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4 5 6

AMERICAN NOTES

CHARLES DICKENS: Born iSiz-Died 1870

Editor's Note

Americans quickly became enthusiastic admirers of
Dickens's works. It was one of the reasons which urged
htm to make his first visit to the United States— the other
{and usual) reason being the search for copy. He went
he saw, he criticised. It is an old story now how the
Americans were chagrined by his criticisms, and how
resentment softened and died away in the general apprccia-
tion of the man and his genius. That the temporary ilU
feeling was so soon forgotten is a tribute alike to the hosts
and to the guest— who had "no desire to court, by any
adventitious means, the popular applause." The visit
that resulted in American Notes was made in - ^42 ;
and the book was published the same year. Frankly
written as are these Notes, it will be seen from the
following Life that Dickens was much more critical
and outspoken of Americans, their habits and institutions
tn his letters to Forster. But when he visited America
for the second and last time, he noted "amazing changes"—
as he acknowledged in the 1868 postscript to the Notes
By then, resentment had given way to "unsurpassable
politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality," etc., on
the part of the criticised Americans. Since 1868 there 'have
been many more amazing changes in the United States :
but there has been no change in the affection for Charles
Dickens and his works. This edition is printed from the
one carefully corrected by the author in 1867-68.

AMERICAN NOTES

CHARLES DICKENS

LONDON:
HAZELL, WATSON 8c VINEY, LTD.

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PREFACE

My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether
the influences and tendencies which I distrusted in America
had. at that time, any existence but in my imagination. They
can examine for themselves whether there has been anything
in the public career of that country since, at home or abroad,
which suggests that those influences and tendencies reaUy did
exist. As they find the fact, they will judge me. If they discern
any evidences of wrong-going, in any direction that I have
indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I
wrote. If they discern no such indications, they will consider
me altogether mistaken— but not wilfully.

Prejudiced. I am not. and never have been, otherwise than
in favour of the United States. ^ - - .xany friends in America,
I feel a grateful interest in th.^ _ , t hope and believe it
will successfully work out a pre ' highest importance

to the whole human race. To re], s viewing America

with ill-nature, coldness, or animosuv, erely to do a very

foolish thing : which is always a very easy one.

AMERICAN NOTES

CHAPTER I

GOING AWAY

I SHALL r ver forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths condcal
astomshnient with which, on the morning of the third of Januarv
eighteen-hundreQ-and-forty-two. I opened the door of. and put mv
w? '"^' ^ '«tfte-room" on board the Britannia steam-packet^
^elve hundred tons burthen per register, bound for HalifL and
Boston, and carr ng Her Majesty's mails.

That this state-room had been specially engaged for "Charl*»s
Dickens. Esquire, and Lady," was rendered suflP vn .ly clear even to
my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, .r.nouncinK the fact
which was pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress'
spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf But that
this was the state-room concerning which Charies Dickens. Esquire
and Lady, had held daily and nightly conferences for at least four
months preceding: that this .)uld by any possibility be that small
snug chamber of the imagination, which Charies Dickens. Esquire
with the spirit of prophecy strong upon him. had always foretold
would contain at least one little sofa, and which his ladv with a
frn^lh ^f f °'* magnificent sense of its limited dimensions, had
from the first opined would not hold more than two enormous oort-
manteaus m some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could
now no more be got m at the door, not to say stowed away than a
giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot): that this
?.if 7k "'^l^^'i'S^^^' tho^o^ghly hopeless, and profoundly prepo^!
terous box. had the remotest reference to. or connection with those
chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, sketched by a
masterly hand, m the highly varnished lithographic plan hangC
up m the agent's counting-house in the city of London that thif

Sfu tsf ort?°^' r ^? ^^ ""^^^"^ ^"* ^ Pleasan^ficrion and
cheerful est of the captain's, invented and put in practice for the

better rehsh and enjoyment of the real state-room presently to S
disdosed:-these were truths which I really could no- for tS
moment, brmg my mind at all to bear upon or comprehend Lid I
sat down upon a kind of horsehair slab, or perch, of which there
were two withm; and looked, without any expression of c^ntenanS
whatever, at some friends who had come on board with us aLd who
319* o

American Notes

were crushing their faces into all manner of shapes by endeavourinff
to squeeze them through the small doorway.

