fok'sle of the good
ship Owssel Wordft, Wednesday next, half-past four ?
Not you ; for when did Stanfell ever pass his word
to go anywheers and not come ! Well. Belay, my

88 &e^er0 of ^tcften^.

heart of oak, belay I Come alongside the Tavistock
same day and hour, 'stead of Owssel Words. Hail
your shipmets, and they'll drop over the side and
join you, like two new shillings a-droppin' into
the purser's pocket Damn all lubberly boys and
swabs, and give me the lad with the tarry trousers,
which shines to me like di'mings bright I

ETO MR. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR]

Tavistock House, London, Sept. 8th, 1853.

My dear Landor :

I am in town for a day or two, and Forster tells
me I may now write to thank you for the happiness
you have given me by honouring my name with such
generous mention, on such a noble place, in your
great book. I believe he has told you already that
I wrote to him from Boulogne, not knowing what
to do, as I had not received the precious volume,
and feared you might have some plan of sending it
to me, with which my premature writing would
interfere.

You know how heartily and inexpressibly I prize
what you have written to me, or you never would
have selected me for such a distinction. I could
never thank you enough, my dear Landor, and I
will not thank you in words any more. Believe me,
I receive the dedication like a great dignity, the

gettere of ®ic6en& 8p

worth of which I hope I thoroughly know. The

Queen could give me none in exchange that I

wouldn't laughingly snap my fingers at.

• • • • •

Ever, my dear Landor,

Heartily and affectionately yours.

[TO MISS HOGARTH]

HdTEL DBS EtRANGERS, NAFLBS,

Friday Night, Nov. 4th, 1858.

My dearest Georgy :

Instead of embarking on Monday at Genoa, we
were delayed (in consequence of the boat's being a
day later when there are thirty-one days in the
month) until Tuesday. Going aboard that morning
at half-past nine, we found the steamer more than
full of passengers from Marseilles, and in a state of
confusion not to be described. We could get no
places at the table, got our dinners how we could
on deck, had no berths or sleeping accommodation of
any kind, and had paid heavy first-class fares I To
add to this, we got to Leghorn too late to steam
away again that night, getting the ship's papers ex-
amined first — as the authorities said so, not being
favourable to the new express English ship, English
officered — and we lay off the lighthouse all night
long. The scene on board beggars description.
Ladies on the tables, gentlemen under the tables.

90 £e^et0 of ®i

and ladies and gentlemen lying indiscriminately on
the open deck, arrayed like spoons on a sideboard.
No mattresses, no blankets, nothing. Towards mid-
night, attempts were made by means of an awn-
ing and flags to make this latter scene remotely ap-
proach an Australian encampment ; and we three
lay together on the bare planks covered with over-
coats. We were all gradually dozing off when a per-
fectly tropical rain fell, and in a moment drowned
the whole ship. The rest of the night was passed
upon the stairs, with an immense jumble of men
and women. When anybody came up for any
purpose we all fell down ; and when anybody came
down we all fell up again. Still, the good-humour
in the English part of the passengers was quite ex-
traordinary. There were excellent officers aboard,
and the first mate lent me his cabin to wash in in
the morning, which I afterwards lent to Egg and
Collins. Then we and the Emerson Tennents (who
were aboard) and the captsdn, the doctor, and the
second officer went off on a jaunt together to Pisa,
as the ship was to lie at Leghorn all day.

The captain was a capital fellow, but I led him,
facetiously, such a life all day, that I got almost
everything altered at night. Emerson Tennent,
with the greatest kindness, turned his son out of
his state-room (who, indeed, volunteered to go in
the most amiable manner), and I got a go6d bed

£etfer0 of ®icfien0. 9^

there. The store-room down by the hold was
opened for Egg and Collins, and they slept with
the moist sugar, the cheese in cut, the spices, the
cruets, the apples and pears — in a perfect chandler's

shop ; in company with what the *s would call

a "hold gent" — who had been so horribly wet
through overnight that his condition frightened the
authorities — a cat, and the steward — who dozed in
an arm-chair, and all night long fell headforemost,
once in every five minutes, on Egg, who slept on
the counter or dresser. Last night I had the stew-
ard's own cabin, opening on deck, all to myself. It
had been previously occupied by some desolate lady,
who went ashore at Civita Vecchia. There was
little or no sea, thank Heaven, aU the trip ; but the
rain was heavier than any I have ever seen, and the
lightning very constant and vivid. We were, with
the crew, some two hundred people ; with boats, at
the utmost stretch, for one hundred, perhaps. I
could not help thinking what would happen if we
met with any accident ; the crew being chiefly Mal-
tese, and evidently fellows who would cut off alone
in the largest boat on the least alarm. The speed
(it being the crack express ship for the India mail)
very high ; also the running through all the nan'ow
rocky channels. Thank God, however, here we are.
Though the more sensible and experienced part of
the passengers agreed with me this morning that it

P2 iAtttxB of ®tcften0»

was not a thing to try often. We had an excellent
table after the first day, the best wines and so forth,
and the captain and I swore eternal friendship.
Ditto the first officer and the majority of the pas-
sengers. We got into the bay about seven this
morning, but could not land until noon. We towed
from Civita Vecchia the entire Greek navy, I believe,
consisting of a little brig-of-war, with great guns,
fitted as a steamer, but disabled by having burst the
bottom of her boiler in her first run. She was just
big enough to carry the captain and a crew of six or
so, but the captain was so covered with buttons and
gold that there never would have been room for him
on board to put these valuables away if he hadn't

worn them, which he consequently did, all nighi
• •••••

I am afraid this is a duU letter, for I am very

tired. You must take the will for the deed, my

dear, and good nighi

Ever most affectionately.

[TO MR. W. H. WILI^]
Bomb, Thursday Afternoon, Nov. ITth, 1853.

My dear Wills :

a • • ■ • •

Keep Household Words imaginative ! is the solemn
and continual Conductorial Injunction. Delighted
to hear of Mrs. Ghiskell's contributions.

feefter0 of ©icfiene. 93

Yes by all maimers of means to Lady Holland.
Will you ask her whether she has Sydney Smith's
letters to me, which I placed (at Mrs. Smith's re-
quest) either in Mra Smith's own hands or in Mrs.
Austin's? I cannot remember which, but I think
the latter.

In making up the Christmas number, don't con-
sider my paper or papers, with any reference saving
to where they will fall best. I have no liking, in
the case, for any particular place.

All perfectly well. Companion moustaches (par-
ticularly Egg's) dismal in the extreme. Kindest re-
gards to Mrs. Will&

Ever faithfully.

ETO MR CHARLES KNIGHT]

Tavistock House, January 80th, 1854.

My dear Knight :

Indeed there is no fear of my thinking you the
owner of a cold heart. I am more than three
parts disposed, however, to be ferocious with you
for ever writing down such a preposterous truism.

My satii-e is against those who see figures and
averages, and nothing else — the representatives of
the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time
— the men who, through long years to come, will
do more to damage the real useful truths of politi-

94 %AiUtti of <i)tt6en0.

cal economy than I could do (if 'I tried) in my whole
life ; the addled heads who would take the average
of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a
reason for clothing a soldier in nankeens on a night
when he would be frozen to death in fur, and who
would comfort the labourer in travelling twelve
miles a day to and from his work, by telling hun
that the average distance of one inhabited place
from another in the whole area of England, is not
more than four miles. Bah ! What have you to do
vdth these ?

I shall put the book upon a private shelf (after
reading it) by Once upon a Time. I should have
buried my pipe of peace and sent you this blast of
my war-horn three or four days ago, but that I have
been reading to a little audience of three thousand
five hundred at Bradford.

Ever affectionately yours.

[ TO MISS HOGARTH ]
Office of " Household Wobds," Saturday, July 22d, 1854.

My dear Georgina :

Neither you nor Catherine did justice to Collins's
book.* I think it far away the cleverest novel I
have ever seen written by a new hand. It is in
some respects masterly. Valentine Blyth is as orig-

fietf er0 of ^SMkns. 95

inal, and as well done as anything can be. The
scene where he shows his pictures is full of an ad-
mirable humour. Old Mat is admirably done. In
short, I call it a very remarkable book, and have
been very much surprised by its great merit.

Tell Kate, with my love, that she will receive
to-morrow in a little parcel, the complete proofs of
ITard Times. They will not be connected, but she
will find them pretty plain. I am just now going
to put them up for her. I saw Grisi the night be-
fore last in Lucrezia Borgia — finer than ever. Last
night I was drinking gin-sHngs till daylight, with
Buckstone of all people, who saw me looking
at the Spanish dancers, and insisted on being con-
vivial. I have been in a blaze of dissipation alto-
gether, and have succeeded (I think), in knocking
the remembrance of my work out.

Loves to all the darlings, from the Plomish-Ma*
roon upward. London is far hotter than Naples.

Ever affectionately.

[ TO THE HON. MRS. WATSON ]
Tavistock House, Wednesday, Nov. 1st, 1854.

My dear Mrs. Watson:

I take upon myself to answer your letter to Cath-
erine, as I am referred to in it.

The Walk is not my writing. It ii very well

96 iAiitxB of ®ieften0.

done by a close imitator. Why I found myself so
"used up" after Hard Times I scarcely know,
perhaps because I intended to do nothing in that
way for a year, when the idea laid hold of me by
the throat in a very violent manner, and because
the compression and close condensation necessaiy
for that disjointed form of publication gave me per-
petual trouble. But I really was tired, which is a
result so very incomprehensible that I can't forget
it I have passed an idle autimin in a beautiful
situation, and am di*eadfully brown and big. For
further particulars of Boulogne, see "Our French
Watering Place," in this present week of Household
Words which contains a faithful portrait of our
landlord there.

• •••••

I am full of mixed feeling about the war — admira-
tion of our valiant men, burning desires to cut the
Emperor of Eussia's throat, and something like de-
spair to see how the old cannon -smoke and blood-
mists obscure the wrongs and sufferings of the peo-
ple at home. When I consider the Patriotic Fund
on the one hand, and on the other the poverty and
wretchedness engendered by cholera, of which in
London alone, an infinitely larger number of Eng-
lish people than are likely to be slain in the whole
Russian war have miserably and needlessly died —
I feel as if the world had been pushed back five

hundred years. If you are reading new books just
now, I think you will be interested with a contro-
versy between Whewell and Brewster, on the ques-
tion of the shining orbs about us being inhabited
or no. Whewell's book is called, On the PlurdUy
of Worlds ; Brewster's, More Worlds than One. I
shouldn't wonder if you know all about them.
They bring together a vast number of points of
great interest in natural philosophy, and some very
curious reasoning on both sides, and leave the mat-
ter pretty much where it was.

• •••.•

Dr. Eae's account of Franklin's unfortunate party
is deeply interesting ; but I think hasty in its ac-
ceptance of details, particularly in the statement
that they had eaten the dead bodies of their com-
panions, which I don't believe. Franklin, on a for-
mer occasion, was almost starved to death, had gone
through all the pains of that sad end, and lain down
to die, and no such thought had presented itself to
any of them. In famous cases of shipwreck, it is
very rare indeed that any person of any humanising
education or refinement resorts to this dreadful
means of prolonging life. In open boats, the
coarsest and commonest men of the shipwrecked
party have done such things ; but I don't remember
more than one instance in which an officer had over-
come the loathing that the idea had inspired. Dr.
7

98 &etter0 of HHc&cnB.

Eae talks about their cooking these remains too* I
should like to know where the fuel came from.

Kindest love and best regards.

Ever, my dear Mrs. Watson, affectionately yours.

[TO M. DB CBRJAT]

Tavistock House, January 3d, 1855.

My dear Cerjat :

When your Christmas letter did not arrive ac-
cording to custom, I felt as if a bit of Christmas
had fallen out and there was no supplying the
piece. However, it was soon supplied by yourself,
and the bowl became round and sound again.
• • • • • ' •

The absorption of the English mind in the war
is, to me, a melancholy thing. Every other subject
of popular solicitude and sympathy goes down be-
fore it. I fear I clearly see that for years to come
domestic reforms are shaken to the root ; every
miserable red-tapist flourishes war over the head of
every protester against his humbug; and every-
thing connected vdth it is pushed to such an un-
reasonable extent, that, however kind and necessary
it may be in itself, it becomes ridiculous. For all
this it is an indubitable fact, I conceive, that Eussia
MUST BE stopped, and that the future peace of the
world renders the war imperative upon us. The

Duke of Newcastle lately addressed a private letter
to the newspapers, entreating them to exercise a
larger discretion in respect of the letters of " Our
Own Correspondents," against which Lord Raglan
protests as giving the Emperor of Eussia informa-
tion for nothing which would cost him (if indeed
he could get it at all) fifty or a hundred thousand
pounds a year. The communication has not been
attended with much effect, so far as I can see. In
the meantime I do suppose we have the wretchedest
Ministry that ever was — in whom nobody not in
office of some sort believes — yet whom there is
nobody to displace. The strangest result, perhaps,
of years of Reformed Parliaments that ever the
general sagacity did not foresee.

Let me recommend you, as a brother-reader of
high distinction, two comedies, both Goldsmith's —
She Stoops to Conquer and The Oood-natured Man,
Both are so admirable and so delightfully written
that they read wonderfully. A friend of mine, For-
ster, who wrote The Life of Goldsmith, was very ill
a year or so ago, and begged me to read to him one
night as he lay in bed, " something of Goldsmith's."
I fell upon She Stoops to Conqiier, and we enjoyed it
with that wonderful intensity, that I believe he be-
gan to get better in the first scene, and was all right
again in the fifth act.

I am charmed by your account of Haldimand, to

100 ^jdtcxB of 1l>uMcM.

whom my love. Tell him Sydney Smith's daughter
has privately printed a life of her father with selec-
tions from his lettera, which has great merit, and
often presents him exactly as he used to be. I have
strongly urged her to publish it, and I think she
will do so, about March.

My eldest boy has come home from Germany to
learn a business life at Birmingham (I think), first
of alL The whole nine are well and happy. Ditto,
Mrs. Dickens. Ditto, Georgina. My two girls are
full of interest in yours ; and one . of mine (as I
think I told you when I was at ]6lysee) is curiously
like one of yours in the face. They are all agog now
about a great fairy play, which is to come off here
next Monday. The house is full of spangles, gas,
Jew theatrical tailors, and pantomime carpenters.
We all unite in kindest and best loves to dear Mrs.
Cerjat, and all the blooming daughters. And I am,
with frequent thoughts of you and cordial affec-
tion, ever, my dear Cerjat,

Your faithful Friend.

[TO MR. ARTHUR RYLAND]

Tavistock House, Monday, Jan. 29th, 1855.

My dear Mr. Ryland:

I have been in the greatest difficulty — which I
am not yet out of — to know what to read at Bir-

feeffere of ©icSeng. /o/

mingham. I fear the idea of next month is now
impracticable. Which of two other months do you
think would be preferable for your Birmingham
objects? Next May, or next December?

Having already read two Christmas books at Bir-
mingham, I should like to get out of that restric-
tion, and have a swim in the broader waters of one
of my long books. I have been poring over Copper-
field (which is my favourite), with the idea of get-
ting a reading out of it, to be called by some such
name as Young Housekeeping and Little EmUy,
But there is still the huge difficulty that I con-
structed the whole with immense pains, and have
so woven it up and blended it together, that I can-
not yet so separate the parts as to tell the story of
David's married life with Dora, and the story of Mi\
Peggott/s search for his niece, within the time.
This is my object If I could possibly bring it to
bear, it would make a very attractive reading, with
a strong interest in it, and a certain completeness.

This is exactly the state of the case. I don't
mind confiding to you, that I never can approach
the book with perfect composure (it had such per-
fect possession of me when I wrote it), and that I
no sooner begin to try to get it into this form,
than I begin to read it all, and to feel that I cannot
disturb it. I have not been unmindful of the
agreement we made at parting, and I have sat star-

I02 &efter0 of ^fHuXi&M.

ing at the backs of my books for an inspiration.
This project is the only one that I have constantly
reverted to, and yet I have made no progress in it I

Faithfully yours always.

[TO MR. DAVID ROBERTS, RA. ]

Tavistock House, February 28th, 1855.

My dear David Roberts :

I hope to make it quite plain to you, in a few
words, why I think it right to stay away from the
Lord Mayor's dinner to the club. If I did not feel
a kind of rectitude involved in my non-acceptance
of his invitation, your note would immediately in-
duce me to change my mind.

Entertaining a strong opinion on the subject of
the City Corporation as it stands, and the absurdity
of its pretensions in an age perfectly different, in aU
conceivable respects, from that to which it properly
belonged as a reality, I have expressed that opinion
on more than one occasion, within a year or so, in
Household Words, I do not think it consistent
with my respect for myself, or for the art I profess,
to blow hot and cold in the same breath ; and to
laugh at the institution in print, and accept the
hospitality of its representative while the ink is star-
ing us all in the face. There is a great deal too

&effer0 of ©icSenc 103

much of this among us, and it does not elevate the
earnestness or delicacy of literature.

This is my sole consideration. Personally I have
always met the present Lord Mayor on the most
agreeable terms, and I think him an excellent one.
As between you, and me, and him, I cannot have
the slightest objection to your teUing him the truth.
On a more private occasion, when he was not keep-
ing his state, I should be delighted to interchange
any courtesy with that honourable and amiable gen-
tleman, Mr. Moon.

Believe me always cordially yours.

[ TO MR. W. M. THACKERAY ]

Tavistock House, Friday Evening, 23d March, 1855.

My dear Thackeray :

I have read in The Times to-day an account of
your last night's lecture, and cannot refrain from as-
suring you in all truth and earnestness that I am
profoundly touched by your generous reference to
me. I do hot know how to tell you what a glow it
spread over my heart. Out of its fulness I do en-
treat you to believe that I shall never forget your
words of commendation. If you could wholly know
at once how you have moved me, and how you have
animated me, you would be the happier I am very

certain.

Faithfully yours ever.

^o4 &eftet0 of liHc&enB.

[ TO MRS. WINTER »]

Tuesday, 3d April, 1855.

My dear Maria :

A necessity is upon me now — ^as at most times—
of wandering about in my old wild way, to think.
I could no more resist this on Sunday or yesterday
than a man can dispense with food, or a horse can
help himself from being driven. I hold my inven-
tive capacity on the stem condition that it must
master my whole life, often have complete posses-
sion of me, make its own demands upon me, and
sometimes, for months together, put everything else
away from me. K I had not known long ago that
my place could never be held, unless I were at any
moment ready to devote myself to it entirely, I
should have dropped out of it very soon. All this I
can hardly expect you to understand — or the rest-
lessness and waywardness of an author's mind. You
have never seen it before you, or lived with it, or
had occasion to think or care about it, and you
cannot have the necessary consideration for ii " It
is only half-an-hour," — "It is only an afternoon," —
*• It is only an evening," people say to me over and
over again ; but they don't know that it is impossi-
ble to command one's self sometimes to any stipu-

1 Mrs. Tenter, a Tory dear friend and companion of Charles Dickens in
his youth.

lated and set disposal of five minutes,— or that the
mere consciousness of an engagement will some-
timee worry a whole day. These are the penalties
paid for writing books. Whoever is devoted to an
art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to
it, and to find his recompense in it. I am giieved
if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I

can't help it ; I must go my way whether or no.

• • • • • • •

Ever affectionately.

[TO MR. AUSTEN H. LAYABD]

Tavistock Housb, Tuesday, April 10th, 185S.

Dear Layard :

I shall of course observe the strictest silence at
present, in reference to your resolutions. It will be
a most acceptable occupation to me to go over them
with you, and I have not a doubt of their producing
a strong effect out of doors.

There is nothiug in the present time at once so
galling and so alarming to me as the alienation of
the people from their own public affisdrs. I have no
difficulty in understanding it. They have had so
Uttle to do vnth the game through all these years of
Parliamentary Reform, that they have sullenly laid
down their cards, and taken to looking on. The
players who are left at the table do not see beyond

io6 SsjMttB of ®icften0.

it, conceive that gain and loss and all the interest of
the play are in their hands, and wiU never be wiser
until they and the table and the lights and the
money are all overturned together. And I believe
the discontent to be so much the worse for smoul-
dering, instead of blazing openly, that it is ex-
tremely like the general mind of Prance before the
breaking out of the first Eevolution, and is in dan-
ger of being turned by any one of a thousand acci-
dents — a bad harvest — the last strain too much of
aristocratic insolence or incapacity — a defeat abroad
— a mere chance at home — with such a devil of a
conflagration as never has been beheld since.

Meanwhile, all our English tuft-hunting, toad-eat-
ing, and other manifestations of accursed gentility —
to say nothing of the Lord knows who's defiances of
the proven truth before six hundred and fifty men
— ARE expressing themselves every day. So, every
day, the disgusted millions with this imnatural
gloom are confirmed and hardened in the very
worst of moods. Finally, round all this is an at-
mosphere of poverty, hunger, and ignorant despera-
tion, of the mere existence of which perhaps not one
man in a thousand of those not actually enveloped
in it, through the whole extent of this country, has
the least idea.

It seems to me an absolute impossibility to direct
the spirit of the people at this pass imtil it shows it-

feeffere of ©icSene. 107

sell K they begin to bestir themselves in the vig-
orous national manner ; if they would appear in po-
litical reunion, array themselves peacefully but in
vast numbers against a system that they know to be
rotten altogether, make themselves heard like the
sea all round this island, I for one should be in
such a movement heart and soul, and should think
it a duty of the plainest kind to go along with it,
and try to guide it by all possible means. But you
can no more help a people who do not help them-
selves than you can help a man who does not help
himself. And until the people can be got up from
the lethargy, which is an awful symptom of the ad-
vanced state of their disease, I know of nothing that
can be done beyond keeping their wrongs continu-
ally before them.

I shall hope to see you soon after you come back
Your speeches at Aberdeen are most admirable,
manful, and earnest I would have such speeches
at every market-cross, and in every town-hall, and
among all sorts and conditions of men ; up in the
very balloons, and down in the very diving-bells.

Ever, cordially yours.

io8 &etfer0 of ®itSetv0.

[TO MBS. TROLLOPE]
Tavistock House, Tuesday Morning, June 19th, 1855.

My dear Mrs. Trollope :

I was out of town on Sunday, or I should have
answered your note immediately on its arrival. I
cannot have the pleasure of seeing the famous
" medium " to-night, for I have some theatricals at
home. But I fear I shall not in any case be a good
subject for the purpose, as I altogether want faith in
the thing.