We had experienced a pretty smart shock before coming below
which, but that we were the most sanguine people living might have'
7repared us for the worst. The imaginative artist to whom I have
already made allusion, has depicted in the same great work a
chamber of almost interminable perspective, furnished, as Mr Rob-
ms would say, in a style of more than Eastern splendour and filled
(but not mconveniently so) with groups of ladies and gentleman in
the very highest state of enjoyment and vivacity. Before descending
into the bowels of the ship, we had passed from the deck into a long
narrow apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with windows in the
sides; having at the upper end a melancholy stove, at which three or
four chilly stewards were warming their hands; while on either side
extending down its whole dreary length, was a long, long table
over each of which a rack, fixed to the low roof, and stuck full of
dnnkmg-glasses and cruet-stands, hinted dismallv at rolling seas and
heavy weather. I had not at that time seen the ideal presentment of
this chamber which has since gratified me so much, but I observed
that one of our friends who had made the arrangements for our
voyage, turned pale on entering, retreated on the friend behind him
smote his forehead involuntarily, and said below his breath "Im-
possible ! it cannot be !" or words to that effect. He recovered himself
however by a great effort, and after a preparatory cough or two cried
with a ghastly smile which is still before me, looking at the same time
round the walls, "Ha! the breakfast-room, steward— eh?" We aJ'
foresaw what the answer must be: we knew the agony he suffered He
had often spoken of the saloon; had taken in and lived upon the
pictorial idea; had usually given us to understand, at home that to
form a just conception of it, it would be necessary to multiply the
size and furniture of an ordinary drawing-room by seven, and then
fall short of the reality. When the man in reply avowed the truth- the
blunt, remorseless, naked truth; "This is the saloon, sir"— he actuallv
reeled beneath the blow. ■'

In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose between their
else daily communication the formidable barrier of many thousand
miles of stormy space, and who were for that reason anxious to cast
no other cloud, not even the passing shadow of a moment's dis-
appointment or discomfiture, upon the short interval of happy
companionship that yet remained to them— in persons so situated
the natural transirion from these first surprises was obviously into
peals of hearty laughter, and I can report that I, for one. being still
seated upon the slab or perch before menrioned, roared outright
until the vessel rang again. Thus, in less than two minutes after com-
ing upon it for the first time, we all by common consent agreed that
this state-room was the pleasantest and most facetious and capital
contrivance possible; and that to have had it one inch larger would
have been quite a disagreeable ana deplorable state of thi"a« At,h

American Notes u

with this: and with showing how.-by very nearly closing the door
and twining in and out like serpents, and by counting the little w^h'
mg slab as standing-room,-we could manage to insinuate four p^^l^
S^ H wi^'^'if *'^'' ^°A""t^«ating each other to observe how vTr^
airy. It was (in dock) and how there was a beautiful port-hole wS
could be kept open all day (weather permitting), and^how therrwas
quite a large bull's-eye just over the loakinglglass which wouW
render shavmg a perfectly easy and delightful process when the
ship didn't roll too much); we arrived, at last, at the unanimous
conclusion that it was rather spacious than otherwise: thoughTdo
verily believe that, deducting the two berths, one above the other
than which nothing smaller for sleeping in was eve- made excent

have the door behind, and shoot their fares out. like sacks of coaS
upon the pavement. ^

Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction .f all parties
concerned and unconcerned, we sat down round the fire in the ladies'
cabin-just to try the effect. It was rather dark, certainly; but some-
body said, of course it would be light, at sea. " a proposition to whTch
we all assented; echoing "of course, of course;" though it would be
exceedingly difficult to say why we thought so. I rfmember too
when we had discovered and exhausted another topic of consolation
m the circumstance of this ladies' cabin adjoining our state-room? anS
the consequently immense feasibiHty of sitting there at all times and
seasons and had fallen into a momLtary silLce. lefning our faces
on our hands and looking at the fire, one of our party said with the
solemn air of a man who had made a discovery. ''What a relish
mu led claret will have down here!" which appeaJ^d to strike us ^1
most forciDly; as though there were something spicy and high-
flavoured m cabins, which essentially improved that composition
and rendered it quite incapable of perfection anywhere else '

Ihere was a stewardess, too. actively engaged in producing clean

fnlln 'f n'f 'r'°'^? '^°"^ *^^ ^^'y '^''^''^' theSas. an^d fiom
hSrh^ . °' '"'.'^ °* '"'^ ^'^^"^ mechanism, that it made one^
head ache to see them opened one after another, and rendered it

finH .ht^^''*'^'*'"^"^''.""''*^"'^^" *° ^«"°^ ^^' proceedings and to
find that every nook and corner and individual piece of furniture was
something else besides what it pretended to be. and was a mere tra^
wa^ itT&uStf jTn^e^ °^ '''''' ''^-^'- ^'^^ ostensiblT^ur^SS
God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account of
January voyages! God bless her for her clear recoflectton of the
compamon passage of last year, when nobody was ill. and everybody
dancing from morning to night, and it was "a run" of tweTv7davs
and a piece of the purest frolic, and delight, and jolhty i^Arhappiness
be with her for her bright face and her pleasant Scotch tongu^whrch
had sounds of old Homp m i+ fr.f »«,, ^^n^... 2. „ ^s^jc, wui^^^

predictions of fair wmds and fine weather (all wrong, or I shouldn^t

American Notes

be half so fond of her); and for the ten thousand small fragments of
genuine womanly tact, by which, without piecing them ellboratelv
together, and patchmg them up into shape and form and case and
pointed apphcation. she nevertheless did plainly show that all youne
mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and close at hand to
their little children left upon the other; and that what seemed to the
umnitiated a serious journey, was. to those who were in the secret a
mere frolic, to be sung about and whistled at! Light be her heart
and gay her merry eyes, for years 1