I have not the least behef in the awful unseen
world being available for evening parties at so much
per night ; and, although I should be ready to re-
ceive enlightenment from any source, I must say I
have very little hope of it from the spirits who ex-
press themselves through mediums, as I have never
yet observed them to talk anything but nonsense,
of which (as Carlyle would say) there is probably
enough in these days of ours, and in all days,

among mere mortality.

Very faithfully yours.

[TO MR. W. C. M ACRE AD Y]

Folkestone, Thursday, Oct. 4th, 1855.

My dearest Macready :

I have been hammering away in that strenuous
manner at my book, that I have had leisui'e for

&etfer0 of ®icSen0. log

scarcely any letters but such as I have been obhgecl
to write ; having a horrible temptation when I lay
down my book-pen to run out on the breezy down
here, tear up the hills, alide down the same, and
conduct myself in a frenzied manner, for the relief
that only exercise gives me.

As to the suffrage, I have lost hope even in the
ballot We appear to me to have proved the failure
of representative institutions without an educated
and advanced people to support them. "What with
teaching people to "keep in their stations," what
with bringing up the soul and body of the land to
be a good child, or to go to the beershop, to go
a-poaching and go to the devil ; what with having
no such thing as a middle class (for though we are
perpetually bragging of it as our safety, it is noth-
ing but a poor fringe on the mantle of the upper) ;
what with flunkyism, toadyism, letting the most
contemptible lords come in for all manner of places,
reading ITie Court Circular for the New Testament,
I do reluctantly believe that the English people are
habitually consenting parties to the miserable im«
beciUty into which we have fallen, and never wUl
help themselves out of it. Who is to do it, if any-
body is, God knows. But at present we are on the
down-hill road to being conquered, and the people

no £etter0 cf ®tc6en0»

WILL be content to bear it, sing "Rule Britannia^'*
and WILL NOT be saved.

In No. 3 of my new book I have been blowing
off a little of indignant steam which would other-
wise blow me up, and with God's leave I shall
walk in the same all the daj^s of my Hfe ; but
I have no present political faith or hope — not a
grain.

I am going to read the Carol here to-morrow
in a long carpenter's shop, which looks far more
alarming as a place to hear in than the Town Hall
at Birmingham.

Kindest loves from all to your dear sister, Kate
and the darlings. It is blowing a gale here from
the south-west and raining like mad.

Ever most affectionately.

[TO MR W. H. WILLS]

49, Avenue des Champs 1^lts:£es,
Wednesday, Oct. 24tli, 1855.

A^ dear Wills :

In the Gad's Hill matter, I too would like to try
the effect of " not budging." So do not go beyond
the £1,700. Considering what I should have to ex-
pend on the one hand, and the low price of stock
on the other, I do not feel disposed to go beyond
that mark. They won't let a purchaser escape for

&efter0 of ®ic8en0. ///

the sake of the £100^ I think. And Austin was
strongly of opinion, when I saw him last, that
£1,700 was enough.

You cannot think how pleasant it is to me to &id
myself generally known and liked here. K I go
into a shop to buy anything, and give my card, the
officiating priest or priestess brightens up, and
says : " Ah I c*est Vecrivain cel^bre I Monsieur
porte un nom trh-distingue. Mais I je suis honori
et interesse de voir Monsieur DicJc-in. Je lis un des
livres de monsieur tous les jours " (in the Moniteur),
And a man who brought some little vases home last
night, said : "On connatt Men en France que Mon-
sieur Dick'in prend sa position sur la dignite de la
litterature. Ah! c'est grande chose! Et ses carac-
tares'* (this was to Georgina, while he unpacked)
^' sonl si spirituellement toum&s! Gette Madame
Tqjare" (Todgers) "a/i/ qu*elle est drdle et precise-
ment comme une dame queje connais d Calais^'

You cannot have any doubt about this place, if
you will only recollect it is the great main road
from the Place de la Concorde to the Barriere de
rfitoile.

Ever faithfully.

■ ■> ' 'j
^ ' ' J

112 £etf er0 of ®tcSen0.

[TO MONSIEUR REGNIBR]

Wednesday, November 21st, 1855.

My dear Regnier:

In thanking you for the box you kindly sent me
the day before yesterday, let me thank you a thou-
sand times for the delight we derived from the
representation of your beautiful and admirable
piece. I have hardly ever been so affected and
interested in any theatre. Its construction is in
the highest degree excellent, the interest absorb-
ing,' and the whole conducted by a masterly hand
to a touching and natural conclusion.

Through the whole story from beginning to end,
I recognise the true spirit and feeling of an artist,
and I most heartily offer you and your fellow-la-
bourer my felicitations on the success you have
achieved. That it will prove a very great and a
lasting one, I cannot for a moment doubt.

Oh my friend ! If I could see an English actress
with but one hundredth part of the nature and art
of Madame Plessy, I should believe our English
theatre to be in a fair way towards its regeneration.
But I have no hope of ever beholding such a phe-
nomenon. I may as well expect ever to see upon
an English stage an accomplished artist, able to
write and to embody what he writes, like you.

Faithfully yours ever.

feeftere of ©tcSene. //i

[TO MADAME VIARDOT]

49, Avenue des Champs i^LYsiss, Monday, Deo. 8d, 1855.

Dear Madame Viardot :

Mrs. Dickens tells me that you have only bor-
rowed the first number of Little Dorrit, and are
going to send it back. Pray do nothing of the
sort, and allow me to have the great pleasure of
sending you the succeeding numbers as they reach
me. I have had such delight in your great genius,
and have so high an interest in it and admiration of
it, that I am proud of the honour of giving you a
moment's intellectual pleasure.

Believe me, very faithfully yours.

[TO MR MAKE LEMON]
49, Champs ^lys^es, Pabis, Monday, Jan. 7tli, 1856.

My dear Mark :

I want to know how Jack and the Beanstalk goes.
I have a notion from a notice — a favourable notice,
however — which I saw in Galignani, that Webster
has let down the comic business.

In a piece at the Ambigu, called the Bentrie d

Paris, a mere scene in honour of the return of the

troops from the Crimea the other day, there is a

novelty which I think it worth letting you know of,
8

/ 14 &etter0 of ®tc8en0^

as it is easily available, either for a serious or a
comic interest — the introduction of a supposed elec-
tric telegraph. The scene is the railway terminus
at Paris, with the electric telegraph office on the
prompt side, and the clerks with their backs to the
audience — much more real than if they were, as they
infalHbly would be, staring about the house — work-
ing the needles ; and the little bell perpetually
ringing. There are assembled to greet the soldiers,
all the easily and naturally ^imagined elements of
interest — old veteran fathers, young children, ago-
nised mothers, sisters and brothers, girl lovers —
each impatient to know of his or her own object of
solicitude. Enter to these a certain marquis, full of
sympathy for all, who says : " My friends, I am one
of you. My brother has no commission yet. He is
a common soldier. I wait for him as well as aU
brothers and sisters here wait for their brothers.
Tell me whom you are expecting." Then they all
tell him. Then he goes into the telegraph-office,
and sends a message down the line to know how
long the troops will be. Bell rings. Answer
handed out on a slip of paper. " Delay on the line.
Troops will not arrive for a quarter of an hour."
General disappointment. " But we have this brave
electric telegraph, my friends," says the marquis.
" Give me your little messages, and Fll send them
offi" General rush round the marquis. Exclama-

feeffer0 of ©icSene. / ^5

tions: "How's Henri?" "My love to Georges;"
"Has Guillaume forgotten !filise?" **Is my son
wounded ? " "Is my brother promoted ? " etc. etc.
Marquis composes tumult Sends message — such
a regiment, such a company, "!l£lise's love to
Georges." Little bell rings, slip of paper handed
out — "Georges in ten minutes will embrace his
£lise. Sends her a thousand kisses." Marquis
sends message — such a regiment, such a company —
" Is my son wounded ? " Little bell rings. Slip of
paper handed out — "No. He has not yet upon
him those marks of bravery in the glorious service
of his country which his dear old father bears"
(father being lamed and invalided). Last of all, the
widowed mother. Marquis sends message — such
a regiment, such a company — "Is my only son
safe?" Little bell riuga Slip of paper handed
out — "He was first upon the heights of Alma."
General cheer. Bell rings again, another slip of
paper handed out "He was made a sergeant at
lukermann." Another cheer. Bell rings again, an-
other shp of paper handed out, "He was made
colour - sergeant at SebastopoL" Another cheer.
Bell rings again, another slip of paper handed out
" He was the first man who leaped with the French
banner on the Malakhoff tower." Tremendous
cheer. Bell rings again, another slip of paper
handed out. " But he was struck down there by a

!i6 feefter0 of ®ic8en0.

musket-ball, and Troops have proceeded. Will

anive in half a minute after this." Mother aban-
dons all hope ; general commiseration ; troops rush
in, down a platform ; son only wounded, and em-
braces her.

As I have said, and as you will see, this is avail-
able for any purpose. But done with equal dis-
tinction and rapidity, it is a tremendous effect, and
got by the simplest means in the world. There is
notliing in the piece, but it was impossible not to
be moved and excited by the telegraph part of it.

I hope you have seen something of Stanny, and
have been to pantomimes with him, and have drunk
to the absent Dick. I miss you, my dear old boy,
at the play, woefully, and miss the walk home, and
the partings at the comer of Tavistock Square.
And when I go by myself, I come home stewing
Little Dorrit in my head ; and the best part of my
play is (or ought to be) in Gordon Street.

Ever affectionately.

[ TO MR. W. WILKIE COLLINS ]
49 Champs ^LYsiss, Saturday, Jan. 19th, 1856.

My dear Collins :

I had no idea you were so far on with your book,
and heartily congratulate you on being within sight
of land.

&effer0 of ®ic8en0. 117

It is excessively pleasant to me to get your letter,
as it opens a perspective of theatrical and other
lounging evenings, and also of articles in House'
hold Words. It will not be the first time that we
shall have got on well in Paris, and I hope it will
not be by many a time the last

I purpose coming over, early in February (as
soon, in fact, as I shall have knocked out No. 5 of
lAttle D,), and therefore we can return in a jovial
manner together. As soon as I know my day of
coming over, I will write to you again, and (as the
merchants — say Chai'ley — would add) "commimi-
cate same " to you.

The lodging, en garpon, shall be duly looked up,
and I shall of course make a point of finding it close
here. There Avill be no difficulty in that. I will
have concluded the treaty before starting for Lon-
don, and will take it by the month, both because
that is the cheapest way, and because desirable
places don't let for shorter terms.

I have been sitting to Scheffer to-day— conceive
this, if you please, with No. 5 upon my soul — four
hours ! ! I am so addleheaded and bored, that if
you were here, I should propose an instantaneous
rush to the Trois Fr5res. Under existing circum-
stances I have no consolation. ... I met Ma-
dame Georges Sand the other day at a dinner got
up by Madame Yiardot for that great purpose. The

/ 1 8 &efter0 of ©tcften^^

human mind cannot conceive any one more aston-
ishingly opposed to all my preconceptions. If I had
been shown her in a state of repose, and asked what
I thought her to be, I should have said: "The
Queen's monthly nurse." Au reste, she has nothing
of the bus bleu about her, and is very quiet and

agreeable.

• ...•*

All unite in kindest remembrances to you, your

mother and brother.

Ever cordially.

[TO MR. W. WILKIE COLLINS]

Tavistock House, June eth, 1856.

My dear Collins :

I have never seen anything about myself in print
which has much correctness in it — any biographi-
cal account of myself I mean. I do not supply
such particulars when I am asked for them by edi-
tors and compilers, simply because I am asked for
them every day. If you want to prime Forgues,
you may tell him without fear of anything wrong,
that I was born at Portsmouth on the 7th of Febru-
ary, 1812 ; that my father was in the Navy Pay
Office ; that I was taken by him to Chatham when
I was very young, and lived and was educated there
till I was twelve or thirteen, I suppose ; that I was
then put to a school near London, where (as at

iAftctB of IDkSenB. 119

other places) I distinguished myself like a brick ;
that I was put in the office of a solicitor, a friend of
my father's, and didn't much like it ; and after a
couple of years (as well as I can remember) applied
myself with a celestial or diabolical energy to the
study of such things as would qualify me to be a
first-rate parliamentary reporter — at that time a
calling pursued by many clever men who were
young at the Bar ; that I made my d6but in the
gallery (at about eighteen, I suppose), engaged on
a voluminous publication no longer in existence,
called The Mirror of Parliament ; that when The
Morning Chronicle was purchased by Sir John East-
hope and acquired a large circulation, I was en-
gaged there, and that I remained there until I had
begun to publish Pickwick^ when I found myself
in a condition to relinquish that part of my la-
bours ; that I left the reputation behind me of
being the best and most rapid reporter ever known,
and that I could do anything in that way under any
sort of circumstances, and often did. (I daresay I
am at this present writing the best shorthand writer
in the world.)

That I began, without any interest or introduc-
tion of any kind, to write fugitive pieces for the old
Monthly Magazine, when I was in the gallery for
TJie Mirror of Parliament ; that my faculty for de-
scriptive writing was seized upon the moment I

I20 ijtUttti of ®tc8en0.

joined The Morning Chronicle, and that I was liber-
ally paid there and handsomely acknowledged, and
wrote the greater part of the short descriptive
Sketches by Boz in that paper ; that I had been
a writer when I was a mere baby, and always an
actor from the same age ; that I married the
daughter of a writer to the signet in Edinburgh,
who was the great friend and assistant of Scott, and
who first made Lockhart known to him.

And that here I am.

Finally, if you want any dates of publication of
books, tell Wills and he'll get them for you.

This is the first time I ever set down even these
particulars, and, glancing them over, I feel like a
wild beast in a caravan describing himself in the
keeper's absence.

Ever faithfully.

RS. — ^I made a speech last night at the London
Tavern, at the end of which all the company sat
holding their napkins to their eyes with one hand,
and putting the other into their pockets. A hun-
dred people or so contributed nine hundi-ed pounds
then and there.

i/MttB of OidCML i2t

[TO MR WASHDkGTOS IBYISG]

TAYI9XOCK HbrBB, L0S3KK. Jidtf SA, 1951.

A^ dear Irving :

Holland House has four- and -twentj jootlifid
pages in it now — twelre for mj knd, and twehe for
my lady ; and no clergyman ooHs tna leg iq> under
his chair all dinner-time, and begins to nneinTe it
when the hostess goes. No wheeled chair nms
smoothly in with that beaming face in it; and

^'s little cotton pocket-handkerchief helped io

make (I belieye) this yery dieet of "peq^er, A balf-
sad, half-ludicroos story of Bogers is all I will sully
it with. You know, I daresay, thai far a year or so
before his death he wandered, and lost himself Hke
one of the Children in the Wood, grown up there
and grown down again. He had Mm 'Proder and
Mrs. Carlyle to breakfast with him one morning —
only those two. Both exceadyety iaXkaiiwe, rerj
quick and cleyer, and bent on entertaining Iobl
When Mrs. Carlyle had flaidied and sbopne beficwe
him for about three-qnarters of an hour on ooe sub-
ject, he turned his poor old eyes on Hrs. Fkxieter,
and pointing to the brilliant diseoorser with ids
poor old finger, said (indignantly;, "Who is ate/*'
Upon this, Mra Procter, cutting in, dthw€fred tit u
her own story) a neat oration on the Hfe and writ-

!22 i^tfcxB of ®tc8en0^

ings of Carlyle, and enlightened him in her happiest
and airiest manner ; all of which he heard, staring
in the dreariest silence, and then said (indignantly
as before), " And who are you ? "
Ever, my dear Irving,

Most affectionately and truly youra

[TO M. DE CERJAT]
Tavistock House, Monday Night, Jan. 17th, 1857.

Aly dear Cerjat :

• •••••

Down at Gad's Hill, near Rochester, in Kent —
Shakespeare's Gad's Hill, where Falstaff engaged in
the robbery — is a quaint little country-house of
Queen Anne's time. I happened to be walking
past, a year and a half or so ago, with my sub-
editor of Household Words^ when I said to him :
"You see that house? It has always a curious
interest for me, because when I was a small boy
down in these parts I thought it the most beautiful
house (I suppose because of its famous old cedar-
trees) ever seen. And my poor father used to
bring me to look at it, and used to say that if ever
I grew up to be a clever man perhaps I might own
that house, or such another house. In remem-
brance of which, I have always in passing looked to
see if it was to be sold or let, and it has never been

geftere of ©icSene. 12s

to me like any other house, and it has never
changed at all" We came back to town, and my
friend went out to dinner. Next morning he came
to me in great excitement, and said : "It is written
that you were to have that house at Gad's Hill.
The lady I had allotted to me to take down to
dinner yesterday began to speak of that neighbor-
hood. * You know it ? * I said ; * I have been there
to-day.' ' O yes,' said she, ' I know it very well. I
was a child there, in the house they call Gad's Hill
Place. My father was the rector, and lived there
many years. He has just died, has left it to me,
and I want to sell it.' * So,* says the sub-editor,
'you must buy it. Now or never.'" I did, and
hope to pass next summer there, though I may,
perhaps, let it afterwards, furnished, from time to

time.

• •••••

Adieu, my dear fellow ; ever cordially yours.

[TO MR FRANK STONE, A.R.A. ]
Opficb op " Household Wobds," Monday, June Ist, 1857.

My dear Stone :

I know that what I am going to say will not be
agreeable ; but I rely on the authoress's good
sense ; and say it, knowing it to be the truth.

These Notes ai'e destroyed by too much smart-

124 ijdi^z of ®tcften0.

ness. It gives the appearance of perpetual effort,
stabs to the heart the nature that is in them, and
wearies by the manner and not by the matter. It
is the commonest fault in the world (as I have con-
stant occasion to observe here), but it is a very
great one. Just as you couldn't bear to have an
^pergne or a candlestick on your table, supported
by a light figure always on tiptoe and evidently in
an impossible attitude for the sustainment of its
weight, so all readers would be more or less op-
pressed and worried by this presentation of every-
thing in one smart point of view, when they know
it must have other, and weightier, and more solid
properties. Airiness and good spirits are always
delightful, and are inseparable from notes of a
cheerful trip ; but they should sympathise with
many things as well as see them in a lively way.
It is but a word or a touch that expresses this
humanity, but without that little embellishment of
good nature there is no such thing as humour. In
this little MS. everything is too much patronised
and condescended to, whereas the slightest touch
of feeling for the rustic who is of the earth eaiihy,
or of sisterhood with the homely servant who has
made her face shine in her desire to please, would
make a difference that the writer can scarcely
imagine without trying it. The only relief in the
twenty-one slips is the little bit about the chimes.

It is a relief, simply because it is an indication of
some kind of sentiment You don't want any sen-
timent laboriously made out in such a thing. You
don't want any maudlin show of it. But you do
want a pervading suggestion that it is there. It
makes all the difference between being playful and
being crueL Again I must say, above all things —
especially to young people writing : For the love
of God, don't condescend I Don't assume the atti-
tude of saying, " See how clever I am, and what
fun everybody else is I " Take any shape but
that.

I observe an excellent quality of observation
throughout, and think the boy at the shop, and all
about him, pai*ticularly good. I have no doubt
whatever that the rest of the journal will be much
better if the writer chooses to make it so. If she
considers for a moment within herself, she will
know that she derived pleasure from everything she
saw, because she saw it with innumerable lights
and shades upon it, and bound to humanity by in-
numerable fine links ; she cannot possibly com-
municate anything of that pleasure to another by
showing it from one little limited point only, and
that point, observe, the one from which it is impos-
sible to detach the exponent as the patroness of a
whole universe of inferior souls. This is what
everybody would mean in objecting to these notes

126 &ettet0 of ®ic8en0»

(supposing them to be published), that they are too
smart and too flippant.

As I understand this matter to be altogether be-
tween us three, and as I think your confidence, and
her's, imposes a duty of friendship on me, I dis-
charge it to the best of my ability. Perhaps I
make more of it than you may have meant or ex-
pected ; if so, it is because I am interested and
wish to express it. If there had been anything in
my objection not perfectly easy of removal, I
might, after all, have hesitated to state it ; but that
is not the case. A very little indeed would make
all this gaiety as sound and wholesome and good-
natured in the reader's mind as it is in the writer's.

Affectionately alwaya

[TO MR. EDMUND YATES]
Tavistock House, Tuesday, Feb. 2d, 1858.

My dear Yates :

Your quotation is, as I supposed, all wrong. The
text is not " which his 'owls was organs." When Mr.
Harris went into an empty dog-kennel, to spare his
sensitive nature the anguish of overhearing Mrs.
Harris's exclamations on the occasion of the birth of
her first child (the Princess Royal of the Harris
family), "he never took his hands away from his
ears, or came out once, till he was showed the

feeffere of lifi^ieM. 127

baby." On encountering that spectade, he was
(being of a weakly constitution) "took with fits."
For this distressing complaint he was medically
treated ; the doctor " collared him, and laid him on
his back upon the airy stones " — please to observe
what follows — " and she was told, to ease her mind,
his 'owls was organs."

That is to say, Mrs. Harris, lying exhausted on
her bed, in the first sweet relief of freedom from
pain, merely covered with the counterpane, and not
yet "put comfortable," hears a noise apparently
proceeding from the back-yard, and says, in a
flushed and hysterical manner : " What 'owls are
those? Who is a-'owling? Not my ugebond?"
Upon which the doctor, looking round one of the
bottom posts of the bed, and taking Mrs. Harris's
pulse in a reassuring manner, says, with much
admirable presence of mind : " Howls, my dear
madam ? — no, no, no ! What are we thinking of ?
Howls, my dear Mrs. Harris ? Ha, ha, ha ! Organs,
ma'am, organs. Organs in the streets, Mrs. Harris ;
no howls."

Tours faithfully.

128 feeftere of ©icftene.

[ TO MR. JOHN FORSTER ]
Tavistock House, Wednesday Night, Feb. Sd, 185a

My dear Forster :

I beg to report two phenomena :

1. An excellent little play in one act, by Marston,
at the Lyceum ; title, A Hard Struggle ; as good
as La Joiefait Peur, though not at all like it.

2. Capital acting in the same play, by Mr. Dillon.
Real good acting, in imitation of nobody, and
honestly made out by himself ! I

I went (at Marston's request) last night, and cried

till I sobbed again. I have not seen a word about

it from Oxenford. But it is as wholesome and

manly a thing altogether as I have seen for many a

day. (I would have given a hundred pounds to have

played Mr. Dillon's part.)