The state-room had grown pretty fast; but by this time it had
expanded into something quite bulky.. and almost boasted a bav-
wmdow to view the sea from. So we went upon deck again in high
spirits; and there, everything was in such a state of bustle and active
preparation, that the blood quickened its pace, and whirled throueh
one s veins on that clear frosty morning with involuntary mirthful-
ness. For every gallant ship was riding slowly up and down and
every little boat was splashing noisily in the water; and knots of
people stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind of "dread delight" •
on the far-famed fast American steamer; and one party of men
were 'taking m the milk." or. in other words, getting the cow on
board; and another were filling the icehouses to the very throat
with fresl. provisions; With butchers'-meat and garden-stuff Dale
sucking-pigs, calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poultrv
out of all proportion; and others were coiling ropes and busy with
oakum yarns; and others were lowering heavy packages into the hold-
and the purser s head was barely visible as it loomed in a state of
exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers'
luggage; and there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere or
uppermost in the mind of anybody, but preparations for this mig'htv
voyage. This, with the bright cold sun. the bracing air, the crisrlv-
curlmg water, the thin white crust of morning ice upon the decks
which crackled with a sharp and cheerful sound beneath the lightest
tread, was irresistible. And when, again upon the shore, we turned
and saw from the vessel's mast her name signalled in flags of iovous
colours, and fluttering by their side the beautiful American banner
with its stars and stripes.— the long three thousand miles and more

fj'i°2?^rfu 'u-^^.^'"^ "^^"^^ "^^"*^^ °* absence, so dwindled and
laded, that the ship had gone out and come home again, and it was
broad spnng already in the Coburg Dock at Liverpool

T i}^""^ ?°* /i'?,'''''^^ ^""""^ "^y niedical acquaintance, whether
Turte. and cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne, and Claret, and all
the slight et cetera usually included in an unlimited order for a good
dinner— especially when it is left to the liberal construction of my
faultless friend. Mr. Radley. of the Adelphi Hotel-are peculiarly
calculated to suffer a sea-change; or whether a plain mutton-choo
and a glass or two of sherry, would be less likely of conversion into
foreign and disconcerting material. My own opinion is. that whether
J .„,.„.., .,ei oj. xiiviio-^iccL III Liicau particulars, ou the eve oi a sea-

American Notes 13

voyage, is a matter of little consequence; and that, to use a common
phrase, it comes to very much the same thing in the end. " Be this
BS It may, I know that the dinner of that day was undeniably perfect:
that It comprehended all these items, and a great many more; and
that we all did ample justice to it. And I know too. that, bating a
certain tacit avoidance of any allusion to to-morrow; such as niay
be supposed to prevail between delicate-minded turnkeys, and a
sensitive prisoner who is to be hanged next morning; we got on very
well. and. all things considered, were merry enough.

When the morning— <Ae morning— came, and we met at breakfast
It was cunous to see how eager we all were to prev at a moment's
pause in the conversation, and how astoundingly gay everybody was-
the forced spirits of each member of the little party having as much
likeness to his natural mirth, as hot-house peas at five guineas the
quart, resemble in flavour the growth of the dews, and air, and rain
of Heaven But as one o'clock, the hour for going aboard, drew near
this volubility dwindled away by little and little, despite the most
pereevenng efforts to the contrary, until at last, the matter being now
quite desperate, we threw off all disguise; openly speculated upon
where we should be this time to-morrow, this time next day. and so
forth; and entrusted a vast number of messages to those who intended
returning to town that night, which were to be delivered at home and
elsewhere without fail, within the very shortest possible space of time
after th^ amval of the railway train at Euston Square. And commis-
sions and remembrances do so crowd upon one at such a time that
we were still busied with this employment when we found ourselves
lusea. as It were, into a dense conglomeration of passengers and pas-
senger fnends and passengers' luggage, all jumbled together on the
deck of a small steamboat, and panting and snorting off to the packet
which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon and was now
lying at her moorings in the river.

And there she is! all eyes are turned to where she lies, dimly dis-
cernible through the gathering fog of the early winter afternoon-
every finger is pointed in the same direction; and murmurs of interest
and admiration— as "How beautiful she looks!" "How trim she is!"
—are heard on every side. Even the lazy gentleman with his hat on
one side and his hands in his pockets, who has dispensed so much
consolation by inquiring with a yawn of another gentleman whether
1 r.u^?"^ across"— as if it were a ferry— even he condescends to

Ik *.f .T.^^'/""^ ''"^ ^'^ ^^^^' "^ wh° should say. "No mistake
about that: and not even the sage Lord Burleigh in his nod. included
half so much as this lazy gentleman of might who has made the pas-
sage (as everybody on board has found out already; it's impossible to
say now) thirteen times without a single accident! There is another
passenger very much wrapped-up, who has been frowned down by
tne rest, and morally trampled upon and crushed, for presuming to
mquire with a timid interest how long it is since the noor Pr*.«id^«f
went down. He is standing close to the lazy gentleman, and says

American Notes

with a fctint smile that he beHeves She is a very strong Ship; to which
the lazy gentleman, looking first in his questioner's eye and then very
hard in the wind's, answers unexpectedly and ominously, that She
need be. Upon this the lazy gentleman instantly falls very low in the
popular estimation, aqd the passengers, with looks of defiance, whis-
per to each other that he is an ass, and an impostor, and clearly don't
know anything at all about it.