Love to Mrs. Forster.

Ever aflfectionately.

[ TO DR WBSTL AND MARSTON ]

Tavistock House, Wednesday, Feb. 8d, 1858.

My dear Marston :

I most heartily and honestly congratulate you on
your charming little piece. It moved me more than
I could easily tell you, if I were to try. Except

&effer0 of <BkSiene. 129

La- Joie fait Peur^ I have seen nothing nearly so
good, and there is a subtlety in the comfortable
presentation of the child who is to become a devoted
woman for Reuben's sake, which goes a long way
beyond Madame de Girardin. I am at a loss to let
you know how much I admired it last night, or how
heartily I cried over it A touching idea, most deli-
cately conceived and wrought out by a true artist
and poet, in a spirit of noble, manly generosity, that
no one should be able to study without great
emotion.

It is extremely well acted by all concerned ; but
Mr. Dillon's performance is really admirable, and
deserving of the highest commendation. It is good
in these days to see an actor taking such pains, and
expressing such natural and vigorous sentiment.
There is only one thing I should have liked him to
change. I am much mistaken if any man — ^least of
all any such man — would crush a letter written by
the hand of the woman he loved. Hold it to his
heart unconsciously and look about for it the while,
he might ; or he might do any other thing with
it that expressed a habit of tenderness and affection
in association with the idea of her ; but he would
never crush it under any circumstances. He would
as soon crush her heart

You will see how closely I went with him, by my

minding so slight an incident in so fine a perform-
9

J30 £etter0 of ®ic8en0.

ance. There is no one who could approach him in
it ; and I am bound to add that he surprised me as
much as he pleased me.

I think it might be worth while to try the people
at the Fran9ais with the piece. They are very good
in one-act plays; such plays take well there, and
this seems to me well suited to them. If you would
like Samson or Regnier to read the play (in Eng-
lish), I know them well, and would be very glad in-
deed to tell them that I sent it with your sanction
because I had been so much struck by it.

Faithfully yours always.

[TO MONSIEUR REGNIER]
Tayistook House, London, W. C, Thursday, Feb. 11th, 1858.

My dear Regnier :

I want you to read the enclosed little play. You
will see that it is in one act — about the length of
La JoiefaU jPeur. It is now acting at the Lyceum
Theatre here, with very great success. The author
is Mr. Westland Marston, a dramatic writer of repu-
tation, who wrote a very well-known tragedy called
The JPatrician's Daughter, in which Macready and
Miss Faucit acted (under Macready's management
at Drury Lane) some years ago.

This little piece is so very powerful on the stage,
its interest is so simple and natural, and the part of

£etter0 of IDk&cM. 131

Reuben is such a very fine one, that I cannot help
thinking you might make one grand coup with it, if
with your skilful hand you arranged it for the
Fran9ais. I have communicated this idea of mine
to the author, *'et Id-dessus je vov^ icris,** I am
anxious to know your opinion, and shall expect with
much interest to receive a little letter from you at
your convenience.

Mrs. Dickens, Miss Hogarth, and all the house
send a thousand kind loves and regards to Madame
Eegnier and the dear little boys. You will bring
them to London when you come, with all the force
of the Fran9ais — will you not ?

Ever, my dear Regnier, faithfully your Friend.

[TO MR EDMUND YATES]

Tavistock House, Tavistock Squabe, London, W. C,
Wednesday, April 28th, 185a

My dear Yates :

For a good many years I have suffered a great
deal from charities, but never anything like what I
suffer now. The amount of correspondence they
inflict upon me is really incredible. But this is
nothing. Benevolent men get behind the piers of
the gates, lying in wait for my going out ; and when
I peep shrinkingly from my study -windows, I see
their pot-bellied shadows projected on the graveL

7^2 fiettore cf ^BidienB.

Benevolent bullies drive up in hansom cabs (with
engraved portraits of their benevolent institutions
hanging over the aprons, like banners on their out-
ward walls), and stay long at the door. Benevolent
area-sneaks get lost in the kitchens and are found
to impede the circulation of the knife-cleaning ma-
chine. My man has been heard to say (at The Bur-
ton Arms) " that if it was a wicious place, well and
good— that an't door work ; but that wen all the
Christian wirtues is always a-shoulderin* and a-hel-
berin* on you in the 'all, a-tryin' to git past you and
cut upstairs into master's room, why no wages as
you couldn't name wouldn't make it up to you."

Persecuted ever.

[ TO MISS HOGARTH ]

M0BBIS0N*8 Hotel, Dublin, Wedneeday, Aug. a5th, 1858.
. • , • • •

They were a highly excitable audience last night,
but they certainly did not comprehend— internally
and intellectually comprehend — The Chimes as a
London audience do. I am quite sure of ii I very
much doubt the L'ish capacity of receiving the pa-
thetic ; but of their quickness as to the humorous
there can be no doubt I shall see how they go
along with Little Paul, in his death, presently.

While I was at breakfast this morning, a general

officer was announced with great state — Shaving a
staff at the door — and came in, booted and plumed,
and covered with Crimean decorations. It was
Cunninghame, whom we knew in Qenoa — then a
captain. He was very hearty indeed, and came to
ask me to dinner. Of course I couldn't go. Olliffe
has a brother at Cork, who has just now (noon)
written to me, proposing dinners and excursions in
that neighbourhood which would fill about a week ;
I being there a day and a half, and reading three
timea The work will be very severe here, and I
begin to feel depressed by it (By " here," I mean
Ireland generally, please to observe.)

We meant, as I said in a letter to Katie, to go to
Queenstown yesterday and bask on the seashore.
But there is always so much to do that we couldn't
manage it after all. We expect a tremendous house
to-morrow night as well as to-day ; and Arthur is
at the present instant up to his eyes in business
(and seats), and, between his regret at losing to-
night, and his desire to make the room hold twice
as many as it wiU hold, is half distracted. I have
become a wonderful Lishman — must play an Irish
part some day — and his only relaxation is when I
enact " John and the Boots," which I consequently
do enact all day long. The papers are full of re-
marks upon my white tie, and describe it as being
of enormous size, which is a wonderful delusion,

134 Si/ttttvB of ®icften«.

because, as you very well know, it is a small tie.
Generally, I am happy to report, the Emerald press
is in favour of my appearance, and Hkes my eyes.
But one gentleman comes out with a letter at Cork,
wherein he says that although only forty-six I look
like an old man. He is a rum customer, I think.

The Rutherfords are living here, and wanted me
to dine with them, which, I needn't say, could not
be done ; all manner of people have called, but I
have seen only two. John has given it up alto-
gether as to rivalry with the Boots, and did not
come into my room this morning at alL Boots ap-
peared triumphant and alone. He was waiting for
me at the hotel-door last night. " Whaa't sart of a
hoose, sur?" he asked me. "Capital" "The
Lard be praised for the 'onor o' Dooblin 1 "

Arthur buys bad apples in the streets and brings
them home and doesn't eat them, and then I am
obliged to put them in the balcony because they
make the room smell faint Also he meets country-
men with honeycomb on their heads, and leads
them (by the buttonhole when they have one) to
this gorgeous establishment and requests the bar to
buy honeycomb for his breakfast; then it stands
upon the sideboard uncovered and the flies fall into
ii He buys owls, too, and castles, and other horri-
ble objects, made in bog-oak (that material which is
not appreciated at Gad's Hill) ; and he is perpetu-

feettere of ©icfiene. 133

ally snipping pieces out of newspapers and sending
them all over the world. While I am reading he
conducts the correspondence, and his great delight
is to show me seventeen or eighteen letters when I
come, exhausted, into the retiring-place. Berry has
not got into any particular trouble for forty-eight
hours, except that he is all over boils. I have pre-
scribed yeast, but ineffectually. It is indeed a sight
to see him and John sitting in pay-boxes, and sur-
veying Ireland out of pigeon-holea

Same Evening before Bed-time.
• ■•••■

Here follows a dialogue (but it requires imita-
tion), which I had yesterday morning with a little
boy of the house — ^landlord's son, I suppose — about
Florn's age. I am sitting on the sofa writing, and
find him sitting beside me.

iNiMrrABLB. Holloa, old chap.

Young Ibbland. Hal-loo !

Inimitable {in his delightftU way). What a nice old fel-
low yoa are. I am very fond of little boys.

Young Ireland. Air ye ? Ye'r right.

Inimitable. What do you learn, old fellow ?

Young Ibeland {very intent on Inimitable, and always
ehildish, except in his brogue). I lairn wureds of three siUibils,
and wureds of two siUibils, and wureds of one sillibil.

Inimitable {gaUy). Get out, you humbug ! You learn
only words of one syllable.

f36 £effer0 of ©icftene.

YoTTNO Ireland {laughs hearUXy). You may saj that it is
mostly wureds of one sillibil.

Inimitablb. Can you write ?

Young Ibbland. Not yet. Things comes by deegrays.

Inimitablb. Can you cipher ?

Young Ireland {v&ry quickly), Wha'at's that ?

Inimitablb. Can you make figures ?

Young Ibeland. I can make a nought, which is not
asy, being roond.

Inimitable. I say, old boy, wasn't it you I saw on Sun-
day morning in the hall, in a soldier's cap ? You know — in
a soldier's cap ?

Young Ireland (cogitating deeply). Was it a very good
cap ?

Inimitablb. Yes.

Young Ireland. Did it fit unkommon ?

Inimitable. Yes.

Young Ireland. Dat was me !

There are two stupid old louts at the room, to
show people into their places, whom John calls
" them two old Paddies," and of whom he says, that
he "never see nothing like them (snigger) hold
idiots " (snigger). They bow and walk backwards
before the grandees, and our men hustle them while
they are doing it.

• •••••

Ever, my dearest Georgy, most aflfectionately.

&efter0 cf ®tc8ens. 137

[TO MISS DICKENS]

Belfast, Saturday, Ang. 28th, 185&

When I went down to the Botunda at Dublin on
Thursday night, I said to Arthur, who came rush-
ing at me : "You needn't tell me, I know all about
it" The moment I had come out of the door of
the hotel (a mile o^, I had come against the stream
of people turned away. I had struggled against it
to the room. There, the crowd in all the lobbies
and passages was so great, that I had a difficulty
in getting in. They had broken all the glass in
the pay-boxes. They had offered frantic prices
for stalla Eleven bank-notes were thrust into
that pay-box (Arthur saw them) at one time, for
eleven stalla Our men were flattened against
walls, and squeezed against beams. Ladies stood
all night with their chins against my platform.
Other ladies sat all night upon my stepa You
never saw such a sight And the reading went
tremendously ! It is much to be regretted that we
troubled ourselves to go anywhere else in Ireland.
We turned away people enough to make immense
houses for a week.

• • . • • .

Our men are rather indignant with the Irish
crowds, because in the struggle they don't sell

/i<S &etter0 of ©icftene.

books, and because, in the pressure, they can't
force a way into the room afterwards to sell them.
They are deeply interested in the success, however,
and are as zealous and ardent as possible. I shall
write to Katie next. Give her my best love, and
kiss the darling Plorn for me, and give my love
to all the boys.

Ever, my dearest Mamie,

Your most affectionate Father.

[TO MISS HOGARTH]

MoBRisoN's Hotel, Dublin, Sunday Night, Aug. 29th, 1858.

I am so delighted to find your letter here to-
night (eleven o'clock), and so afraid that, in the
wear and tear of this strange life, I have written to
Gad's Hill in the wrong order, and have not written
to you, as I should, that I resolve to write this be-
fore going to bed. You will find it a wretchedly
stupid letter ; but you may imagine, my dearest
girl, that I am tired.

The success at Belfast has been equal to the suc-
cess hera Enormous ! We turned away half the
town. I think them a better audience, on the
whole, than Dublin ; and the personal affection
there was something overwhelming. I wish you
and the dear girls could have seen the people look

feeffere of ®tcSen0. 139

at me in the street ; or heard them ask me, as I
hurried to the hotel after reading last night, to
** do me the honour to shake hands, Misther Dick-
ens, and God bless you, sir ; not ounly for the light
you've been to me this night, but for the light
you've been in mee house, sir (and God love your
face), this many a year." Every night, by-the-bye,
since I have been in Ireland, the ladies have be-
guiled John out of the bouquet from my coat. And
yesterday morning, as I had showered the leaves
from my geranium in reading "Little Dombey,"
they mounted the platform, after I was gone, and
picked them all up as keepsakes !

I have never seen men go in to cry so undis-
guisedly as they did at that reading yesterday
afternoon. They made no attempt whatever to
hide it, and certainly cried more than the women.
As to the " Boots " at night, and " Mrs. Gamp " too,
it was just one roar with me and them ; for they
made me laugh so that sometimes I could not com-
pose my face to go on.

You must not let the new idea of poor dear
Landor effiace the former image of the fine old man.
I wouldn't blot him out, in his tender gallantry, as
he sat upon that bed at Forster's that night, for a
miUion of wild mistakes at eighty years of age.

I hope to be at Tavistock House before five
o'clock next Saturday morning, and to lie in bed

I40 feeftete of ©icSene.

half the day, and come home by the 10.50 on Sun-
day.

• •••••

Ever affectionately.

[TO MISS HOGARTH ]
RoTAL Hotel, Soabbobough, Sunday, Sept 11th, ia58.

My dearest Georgy :

We had a very fine house indeed at York. All
kinds of applications have been made for another
reading there, and no doubt it would be exceed-
ingly productive ; but it cannot be done. At Har-
rogate yesterday ; the queerest place, with the
strangest people in it, leading the oddest lives of

dancing, newspaper reading, and tables d*h6te.
• •.•••

My dearest love, of course, to the dear girls, and
to the noble Plom. Apropos of children, there
was one gentleman at the " Little Dombey " yester-
day morning, who exhibited, or rather concealed,
the profoundest grief. After crying a good deal
without hiding it^ he covered his face with both his
hands, and laid it down on the back of the seat be-
fore him, and really shook with emotion. He was
not in mourning, but I supposed him to have lost
some child in old time. There was a remarkably
good fellow of thirty or so, too, who found some-

ijtttttB of ®tc8en0. 14/

thing so very ludicrous in " Toots," that he could
not compose himself at all, but laughed until he sat
wiping his eyes with his handkerchief! And when-
ever he felt "Toots" coming again he began to
laugh and wipe his eyes afresh, and when he came
he gave a kind of cry, as if it were too much for
him. It was uncommonly droll, and made me laugh
heartily.

Ever, dear Georgy, your most affectionate.

[TO MR. JOHN FORSTER]

TA.VISTOGK House, Tavistock Squabs, London,
Sunday, Oct 10th, 1858.

My dear Forster :

As to the truth of the readings, I cannot tell you
what the demonstrations of personal regard and re-
spect are. How the densest and most uncomforta-
bly-packed crowd will be hushed in an instant when
I show my face. How the youth of colleges, and
the old men of business in the town, seem equally
unable to get near enough to me when they cheer
me away at night. How common people and gen-
tlefolks will stop me in the streets and say : '' Mr.
Dickens, will you let me touch the hand that has
filled my home with so many friends ? ** And if you
saw the mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and
brothers in mourning, who invariably come to "Lit-
tle Dombey," and if you studied the wonderful ex*

J 42 £efter0 of ®ic8en«*

pression of comfort and reliance with which they
hang about me, as if I had been with them, all kind-
ness and delicacy, at their own little deathbed, you
would think it one of the strangest things in the
world.

As to the mere effect, of course I don't go on do-
ing the thing so often without carefully observing
myself and the people too in every little thing, and
without (in consequence) greatly improving in it.

At Aberdeen, we were crammed to the street
twice in one day. At Perth (where I thought when
I arrived there literally could be nobody to come),
the nobility came posting in from thirty miles
round, and the whole town came and filled an im-
mense halL As to the effect, if vou had seen them
after Lilian died, in The Chimes, or when Scrooge
woke and talked to the boy outside the window, I
doubt if you would ever have forgotten it. And at
the end of "Dombey," yesterday afternoon, in the
cold light of day, they all got up, after a short
pause, gentle and simple, and thundered and waved
their hats with that astonishing heartiness and fond-
ness for me, that for the first time in all my public
career they took me completely off my legs, and I
saw the whole eighteen hundred of them reel on ono

side as if a shock from without had shaken the halL
• • • • • ,

Ever affectionately.

£efter0 of VHc&eM. 143

[TO MR. PRANK STONE, A.RA.]

Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, Loi^don, W. C,

Monday, Dec. 13th, 1858.

My dear Stone :

Many thanks for these discourses. They are
very good, I think, as expressing what many men
have felt and thought ; otherwise not specially re-
markable. They have one fatal mistake, which is a
canker at the foot of their ever being widely usefuL
Half the misery and hypocrisy of the Christian
world arises (as I take it) from a stubborn deter-
mination to refuse the New Testament as a suffi-
cient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament
into alliance with it — whereof comes all manner of
camel-swallowing and of gnat-straining. But so to
resent this miserable error, or to (by any implica-
tion) depreciate the divine goodness and beauty of
the New Testament, is to commit even a worse
error. And to class Jesus Christ with Mahomet is
simply audacity and folly. I might as well hoist
myself onto a high platform, to inform my disciples
that the lives of King George the Fourth and of
King Alfred the Ghreat belonged to one and the
same category.

Ever affectionately.

144 ijtttaxz of iEHcSen^*

t TO MR ARTHUR SMITH ]

Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London, W.C,

Wednesday, Jan. 26th, 1859.

My dear Arthur :

Will you first read the enclosed letters, having
previously welcomed, with all possible cordiality,
the bearer, Mr. Thomas C. Evans, from New
York?

You having read them, let me explain that Mr.
Fields is a highly respectable and influential man,
one of the heads of the most classical and most re-
spected publishing house in America ; that Mr.
Eichard Grant White is a man of high reputation ;
and that Pelton is the Greek Professor in their
Cambridge University, perhaps the most distin-
guished scholar in the States.

The address to myself, referred to in one of the
letters, being on its way, it is quite clear that I
must give some decided and definite answer to the
American proposal. Now, will you carefully dis-
cuss it with Mr. Evans before I enter on it at all?
Then, will you dine here with him on Sunday —
which I will propose to him — and arrange to meet
at half-past four for an hour's discussion ?

The points are these :

First. I have a very grave question within my-
self whether I could go to America at alL

^ttcTB of ®icSen0. /^5

Secondly. If I did go, I could not possibly go
before the autumn.

Thirdly. If I did go, how long must I stay ?

Fourthly. If the stay were a short one, could
you go ?

Fifthly. What is his project? What could I
make ? What occurs to you upon his proposal ?

I have told him that the business arrangements
of the readings have been from the first so entirely
in your hands, that I enter upon nothing connected
with them without previous reference to you.

Ever faithfully.

[TO M. DB CERJAT]

Tavistock House, Tuesday, Feb. 1st, 1869.

hfy dear Cerjat :

• • • • • •

My affidrs domestic (which I know are not with-
out their interest for you) flow peacefully. My eld-
est daughter is a capital housekeeper, heads the
table gracefully, delegates certain appropriate du-
ties to her sister and her aunt, and they are all
three devotedly attached. Charley, my eldest boy,
remains in Barings* house. Tour present corre-
spondent is more popular than he ever has been. I
rather think that the readings in the country have

opened up a new pubUc who were outside before ;
10

146 i^it^B of ®tc8en0,

but howeyer that may be, his books have a wider
range than they ever had, and his public welcomes
are prodigious. Said correspondent is at present
overwhelmed with proposals to go and read in
America. "Will never go, unless a small fortune
be first paid down in money on this side of the
Atlantic. Stated the figure of such payment, be-
tween ourselves, only yesterday. Expects to hear
no more of it, and assuredly will never go for less.
You don't say, my dear Cerjat, when you are com-
ing to England I Somehow I feel that this mar-
riage ought to bring you over, though I don't know
why. You shall have a bed here and a bed at
Gad's Hill, and we will go and see strange sights
together. . When I was in Ireland, I ordered the
brightest jaunting-car that ever was seen. It has
just this minute arrived per steamer from Belfast.
Say you are coming, and you shall be the first man
turned over by it; somebody must be (for my
daughter Mary drives anything that can be har-
nessed, and I know of no English horse that would
understand a jaunting-car coming down a Kentish
hill), and you shall be that somebody if you will.
They turned the basket-phaeton over, last summer,
in a bye-road — Mary and the other two — and had
to get it up again ; which they did, and came home
as if nothing had happened. They send their loves
to Mrs. Cerjat, and to you, and to all, and particu-

feeffer0 of Wic&enB. 147

larly to the dear fiancie. So do I, with all my
heart, and am ever your attached and a£Eectionate
friend.

[TO MR. JOHN PORSTER]

Gad's Hnx, Thnrsday Night, Aug. 25th, 1850.

My dear Forster :

Heartily glad to get your letter this morning.

I cannot easily tell you how much interested I
am by what you tell me of our brave and excellent
friend the Chief Baron, in connection with that
ruffian. I followed the case with so much interest,
and have followed the miserable knaves and asses
who have perverted it since, with so much indigna-
tion, that I have often had more than half a mind
to write and thank the upright judge who tried
him. I declare to God that I believe such a service
one of the greatest that a man of intellect and
courage can render to society. Of course I saw the
beast of a prisoner (with my mind's eye) delivering
his cut-and-dried speech, and read in every word of
it that no one but the murde^rer could have deliv-
ered or conceived it. Of course I have been driv-
ing the girls out of their wits here, by incessantly
proclaiming that there needed no medical evidence
either way, and that the case was plain without it.
Lastly, of course (though a merciful man— because

148 i^ttttB of ^BicSienB.

a merciful man I mean), I would hang any Home

Secretary ("Whig, Tory, Radical, or otherwise) who

should step in between that black scoundrel and

the gallowa I cannot believe — and my belief in all

wrong as to public matters is enormous — that such

a thing wiU be done.

I am reminded of Tennyson, by thinking that

King Arthur would have made short work of the

amiable Smethurst, whom the newspapers strangely

deHght to call "Doctor," by-the-bye, and to make

a sort of gentleman of. How fine the Idylls

are I Lord ! what a blessed thing it is to read a

man who can vnite ! I thought nothing could be

grander than the first poem till I came to the

third ; but when I had read the last, it seemed to

be absolutely unapproached and unapproachable.
• •••••

Ever affectionately.

[TO MR W. WILKIE COLLINS]

Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London, W. C,
Saturday Night, Jan. 7th, 1860.

My dear IVUkie :

I have read this book with great care and atten-
tion. There cannot be a doubt that it is a very
great advance on all your former writing, and most
especially in respect of tenderness. In character it
is excellent. Mr. Eairlie as good as the lawyer, and

&effer0 of ®ic8en«» 149

the lawyer as good as he. Mr. Vesey and Miss
Halcombe, in their different ways, equally meritori-
ous. Sir Percival, also, is most skilfully shown,
though I doubt (you see what small points I come
to) whether any man ever showed uneasiness by
hand or foot without being forced by nature to
show ifc in his face too. The story is very interest-
ing, and the writing of it admirable.

I seem to have noticed, here and there, that the
great pains you take express themselves a trifle too
much, and you know that I always contest your dis-
position to give an audience credit for nothing,
which necessarily involves the forcing of points on
their attention, and which I have always observed
them to resent when they find it out — as they
always will and do. But on turning to the book
again, I find it dificult to take out an instance of
this. Ifc rather belongs to your habit of thought
and manner of going about the work. Perhaps I
express my meaning best when I say that the three
people who write the narratives in these proofs have
a DissECTivE property in common, which is essentially
not theirs but yours ; and that my own effort would
be to strike more of what is got that way out of them
by collision with one another, and by the working
of the story.

You know what an interest I have felt in your
powers from the beginning of our friendship, and

150 ^tt^B of ®icften0*

liow very high I rate them ? / know that this is an
admirable book, and that it grips the difficulties of
the weekly portion and throws them in masterly
style. No one else could do it half so well. I have
stopped in every chapter to notice some instance of
ingenuity, or some happy turn of writing ; and I am
absolutely certain that you never did half so well
yourself.

So go on and prosper, and let me see some more,
when you have enough (for your own satisfaction)
to show me. I think of coming in to back you up
if I can get an idea for my series of gossiping
papers. One of these days, please God, we may do
a story together ; I have very odd half -formed no-
tions, in a mist, of something that might be done'

that way.

Ever affectionately.

[ TO MR. HENRY F. CHORLEY ' ]

Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, W. C,
Friday Night, Feb. 8, 1860.

My dear Cborley :

I can most honestly assure you that I think
Roccabella a very remarkable book indeed.

I am not quite with you as to the Italians. Tour
knowledge of the Italian character seems to me sur-

1 Pablifihed in i\i& Autobiography, Memoir, and Ltttert of Henry Foth^
ergiU Charley . Ckimpiled by H. Q. Hewlett

&tttttB of ®icften0- / 5'

prisingly subtle and penetrating ; but I think we owe
it to those most unhappy men and their political
wretchedness to ask ourselves mercifully, whether
their faults are not essentially the faults of a people
long oppressed and priest-ridden ; — whether their
tendency to slink and conspire is not a tendency
that spies in every dress, from the triple crown to
a lousy head, have engendered in their ancestors
through generations? Again, like you, I shudder
at the distresses that come of these unavailing ris-
ings; my blood runs hotter, as yours does, at the
thought of the leaders safe, and the instruments
perishing by hundreds ; yet what is to be done ?
Their wrongs are so great that they will rise from
time to time somehow. It would be to doubt the
eternal providence of God to doubt that they will
rise successfully at last Unavailing struggles
against a dominant tyranny precede all successful
turning against it. And is it not a little hard in us
Englishmen, whose forefathers have risen so often
and striven against so much, to look on, in our own
security, through microscopes, and detect the motes
in the brains of men driven mad? Think, if you
and I were Italians, and had grown from boyhood
to our present time, menaced in every day through
all these years by that infernal confessional, dun-
geons, and soldiers, could we be better than these
men ? Should we be so good ? I should not, I am

1^2 ijtttttti of ^DfefiemL

afraid, if I know myself. Such things would make
of me a moody, bloodthirsty, implacable man, who
would do anything for revenge ; and if I compro-
mised the truth — put it at the worst, habitually —
where should I ever have had it before me ? In the
old Jesuits* college at Genoa, on the Chiaja at Naples,
in the churches of Rome, at the University of Padua,
on the Piazza San Marco at Venice, where? And
the government is in all these places, and in all
Italian places. I have seen something of these men.
I have known Mazzini and Gkllenga ; Manin was
tutor to my daughters in Paris ; I have had long
talks about scores of them with poor Ary Scheffer,
who was their best friend. I have gone back to
Italy after ten years, and found the best men I had
known there exiled or in jaiL I believe they have
the faults you ascribe to them (nationally, not indi-
vidually), but I could not find it in my heart, re-
membering their miseries, to exhibit those faults
without referring them back to their causes. You
will forgive my writing this, because I write it
exactly as I write my cordial little tribute to the
high merits of your book. If it were not a living
reality to me, I should care nothing about this point
of disagreement ; but you are far too earnest a man,
and far too able a man, to be left unremonstrated
with by an admiring reader. You cannot write so
well without influencing many people. If you could

ijtfUtB of Oidtens. #5^

tell me that your book had but twenty readers, I
would reply, that so good a book will inflaence more
people's opinions, through those twenty, than a
worthless book would through twenty thousand;
and I express this with the perfect confidence of one
in whose mind the book has taken, for good and all,
a separate and distinct place.

Accept my thanks for the pleasure you hare given
me. The poor acknowledgment of testifying to
that pleasure wherever I go will be my pleasure in
return. And so, my dear Chorley, good night, and
God bless you.

Ever faithfully youra.

[TO MR JOHN FOBSTEB]

11, Wellington Stbeet, North Stsand, Londov, W, C,
WedneadAy, Hay 2d, I860.

My dear Forster :

It did not occur to me in rea^ling your motii eir
cellent, interesting, and remarkable book, that' ii
could with any reason be called one^mdetL If Clar*
endon had never written his IJintary fjf Ih: Jie^
bellion, then I can understand that ii taigbt W
But just as it would be impownble to ntmw^ nu
advocate who had misstated the ineriiH (A a mm
for his own purpose, without, in ih^ iuUirtsnUt fft
truth, and not of the other md^ mirn^ly, t^HtMiun

^54 &ettttB of ®icSen0.

the merits and showing them in their real form, so
I cannot see the practicability of telling what you
had to tell without in some sort championing the
misrepresented side, and I think that you don't
do that as an advocate, but as a judge.

The evidence has been suppressed and coloured,
and the judge goes through it and puts it straight.
It is not his fault if it all goes one way and tends to
one plain conclusion. Nor is it his fault that it
goes the further when it is laid out straight, or
seems to do so, because it was so knotted and
tmsted up before.

I can understand any man's, and particularly
Carlyle's, having a lingering respect that does not
like to be disturbed for those (in the best sense of
the word) loyal gentlemen of the country who went
with the king and were so true to him. But I
don't think Carlyle sufficiently considers that the
great mass of those gentlemen didn't knoio the truth,
that it was a part of their loyalty to believe what
they were told on the king's behalf, and that it is
reasonable to suppose that the king was too artful
to make known to them (especially after failure)
what were very acceptable designs to the desperate
soldiers of fortune about Whitehall. And it was to
me a curious point of adventitious interest arising
out of your book, to reflect on the probabiHty of
their having been as ignorant of the real scheme in

feeffer0 of ©icftene. 15^

Charles's head, as then: descendants and followers
down to this time, and to think with pity and ad-
miration that they beheved the cause to be so much
better than it was. This is a notion I was anxious
to have expressed in our account of the book in
these pages. For I don't suppose Clarendon, or
any other such man to sit down and tell posterity
something that he has not " tried on " in his own
time. Do you ?

In the whole narrative I saw nothing anywhere
to which I demurred. I admired it all, went with
it all, and was proud of my friend's having written it
alL I felt it to be all square and sound and right,
and to be of enormous importance in these times.
Firstly, to the people who (like myself) are so sick
of the shortcomings of representative government
as to have no interest in it. Secondly, to the hum-
bugs at Westminster who have come down — a long,
long way — from those men, as you know. When
the great remonstrance came out, I was in the thick
of my story, and was always busy with it ; but I am
very glad I didn't read it then, as I shall read it
now to much better purpose. All the time I was
at work on the 2\oo Cities I read no books but
such as had the air of the time in them.

To return for a final word to the Mve Members.
I thought the marginal references overdone. Here
and there, they had a comical look to me for that

'5^ £effer0 of ^BkHenB.

reason, and reminded me of shows and plays where
everything is in the bill.

Lastly, I should have written to yoa — as I had a
strong incHnation to do, and ought to have done,
immediately after reading the book — but for a
weak reason ; of aU things in the world I have lost
heart in one — ^I hope no other — I cannot, times out
calculation, make up my mind to write a letter.
Ever, my dear Forster, affectionately youra

[TO SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON]

Gad's Hill, Tuesday, June 5th, 1860.

A/v dear Bulwer Lytton :

I am very much interested and gratified by your
letter concerning A Tale of Two Cities. I do not
quite agree with you on two points, but that is no
deduction from my pleasure.

In the first place, although the surrender of the
feudal privileges (on a motion seconded by a noble-
man of great rank) was the occasion of a sentimen-
tal scene, I see no reason to doubt, but on the con-
trary, many reasons to believe, that some of these
privileges had been used to the frightful oppression
of the peasant, quite as near to the time of the Revo-
lution as the doctor's narrative, which, you will re-
member, dates long before the Terror. And surely
when the new philosophy was the talk of the salons

iMtetB of ®icfien0* 157

and the slang of the hour, it is not unreasonable or
unallowable to suppose a nobleman wedded to the
old cruel ideas, and representing the time going
out, as his nephew represents the time coming in ;
as to the condition of the peasant in France gener-
ally at that day, I take it that if anything be certain
on earth it is certain that it was intolerable. No
ex post facto enquiries and provings by figures will
hold water, surely, against the tremendous testi-
mony of men living at the time.

There is a curious book printed at Amsterdam,
written to make out no case whatever, and tiresome
enough in its literal dictionary-like minuteness,
scattered up and down the pages of which is full
authority for my marquis. This is Mercier's Tab-
leau de Paris, Rousseau is the authority for the
peasant's shutting up his house when he had a bit
of meat The tax-taker was the authority for the
wretched creature's impoverishment.

I am not clear, and I never have been clear, re-
specting that canon of fiction which forbids the in-
terposition of accident in such a case as Madame
Defarge's death. Where the accident is insepara-
ble from the passion and emotion of the character,
where it is strictly consistent with the whole design,
and arises out of some culminating proceeding on
the part of the character which the whole story has
led up to, it seems to me to become, as it were, an

/5* feettere of ©icftene.

act of divine justice. And when I use Miss Fross
(though this is quite another question) to bring
about that catastrophe, I have the positive intention
of making that half-comic intervention a part of the
desperate woman's failure, and of opposing that
mean death — instead of a desperate one in the
streets, which she wouldn't have minded — to the
dignity of Carton's wrong or right ; this ims the de-
sign, and seemed to be in the fitness of things.
• • • • • •

Ever affectionately and faithfully.

[TO M. DB CERJAT]

Office of "All the Year Round,"
Friday, Feb. let, 1861.

My dear Cerjat :

......

The American business is the greatest English
sensation at present I venture to predict that the
struggle of violence will be a very short one, and
will be soon succeeded by some new compact be-
tween the Northern and Southern States. Mean-
time the Lancashire mill-owners are getting very
uneasy.

The Italian state of things is not regarded as
looking very cheerfuL What from one's natural
sympathies vdth a people so oppressed as the Ital-
ians, and one's natural antagonism to a pope and a

feefter0 of ®tc8m0. J 59

Bourbon (both of which superstitions I do suppose

the world to have had more than enough of), I agree
with you concerning Victor Emmanuel, and greatly

fear that the Southern Italians are much degraded.

Still, an united Italy would be of vast importance to

the peace of the world, and would be a rock in Louis

Napoleon's way, as he very well knowa Therefore

the idea must be championed, however much against

hope.

• •••••

This journal is doing gloriously, and Great Ex-
pectations is a great success. I have taken my third
boy, Frank (Jeffrey's godson) into this office. If I
am not mistaken, he has a natural literary taste and
capacity, and may do very weU with a chance so
congenial to his mind, and being also entered at the
Bar.

[TO MR W. C. MACREADY]
" All the Yeab Round" Opficb, Tuesday, June 11th, 1861.

My dearest Macready :

• •••••

I have just finished my book of Great Expecta-
tions, and am the worse for wear. Neuralgic pains
in the face have troubled me a good deal, and the
work has been pretty close. But I hope that the
book is a good book, and I have no doubt of very

loo &e«er0 of ®icfien0.

Boon throwing off the little damage it has done
me.

What with Blondin at the Crystal Palace and Leo-
tard at Leicester Square, we seem to be going back
to barbaric excitements. I have not seen, and don't
intend to see, the Hero of Niagara (as the posters
call him), but I have been beguiled into seeing Leo-
tard, and it is at once the most fearful and most
graceful thing I have ever seen done.

Clara White (grown pretty) has been staying
with us.

I am sore afraid that TJie Times, by playing fast
and loose with the American question, has very se-
riously compromised this country. The Americans
northward are perfectly furious on the subject ;
and Motley the historian (a very sensible man,
strongly English in his sympathies) assured me the
other day that he thought the harm done very seri-
ous indeed, and the dangerous nature of the daily
widening breach scarcely calculable.

Kindest and best love to alL WiUde Collins has
just come in, and sends best regard.

Ev^r most affectionately, my dearest Macready.

&effer0 of ^tcfiene* i6i

[TO MR. JOHN FORSTER]

Gad's Hill, Monday, July let, 1861.

My dear Forster :

• •••••

You will be surprised to hear that I have changed
the end of Great Expectations from and after Pip's
return to Joe's, and finding his little likeness there.

Balwer (who has been, as I think I told you, ex-
traordinarily taken by the book), so strongly urged
it upon me, after reading the proofs, and supported
his views with such good reasons, that I resolved
to make the change. You shall have it when you
come back to town. I have put in a very pretty
piece of writing, and I have no doubt the story will
be more acceptable through the alteration.

I have not seen Bulwer's changed story. I
brought back the first month with me, and I know
the nature of his changes throughout ; but I have
not yet had the revised proofs. He was in a better
state at Knebworth than I have ever seen him in all
these years, a Httle weird occasionally regarding
magic and spirits, but perfectly fair and frank un-
der opposition. He was talkative, anecdotical, and
droll ; looked young and well, laughed heartily, and
enjoyed some games we played with great zesi In
his artist character and talk he was full of interest

and matter, but that he always is. Socially, he
11

i62 &etter0 of ^SivcSi&ML

seemed to me almost a new man. I thoroughly en-
joyed myself, and so did Georgina and Mary.

• •••••

Tou will be perhaps surprised , to hear that it is
Morgan's conviction (his son was here yesterday),
that the North will put down the South, and that
speedily. In his management of his large business,
he is proceeding steadily on that conviction. He
says that the South has no money and no credit, and
that it is impossible for it to make a successful
stand. He may be all wrong, but he is certainly a
very shrewd man, and he has never been, as to the
United States, an enthusiast of any class.

• •••••

Ever, my dear Forster, affectionately,

[ TO MISS HOGARTH ]

Gabriok^s BoYAii Hotel, Glasgow, Tuesday, Deo. 8d, 1861.

I send you by this post another Scotsman, From
a paragraph in it, a letter, and an advertisement,
you may be able to form some dim guess of the scene
at Edinburgh last nighi Such a pouring of hun-
dreds into a place already full to the throat, such
indescribable confusion, such a rending and tearing
of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humour
on the whole. I never saw the faintest approach to
it While I addressed the crowd in the room, Gor-

&etter0 of ©icSene. 163

don addressed the crowd in the street. Fifty fi-an-

tic men got up in all parts of the hall and addressed

me all at once. Other frantic men made speeches

to the walls. The whole Blackwood family were

borne in on the top of a wave, and landed with

their faces against the front of the platform. I

read with the platform crammed with people. I

got them to lie down upon it, and it was like some

impossible tableau or gigantic picnic ; one pretty

girl in full dress lying on her side all night, holding

on to one of the legs of my table. It was the most

extraordinary sight. And yet from the moment I

began to the moment of my leaving off they never

missed a point, and they ended with a burst of

cheers.

• •••••

Give my love to Mamie. To her question, " Will
there be war with America ? '* I answer, " Yes ; " I
fear the North to be utterly mad, and war to be un-
avoidable.

[TO MISS HOGARTH]

Torquay, Wednesday, Jan. Sth, 1868.

You know, I think, that I was very averse to
going to Plymouth, and would not have gone there
again but for poor Arthur. But on the last night
I read " Copperfield," and positively enthralled the
people. It was a most ovei-powering effect, and poor

j64 iAitttB cf ^BidienB.

Andrew * came behind the screen, after the storm,
and cried in the best and manliest manner. Also
there were two or three lines of his shipmates and
other sailors, and they were extraordinarily affected.
But its culminating effect was on Macready at
Cheltenham. When I got home after " Copperfield,"
I found him quite unable to speak, and able to
do nothing but square his dear old jaw all one
side, -and roll his eyes (half closed), like Jackson's
picture of him. And when I said something
light about it, he returned : " No — er — Dickens I
I swear to Heaven that, as a piece of passion and
playfulness — er — indescribably mixed up together,
it does — er — ^no, really, Dickens ! — amaze me as
profoundly as it moves me. But as a piece of art
— and you know — er — that I — no, Dickens I By

! have seen the best art in a great time — it is

incomprehensible to me. How is it got at — er —
how is it done — er — how one man can — well ? It
lays me on my — er — ^back, and it is of no use talking
about it I " With which he put his hand upon my
breast and pulled out his pocket-handkerchief, and
I felt as if I were doing somebody to his Werner,
Katie, by-the-bye, is a wonderful audience, and has
a great fund of wild feeling in her. Johnny not
at all unlike Plom.
I have not yet seen the room here, but imagine it

' Ltontenant Andrew GKirdoii« R.N.

£efter0 of ^iKcSene. /<^5

to be very small Exeter I know, and that is small
also. I am very much used up, on the whole, for I
cannot bear this moist warm climate. It would
kill me very soon. And I have now got to the
point of taking so much out of myself with " Copper-
field," that I might as well do Eichard Wardour.

Tou have now, my dearest Georgy, the fullest ex-
tent of my tidinga This is a very pretty place — a
compound of Hastings, Tunbridge Wells^ and lit-
tle bits of the hills about Naples ; but I met four
respirators as I came up from the station, and three
pale curates without them, who seemed in a bad
way.

Frightful intelligence has just been brought in
by Boylett, concerning the small size of the room.
I have terrified Headland by sending him to look at
it, and swearing that if it's too small I will go away
to Exeter.

[TO M. DE CERJAT]

16, Hyde Pabk Gate, South Kensington Gobb,
Sunday, March 16th, 1862.

My dear Cerjat :

You ask me about Fechter and his Hamlet It
was a performance of extraordinary merit ; by far
the most coherent, consistent, and intelligible Ham-
let I ever saw. Some of the delicacies with which

J 66 feettere of ©icftene.

he rendered his conception clear were extremely
subtle ; and in particular he avoided that brutality
towards Ophelia which, with a greater or less amount
of coarseness, I have seen in all other Hamlets. As
a mere tour de force, it would have been very re-
markable in its disclosure of a perfectly wonderful
knowledge of the force of the EngUsh language ; but
its merit was far beyond and above this. Foreign
accent, of course, but not at all a disagreeable one.
And he was so obviously safe and at ease, that you
were never in pain for him as a foreigner. Add to
this a perfectly picturesque and romantic "make
up," and a remorseless destruction of all conven-
tionalities, and you have the leading virtues of the
impersonation. In Othello he did not succeed. In
lago he is very good. He is an admirable artist,
and far beyond anyone on our stage. A real artist
and a gentleman.

a • • • « •

Yours affectionately.

[TO MISS DICKENS]
HdTEL DU Hblder, Pabis, Sunday, Feb. let, 1863.

My dearest Mamie :

I cannot give you any idea of the success of the
readings here, because no one can imagine the
scene of last Friday night at the Embassy. Such

Eeffere of ^tcfiene* 167

audiences and such enthusiasm I have never seen,
but the thing cubninated on Friday night in a two
hours' storm of excitement and pleasure. They ac-
tually recommenced and applauded right away into
their carriages and down the street.

You know your parent's horror of being lionised,
and will not be surprised to hear that I am half
dead of ii I cannot leave here until Thursday
(though I am every hour in danger of running
away) because I have to dine out, to say nothing of
breakfasting — think of me breakfasting ! — every in-
tervening day. But my project is to send John
home on Thursday, and then to go on a little per-
fectly quiet tour for about ten days, touching the
sea at Boulogne. When I get there, I will write to
your aunt (in case you should not be at home), say-
ing when I shall arrive at the office. I must go to
the office instead of Gad's, because I have much to
do with Forster about Elliotson.

I enclose a short note for each of the little boys.
Give Harry ten shillings pocket-money, and Plom
six.

The OUiffe girls, very nice. Florence at the read-
ings, prodigiously excited.

i68 £efter0 of VkSitnB.

[TO MR W. C. MACREADY]

Office of " All the Year Round,*'

Thursday, Feb. 19fcli, ISdS.

My dearest Macready :

I have just come back from Paris, where the read-
ings— " Copperfield," " Dorabey " and "Trial," and
" Carol" and " Trial " — have made a sensation which
modesty (my natural modesty) renders it impossible
for me to describe. You know what a noble au-
dience the Paris audience is ! They were at their
very noblest with me.

I was very much concerned by hearing hurriedly
from Georgy that you were ill. But when I came
home at night, she showed me Katie's letter, and
that set me up again. Ah, you have the best of
companions and nurses, and can afford to be ill
now and then for the happiness of being so brought
through it. But don't do it again yet awhile for
all thai

Legouv6 (whom you remember in Paris as writ-
ing for the Kistori) was anxious that I should bring
you the enclosed. A manly and generous effort, I
think? Kegnier desired to be warmly remem-
bered to you. He looks just as of yore.

Paris generally is about as wicked and extrava-
gant as in the days of the Eegency. Madame
Viardot in the Orph^, most splendid. An

&effer0 of ®ic8en0. 169

opera of Faust, a very sad and noble rendering
of that sad and noble story. Stage management
remarkable for some admirable, and really poetical,
effects of light In the ndore striking situations,
Mephistopheles surrounded by an infernal red at-
mosphere of his own. Marguerite by a pale blue
mournful light The two never blending. After
Marguerite has taken the jewels placed in her way
in the garden, a weird evening draws on, and the
bloom fades from the flowers, and the leaves of the
trees droop and lose their fresh green, and mourn-
ful shadows overhang her chamber window, which
was innocently bright and gay at first. I couldn't
bear it, and gave in completely.