But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose huge red funnel
is smoking bravely, giving rich promise of serious intentions. Packing-
cases, portmanteaus, carpet-bags, and boxes, are already passed from
hand to hand, and hauled on board with breathless rapidity. The
officers, smartly dressed, are at the gangway handing the passengers
up the side, and hurrying the men. In five minutes' time, the little
steamer is utterly deserted, and the packet is beset and over-run by
its late freight, who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be
met with by the dozen in every nook and corner: swarming down
below with their own baggage, and stumbling over other people's;
disposing themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, and creating a
most horrible confusion by having to turn out again; madly bent
upon opening locked doors, and on forcing a passage into all kinds of
out-of-the-way places where there is no thoroughfare; sending wild
stewards, with elfin hair, to and fro upon the breezy decks on un-
intelligible errands, impossible of execution: and in short, creating the
most extraordinary and bewildering tumult. In the midst of all this,
the lazy gentleman, who seems to have no luggage of any kind — not
so niuch as a friend, even — lounges up and down the hurricane deck,
coolly pufiing a cigar; and, as this unconcerned demeanour again
exalts him in the opinion of those wli j have leisure to observe his
proceedings, every time he looks up at the masts, or down at the
decks, or over the side, they look there too, as wondering whether he
sees anything wrong anywhere, and hoping that, in case he should,
he will have the goodness to mention it.

What have we here? The captain's boat! and yonder the captain
himself. Now, by all our hopes and wishes, the very man he ought to
be! A well-made, tight-built, dapper little fellow; with a ruddy face,
which is a letter of invitation to shake him by both hands at once;
and with a clear, blue honest eye, that it does one good to see one's
sparkling image in. "Ring the bell!" "Ding, ding, ding!"the very bell
is in a hurry. "Now for the shore — who's for the sliore?" — "These
gentlemen, I am sorry to say." They are away, and never said.
Good b'ye. Ah! now they wave it from the little boat. "Good b'ye!
Good b'ye!" Three cheers from them; three more from us; three more
i/om them: and they are gone.

To and fro, to and fro, to and fro again a hundred times ! This
waiting for the latest maii-bags is worse than all. If we could have
gone oflE in the midst of that last burst, we should have started trium-
phantly: but to lie here, two hours and more in the damp fog, neither
staying at home nor going abroad, is letting ont gradually down into

American Notes

the very depths of dulness and low spirits. A speck in the mist, at
last! That's something. It is the boat we wait for! That's more to the
purpose. The captain appears on the paddle-box with his speaking
trumpet; the officers take their stations; all hands are on the alert;
the flagging hopes of the passeng:ers revive; the cooks pause in their
savoury work, and look out with faces full of interest. The boat comes
alongside; the bags are dragged in anyhow, and flung down for the
moment anjnivhere. Three cheers more: and as the first one rings upon
our ears, the vessel throbs like a strong giant that has just received
the breath of life; the two great wheels turn fiercely round for the
first time; and the noble ship, with wind and tide astern, breaks
proudly through the lashed and foaming water.

CHAPTER II

THE PASSAGE OUT

We all dined together that day; and a rather formidable party we
were: no fewer than eighty-six strong. The vessel being pretty deep
in the water, with all her coals on board and so many passengers,
and the weather being calm and quiet, there was but little motion-
so that before the dinner was half over, even those passengers who
were most distrustful of themselves plucked up amazingly; and those
who in the morning had returned to the universal question, "Are you
a good sailor?" a very decided negative, now either parried the
inquiry with the evasive reply, "Oh! I suppose I'm no worse than
anybody else;" or, reckless of all moral obligations, answered boldly
"Yes:" and with some irritation too, as though they would add, "I
should like to know what you see in me, sir, particularly, to justify
suspicion!"

Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and confidence, I could
not but observe that very few remained long over their wine; and ,
that everybody had an unusual love of the open air; and that the
favourite and most coveted seats were invariably those nearest to the
door. The tea-table, too, was by no means as well attended as the
dinner-table; and there was less whist-playing than might have been
expected. Still, with the exception of one lady, who had retired with
some precipitation at dinner-time, immediately after being assisted
to the finest cut of a very yellow boiled leg of mutton with very frreen
capers, there were no invalids as yet; and walking, and smoking, and
drinking of brandy-and-water (but always in the open air), went on
with unabated spirit, until eleven o'clock or thereabouts, when
I'tuming in" — no sailor of seven hours' experience talks of going to
bed — became the order of the night. Ine perpetual tramp of boot-
heels on the decks gave place to a heavy silence, and the whole