Fechter doing wonders over the way here, with
a picturesque French drama. Miss E^te Teny,
in a small part in it, perfectly charming. You may
remember her making a noise, years ago, doing a
boy at an inn, in The Courier of Lyons f She
has a tender love-scene in this piece, which is a
really beautiful and artistic thing. I saw her do
it at about three in the morning of the day when
the theatre opened, suiTOunded by shavings and
carpenters, and (of course) with that inevitable
hammer going; and I told Fechter : "That is the
very best piece of womanly tenderness I have ever
seen on the stage, and you'll find that no audi-
ence can miss it," It is a comfort to add that it

ijo feefter0 of ©icfiene.

was instantly seized upon, and is much talked
of.

Stanfield was very ill for some months, then sud-
denly picked up, and is really rosy and jovial again.
Going to see him when he was very despondent, I
told him the story of Fechter's piece (then in re-
hearsal) with appropriate action; fighting a duel
with the washing-stand, defying the bedstead, and
saving the hfe of the sofa-cushion. This so kindled
his old theatrical ardour, that I think he turned
the corner on the spot.

With love to Mrs. Macready and Katie, and (be
still my heart !) Benvenuta, and the exiled Johnny
(not too attentive at school, I hope ?), and the per-
sonally-unknown young Parr,
Ever, my dearest Macready, your most affectionate.

[TOM. DE CERJAT]

Gad*s Hill Place, Higham by Bochesteb, Kent,

Thursday, May 28th, 1863.

My dear Cerjat :
I don't wonder at your finding it difficult to

reconcile your mind to a French Hamlet ; but I as-
sure you that Fechter's is a very remarkable per-
formance perfectly consistent with itself (whether
it be my particular Hamlet, or your particular
Hamlet, or no), a coherent and intelligent whole.

iMtttB of ®tc8en0, 17^

and done by a true artist. I have never seen, I
think, an intelligent and clear view of the whole
character so well sustained throughout; and there
is a very captivating air of romance and pictur-
esqueness added, which is quite new. Rely upon
it, the public were right. The thing could not have
been sustained by oddity ; it would have perished
upon that, very soon. As to the mere accent, there
is far less drawback in that than you would sup-
pose. For this reason, he obviously knows English
so thoroughly that you feel he is safe. You are
never in pain for him. This sense of ease is gained
directly, and then you think very little more
about it.

The Colenso and Jowett matter is a more difficult
question, but here again I don't go with you.
The position of the writers of Essays and Re-
views is, that certain parts of the Old Testament
have done their intended function in the education
of the world as it was; but that mankind, like the
individual man, is designed by the Almighty to
have an infancy and a maturity, and that as it ad-
vances, the machinery of its education must advance
too. For example : inasmuch as ever since there
was a sun and there was vapour, there must have
been a rainbow under certain conditions, so surely
it would be better now to recognise that indisput-
able fact. Similarly, Joshua might command the

172 £effer0 of ®icfieni»

8un to stand still, under the impression that it
moved round the earth ; but he could not possibly
have inverted the relations of the earth and the sun,
whatever his impressions were. Again, it is con-
tended that the science of geology is quite as much
a revelation to man, as books of an immense age
and of (at the best) doubtful origin, and that your
consideration of the latter must reasonably be in-
fluenced by the former. As I understand the im-
j)ortance of timely suggestions such as these, it is,
that the Church should not gradually shock and
lose the more thoughtful and logical of human
minds ; but should be so gently and considerately-
yielding as to retain them, and, through them, hun-
dreds of thousands. This seems to me, as I under-
stand the temper and tendency of the time, whether
for good or evil, to be a very wise and necessary
position. And as I understand the danger, it is
not chargeable on those who take this ground, but
on those who in reply call names and argue noth-
ing. What these bishops and such-like say about
revelation, in assuming it to be finished and done
with, I can't in the least understand. Nothing is
discovered without God's intention and assistance,
and I suppose every new knowledge of His works
that is conceded to man to be distinctly a revelation
by which men are to guide themselves. Lastly,
in the mere matter of religious doctrine and dog.

£etter0 of ^kSieM. 173

mas, these men (Protestants — protestors — succes-
sors of the men who protested against human judg-
ment being set aside) talk and write as if they were
all settled by the direct act of Heaven ; not as if
they had been, as we know they were, a matter of
temporary accommodation and adjustment among
disputing mortals as fallible as you or I:

• •••••

A very intelligent German friend of mine, just
home from America, maintains that the conscrip-
tion will succeed in the North, and that the war
vdll be indefinitely prolonged. I say "No," and
that however mad and villainous the North is, the
war will finish by reason of its not supplying sol-
diers. We shall see. The more they brag the more
I don't believe in them.

[TO MR CHARLES READB]

Office of " All the Yeab Round,"

Wednesday, Sept. 80th, 1863.

My dear Reade :

I must write you one line to say how interested
I am in your story, and to congratulate you upon
its admirable art and its surprising grace and
vigour.

And to hint my hope, at the same time, that you

174 iAitttz of ©icftenB.

will be able to find leisure for a little dash for the
Christmas number. It would be a really great and
true pleasure to me if you could.

Faithfully yours always.

CTO MR. W. H. WILLS]

Gad's Hill, Sunday, Dec. 20th, 1863.

My dear Wills :

I am clear that you took my cold. Why didn't
you do the thing completely, and take it away from
me ? for it hangs by me still.

Will you tell Mi's. Linton that in looking over her
admirable account {most admirable) of Mrs. Gor-
don's book, I have taken out the references to Lock-
bart, not because I in the least doubt their justice,
but because I knew him and be liked me ; and be-
cause one bright day in Rome, I walked about with
him for some hours when he was dying fast, and all
the old faults had faded out of him, and the now
ghost of the handsome man I had first known when
Scott's daughter was at the head of his house, had
little more to do with this world than she in her
grave, or Scott in his, or small Hugh Little John in
his. Lockhart had been anxious to see me all the
previous day (when I was away on the Campagna),
and as we walked about I knew very well that he
knew very well why. He talked of getting better.

feeffere of ©tcfiena; 175

but I never saw liim again. This makes me stay
Mrs. Linton's hand, gentle as it is.

Mrs. Lirripei' is indeed a most brilliant old lady.
God bless her.

I am glad to hear of your being " haunted,'* and
hope to increase your stock of such ghosts pretty
liberally.

Ever faithfully,

[ TO MR. W. WniKIB COLLINS ]

Gad's Hill, Monday, Jan. 24Ui, 1864.

My dear IVilhie :

• • • • • •

The Christmas number has been the greatest suc-
cess of all ; has shot ahead of last year ; has sold
about two hundred and twenty thousand ; and has
made the name of Mrs. Lirriper so swiftly and do-
mestically famous as never was. I had a very
strong belief in her when I wrote about her, finding
that she made a great effect upon me ; but she cer-
tainly has gone beyond my hopes. (Probably you
know nothing about her ? which is a very unpleasant
consideration.) Of the new book, I have done the
two first numbers, and am now beginning the third.
It is a combination of drollery with romance which
requires a great deal of pains and a perfect throwing
away of points that might be amplified ; but I hope

17^ ijtUttB of ®tcften0.

ifc is very good. I confess, in short, tliat I think it
is. Strange to say, I felt at first quite dazed in get-
ting back to the large canvas and the big brushes ;
and even now, I have a sensation as of acting at the
San Carlo after Tavistock House, which I could
hardly have supposed would have come upon so old
a stager.

You will have read about poor Thackeray's death
— sudden, and yet not sudden, for he had long been
alarmingly ill. At the solicitation of Mr. Smitli
and some of his friends, I have done what I would
most gladly have excused myself from doing, if I
felt I could — written a couple of pages about him in
what was his own magazine.

[ TO MR MARCUS STONE ]

57, Gloucester Place, Htdb Park,
Tuesday, Feb. 23d, 1864.

My dear Marcus :

I think the design for the cover excellent, and do
not doubt its coming out to perfection. The slight
alteration I am going to suggest originates in a bus-
iness consideration not to be overlooked.

The word Our in the title must be out in the
open like Mutual Friend, making the title three dis-
tinct large lines— Owr as big as Mutual Friend This
would give you too much design at the bottom. I

fcefter^ of ©tcftens* 177

would therefore take out the dustman, and put the
Wegg and Boffin composition (which is capital) in
its place. I don't want Mr. Inspector or the mur-
der reward bill, because these points are sufficiently
indicated in the river at the top. Therefore you
can have an indication of the dustman in Mi*. In-
spector's place. Note, that the dustman's fece
should be droll, and not horrible. Tvvemlow's
elbow will still go out of the frame as it does now,
and the same with Lizzie's skirts on the opposite
side. With these changes, work away I

Mrs. Boffin, as I judge of her from the sketch,
'* very good, indeed." I want Boffin's oddity, with-
out being at all blinked, to be an oddity of a very
honest kind, that people will like.

The doll's dressmaker is immensely better than

she was. I think she should now come extremely

well. A weird sharpness not without beauty is the

thing I want

Affectionately always.

[TO MR. EDMUND OLLIER]

" All the Yeak Round '* Office, March, 1864.
• • • . . .

I want the article on " Working Men's Clubs " to

refer back to "The Poor Man and his Beer" in

No. 1, and to maintain the principle involved in

that effort.

12

/7* feetfere of ©tcSene*

Also, emphatically, to show that trustfulness is
at the bottom of all social institutions, and that
to trust a man, as one of a body of men, is to place
him under a wholesome restraint of social opinion,
and is a very much better thing than to make a
baby of him.

Also, to point out that the rejection of beer in
this club, tobacco in that club, dancing or what-not
in another club, are instances that such clubs are
founded on mere whims, and therefore cannot suc-
cessfully address human nature in the general, and
hope to last.

Also, again to urge that patronage is the curse and
blight of all such endeavours, and to impress upon
the working men that they must originate and man-
age for themselves. And to ask them the question,
can they .possibly show their detestation of drunken-
ness better, or better strive to get rid of it from
among them, than to make it a hopeless disqualifi-
cation in all their clubs, and a reason for expulsion.

Also, to encourage them to declare to themselves
and their fellow working men that they want social
rest and social recreation for themselves and their
families ; and that these clubs are intended for that
laudable and necessary purpose, and do not need
educational pretences or flourishes. Do not let
them be afraid or ashamed of wanting to be amused
and pleased.

%/Mttti of ®icften0* 179

[TO M. DE CBRJAT ]

Gad's Hill Place, Hioham by Rochester,
Tuesday, Oct. 25th, 1864.

My dear Cerjat :

• • • • • •

In London there is, as you see by the papers,
extraordinarily little news. At present the appre-
hension (rather less than it was though!) of a com-
mercial crisis, and the trial of Milller next Thurs-
day, are the two chief sensations. I hope that
gentleman will be hanged, and have hardly a doubt
of it, though croakers contrariwise are not wanting.
. . . As to the Church, my friend, I am sick of
it. The spectacles presented by the indecent
squabbles of priests of most denominations, and
the exemplary unfairness and rancour with which
they conduct their differences, utterly repel me.
And the idea of the Protestant establishment, in
the face of its own histoiy, seeking to trample out
discussion and private judgment, is an enormity so
cool, that I wonder the Right Reverends, Very Rev-
erends, and all other Reverends, who commit it,
can look in one another's faces without laughing,
as the old soothsayers did. Perhaps they can't and
don't. How our sublime and so-different Chris-
tian religion is to be administered in the future I
cannot pretend to say, but that the Church's hand

i8o i/ttUxz of ®icften«.

is at its own throat I am fully convinced. Here,
more Popery, there, more Methodism — as many
forms of consignment to eternal damnation as there
are articles, and all in one forever quarrelling body
— the Master of the New Testament put out of
sight, and the rage and fury almost always turning
on the letter of obscure parts of the Old Testament,
which itself has been the subject of accommodation,
adaptation, varying interpretation without end —
these things cannot last. The Church that is to
have its part in the coming time must be a more
Christian one, with less arbitrary pretensions and
a stronger hold upon the mantle of our Saviour, as
He walked and talked upon this earth.

Of family intelligence I have very httle. Charles
CoUins continuing in a very poor way, and showing
no signs of amendment. He and my daughter
Katie went to Wiesbaden and thence to Nice,
where they are now. I have strong apprehensions
that he will never recover, and that she will be left
a young widow. All the rest are as they were.
Mary neither married nor going to be ; Georgina
holding them all together and perpetually corre-
sponding with the distant ones; occasional rally-
ings coming off here, in which another generation
begins to peep above the table. I once used to
think what a horrible thing it was to be a grand-
father. Finding that the calamity falls upon me

iAitttti of ®ic6en0. i8i

without my perceiving any other change in myself,
I bear it like a man.

• •••••

Affectionately yours.

[TO MR THOMAS MITTON]

Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Bochesteb, Kent,
Tuesday, June 13th, 1865.

My dear Mitt on :

I should have written to you yesterday or the
day before, if I had been quite up to writing.

I was in the only carriage that did not go over
into the stream. It was caught upon the turn by
some of the ruin of the bridge, and hung suspended
and balanced in an apparently impossible manner.
Two ladies were my fellow-passengers, an old one
and a young one. This is exactly what passed.
You may judge from it the precise length of the
suspense : Suddenly we were off the rail, and beat-
ing the ground as the car of a half-emptied balloon
might. The old lady cried out, " My God I " and
the young one screamed. I caught hold of them
both (the old lady sat opposite and the young one
on my left), and said : " We can't help ourselves,
but we can be quiet and composed. Pray don't
cry out." The old lady immediately answered :
"Thank you. Rely upon me. Upon my soul I

i82 i^ttttB of ®tc8en0.

will be quiet." We were all tilted down together in
a corner of the caniage, and stopped. I said to
them thereupon : "You may be sure nothing worse
can happen. Our danger must be over. Will you
remain here without stiiTing, while I get out of the
window ? " They both answered quite collectedly,
" Yes/* and I got out without the least notion what
had happened. Fortunately I got out with gi'eat
caution and stood upon the step. Looking down I
saw the bridge gone, and nothing below me but the
line of raiL Some people in the two other compart-
ments were madly trying to plunge out at window,
and had no idea that there was an open swampy
field fifteen feet down below them, and nothiner
else I The two guards (one with his face cut) were
running up and down on the down side of the
bridge (which was not torn up) quite wildly. I
called out to them : ** Look at me. Do stop an in-
stant and look at me, and tell me whether you don't
know me." One of them answered : " We know
you very well, Mr. Dickens." " Then," I said, " my
good fellow, for God's sake give me your key, and
send one of those labourers here, and I'll empty
this carriage. " We did it quite safely, by means
of a j)lank or two, and when it was done I saw all
the rest of the train, except the two baggage vans,
down in the stream. I got into the carriage again
for my brandy flask, took off my travelling hat for

feeftere of ®icften0. i8^

a basin, climbed down the brickwork, and filled my
hat with water.

Suddenly I came upon a staggering man covered
with blood (I think he must have been flung clean
out of his carriage), with such a frightful cut
across the skull that I couldn't bear to look at him.
I poured some water over his face and gave him
some to drink, then gave him some brandy, and
laid him down on the grass, and he said, " I am
gone," and died afterwards. Then I stumbled over
a lady lying on her back against a little pollard-tree,
with the blood streaming over her face (which was
lead colour) in a number of distinct httle streams
from the head. I asked her if she could swallow a
little brandy and she just nodded, and I gave her
some and left her for somebody else. The next
time I passed her she was dead. Then a man, ex-
amined at the inquest yesterday (who evidently had
not the least remembrance of what really passed),
came running up to me and implored me to help
him find his wife, who was afterwards found dead.
No imagination can conceive the ruin of the carri-
ages, or the extraordinary weights under which the
people were lying, or the complications into which
they were twisted up among iron and wood, and
mud and water.

I don't want to be examined at the inquest, and I
don't want to write about it. I could do no good

1 84 feeftere of ®tc8en0.

either way, and I could only seem to speak about
myself, which, of course, I would rather not do. I
am keeping very quiet here. I have a — I don't
know what to call it — constitutional (I suppose)
presence of mind, and was not in the least fluttered
at the time. I instantly remembered that I had
the MS. of a number with me, and clambered back
into the carriage for it. But in writing these
scanty words of recollection I feel the shake and
am obliged to stop.

Ever faithfully.

[TO PROFESSOR OWEN, P.RS.]

Gad's Hill, Wednesday, July 12th, 1865.

My dear Owen :

Studying the gorilla last night for the twentieth
time, it suddenly came into my head that I had
never thanked you for that admirable treatise. This
is to bear witness to my blushes and repentance. If
you knew how much interest it has awakened in me,
and how often it has set me a-thinkiug, you would
consider me a more thankless beast than any gorilla
that ever lived. But happily you do not know, and
I am not going to tell you.

Believe me, ever faithfully yours.

feeftere of ®ic6en«. i8^

[TO MRS. PROCTER]

Gab^s Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent,

Sept. 26th, 1865.

My dear Mrs. Procter :

I have written the little introduction,* and have
sent it to my printer, in order that you may read it
without trouble. But if you would like to keep the
few pages of MS., of course they are yours.

It is brief, and I have aimed at perfect simplicity,
and an avoidance of all that your beloved Adelaide
would have wished avoided. Do not expect too
much from it. If there should be anything wrong
in fact, or anything that you would like changed for
any reason, of course you will tell me so, and of course
you will not deem it possible that you can ti-ouble
me by making any such request most freely.

You will probably receive the proof either on
Friday or Saturday. Don't write to me until you
have read it. In the meantime I send you back the
two books, with the two letters in the bound one.

With love to Procter,

Ever your affectionate Friend.

> A preface to the collected poems of Adelaide Procter.

i86 tsjM^B of ©icftene.

[TO M. DE CERJAT]

Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent,

November 13th, 1865.

My dear Cerjat :

• •••••

If the Americans don't embroil us in a war be-
fore long it will not be their fault What with
their swagger and bombast, what with their claims
for indemnification, what with Ireland and Fenian-
ism, and what with Canada, I have strong appre-
hensions. With a settled animosity towards the
French usurper, I believe him to have always been
sound in his desire to divide the States against
themselves, and that we were unsound and wroncr
in "letting I dare not wait upon I would." The
Jamaica insurrection is another hopeful piece of
business. That platform-sympathy with the black
— or the native, or the devil — afar off, and that
platform indifference to our own countrymen at
enormous odds in the midst of bloodshed and sav-
agery, makes me stark wild. Only the other day,
here was a meeting of jawbones of asses at Man-
chester, to censure the Jamaica Governor for his
manner of putting down the insurrection ! So we
are badgered about New Zealanders and Hotten-
tots, as if they were identical with men in clean
shirts at Camberwell, and were to be bound by

feeffere of ©icftene. 187

pen and ink accordingly. So Exeter Hall holds us
in mortal submission to missionaries, who (Living-
stone always excepted) are perfect nuisances, and
leave every place worse than they found it.

Of all the many evidences that are visible of our
being ill-governed, no one is so remarkable to me
as our ignorance of what is going on under our
Government. What will future generations think
of that enormous Indian Mutiny being ripened
without suspicion, until whole regiments arose and
killed their officers ? A week ago, red tape, half-
bouncing and half pooh-poohing what it bounced
at, would have scouted the idea of a Dublin jail not
being able to hold a political prisoner. But for the
blacks in Jamaica being over-impatient and before
their time, the whites might have been extermi-
nated, without a previous hint or suspicion that
there was anything amiss. Laissez dler, and Brit-
ons never, never, never !

[ TO MRS. BROOKFIELD ]

Office of " All the Yeab Round,"
Tuesday, Feb. 20th, 1866.

My dear Mrs. Brookfield :

Having gone through your MS. (which I should
have done sooner, but that I have not been very
well), I write these few following words about it.
Firstly, with a limited reference to its unsuitability

i88 feettete of ©tcBetUL

to these pages. Secondly, with a more enlarged
reference to the merits of the story itself.

If you "will take any part of it and cut it up (in
fancy) into the small portions into which it would
have to be divided here for only a month's supply,
you will (I think) at once discover the impossibility
of publishing it in weekly parts. The scheme of
the chapters, the manner of introducing the people,
the progress of the interest, the places in which the
principal places fall, are all hopelessly against it.
It would seem as though the story were never com-
ing, and hardly ever moving. There must be a spe-
cial design to overcome that specially tiying mode of
publication, and I cannot better express the difficul-
ty and labour of it than by asking you to turn over
any two weekly numbers of A Tale of Two Cities, or
Great Expectations, or Bulwer's story, or Wilkie Col-
lins's, or Reade's, or At the Bar, and notice how pa-
tiently and expressly the thing has to be planned for
presentation in these fragments, and yet for after-
wards fusing together as an uninterrupted whole.

Of the story itself I honestly say that I think
highly. The style is particularly easy and agree-
able, infinitely above ordinary writing, and some-
times reminds me of Mrs. Inchbald at her best.
The characters are remarkably well observed, and
with a rare mixture of delicacy and truthfulness. I
observe this particularly in the brother and sis-

i^^ttexB of ®ic8en0. i8^

ter, and in Mrs. Neville. But it strikes me that
you constantly hurry your narrative (and yet with-
out getting on) bi/ telling it, in a sort of impetuous
breathless way, in your own person, when the people
should tell it and act it for themselves. My notion
always is, that when I have made the people to play
out the play, it is, as it were, their business to do it,
and not mine. Then, unless you really have led up
to a great situation like Basil's death, you are bound
in ai't to make more of it. Such a scene should
form a chapter of itself. Impressed upon the read-
er's memory, it would go far to make the fortune
of the book. Suppose yourself telling that affect-
ing incident in a letter to a friend. Wouldn't you
describe how you went through the life and stir of
the streets and roads to the sick-room ? Wouldn't
you say what kind of a room it was, what kind of
day it was, whether it was sunlight, starlight, or
moonlight? Wouldn't you have a strong impres-
sion on your mind of how you were received, when
you first met the look of the dying man, what
strange contrasts were about you and struck you ?
I don't want you, in a novel, to present yourself, to
tell such things, but I want the things to be there.
You make no more of the situation than the index
might, or a descriptive playbill might in giving a
summary of the tragedy under representation.
As a mere piece of mechanical workmanship, I

igo &ettet0 of ®tc8en0.

thiuk all your chapters should be shorter; that is
to say, that they should be subdivided. Also, when
you change from narrative to dialogue, or vice versd^
you should make the transition more carefully.
Also, taking the pains to sit down and recall the
principal landmarks in your story, you should then
make them far more elaborate and conspicuous than
the rest Even with these changes I do not believe
that the story would attract the attention due to it,
if it were published even in such monthly portions
as the space of Fraser would admit of. Even so
brightened, it would not, to the best of my judg-
ment, express itself piecemeal. It seems to me to
be so constituted as to require to be read " off the
reel." As a book in two volumes I think it would
have good claims to success, and good chances of
obtaining success. But I suppose the polishing I
have hinted at (not a meretricious adornment, but
positively necessary to good work and good art) to
have been first thoroughly administered.

Now don't hate me if you can help it. I can af-
ford to be hated by some people, but I am not rich
enough to put you in possession of that luxury.

Ever faithfully yours.

P.S. — The MS. shall be delivered at your house
to-morrow. And your petitioner again prays not to
be, etc.

&ettet0 of ®ic8en6. 191

[TO MR. B. W. PROCTER]

Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Roohestbb, Kent,
Monday, Aug. 13tli, 1866.

My dear Procter :

I have read your biography of Charles Lamb with
inexpressible pleasure and interest. I do not think
it possible to tell a pathetic story with a more un-
affected and manly tenderness. And as to the force
and vigour of the style, if I did not know you I
should have made sure that there was a printer's
error in the opening of your introduction, and that
the word ** seventy" occupied the place of ** forty."

Let me, my dear friend, most heartily congratu-
late you on your achievement. It is not an ordin-
ary triumph to do such justice to the memory of
such a man. And I venture to add, that the fresh
spirit with which you have done it impresses me as
being perfectly wonderful.

Ever affectionately yours.

[ TO MR W. C. M ACRE ADY ]

Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent,
Friday, Dec. 28th, 1866.

My dearest Macready :

I have received your letter with the utmost pleas-
ure and we all send our most affectionate love to
you, Mrs. Macready, Katie, Johnny, and the boy of

ip2 feettet0 of ®icfteiv0.

boys. All good Christmas and New Year greetings
are to be understood as included.

You will be interested in knowing that, encour-
aged by the success of summer cricket-matches, I
got up a quantity of foot-races and rustic sports in
my field here on the 2Gth last past : as I have never
yet had a case of drunkenness, the landlord of The
Falstaff had a drinking-booth on the ground. All
the prizes I gave were in money, too. We had two
thousand people here. Among the crowd were sol-
diers, navvies, and labourers of all kinds. Not a
stake was pulled up, or a rope slackened, or one
farthing's-worth of damage done. To every com-
petitor (only) a printed bill of general rules was
given, with the concluding words: **Mr. Dickens
puts every man upon his honour to assist in pre-
serving order." There was not a dispute all day,
and they went away at sunset rending the air with
cheers, and leaving every flag on a six hundred
yards' course as neat as they found it when the
gates were opened at ten in the morning. Surely
this is a bright sign in the neighbourhood of such a
place as Chatham !

Mughy Junction turned, yesterday afternoon, the
extraordinary number of two hundred and fifty
thousand !

In the middle of next month I begin a new course
of forty-two readings. If any of them bring me

£efter0 of ^S>ic&em. 193

within reach of Cheltenham, with an hour to spare,
I shall come on to you, even for that hour. More
of this when I am afield and have my list, which
Dolby (for Chappell) is now preparing.

Forster and Mi's. Forster were to have come to
us next Monday, to stay until Saturday. I write
" were," because I hear that Forster (who had a
touch of bronchitis when he wrote to me on Christ-
mas Eve) is in bed. Katie, who has been ill of low
nervous fever, was brought here yesterday from
London. She bore the journey much better than I
expected, and so I hope will soon recover. This is
my little stock of news.

I begin to discover in your riper years, that you
have been secretly vain of your handwriting all your
life. For I swear I see no change in it ! What it
always was since I first knew it (a year or two !) it
is. This I will maintain against all comers.

Ever affectionately, my dearest Macready.

[ANONYMOUS]
Office of " All the Teab Round," Tuesday, Feb. 5th, 1867.

Dear Sir:

I have looked at the larger half of the first vol-
ume of your novel, and have pursued the more diffi-
cult points of the story through the other two vol-
umes.

13

t94 SsAitctB of ©icSeite;

You will, of course, receive my opinion as that of
an individual writer and student of art, -who by no
means claims to be infallible.

I think you are too ambitious, and that you have
not sufficient knowledge of life or character to vent-
ure on so comprehensive an attempt. Evidences
of inexperience in every way, and of your power
being far below the situations that you imagine,
present themselves to me in almost every page I
have read. It would greatly surprise me if you
found a publisher for this story, on trying your
fortune in that line, or derived anything from it
but weariness and bitterness of spirit.

On the evidence thus put before me, I cannot
even entirely satisfy myself that you have the fac-
ulty of authorship latent within you. If you have
not, and yet pursue a vocation towards which you
have no call, you cannot choose but be a vnretched
man. Let me counsel you to have the patience to
form yourself carefully, and the courage to re-
nounce the endeavour if you cannot establish your
case on a very much smaller scale. You see around
you every day, how many outlets there are for
short pieces of fiction in all kinds. Try if you can
achieve any success within these modest limits (I
have practised in my time what I preach to you),
and in the meantime put your three volumes away.

Faithfully yours.

&effet0 of ®ic8en0. 195

P.S. — Tour MS. will be returned separately from
this of&ce.

[TO MR. F. D. PINLAY] >

Gad's Hill Place, Higham bt Boohbsteb Kent,

Taesday, Sept. 8d, 1867.

This is to certify that the undersigned victim of
a periodical paragraph-disease, which usually brecdca
out once in every seven years (proceeding to Eng-
land by the overland route to India and per Cunard
line to America, where it stiikes the base of the
Rocky Mountains, and, rebounding to Europe, per-
ishes on the steppes of Russia), is not in a '' critical
state of health," and has not consulted '* eminent
surgeons," and never was better in his life, and is
not recommended to proceed to the United States
for " cessation from literary labour," and has not
had so much as a headache for twenty years.

Charles Dickens.

[ TO MR. JAMES T. FIELDS ]

October, 1867.

My dear Fields :

• •••••

Reverting to the preposterous fabrication of the
London correspondent, the statement that I ever

* Ckmtradictiiig a newepaper report of his being in a critical atate of
health.

/p<5 £effer0 of ®ie6en«.

talked about " these fellows " who republished my
books or pretended to know (what I don't know at
this instant) who made how much out of them,
or ever talked of their sending me "conscience
money," is as grossly and completely false as the
statement that I ever said anything to the effect
that I could not be expected to have an interest in
the American people. And nothing can by any
possibility be falser than thai Again and again in
these pages {All the Year Bound) have I expressed
my interest in them. You will see it in the Child's
History of England. You will see it in the last
preface to American Notes, Every American who
has ever spoken with me in London, Paris, or
where not, knows whether I have frankly said,
" You could have no better introduction to me than
your country." And for years and years when I
have been asked about reading in America, my in-
variable reply has been, " I have so many fiiends
there, and constantly receive so many earnest let-
ters from personally unknown readers there, that,
but for domestic reasons, I would go to-morrow."
I think I must, in the confidential intercourse be-
tween you and me, have written you to this effect

more than once.

• •••••

Ever, my dear Fields,

Heartily and affectionately youxa.

£e^et0 of ®tcSenB. 197

[TO MR THORNBURY]

Gad's Hill, Saturday, 5th October, 1867.

My dear Tbornbury :

Behold the best of my judgment on your ques-
tional

Susan Hopley and Jonathan Bradford ? No. Too
well known.

London Strikes and SpiWfields Cutters ? Yes.

Fighting FitzQerald ? Never mind him.

Duel of Lord Mohun and Duke of Hamilton?
Ye-e-es.

Irish Abductions? 1 think not.

Brunswick Theatre ? More Yes than No.

Theatrical Farewells ? Yes.

Bow Street Runners (as compared with Modem
Detectives) ? Yes.

Vauxhall aud Ranelagh in the Last Century?
Most decidedly. Don't forget Miss Burney.

Smugglers? No. Overdone.

Lacenaire ? No. Ditto.

Madame Laffarge? No. Ditto.

Fashionable Life Last Century? Most decidedly
yes.

Debates on the Slave Trade ? Yes, generally.
But beware of the Pirates, as we did them in the
beginning of Household Words,

1 As to subjects for articles in All the Tear Round,

igS iAttctB of ®icKen&

Certainly I acquifc you of all blame in the Bed-
ford case. But one cannot do otherwise than sym-
pathise with a son who is reasonably tender of his
father's memory. And no amount of private corre-
spondence, we must remember, reaches the readers
of a printed and pubhshed statement.

I told you some time ago that I believed the
arsenic in Eliza Fenning's case to have been admin-
istered by the apprentice, I never was more con-
vinced of anything in my life than of the girl's
innocence, and I want words in which to express
my indignation at the muddle-headed story of that
parsonic blunderer whose audacity and conceit dis-
torted some words that fell from her in the last

days of her baiting.

Ever faithfully yours.

[TO MISS DICKKNB]

Parker House, Boston, Thursday, Nov. 2l8t, 1867.

I arrived here on Tuesday night, after a very
slow passage from Halifax against head-winds. All
the tickets for the first four readings here (all yet
announced) were sold immediately on their being
issued.

You know that I begin on the 2d of December
with "Carol" and "Tiial? " ShaU be heartily glad
to begin to count the readings o£

&effet0 of ®icSetv0. 199

This is an immense hotel, with all manner of
white marble public passages and public rooms. I
live in a comer high up, and have a hot and cold
bath in my bedroom (communicating with the sit-
ting-room), and comforts not in existence when I
was here before. The cost of living is enormous,
but happily we can afford it I dine to-day with
Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, and Agassiz. Long-
fellow was here yesterday. Perfectly white in hair
and beard, but a remarkably handsome and notable-
looking man. The city has increased enormously
in five-and-twenty years. It has grown more mer-
cantile—is like Leeds mixed with Preston, and flav-
oured with New Brighton ; but for smoke and fog
you substitute an exquisitely bright light air. I
found my rooms beautifully decorated (by Mrs.
Fields) with choice flowers, and set off by a number
of good books. I am not much persecuted by peo-
ple in general, as Dolby has happily made up his
mind that the less I am exhibited for nothing the
better. So our men sit outside the room door and
wrestle vidth mankind.

We had speech-making and singing in the saloon
of the Cuba after the last dinner of the voyage. I
think I have acquired a higher reputation from
drawing out the captain, and getting him to take
the second in "All's Well," and likewise in
"There's not in the wide world" (your parent tak-

200 feeftet0 of ®tc8en».

ing first), than from anything previously known of
me on these shores. I hope the effect of these
achievements may not dim the lustre of the read-
ings. We also sang (with a Chicago lady, and a
strong-minded woman from I don't know where)
"Auld Lang Syne," with a tender melancholy, ex-
pressive of having all four been united from our
cradles. The more dismal we were, the more de-
lighted the company were. Once (when we pad-
dled i' the burn) the captain took a little cruise
round the compass on his own account, touching
at the " Canadian Boat Song," and taking in sup-
plies at "Jubilate," " Seas between us braid ha'
roared," and roared like the seas themselves. Fin-
ally, I proposed the ladies in a speech that con-
vulsed the stewards, and we closed with a brilliant
success. But when you dine with Mr. Forster, ask
him to read to you how we got on at church in a
heavy sea. Hillard has just been in and sent his
love " to those dear girls." He has grown much
older. He is now District Attorney of the State
of Massachusetts, which is a very good office. Best
love to your aunt and Katie, and Charley and all
his house, and all friends.

&etf ere of SHcftene. 201

[TO MR. CHARLES DICKENS]
Parker House, Boston, U. S., Saturday, Nov. 30th, 1867.

My dear Charley :

You will have lieard before now how fortunate I
was on my voyage, and how I was not sick for a
moment These screws are tremendous ships for
carrying on, and for rolling, and their vibration is
rather distressing. But my little cabin, being
for'ard of the machinery, was in the best part of
the vessel, and I had as much air in it, night and
day, as I chose. The saloon being kept absolutely
without air, I mostly dined in my own den, in spite
of my being allotted the post of honour on the

right hand of the captain.

• •••••

As they don't seem (Americans who have heard
me on their travels excepted) to have the least idea
here of what the readings are like, and as they are
accustomed to mere readings out of a book, I am
inclined to think the excitement will increase when
I shall have begun. Everybody is very kind and
considerate, and I have a number of old friends
here, at the Bar and connected with the University.
I am now negotiating to bring out the dramatic
version of No Thoroughfare at New York. It is
quite upon the cards that it may turn up trumps.

202 &efter0 of ©tcfiene.

I was interrupted in that place by a call from my
old secretary in the States, Mr. Putnam. It was
quite aflfectiug to see his delight in meeting his old
master again. And when I told him that Anne was
married, and that I had (unacknowledged) grand-
children, he laughed and cried together. I sup-
pose you don't remember Longfellow, though he
remembers you in a black velvet frock very well.
He is now white-haired and white-bearded, but
remarkably handsome. He still lives in his old
house, where his beautiful wife was burnt to death.
I dined with him the other day, and could not get
the terrific scene out of my imagination. She was
in a blaze in an instant, rushed into his arms with
a wild cry, and never spoke afterwards.

My love to Bessie, and to Mekitty, and all the
babbies. I will lay this by until Tuesday morning,
and then add a final line to it.

Ever, my dear Charley, your affectionate Father.

Tuesday, Deo. 8d, 1867.

Success last night beyond description or exagger-
ation. The whole city is quite frantic about it to-
day, and it is impossible that prospects could be

more brilliant.

I^AftcxB of 1Dtc6en0. 20s

[TO MISS DICKENS]

Parker House, Boston, Sunday, Deo. Ist, 1867.
• ••••«

I have been going on very welL A horrible cus-
tom obtains in these parts of asking you to dinner
somewhere at half-past two, and to supper some-
where else about eight. I have run this gauntlet
more than once, and its effect is, that there is no
day for any useful purpose, and that the length of
the evening is multiplied by a hundred. Yesterday
I dined with a club at half-past two, and came
back here at half -past eight, with a general impres-
sion that it was at least two o'clock in the morning.
Two days before I dined with Longfellow at half-
past two, and came back at eight, supposing it to
be midnight. To-day we have a state dinner-party
in our rooms at six, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, and Mr.
and Mrs. Bigelow. (He is a friend of Forster's,
and was American Minister in Paris.) There are
no negro waiters here, all the servants are Irish —
willing, but not able. The dinners and wines are
very good. I keep our own rooms well ventilated
by opening the windows, but no window is ever
opened in the halls or passages, and they are so
overheated by a gi'eat furnace, that they make me
faint and sick. The air is like that of a pre-Adam-
ite ironing-day in full blast. Your respected parent

204 fkjMztti of <i9ic8etv0.

is immensely popular in Boston society, and its
cordiality and unaffected heartiness are charming.
I wish I could carry it with me.

The leading New York papers have sent men over
for to-morrow night with instructions to telegraph
columns of descriptions. Great excitement and ex-
pectation everywhere. Fields says he has looked
forward to it so long that he knows he will die at
five minutes to eight.

At the New York barriers, where the tickets are
on sale and the people ranged as at the Paris thear
tres, speculators went up and down offering " twenty
dollars for anybody's place." The money was in no
case accepted. One man sold two tickets for the
second, third, and fourth night for " one ticket for
the first, fifty dollars " (about seven .pounds ten
shillings), " and a brandy cocktail," which is an iced
bitter drink. The weather has been rather muggy
and languid until yesterday, when there was the
coldest wind blowing that I ever felt In the night
it froze very hard, and to-day the sky is beauiifuL

Taesday, Deo. 8d.

Most magnificent reception last night, and most
signal and complete success. Nothing could be
more triumphant. The people will hear of nothing
else and talk of nothing else. Nothing that WM

£et&r0 of <i)ic6en0* 20$

ever done here, they all agree, evoked any approach
to such enthusiasm. I was quite as cool and quick
as if I were reading at Greenwich, and went at it
accordingly.

[TO MISS DICKENS]

Westminster Hotel, Irving Place, New York Citt,

Wednesday, Dec. 11th, 1867.

Amazing success here. A very fine audience ; far
belter than that at Boston. Great reception. Great,
"Carol" and ** Trial,'* on the first night; still
greater, " Coppei-field" and "Bob," on the second.
Dolby sends you a few papers by this post. You
will see from their tone what a success it is.

I cannot pay this letter, because I give it at the
latest moment to the mail-officer, who is going on
board the Cunard packet in charge of the mails,
and who is staying in this house. We are now sell-
ing (at the hall) the tickets for the four readings of
next week. At nine o'clock this morning there were
two thousand people in waiting, and they had be-
gun to assemble in the bitter cold as early as two
o'clock. All night long Dolby and our man have
been stamping tickets. (Immediately over my head,
by-the-bye, and keeping me awake.) This hotel is
quite as quiet as Mivart's, in Brook Street. It is
not very much larger. There are American hotels

2o6 ^ffet0 of %V^iM\B.

close by, witli five hundred bed-rooms, and I don't
know how many boarders ; but this is conducted
on what is called " the European principle," and is
an admirable mixture of a first-class French and
English house. I keep a very smart carriage and
pair; and if you were to behold me driving out,
furred up to the moustache, with furs on the coach-
boy and on the driver, and with an immense white,
red, and yellow striped rug for a covering, you
would suppose me to be of Hungarian or Polish
nationality.

Will you report the success here to Mr. Forster
with my love, and tell him he shall hear from me
by next mail ?

Dolby sends his kindest regards. He is just
come in from our ticket sales, and has put such an
immense untidy heap of paper money on the table
that it looks like a family wash. He hardly ever
dines, and is always tearing about at unreasonable
hours. He works very hard.

My best love to your aunt (to whom I will write
next), and to ELatie, and to both the Charleys, and
all the Christmas circle, not forgetting Chorley, to
whom give my special remembrance. Tou may
get this by Christmas Day. We shall have to keep
it travelling from Boston here ; for I read at Bos-
ton on the 23d and 24th, and here again on the
26th.

&efter0 of ©tcSen^; 207

[ TO MISS HOGARTH ]

Boston, Sunday, Dec. 22d, 1867.

Coming here from New York last night (after a
detestable journey), I was delighted to find your
letter of the 6th. I read it at my ten o'clock din-
ner with the greatest interest and pleasure, and
then we talked of home till we went to bed.

Our tour is now being made out, and I hope to
be able to send it in my next letter home, which
will be to Mamie, from whom I have not heard (as
you thought I had) by the mail that brought out
yours. After very careful consideration I have re-
versed Dolby's original plan, and have decided on
taking Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, ChicO'
go (!), St Louis, and a few other places nearer here,
instead of staying in New York, My reason is that
we are doing immensely, both at New York and
here, and that I am sure it is in the peculiar char-
acter of the people to prize a thing the more the
less easily attainable it is made. Therefore, I want,
by absence, to get the greatest rush and pressure
upon the five farewell readings in New York in
ApriL All our announced readings are already
crammed.

When we got here last Saturday night, we found
that Mrs. Fields had not only garnished the rooms

2o8 ijdittz of ®t(

with flowers, but also with holly (with real red ber-
ries) and festoons of moss dependent from the look-
ing-glasses and picture frames. She is one of the
dearest little women in the world. The homely
Christmas look of the place quite affected us. Yes-
terday we dined at her house, and there was a plum-
pudding brought on blazing, and not to be sur-
passed in any house in England. There is a certain
Captain DoUiver, belonging to the Boston Custom
House, who came off in the little steamer that
brought me ashore from the Cuba. He took it into
his head that he would have a piece of English mis-
tletoe brought out in this week's Cunard, which
should be laid upon my breakfast-table. And there
it was this morning. In such affectionate touches
as this, these New England people are especially
amiable.

As a general rule, you may lay it down that what-
ever you see about me in the papers is not traa
But although my voyage out was of that highly hi-
larious description that you first made known to
me, you may generally lend a more beheving ear to
the Philadelphia correspondent of The Harries. I
don't know him, but I know the source from which
he derives his information, and it is a very respect-
able one.

Did I tell you in a former letter from here, to
tell Anne, with her old master's love, that I had

&ett er0 of ©icftene. 209

Been Putnam, my old secretary? Gray, and with
several front teeth out, but I would have known
him anywhere. He is coming to " Coppei-field " to-
night, accompanied by his wife and daughter, and
is in the seventh heaven at having his tickets given
him.

Our hotel in New York was on fire again the
other night. But fires in this country are quite
matters of course. There was a large one there at
four this morniug, and I don*t think a single night
has passed since I have been under the protection
of the Eagle, but I have heard the fire bells dole-
fully clanging all over the city.

Dolby sends his kindest regard. His hair has
become quite white, the effect, I suppose, of the
climate. He is so universally hauled over the coals
(for no reason on earth), that I fully expect to hear
him, one of these nights, assailed with a howl when
he precedes me to the platform steps. You may
conceive what the low newspapers are here, when
one of them yesterday morning had, as an item
of news, the intelligence : ** Dickens's Readings.
The chap calling himself Dolby got drunk last
night, and was locked up in a police-station for
fighting an Irishman." I don't find that anybody is
shocked by this liveliness.

My love to all, and to Mrs. Hulkes and the boy.

By-the-bye, when we left New York for this place,
14

2IO iAftztz of <iHc6en0»

Dolby callecl my amazed attention to the circum-
stance that Scott was leaning his head against the
side of the carriage and weeping bitterly. I asked
him what was the matter, and he replied : " The
owdacious treatment of the luggage, which was
more outrageous than a man could bear/* I told
him not to make a fool of himself ; but they do
knock it about cruelly. I think every trimk we
have is already broken.

I must leave off, as I am going out for a walk in
a bright sunlight and a complete break-up of the
frost and snow. I am much better than I have
been during the last week, but have a cold.

[TO MISS DICKENS]

Westminsteb Hotel, Irving Place, New York City,

Thursday, Dec. 26th, 1867.