American Notes

human freight was stowed away below, excepting a very few
stragglers, like myself, who were probably, like me. afraid to go there
To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is a very striking time on
shipboard. Afterwards, and when its novelty had long worn off it
never ceased to have a peculiar interest and charni for me. The gloom
through which the great black mass holds its direct and certain
course; the rushing water, plainly heard, but dimly seen; the broad
white, gUstenmg track, that follows in the vessel's wake; the men on
the lookout forward, who would be scarcely visible against the dark
sky. but for their blotting out some score of glistening stars; the
helmsman at the wheel, with the illuminated card before him, shining
a speck of light amidst the darkness, like something sentient and of
Divme intelligence; the melancholy sighing of the wind through block
and rope, and chain; the gleaming forth of light from every crevice'
nook, and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though the ship were
tilled with fire in hiding, ready to burst through any outlet, wild with
Its resistless power of death and ruin. At first, too. and even when the
hour, and all the objects it exalts, have come to be familiar it is
difficult, alone and thoughtful, to hold them to their proper shapes
and forms. They change with the wandering fancy; assume the
semblance of things left far away; put on the well-remembered aspect
of favourite places dearly loved; and even people them with shadows
Streets, houses, rooms; figures so like their usual occupants, that they
have startled me by their reality, which far exceeded, as it seemed to
me, all power of mine to conjure up the absent; have, many ^nd
many a time, at such an hour, grown suddenly out of objects with
whose real look, and use. and purpose, I was as well acquainted as
with my own two hands.

My own two hands, and feet likewise, being very cold, however
on this particular occasion, I crept below at midnight. It was not
exactly comfortable below, it was decidedly close; and it was
impossible to be unconscious of the presence of that extraordinary
compound of strange smells, which is to be found nowhere but on
board ship, and which is such a subtle perfume that it seems to enter
at every pore of the skin, and whisper of the hold. Two passengers'
wives (one of them my own) lay already in silent agonies on the sofa-
and one lady's riaid {my lady's) was a mere bundle on the floor,
execrating her destiny, and pounding her curl-papers among the
stray boxes. Everything sloped the wrong way: which in itself was
an aggravation scarcely to be borne. I had left the door open a
moment before, in the bosom of a gentle declivity, and. when I
turned to shut it, it was on the summit of a lofty eminence. Now
every plank and timber creaked, as if the ship were made of wicker-
work; and now crackled, like an enormous fire of the driest possible
twigs. There was nothing for it but bed; so I went to bed.

It was pretty much the same for the next two days, with a tolerably
fair wind and dry weather. I read in bed (but to this hour I don't
know what) a good deal; and reeled on deck a little; drank cold

American Notes j^

any danger. I rouse mvself' Jn^ i^T 1 ^^^^^^ whether there's

p/ngi„glndlea7ngS'livetd°^^^^^^ ^^-^"8 -

afloat, except my shoes which Li^2',^ ^® smaller articles are

and dry. like a couple of Ji^S^^^^ tf/^^ 7 ^ carpet-bag. high
the air! and behol? theTool^\%?asf^^^^

sticking fast upon the ceiUnT At Se s^me f/^"?^^'^^*^ *^^ ^^"'
disappears, and a new one if opened inThe Cor Th ^^k'^^^'^^^
comprehend.thatthestate-roomTsstLdingo^^^^^^^ ' ^^^^^ *°

witll^s nVv^n^^roflh^ts^ tl7sr "n~ ^^^^ --P^tible
"Thank Heaven!'' Lewro/^'s alfn ^eg"''- ^'^°'' °^^ ^^^ ^^^
wrong, she seems to Lve startTfo;^^rH ^ T! "^t" ""^ «^« «
actually running of its o^ accord w^h K ' S'"'^ ,*° ^^ ^ *^^^^t^^e
legs, through every variet^ of hn^« ^ ul°»^'' ^^^« ^^^ failing
stantly. Before on^cln so m„rh «« ""^ P'^?"' ^"^ stumbling con-
the air Before she has weirdone^h^^^^^^^^ '^^T ^ ^^^^ ^^^P "^^o

water. Before she hLTaintd f ht c ' f *^u ^^ ^ "^^^P ^^^^ ^^^ the
The instant she s ofhef wf she/uT^^^^^^^^ 'I' *^?^.^ ^ summerset,
on staggering hea.vinsZrS{i^t^^^ backward. And so she goes

throbbfng. rSlLrr/d ^SLdT^thS^ P^^^^^^'

ments. sometimes by turns and qoTm.f 1«!^f u 1 ^^^^® "^^^e-
disposed to roar for mercy. ''^"'^^^"^es altogether: until one feels

A steward passes. "Stewardl" "<?ir?" "wiu x • ^,
rfo you call this?" "RatWa hp.^. c ^^^* " *^^ "^^^ter? what

A head-wind! ImaSne a humt7/^ ''''' '''' ^^^ ^ head-.vind."

fifteen thousand SaSs^nTnTb^nt Ton d'l' "'^^l!'^ r^' ^^^

titting her exactly between the eve. ^h? '°l ^^^ ^^*^^' ^^

advance an inch ImaJinrfho t-^f whenever she attempts to

artery of her huge S swofl J ^^^ "^'^^ ^^^^ P^l^e and

.mentf sworn to To on L d^ L^. ^Tk*^"^ .""^er this maltreat-

roaring.therainKg alUnfuriZr ^^"^ ™^ ^°^""S. the sea

sky both dark and w S.^and L cCdsTn^fLTI'''' ^^'' ?^"*"^^ *^«

waves, making another ocean in thp^ir' f,^,^ff^J sympathy with the

on deck and down below the ?readnfh *S ?" ^^'' *^^ <^lattering

shouts of seamen; the^urRHn^ ?n t^'^'^'fi^^^' *^^ ^°"^ ^^^^^e

scuppers; with. ev;ry Lw and tLn th.V^i^- °* "J^*^^ *^"°^g^ the
the planks aboU with th^ H^. *^ '}*"! strikmg of a heavy sea upon

within a vault;Ard there fs the ht^^' ^"^^y/°.""^ °^ thunder heasd

I say nothing o^what rial te ^^^^^^^ J^°"^^ "^°^"i°g-

ship: such as the breakLg^?^lass and crn^v '^''Tk '^' ^°^^^« «* t^«

of stewards, the gambols overhead on" ^'^' *^^ t^^^bling down

_ ^„,„ .. =g|auuiiU3 raisea iix their varioiio'o^.,^ , — ' *"" -ivjui csjiiiaratmg

ink cold Bwho were too iU to gelTrto breaSSri'^l*" seventy passenger!

up to breakfast. iTaynotWng^fTS

for

American Notes

although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't
think I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expiration
of which term, I lay down again, excessively sea-sick.

Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation of the
term: I wish I had been: but in a form which I have never seen or
heard described, though I have no doubt it is very common. I lay
there, all the day long, quite coolly and contentedly; with no sense of
weariness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or take the air; with
no curiosity, or care, or regret, of any sort or degree, saving that I
think I can remember, in this universal indifference, having a kind
of lazy joy — of fiendish delight, if anything so lethargic can be digni-
fied with the title-— in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to me.
If I may be allowed to illustrate my state of mind by such an example,
I should say thai I ivas exactly in the condition of the elder Mr.
Willet, after the incursion of the rioters into his bar at Chigwell.
Nothing would ha /e surprised me. If, in the momentary illumination
of any ray of intelligence that may have come upon me in the way of
thoughts of Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and bell, had
come into that little kennel before me, broad awake in broad day, and,
apologising for being djamp through walking in the sea, had handed
me a letter directed to myself, in familiar characters, I am certain I
should not have felt one atom of astonishment: I should have been
perfectly satisfied. If Neptune himself had walked in, with a toasted
shark on his trident, I should have looked upon the event as one of
the very commonest everyday occurrences.

Once — once — I found myself on deck. I don't know how I got
there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was; and com-
pletely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair of boots such
as no weak man in his senses could ever have got into. I found myself
standing, when a gleam of consciousness came upon me, holding on
to something. I don't know what. I think it wa's the boatswain: or it
may have been the pump: or possibly the cow. I can't say how long
I had been there; whether a day or a minute. I recollect trying to
think about something (about anything in the whole wide world, I
was not particular) without the smallest effect. I could not even make
out which was the sea, and which the sky, for the horizon seemed
drunk, and was flying wildly about in all directions. Even in that
incapable state, however, I recognised the lazy gentleman standing
before me: nautically clad in a suit of shaggy blue, with an oilskin
hat. But I was too imbecile, although I knew it to be he, tb separate
him from his dress; and tried to call him, I remember. Pilot. After
another interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and
recognised anocher figure in its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate
before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass;
but I knew it for the captain; and such was the cheerful influence of
his face, that I tried to smile: yes, even then I tried to smile. I saw by
his gestures that he addressed me; but it was a long time be' "j I
could make out that he remonstrated against my standing up to my

jwain: or it

g up to my

American Notes jg

knees in water— as I was; of course I don't know whv I fri^ f

soles: at the same time endeavouring I am told fn !if h^ • .1
pool. Finding that I was quite insensible tnd for Vh« ? ^"^^ '" .*^*
he humanely conducted me beSw ' ^ ^'""^ ^ "'^°^^*^'

There I remained until I eot bptf*»r- anff^r^ i.

introduction to me from a rri.^li^^'^l^n'^l^t^t'^ t Wow
with his card, on the morning of the head-winrt ■ »nH t ■

troubled with the idea that he might be np an* we'll anrt»T i°°§
times a day expecting me to call upon LrJ'in ti^saioon t ii^^**"^
him one of those cast-ir„„ imagesLi will not c'all ttem meT^who
ask, with red faces, and lustv voices what «,.» .ir.i,„„ men— who
whether it really is as bad as^t is\%;:ltntrd'rb^'S:S was'™,^
tortunng indeed; and I don't think I ever felt surh w.^* was very

SrL^S^rb-n-^i-d^o-T^^^^^

It was materiaUy assisted though. I have no dnnhf k„ o v
gale If wind, which came slowly up kt sunset wh^n^; ^ ^ ^l^""^

rvi^7rtVJiiird«'ii«SSii^^^

Its bursting into full violence was almost areUef f^^^ndous, that

sToos^Sh T ° ^ ^""?^^ S"^^^ g"^^' ^"^ l^^^is her back-that she

mmmm

f^«"l*;f f ifP.^'-i' «\^-^ »''" it^ Bhriek. and every d^o oflw Z

and^ip^iriLrrdX^ir.-^--^^^^^^^

American Notes

cannot express it Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can call
It up again, in all its fury. rage, and passion. '