I got your aunt's last letter at Boston yesterday,
Christmas Day morning, when I was starting at
eleven o'clock to come back to this place. I wanted
it very much, for I had a frightful cold (English
colds are nothing to those of this country), and was
exceedingly depressed and miserable. Not that I
had any reason but illness for being so, since the
Bostonians had been quite astounding in their dem-
onstrations. I never saw anything like them on
Christmas Eve. But it is a bad country to be iin*

ijdittti of ^Stidb^m. 21!

well and travelling in ; you are one of say a hun-
dred people in a heated car, with a great stove in it,
and all the little windows closed, and the hurrying
and banging about are indescribable. The atmos-
phere is detestable, and the motion often all but in-
tolerable. However, we got our dinner here at
eight o'clock, and plucked up a little, and I made
some hot gin punch to drink a merry Christmas to
all at home in. But it must be confessed that we

were both very dulL

• • • • • •

If I do not send a letter to Eatie by this mail, it
will be because I shall probably be obliged to go
across the water to Brooklyn to-morrow to see a
church, in which it is proposed that I shall read 1 1 1
Horrible visions of being put in the pulpit already
beset me. And whether the audience will be in
pews is another consideration which greatly dis-
turbs my mind. No paper ever comes out without
a leader on Dolby, who of course reads them all,
and never can understand why I don't, in which he is
called all the bad names in (and not in) the lan-
guage.

We always call him P. H. Dolby now, in conse-
quence of one of these graceful specimens of litera-
ture describing him as the ** pudding-headed."

I fear that when we travel he will have to be al-
ways before me, so that I may not see him six times

212 £effet0 of ^Dicfien0«

in as many weeks. However, I shall have done a
fourth of the whole this very next week I

Best love to your aunt, and the boys, and Eatie,
and Charley, and all true friends.

Friday.

I managed to read last night, but it was as much
as I could do. To-day I am so very unweD, that I
have sent for a doctor ; he has just been, and is in
doubt whether I shall not have to stop reading for
a while.

[TO MISS DICKENS]

Westminsteb Hotel, Irving Place, New Yobk,

MoDday, Dec. 80tli, 1867.

I am getting all right again. I have not been
well, been very low, and have been obliged to have
a doctor ; a very agreeable fellow indeed, who soon
turned out to be an old friend of Olliffe'a* He
has set me on my legs and taken his leave '* pro-
fessionally,** though he means to give me a call
now and then.

Nothing is being played here scarcely that is
not founded on my hookB—Cncket, Oliver Twisty
Our Mutual Friend, and I don't know what else,
every night. I can't get down Broadway for my

1 Br. Fordyoe Barker.

feeftere of ^Bk&cM. 213

own portrait ; and yet I live almost as quietly in
this hotel, as if I were at the office, and. go in and
out by a side door just as I might there.

I go back to Boston on Saturday to read there on
Monday and Tuesday. Then I am back here, and
keep within six or seven hours' journey of here-
abouts till February. My further movements shall
be duly reported as the details are arranged.

I shall be curious to know who were at Gad's Hill
on Christmas Day, and how you (as they say in this
country) " got along." It is exceedingly cold here
again, after two or three quite spring daya

C TO MISS HOGARTH ]

Westminster Hotel, Irving Place, New York,

Friday, Jan. 3rd, 186S.

My dearest Georgy :

I received yours of the 19th from Gad's and the
office this morning. I read here to-night, and go
back to Boston to-morrow, to read there Monday
and Tuesday.

To-night I read out the first quarter of my list.
Our houses have been very fine here, but have never
quite recovered the Dolby uproar. It seems impos-
sible to devise any scheme for getting the tickets
into the people's hands without the intervention of
speculators. The people will not help themselves ;

214 fetters of ^iHcSenB*

and, of course, the speculators and all other such
prowlers throw as great obstacles m Dolby's way
(an Englishman's) as they possibly can. He may
be a little injudicious into the bargain. Last night,
for instance, he met one of the " ushers " (who show
people to their seats) coming in with Kelly. It is
against orders that anyone employed in front should
go out during the readings, and he took this man
to task in the British manner. Instantly the free
and independent usher put on his hat and walked
off. Seeing which, all the other free and indepen-
dent ushers (some twenty in number) put on their
hats and walked off, leaving us absolutely devoid
and destitute of a staff for to-night. One has since
been improvised ; but it was a small matter to raise
a stir and ill will about, especially as one of our
men was equally in fault.

Tell Plorn, with my love, that I think he will find
himself much interested at that college,* and that it
is very likely he may make some acquaintances there
that will thereafter be pleasant and useful to him.
Sir Sidney Dacres is the best of fiiends. I have a
letter from Mrs. Hulkes by this post, wherein the
boy encloses a violet, now lying on the table before
me. Let her know that it arrived safely, and re-
taining its colour. I took it for granted that Mary

1 The Agricultural College, Cirencester.

feeffer0 of ©ictens. 2/5

•

"would have asked Chorley for Christmas Day, and
am very glad she ultimately did so. I am sorry
that Harry lost his prize, but believe it was not his
fault. Let him know that, with my love. I would
have written to him by this mail in answer to his,
but for other occupation. Did I tell you that my
landlord made me a drink (brandy, rum, and snow
the principal ingredients) called a " Eocky Moun-
tain sneezer " ? Or that the favourite drink before
you get up is an ** eye-opener " ? Or that Roberts
(second landlord), no sooner saw me on the night of
the first fire, than, with his property blazing, he in-
sisted on taking me do^vn into a roomful of hot
smoke to drink brandy and water with him ? We
have not been on fire again, by-the-bye, more than
once.

[TO MISS HOGARTH]

Parkei; House, Boston, U. S., Jan. 4th, 1868.
I write to you by this opportunity, though I
really have nothing to tell you. The work is hard
and the climate is hard. We made a tremendous hit
last night with "Nickleby" and "Boots," which the
Bostoniaus certainly on the whole appreciate more
than " Copperfield ! " Dolby is always going about
with an immense bundle that looks like a sofa
cushion, but it is in reality paper money; and al-
ways works Uke a Trojan. His business at night is

2i6 i^etz of <i)tcSetUL

a mere nothing, for these people are so accustomed
to take care of themselves, that one of these im-
mense audiences Avill fall into their places with an
case amazing to a frequenter of St James's Hall.
And the certainty with which they are all in, before
I go on, is a very acceptable mark of respect I
must add, too, that although there is a conventional
familiarity in the use of one's name in the news-
papers as "Dickens," " Chai*lie," and what not, I do
not in the least see that familiarity in the wiitera
themselves. An inscrutable tone obtains in journal-
ism, which a stranger cannot understand. If I say
in common courtesy to one of them, when Dolby
introduces, " I am much obhged to you for your in-
terest in me," or so forth, he seems quite shocked,
and has a bearing of perfect modesty and propriety.
I am rather inclined to think that they suppose
their printed tone to be the public's love of smart-
ness, but it is immenselv difficult to make out. All
I can as yet make out is, that my perfect freedom
from bondage, and at any moment to go on or leave
off, or otherwise do as I like, is the only safe posi-
tion to occupy.

Again ; there are two apparently irreconcilable
contrasts here. Down below in this hotel every
night are the bar loungers, dram drinkers, drank-
ards, swaggerers, loafers, that one might find in a
Boucicault play. Within half an hour is Cam-

feetter0 of ^BuMenB. 217

bridge, where a delightful domestic life — simple,
self-respectful, cordial, and affectionate — is seen in
an admirable aspect. All New England is primitive
and puritanical. All about and around it is a pud-
dle of mixed human mud, with no such quality in
it Perhaps I may in time sift out some tolerably
intelligible whole, but I certainly have not done so
yet. It is a good sign, may be, that it all seems
immensely more difficult to understand than it was
when I was here before.

Felton left two daughters. I have only seen the
eldest, a very sensible, frank, pleasant girl of eight-
and-twenty, perhaps, rather like him in the face.
A striking-looking daughter of Hawthorne's (who is
also dead) came into my room last night The day
has slipped on to three o'clock, and I must get up
" Domber " for to-night. Hence this sudden break
off. Best love to Mamie, and to Katie and Charley
Collins.

[ TO MR. W. WILKIE COLLINS ]
Westminster Hotel, New York, Sunday, Jan. 12th, 1868.

My dear Wilkie :

• • • • • •

Being at Boston last Sunday, I took it into my
head to go over the medical school, and survey the
holes and comers in which that extraordinary
murder was done by Webster. There was the

2i8 feetteir0 of IDtcSme.

furnace — stinking horribly, as if the dismembered
pieces were still inside it — and there are all the
grim spouts, and sinks, and chemical appliances,
and what not At dinner, afterwards, Longfellow
told me a terrific story. He dined with Webster
within a year of the murder, one of a party of ten
or twelve. As they sat at their wine, Webster sud-
denly ordered the lights to be turned out, and a
bowl of some burning mineral to be placed on the
table, that the guests might see how ghostly it
made them look. As each man stared at all the
rest in the weu'd light, all were horrified to see
Webster with a rope round his neck, holding it up,
over the bowl, with his head jerked on one side,
and his tongue lolled out, representing a man being
Lunged !

Poking into his life and character, I find (what I
would have staked my head upon) .that he was al-
ways a cruel man.

So no more at present from,

My dear Wilkie, yours ever affectionately.

[TO mSS HOGARTH]

Westminster Hotet., New Yokk, Sunday, Jan. 12th, 18G8.
As I am ofi" to Philadelphia this evening, I may
as well post my letter here. I have scarcely a word
of news.

feeftet0 of ®icften0. 21 g

On Wednesday I come back here for my four
church readings at Brooklyn. Each evening an
enormous ferry-boat will convey me and my state
carriage (not to mention half-a-dozen waggons, and
any number of people, and a few score of horses)
across the river, and will bring me back again. The
sale of tickets there was an amazing scene. The
noble army of speculators are now furnished (this is
Hterally true, and I am quite serious), each man with
a straw mattress, a little bag of bread and meat, two
blankets, and a bottle of whiskey. With this outfit
they lie down in line on the pavement the whole night
before the tickets are sold, generally taking up
their position at about ten. It being severely cold
at Brooklyn, they made an immense bonfire in the
street — a narrow street of wooden houses ! — which
the police turned out to extinguish. A general
fight then took place, out of which the people farth-
est off in the line rushed bleeding when they saw a
chance of displacing others near the door, and put
their mattresses in those places, and then held on
by the iron rails. At eight in the morning Dolby
appeared with the tickets in a portmanteau. Ho
was immediately saluted with a roar of "Halloa
Dolby ! So Charley has let you have the carriage,
has he, Dolby! How is he, Dolby! Don't drop
the tickets, Dolby ! Look alive, Dolby ! " etc. etc.
etc., in the midst of which he proceeded to busi-

220 feetter0 of ®icften«,

ness, and concluded (as usual) by giving universal
dissatisfaction.

He is now going off upon a little journey "to
look over the ground and cut back again." This
little journey (to Chicago) is fifteen hundred miles
on end, by railway, and back again I

• • • • • •

Did I tell you that the severity of the weather, and
the heat of the intolerable furnaces, di'y the bail* and
break the nails of strangers ? There is not a com-
plete nail in the whole British suite, and my hair
cracks again when I brush it. (I am losing my hair
with great rapidity, and what I don't lose is getting
very grey.)

The Cuba will bring this. She has a jolly new
captain — Moody, of the Java — and her people rushed
into the reading, the other night, captain-headed, as
if I were their peculiar property. Please God I shall
come home in her, in my old cabin ; leaving here on
the 22nd of April, and finishing my eighty-fourth
rending on the previous night ! It is likely enough
that I shall read and go straight on board.

I think this is all my poor stock of intelligence.
By-the-bye, on the last Sunday in the old year, I
lost my old year's pocket-book, "which," as Mr.
Pepys would add, " do trouble me mightily." Give
me Katie's new address ; I haven't got it.

fUtfcxB of ^&tcfien0« 22/

[ TO MISS DICKENS ]
PniLADELPHiA, Monday, Jan. 13th, 1868.

I write you this note, a day later than your aunt's,
not because I have anything to add to the little I
have told her, but hecause you may like to have it.

We arrived here last night toward twelve o'clock,
more than an hour after our time. This is one of
the immense American hotels (it is called the Con-
tinental) ; but I find myself just as quiet here as
elsewhere. Everything is very good indeed, the
waiter is German, and the greater part of the house
servants seem to be coloured people. The town is
very clean, and the day as blue and bright as a fine
Italian day. But it freezes very hard. All the
tickets being sold here for six nights (three visits of
two nights each), the suite complain of want of ex-
citement already, having been here ten hours I Mr.
and Mrs. Barney Williams, with a couple of servants,
and a pretty little child-daughter, were in the train
each night, and I talked with them a good deal.
They are reported to have made an enormous for-
tune by acting among the CaKfornian gold-diggers.
My cold is no better, for the cars are so intolerably
hot, that I was often obliged to go and stand upon
the break outside, and then the frosty air was biting
indeed. The great man of this place is one Mr.

222 &efteir0 of ^icfiene;

Cbilds, a newspaper proprietor, and he is so exactly
like Mr. Esse in all conceivable respects except being
an inch or so taller, that I was quite confounded
when I saw him waiting for me at the station (always
called depot here) with his carriage. During the
last two or three days, Dolby and I have been mak-
ing up accounts, wliich are excellently kept by Mr.
Osgood, and I find them amazing, quite, in their
results.

[ TO MR. SAMUEL CARTWRIGHT ]

Baltimore, Wednesday, Jan. 29tli, 1868,

My dear Cartwright :

As I promised to report myself to you from this
side of the Atlantic, and as I have some leisure this
morning, I am going to hghten my conscience by
keeping my word.

I am going on at a great pace and with immense
success. Next week, at Washington, I shall, please
God, have got through half my readings. The re-
maining half are all arranged, and they will carry
me into the third week of April. It is very hard
work, but it is brilliantly paid. The changes that
I find in the country generally (this place is the
least changed of any I have yet seen) exceed my ut-
most expectations. I had been in New York a
couple of days before I began to recognise it at all ;

&etter0 of ®fcften0. 223

and the handsomest part of Boston was a black
swamp when I saw it five-and-twenty yesirs ago.
Considerable advances, too, have been made so-
cially. Strange to say, the railways and railway
arrangements (both exceedingly defective) seem to
have stood still while all other things have been
moving.

One of the most comical spectacles I have ever
seen in my life was ** church," with a heavy sea on,
in the saloon of the Ciinard steamer coming out.
The officiating minister, an extremely modest young
man, was brought in between two big stewards, ex-
actly as if he were coming up to the scratch in a
j)rize-fight. The ship was rolling and pitching so,
that the two big stewards had to stop and watch
their opportunity of making a dart at the reading-
desk with their reverend charge, during which
pause he held on, now by one steward and now by
the other, with the feeblest expression of counte-
nance and no legs whatever. At length they made
a dart at the wrong moment, and one steward was
immediately beheld alone in the extreme perspec-
tive, while the other and the reverend gentleman
held on by the mast in the middle of the saloon —
which the latter embraced with both arms, as if it
were his wife. All this time the congregation was
breaking up into sects and sliding away ; every sect
(as in nature) pounding the other sect. And when

224 ijdtttti of <EKcften0.

at last the reverend gentleman bad been tumbled
into his place, the desk (a loose one, put upon the
dining-table) deserted from the church bodily, and
went over to the purser. The scene was so extraor-
dinarily ridiculous, and was made so much more so
by the exemplary gravity of all concerned in it, that
I was obliged to leave before the service began.

This is one of the places where Butler carried it
with so high a hand in the war, and where the la-
dies used to spit when they passed a Northern sol-
dier. It still wears, I fancy, a look of sullen re-
membrance. (The ladies are remarkably handsome,
with an Eastern look upon them, dress with a strong
sense of colour, and make a brilliant audience.)
The ghost of slavery haunts the houses ; and the
old, untidy, incapable, lounging, shambling black
serves you as a free man. Free of course be ought
to be ; but the stupendous absurdity of making him
a voter glares out of every roll of his eye, stretch of
his mouth, and bump of his head. I have a strong
impression that the race must fade out of the States
very fast. It never can hold its own against a stiiv-
ing, restless, shifty people. In the penitentiary
here, the other day, in a room full of all blacks (too
dull to be taught any of the work in band), was one
young brooding fellow, very like a black rhinocero&
He sat glowering at life, as if it were just endurable
at dinner time, until four of bis fellows began to

SAtfitB of IDicSene. 22^

sing, most unmelodiously, a part song. He then
set up a dismal howl, and pounded his face on a
form. I took him to have been rendered quite des-
perate by having learnt anything. I send my kind
regard to Mrs. Cartwright, and sincerely hope that
she and you have no new family distresses or anxie-
ties. My standing address is the Westminster Ho-
tel, Irving Place, New York City. And I am always,

my dear Cartwright,

Cordially yours.

[TO MISS DICKENS ]

Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 4th, 1868.

I began here last night with great success. The

hall being small, the prices were raised to three

dollars each ticket. The audience was a superior

one, composed of the foremost pubhc men and

their families. At the end of the "Carol" they

gave a great break out, and applauded, I really

believe, for five minutes. You would suppose them

to be Manchester shillings instead of Washington

half sovereigns. Immense enthusiasm.

• • • • • •

I dined (against my rules) with Charles Sumner

on Sunday, he having been an old friend of mine.

Mr. Secretary Stanton (War Minister) was there.

He is a man of a very remarkable memory, and
15

226 feeffere of

famous for Lis acquaintance with the minutest de«
toils of my books. Give him any passage anywhere,
and he will instantly cap it and go on with the
context. He was commander-in-chief of all the
Northern forces concentrated here, and never went
to sleep at night without first reading something
from my books, which were always with him. I put
him through a pretty severe examination, but he
was better up than I was.

The gas was very defective indeed last night, and
I began with a small speech, to the effect that I
must trust to the brightness of their faces for the
illumination of mine ; this was taken greatly. In
the " Carol," a most ridiculous incident occurred all
of a sudden. I saw a dog look out from among the
seats into the centre aisle, and look very intently
at me. The general attention being fixed on me,
I don't think anybody saw the dog ; but I felt
so sure of his turning up again and barking,
that I kept my eye wandering about in search of
him. He was a very comic dog, and it was well for
me that I was reading a very comic part of the book.
But when he bounced out into the centre aisle
again, in an entirely new place (still looking intently
at me) and tried the effect of a bark upon my pro-
ceedings, I was seized with such a jMuroxysm of
laughter, that it communicated itself to the audience,
and we roared at one another loud and long. The

i/tffetti of VHdUni. 227

President has sect to me twice, and I am going to
see him to-morrow. He has a whole row for his
family every night.

[ TO MR. CHARLES LANMAN ]

Washington, February 5tli, 1868.

My dear Sir :^

• •••••

Your reference to my dear friend Washington
Irving renews the vivid impressions reawakened in
my mind at Baltimore the other day. I saw his fine
face for the last time in that city. He came there
from New York to pass a day or two with me be-
fore I went westward, and they were made among
the most memorable of my life by his delightful
fancy and genial humour. Some unknown admirer
of his books and mine sent to the hotel a most enor-
mous mint julep, wreathed with flowers. We sat,
one on either side of it, with great solemnity (it
filled a respectable-sized paper), but the solemnity
was of very short duration. It was quite an en-
chanted julep, and carried us among innumerable
people and places that we both knew. The julep
held out far into the night, and my memory never
saw him afterward otherwise than as bending over
it, with his straw, with an attempted gravity (after
some anecdote, involving some wonderfully droll

228 fieffers of SDicieiaL

and delicate observation of character), and then, as
his eyes caught naine, meUing into that captivating
laugh of his which was the brightest and best I have
ever, heard.

Deal' Sir, with many thanks, faithfully yr)ui*s.

[TO MISS DICKENS]
Baltimore, U. S., Tuesday, Feb. 11th, 1868.

The weather has been desperately severe, and my
cold quite as bad as ever. I couldn't help laughing
at myself on my birthday at Washington. It was
observed as much as though I were a little bo}'.
Flowers and garlands (of the most exquisite kind)
bloomed all over the room ; letters radiant with
good wishes poured in ; a shirt pin, a handsome sil-
ver travelling bottle, a set of gold shirt studs, and
a set of gold sleeve links were on the dinner-table.
After "Boots," at night, the whole audience rose and
remained (Secretaries of State, President's family.
Judges of Supreme Court, and so forth) standing
and cheering until I went back to the table and
made them a little speech. On the same august day
of the year I was received by the President, a man
with a very remarkable and determined face. Each
of us looked at each other very hard, and each of U8
managed the interview (I think) to the satisfaction
of the other. In the outer room was sitting a cejv

fieffers of t>idkM. 229

tain sunburnt General Blair, with many evidences ot
the war upon him. He got up to shake hands with
me, and then I found he had been out in the prairie
with me, five-and-twenty years ago. That afternoon
my '' catarrh " was in such a state that Charles Sum-
ner, coming in at five o'clock and finding me cov-
ered with mustard poultice, and apparently voice-
less, turned to Dolby and said : " Surely, Mr.
Dolby, it is impossible that he can read to-night/'
Says Dolby : " Sir, I have told the dear Chief so
four times to-day, and I have been very anxious.
But you have no idea how he will change when he
gets to the little table," After five minutes of the
little table, I was not (for the time) even hoarse.
The frequent experience of this return, of force
when it is wanted saves me a vast amount of anx-
iety.

[TO MR. HENRY FIELDING DIC^IINS]

Baltimobs, U. a., Tuesday, Feb. 11th, 1868.

My dear Harry :
I should have written to you before now, but for

constant and arduous occupation.

• . • • • •

I am very glad to hear of the success of your read*
mg, and still more glad that you w^nt at it in down-

230 i/MttB of ®icfienc

light earnesi I should never have made mj sno-
cess in life if I had been shy of taking paina^ or if I
had not bestowed upon the least thing I have ever
undertaken exactly the same attention and care that
I have bestowed upon the greatest Do everything
at your best It was but this last year that I set
to and learned every word of my readings ; and
from ten years ago to last night, I have never read
to an audience but I have watched for an opportu-
nity of striking out something better somewhere.
Look at such of my manuscripts as are in the
library at Gad's, and think of the patient hours

devoted year after year to single linea

• • • • • - •

Ever, my dear Harry, your affectionate Father.

[TO M. CHARLES PECHTBR]

Washington, Febmaxy dtth, 1S68.

My dear Fechter :

• •••••

I am doing enormous businesa It is a wearying
life, away from all I love, but I hope that the time
will soon begin to spin away. Among the many
changes that I find here is the comfortable change
that the people are in general extremely consider-
ate, and very observant of my privacy. Even in this
place, I am really almost as much my own master afai

i/tftetB of ^S>icSitnB. 2ji

if I were in an Englisli country town. Generally,
they are very good audiences indeed. They do not
(I think) perceive touches of art to 6e art ; but they
are responsive to the broad results of such touches.
" Doctor Marigold " is a great favourite, and they
laugh so unrestrainedly at "The Trial" from IHck-
wick (which you never heard), that it has grown
about half as long again as it used to be.