And yet. m the very midst of these terrors. I was placed in a situa-
tioii so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as stroig a sense
of Its absurdity as I have now, and could no more help laughing than
I can at any other comical incident, happening unde? cir" umstance*
the most favourable to its enjoyment. About midnight wrshfoned *
sea, which forced its way through the skylights, burft open tSors
abo^e, and came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin to
whn^h'^H ^^^' consternation of my wife and a little Scotch laS;-
who, by the way, had previously sent a message to the captaki by the
stewardess, requestmg him, with her compliments, to have a steel
conductor immediately attached to the top of every mast and to the
Thf ""'^^ Ik ^l^^'J^^} the ship might not be stXck T; hghtnine
They and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such ecSs of
fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them. iLturalVSu^^^^
myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial; and nothing better
occurring to me. at the moment, than hot brandy-and-water I «m

w'ltho^t'h T.''- '' '"" rv!*^""' ^^^y- '' ^^^"g impos^sibL to stand o?S
without holding on. they were all heaped together in one corne- of ^

long sofa-a fixture extending entirely acrosi the clbin-wheTe thev

dung to each other in momentary expectation of being dSmied

When I approached this place with my specific, and w£ aW t'

admmister it with many consolatory expressions to Se newest

sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly do^ tTthe

other end ! And when I staggered to that end. and heldVut^e gl2s

once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions bvt^!

? ^IT?^^''^'^^' ^"'."^' ^"^ ^^^^ ^» rolling back aga^nTrsupUse

L ,r ^'i^^r "Pu^^^^ ^°^ *h^^ «°^^ ^°^ at least f quarter of an
hour without reaching them once; and by the time I did cSch them
the brandy-and-water was diminished; by constant sniilin a ^^o

eas^onful. To complete the group, it'is Lc^a^ toT^^^^^^^^^
this disconcerted dodger, an individual very pale W sea sfclSess
who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair last. SLveri^or and
whose only article of dress (linen not included) weie a pafr S^ dread
nought trousers; a blue jacket, formerly admired upon tKames at
Richmond; no stockings; and one slipper ^ ihames at

«.T?i*^^ outrageous antics performed by that ship next mominc
which made bed a practical pke. and getting up, by any proc?ss?ho&
of falling out. an impossibility; I say nothing. But ^ylSSrSketh^
utter drearmess and desolation that met my eyes whefl^iteraUv

tumbled up" on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean a^dTky were aU
of one dull, heavy, uniform, lead colour. There was no extend of nroi^
pect even over the dreary waste that lay around us° for the sea ran
high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop X^ewed
from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would hate bSmSt
and stupendous, no doubt; but seen from the wet and rSw S^t

only imoressed nn#» mHrHKr o«^ ^„^^a.ii- t ., , i^fung aeCKS, It

. o-.^„..jr «ii^x irciiiiuiiy . in xne gaie ol last night the

earn can call

American Notes 21

ai'd" *:L^'A^™,=™';f^^^ °- "°w of the ,ea Uk. a walnut-sheU;
The planking of the mrffli il *'u tT" '*8«°' "' "^^Y boards,
wheels were^exposed and Ltr^ ^nH*"?^ been torn sheer away. The
spray about the de^ks at ranH^'J' r.-^*' "'""""' ='"'' ''"'bed their
topmasts struckfSo^iTlsttriggllJnir^o?^^^^^^
''^'^rn^o^^oo^^l^l^atr^e'^S^^^^^^^^^^^^ bj ht^^^-^^l;. "'=*•

husbind at New York t^h^ i° H "^!"*'2"^^' °° ^^' ^^V *« J^in he;
Secondly and thirdly a^hnn..^ settled there three years before,
with some Amerkan Luse- Hnr^f./n^'^^u^^'^'^^'"^"^^"' connected
thither his beautiLl y^ng w^t^w^^^^^ T^H'^' ^"^ ^^^^"8
a fortnight, and who wal thrJ^irir ^^^ ^^^. ^^^°^ ™^"ied but
country girl I have evTseen FoilfhF^'^'II'Kr °^ ^ *^°""^^y English
couplef newly married ton ff A Fourthly fifthly, and lastly, another

thef frequ^rXiri^^ercha^^^^^^ wlfo * ^?1^" ''°"^ *^*^ endearments
they were rath4 a mysterious r.?n T J ^T ""^ "'^^^ *^an that

more guns witHm than r1^^ n^ ^^* *^^ gentleman carried
andhadtwogreaXsonboar^^^^^^^ ^°^I ^ shooting-coat,

oer that he tried hot foS p^fand Lff^H^^ ^ '^'^^^'

ness; and that he took tresertm^H ■ / ^"^ f!^ ^^ ^ ^"^^ ^^^ sea-sick-
with astonishLg perseyerance^ ^""/^f^ *? ^^^^ ^^y ^^^^^ day.