If I could send you a " brandy cock-tail " by post
I would. It is a highly meritorious dram, which I
hope to present to you at Gad's. My New York
landlord made me a ''Eocky Mountain sneezer,"
which appeared to me to be compounded of aU the
spirits ever heard of in the world, with bitters,
lemons, sugar, and snow. You can only make a
true "sneezer" when the snow is lying on the
ground.

There, my dear boy, my paper is out, and I am
going to read " Copperfield." Count always on my
fidelity and true attachment, and look out, as I have
already said, for a distinguished visitor about Mon-
day, the 4th of May.

Ever, my dear Fechter,

Your cordial and affectionate Friend.

232 fieftem of ®icfien&

[ TO M. CHARLES PECHTBR ]

Syracuse, U. S. of Amebioa,

Sunday Nigfat, March Sfth, 186a

My dear Fechter :

I am here in a most wonderful oui-of-the-world
place, which looks as if it had begun to be built
yesterday, and were going to be imperfectly knocked
together with a nail or two the day after to-morrow.
I am in the worst inn that ever was seen, and ontr
side is a thaw that places the whole country under
water. I have looked out of window for the people,
and I can't find any people, t have tried all the
wines in the house, and there are only two winea^
for which you pay six shillings a bottle, or fifteen,
according as you feel disposed to change the name
of the thing you ask for. (The article never
changes.) The bill of fare is " in French," and the
principal article (the carte is printed) is ''Paettie de
shay.'' I asked the Irish waiter what this dish waa^
and he said : '' It was the name the steward giv* to
oyster patties — the Frinch name." These are the
drinks you are to wash it down vnth : " Mooseuz,**
''Abasinthe," "Curacco," "Marschine," "Annise,"
and " Margeaux I "

£etf ere of ®icSene. 2^)

I Bave had an American cold (the worst in the
world) since Chiistmas Day. I read four times a
week, with the most tremendous energy I can bring
to bear upon ii I travel about pretty heavily. I
am very resolute about calling on people, or receiv-
ing people, or dining, out, and so save myself a great
deal. I read in all sorts of places — churches, the-
atres, concert rooms, lecture halls. Every night I
read I am described (mostly by people who have
not the faintest notion of observing) from the sole
of my boot to where the topmost hair of my head
ought to be, but is noi Sometimes I am described
as being " evidently nervous ; " sometimes it is
rather taken ill that " Mr. Dickens is so extraordi-
narily composed." My eyes are blue, red, grey,
white, green, brown, black, hazel, violet, and rain-
l!ow-coloured. I am like "a well-to-do American
gentleman," and the Emperor of the French, with
an occasional touch of the Emperor of China, and
a deterioration from the attributes of our famous
townsman, Eof us W. B. D. Dodge Grumsher Pick-
ville. I say all sorts of things that I never said, go
to all soi*ts of places that I never saw or heard of,
and have done all manner of things (in some previ-
ous state of existence I suppose) that have quite
escaped my memory. You ask your friend to de-
scribe what he is about. This is what he is about,
every day and hour of his Ameiican life.

^34 £etfer6 of ®icfien&

I hope to be back with you before you write i
me I
Ever, my dear Fechter,

Your most affectionate and hearty Friend.

P.S. — Don't let Madame Fechter, or Marie, o
Paul forget me !

[TO MISS HOGARTH]

Sybacuse, Snnday, March Sth, 1868.

As we shall probably be busy all day to-morrow
I wiite this to-day, though it will not leave Ne^i
York until Wednesday. This is a very giim plac<
in a heavy thaw, and a most depressing one. The
hotel also is surprisingly bad, quite a triumph is
that way. We stood out for an hour in the melting
snow, and came in again, having to change comr
pletely. Then we sat down by the stove (no fire-
place), and there we are now. We were so afraid
to go to bed last night, the rooms were so dose and
sour, that we played whist, double dummy, till W€
couldn't bear each other any longer. We had as
old buffalo for supper, and an old pig for break&st^
and we are going to have I don't know what fox
dinner at six. In the public rooms downstairs^ a
number of men (speechless) are sitting in rocking-

£efter0 of ®ic6en«. 2^5

chairs, with their feet against the window-frames,
staring out at window and spitting dolefully at in-
tervals. Scott is in tears, and George the gasman
is suborning people to go and clean the hall, which
is a marvel of dirt. And yet we have taken consid-
erably over three hundred pounds for to-morrow
night I

[TO MR. W. C. MACREADY]

Springfield, Mass., Saturday, March 21 st, 1868.

My dearest Macready :

• •••«•

Tou would find the general aspect of America and
Americans decidedly much improved. Tou would
find immeasurably greater consideration and respect
for your privacy than of old. You would find a
steady change for the better everywhere, except
(oddly enough) in the railroads generally, which
seem to have stood still, while everything else has
moved. But there is an exception westward. There
the express trains have now a very delightful car-
riage called a " drawing-room car," literally a series
of Httle private drawing-rooms, with sofas and a
table in each, opening out of a little corridor. In
each, too, is a large plate-glass window, with which
you can do as you like. As you pay extra for this
luxury, it may be regarded as the first move towards

^3^ £etfer0 of ®ic6en0.

two classes of passengers. When the raihroad
straight away to San Francisco (in six days) shall
be opened through, it will not only have these
drawing-rooms, but sleeping-rooms too ; a bell in
every little apartment communicating with a stew-
ard's pantry, a restaurant, a staff of servants, marble
washing-stands, and a barber's shop ! I looked into
one of these cars a day or two ago, and it wras very
ingeniously arranged and quite complete.

• • • • • •

I have seen all our Boston friends, except Curtis.
Ticknor is dead. The rest are very little changed,
except that Longfellow has a perfectly white flow-
ing beard and long white hair. But he does not
otherwise look old, and is infinitely handsomer than
he was. I have been constantly with them all, and
tliey have always talked much of you. It is the es-
tablished joke that Boston is my "native place,*'
and we hold all sorts of hearty foregatherings.
They all come to every reading, and are always in a
most delightful state of enthusiasm. They give me
a parting dinner at the club, on the Thursday be-
fore Good Friday. To pass from Boston personal
to New York theatrical, I will mention here that
one of the proprietors of my New York hotel is one
of the proprietors of Niblo's, and the most active.
Consequently I have seen the BUuck Crook and
the Wliite Fawn, in majesty, from an arm-chair

in the first entrance, P.S., more than once. Of
these astonishing dramas, I beg to report (seri-
ously) that I have found no human creature "be-
hind" who has the shghest idea what they are
about {upon my honour, my dearest Macready!),
and that having some amiable small talk with a
neat Uttie Spanish woman, who is the premihre dan-
sense, I asked her, in joke, to let me measure her
skirt with my dress glove. Holding the glove by
the tip of the forefinger, I found the skirt to be just
three gloves long, and yet its length was much in
excess of the skirts of two hundred other ladies,
whom the cai'penters were at that moment getting
into their places for a transformation scene, on re-
volving columns, on Avires and "travellers" in iron
cradles, up in the flies, down in the cellars, on
every descnption of float that Wilmot, gone dis-
tracted, could imagine !

. • • • • •

Niagara is not at all spoiled by a very dizzy-look-
ing suspension bridge. Is to have another still
nearer to the Horse-shoe opened in July. My last
sight of that scene (last Sunday) was thus: We
went up to the rapids above the Horse-shoe — say
two miles from it — and through the great cloud of
spray. Everything in the magnificent valley—^
buildings, forest, high banks, air, water, everything
— was made of rainbow. Turner's most imaginative

238 £effer0 of ®ic6ens.

drawing in his finest day has nothing in it so
ethereal, so gorgeous in fancy, so celestial We
said to one another (Dolby and I), "Let it for ever-
more remain so," and shut our eyes and came away.
God bless you and all dear to you, my dear old
Fi-iend !

I am ever your affectionate and loving.

[TO MR HENRY PIBLDING DICKENS ]
Adelphi Hotel, Literpool, Th'uxsday, Oct. 15th, 1868.

My dear Harry :

I have your letter here this morning. I enclose
you another cheque for twenty-five pounds, and I
write to London by this post) ordering three dozen
sherry, two dozen port, and three dozen light
claret, to be sent down to you.

Now, observe attentively. We must have no
shadow of debi Square up everything whatsoever
that it has been necessary to buy. Let not a farth-
ing be outstanding on any account, when we begin
together with your allowance. Be particular in the
minutest detail

I wish to have ho secret from you in the relations
we are to establish together, and I therefore send
you Joe Chitty's letter bodily. Beading it, you
will know exactly what I know, and will under-

£e^er0 of ®icSen6; 239

stand that I treat you with perfect confidence. It
appears to me that an allowance of two hundred
and fifty pounds a year will be handsome for all
your wants, if I send you your wines. I mean this
to include your tailor's bills as well as every other
expense ; and I strongly recommend you to buy
nothing in Cambridge, and to take credit for noth-
ing but the clothes with which your tailor provides
you. As soon as you have got your furniture ac-
counts in, let us wipe all those preliminaiy expenses
clean out, and I will then send you your first
quarter. We will count in it October, November,
and December ; and your second quarter will begin
with the New Year. If you dislike, at first, taking
charge of so large a sum as sixty- two pounds ten
shillings, you can have your money from me half-
quarterly.

You know how hard I work for what I get, and I
think you know that I never had money help from
any human creature after I was a child. You know
that you are one of many heavy charges on me, and
that I trust to your so exercising your abilities and
improving the advantages of your past expensive
education, as soon to diminish this charge. I say
no more on that head.

Whatever you do, above all other things keep out
of debt and confide in me. If you ever find your-
self on the verge of any perplexity or difficulty,

240 &efte¥0 of ®ic6ens.

come to me. Tou will never find me hard with yon
while you are manly and truthful.

As your brothers have gone away one by one, I
have written to each of them what I am now going
to write to you. You know that you have never
been hampered with religious forms of restraint^
and that with mere unmeaning forms I Imve no
sympathy. But I most strongly and affectionately
impress upon you the priceless value of the New
Testament, and the study of that book as the one
unfailing guide in Hf e. Deeply respecting it, and
bowing down before the character of our Saviour,
as separated from the vain constructions and inven-
tions of men, you cannot go very wrong, and will
always preserve at heart a true spirit of veneration
and humility. Similarly I impress upon you the
habit of saying a Christian prayer every night and
moraing. These things have stood by me all
through my life, and remember that I tried to ren-
der the New Testament intelligible to you and lova-
able by you when you were a mere baby.

And so God bless you.

Ever your affectionate Father.

fieifettf of ^Bi^iem. 241

[TO MR. EDWARD BULWER LYTTON DICKENS ]i

Afy dearest Plorn :

I write this note to-day because your going away
is much upon my mind, and because I want you to
have a few parting words from me to think of now
and then at quiet times. I need not tell you that I
love you dearly, and am very, very sorry in my heart
to part with you. But this life is half made up of
partings, and these pains must be borne. It is my
comfort and my sincere conviction that you are go-
ing to try the life for which you are best fitted. I
think its freedom and wildness more suited to you
than any experiment in a study or office would ever
have been ; and without that training, you could
have followed no other suitable occupation.

What you have already wanted until now has
been a set, steady, constant purpose. I therefore
exhort you to persevere in a thorough determina-
tion to do whatever you have to do as well as you
can do ii I was not so old as you are now when I
first had to win my food, and do this out of this
determination, and I have never slackened in it
since.

Never take a mean advantage of anyone in any
transaction, and never be hard upon people who are

1 Letter to his yonnsest eon on hit departure for Australia in 1868.
16

242 &et(er0 of 9Dtc6en0.

in your power. Try to do to others, as you would
have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if
they fail sometimes. It is much better for you that
they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid
down by our Saviour, than that you should.

I put a New Testament among your books, for
the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes
that made me write an easy account of it for you,
when you were a little child. Because it is the best
book that ever was or will be known in the world,
and because it teaches you the best lessons by which
any human creature who tries to be truthful and
faithful to duty can possibly be guided. As your
brothers have gone away, one by one, I have writ-
ten to each such words as I am now writing to you,
and have entreated them all to guide themselves by
this book, putting aside the interpretations and in-
ventions of men.

You will remember that you have never at home
been wearied about religious observances or mere
formalities. I have always been anxious not to
weary my children with such things before they are
old enough to form opinions respecting them. Tou
will therefore understand the better that I now most
solemnly impress upon you the truth and beauiy of
the Christian religion, as it came from Christ Him-
self, and the impossibility of your going far wrong
if you humbly but heartily respect ii

iA^txB of ©icfienc 243

Only one thing more on this head. The more we
are in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are dis-
posed to hold forth about it. Never abandon the
wholesome practice of saying your own private
prayers, night and morning. I have never aban-
doned it myself, and I know the comfort of it.

I hope you will always be able to say in after life
that you had a kind father. You cannot show your
affection for him so well, or make him so happy, as
by doing your duty.

Your affectionate Father.

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INDEX.

Agassiz, Prof., 199.

AUston, Washington, 36.

AU the Tear Sound, 196 ; Mrs.
Lirriper*8 Legacy , 175 ; Mug-
by Junction, 193.

America, feeling for Dickens in
backwoods of, 12-13 ; his wel-
come in, 18; his opinions of,
20; freedom of opinion in,
21 ; characteristics of people
in, 22 ; Dickens's levees in, 23,
25; temperature in, 24, 26;
midnight rambles in New
York, 26; copyright in, 27-
80 ; Dickens's tribute to Mrs.
TroUope's book on, 30-31;
criticisms of Dickens in, 58;
tiie great war in, 160, 162; feel-
ing between England and, 186 ;
Dickens's second visit to, 198 ;
Dickens's letters on, 198-238;
treatment of luggage in, 210 ;
"drinks"in, 215, 231; changes
and improvements in since
Dickens's first visit, 222, 235;
the negroes in, 224; personal
description of Dickens in, 233 ;
travelling in, 236.

American Notes, editions sold,
82; manuscript of, 86; pre-
face to, 196.

Author, the highest reward of

an, 12.
Austin, Henry, see Letters.
Autobiography, a concise, of

Dickens, 118-120.

Barnaby Budge, Dickens's de-
scription for the illustration of
the raven in, 11.

Basil, Dickens's opinion of, 86-
87.

Blair, General F. P., 229.

Bleak House, Dickens occupied
with, 81 ; circulation of, 85.

Book-backs, Dickens's imita-
tion of, 76.

Boyle, Miss Mary, 68, and see
Letters.

Broadstairs, Dickens at, 41-44.
' Brookfield, Mrs., see Letters.

Buckstone, J. B., 95.

Bulwer, see Lytton.

Capital Punishment, Dick-
ens's views on, 55-^.

Carlyle, Thomas, 154.

Carlyle, Mrs., 121.

Cartwright, Samuel, see Let-
ters.

Cattermole, George, see Letters.

Cerjat, M. de, see Iietters.

248

3nb^.

Charities, Dickens^s sufferings
from pubUc, 131-132.

Childs, Mr. G. W., 222.

Chimes^ The^ an attack npon
cant, 53; Dickenn^s opinion
of, 53, 54; Dickens gives a
private reading of, 54.

Chorley, Henry F., see Let-
ters.

Christmas Carols A, 45.

Church, Dickens on the, 179-
180; service on board ship,
223-224.

Clay, Henry, 24.

Collins, C. A., 180.

Collins, Wilkie, 94, and see Let-
ters.

Conjuror, Dickens as a, 25.

Copyright, Dickens's struggles
to secure English, in America,
27-30.

Cornwall, trip in, 33.

Criminals, 55-56.

Dacres, Sir Sidney, 214.

David Copper Jield^ purpose of
Little Emily in, 68 ; success
of, 68 ; readings of, 101.

Dickens, Charles, personal feel-
ing for his characters, 9, 14;
an enemy of cant, 38-39, 53;
visits of to America, see Amer-
ica ; travels in Italy, see Italy ;
political opinions of, 23; at
the seaside, 41 ; correspond-
ence of, 40; as an editor, 71-
73, 77-82 ; his kindly criticism
of young writers, 123-126 ; his
religious views, 143, 171-173,
179-180, 240, 242 ; one of the

secrets of the saocess of,
230.

Dickens, Charles, jr., 85, 73,
and see Letters.

Dickens, Mrs. Charles, see Let-
ters.

Dickens, Kate, sickneBs of, 198,
and see 180.

Dickens, Miss, see Letters.

Dickens, Frank, nickname of,
52.

Dickens, Henry F., see Letters.

Dickens, Edward B. L. , see Let-
ters.

Dickson, David, see Letters.

DiUon, C, 128.

Dolby, George, 205-207, 209-
211, 214-216, 219.

Domhey & Son^ great sacoess of,
60.

Dreams, Dickens^s, 42-48.

Driver, Dickens's estimate of
himself as a, 3.

Eeles, Mr. , see Letters.
Emerson, Mr. R W., 199.
England, state of, in 1855, 105 ;

politically, 109.
Executions, Dickens on public,

75.

Faust, Gounod's, 169.

Fechter, Charles, 165, 169, 170,
and see Letters.

Felton, Prof., 144, and see Let-
ters.

Fields, James T., 144, 204, and
see Letters.

Fields, Mrs., 208, 207.

Finlay, F. D., see Letters.

3n^;r.

249

Forsfcerf John, 83, 85, and see

Letters.
Franklin, Sir John, 97.

Gad's Hill, Dickens's childish
impressions of, 122.

Gallenga, 152.

Gaskell, Mrs., see Letters.

Great Expectations^ letters con-
cerning, 159, 161.

Grief, the perversity of, exem-
plified, 7.

Grisi, 95.

Hard Times, 96.

Harness, Rev. W., see Letters.

Hillard, Mr., 86.

Hogarth, Miss, see Letters.

Holland House, 121.

Holmes, Mr. O. W., 199.

Hood, Tom, 84.

Household Words, 77, 80, 81,

92.
Hughes, Master Hastings, see

Letters.
Hulkes, Mrs., 214.

Illustrations of Dickens's

works, his descriptions for, 8,

9, 10.
Lreland, Alexander, see Letters.
Lreland, a dialogue in, 135-136 ;

feeling for Dickens in, 188.
Irving, Washington, 227, and

see Letters.
Italy, Dickens in, 47-52; in

Venice, 47 ; at Naples, 89-91 ;

Dickens on unity of, 159 ; his

apology for Italians, 151 .

Jamaica, the insurrection in,

186.
Jerrold, Douglas, see Letters.
Jesuits' College, 152.

Knight, Charles, see Letters.
Knowles, James Sheridan, 65.

Lamartine, 64.

Landor, Walter Savage, see Let-
ters.
Lanman, Charles, see Letters.
Layard, A. H., see Letters.
Letters of Charles Dickens to :

Anonymous, 193.

Austin, Henry, 3, 27.

Boyle, Miss Mary, 71.

Cartwright, Samuel, 222.

Cattermole, George, 8, 10,
11.

Cerjat, M. de, 67, 98, 122, 145,
165, 170, 179. 186.

Chorley, Henry F., 150.

Collins, Wilkie, 86, 116, 118,
148, 175, 217.

Dickens, Charles, jr., 201.

Dickens, Mrs., 48, 53.

Dickens, Miss, 67, 187, 166,
198, 203, 205, 210, 212, 221,
225,228.

Dickens, Henry F., 229, 288.

Dickens, Edward B. L., 241.

Eeles, Mr., 75.

Fechter, Mr. Charles, 23a

Felton, Prol, 31, 87, 89, 44.

Fields, James T., 195.

Finlay, F. D., 195.

Forster, John, 128, 141, 147,
153, 161.

Gaskell, Mrs., 77, 7a

2^0

3nb^*

Letters of Charles Dickens to :
Harness, Rev. William, 9.
Hogarth, Miss, 4, 89, 94, 182,

138, 140, ie>2, 163, 207, 213,

215, 218, 234.
Hoghes, Master Hastings, 5.
Ireland, Alexander, 64.
Irving, Washington, 15, 19,

121.
Jerrold, Douglas, 47.
Knight, Charles, 70, 93.
Landor, Walter Savage, 61,

88.
Lanman, Charles, 227.
Layard, A. H , 105.
Longman, Thomas, 29.
Lovejoy, G., 14.
Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer,

156.
Macready, W. C, 7, 20, 52,

59, 63, 64, 66, 108, 159, 168,

191, 235.
Marston, Dr. Westland, 128.
MUnes, R. Monckton, 13.
Mitton, Thomas, 18, 24, 181.
Napier, Macvey, 55.
Oilier, Edmund, 177.
Owen, Prof., 184.
Pardoe, Miss, 29.
Procter, B. W., 191.
Procter, Mrs., 185.
Regnier, M., 112, 130.
Roberts, David, 102.
Ryland, Mr. Arthur, 100.
Smith, Mr. Arthur, 144.
Stanfield, Clarkson, 87.
Stone, Prank, 123, 143.
Stone, Marcus, 176.
Tagart, Rev. Edward, 62.
Thackeray, W. M., 103.

Letters of Charles Dickens to :

Thombury, Mr. W., 197.

Tomlin, John, la

Trollope, Mrs., 30, 108.

Viardot, Mme., 113L

Watkins, John, 84.

Watson, Hon. Mrs., 73, 85,
95.

Wills, W. H., 58, 80, 88, 90,
110, 174.

Tates, Edmund, 126, 131.
Linton, Mrs., 174.
Little Dorrit^ letter oonoemiDg,

110.
Lockhart, Mr., 174.
London, Dickens's opinion of

corporation of, 102-103.
Longfellow, H. W., 33, 86, 199,

202, 218, 286.
Longman, Thomas, see Letters.
Lovejoy, G., see Letters.
Lytton, Sir E. B., 161, and see

Letters.

Maclise, Daniel, 83, 86i, 88.
Macready, W. C, 46, 164^ and

see Letters.
Macready, Kate, 168.
Manin, 152.
Marston, Dr. Westland, 128, ISO,

and see Letters.
Martin ChuzzletoU^ Diokens al

work on, 37.
Master lhunphrey*% Clocks IS ;

concerning illustrations in, 8^

9,10.
Mazzini, 152.
Milnes, R Monckton, see I«et-

ters.
Missionaries, Dickens on, 79-8QL