curious, that th'erdecTdedT;^^^^ "^'' '°^ *^^ -formation of t^e

bal. weTsuilh^swS "^^ "^°^^«* unprecedentedly

able, about an hoSw non^ cabm. more or less faint and miser-
duriig which intei^^?J! ^°°?' ^""^ ^^y ^j^wn on the sofas to recover;
state ^f the wJndX'm^L^^^^^^^ to communicate the

weather is always ffoW S iS!l ^^°* **^ changmg to-morrow (the
rate of sailing and so forth ^^ to-morrow, at sea), the vessel's
of, for there^snosun t?tak?f?^^K'°"^ *^^'^ ^^^^ °°^^ to tell us
will serve for ^l^tL rest He^tu^''' ^"* ^ ^'^<^^P^on of one day

be hgLTnough^^^^^^ 'TP°'^ °"^^^^^^^ *° ^«^d. if the place

bell rings and l-h../ > "^^ ^^"^^ ^"^ talk alternately. At oL a

baked loktoes and .3.'"' ?^"' ^^^'^ ^^^^ ^ steaming d°sh of

face. COM ham ' saU beef ^r ?lrh "'^'^ "^^1'^' ^"^ P^^*^^ ^^ P^^^
collops. We Ml to VirTrf +1, perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot

haye^g;erapStL^^^^ ^^^^'T' "^' ^^ °^"^^ ^' ^« ^^^ (we

fire will huS^twm^eSlt T ^' ^"""^ ^' P°''^^^^ ^^^"t it. If the
we all remark to Sfh otwTh?] -^ ^'^ ^"1*^ ^^"^^f"^" " ^t won't,
ourselves with coTts and Hnf^? it's very cold, rub our hands, cove^

and read (^ovi^as aforlTiS ^"?/'? ^°^" ^^^^ *° ^oze. talk.
K^n -._-_ ^^ ^vi,"ea as aioresaid), until dmner-^imA Af «„^ xu..'

American Notes

!!^n ? ^l ''''^*'* P*^'.**" ^ ^^''^^ medicinaUy. We sit down at table
Sr^mn^H T' ^JrT^"»y *han before^; p'rolong the meal wi?h a
rather mouldy dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges; and drink our
7^\^^ brandy-and-water. The bottles and glaLs ere Su^n
the table, and the oranges and so forth are rolling about accordinjto

«^Hp ^"'L?"'* *^." '-^^P'^ ^*y' ^^«" ^^^ ^^^or comes aowrby
special night y mvitation. to join our evening rubber: immediately on

the irH'"'^^ ''\T^^ ^ P^'*y ^* ^^i«*' ^"d ^ it is a rough n^ht^S
we take them At whist we remam with exemplary gravity (deductine

h^ chfn 'n'J^^'^fr''.^^^ ' ^^^^' '"^ ^ sou'-west;r hat tied uS
^r thl^', .1 P'lot;coat: makinrr the ground wet where he stands
By this time the card-pJaying is over, and the bottles and glassTs^e

never JLto'b.T''T^^ ^°^ '""'T ^" ^^"^^^»' *^« captain (who
?nr fhe^n! i • ^"u"* ;^ "l'^^'" "*"* °^ humour) turns up his coat collar
for the deck agam; shakes hands all round; and goes laughing outinto
the weather as merrily as to a birthday party. ^

As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity This
passenger is reportea to have lost fourteen pounds at vTnTet-un in
the saloon yesterday; and that passenger drinks his bottle of cham

£?ws Th" \fZ' '"^ ^° V .^°^^ '' (^^^ ^-'y - clerk)° noMy
whTw^ pngineer has distinctly said that there never wZ

XenT^Z^u^Ti ^^^t?f-?^d four good hands are ill, and ha^

SrieaL The !h^^^^^ ^^^ir ^"" °^ ^**^^' ^"^ ^» *h« cabins

b^en founH ,lr?nt P^T^'k'^*''"^*/^ Swigging damaged whisky, has
been found drunk; and has been played upon bv the fire-enmn/ inSi

rnVr^"'- ^"/^^ t''^''^' ^^^' ^^"^" doC-^tSrs afvariou
dmnar-tames, and go about with plasters in various places. The bake?
^ill. and so IS the pastry-cook. A new man. horribly indisposed has
been required to fill the place of the latter officer; aSS been
propped and jammed up with empty casks in a little houS u^n
deck and conimanded to roll out pie-crust, which he protest (S

S'^^'^-^^'V* ' w>f' ^ 1° ^^" '} ^°^^ ^'- ^^-«' A Teen miS

D^^;^ .1 ?V ""^ *^^ '"*^'L^'* °^ *^^^^ ^"g^t incidents at sea.
rumir r" ^;; ."^^ber and such topics as these, we were

wi?h HffiW ^V^''^*^''*^ '"1° "^^^^^^ Harbour, on the fifteenth nX
with little wind and a bright moon-indeed, we had made the Lirfit

shin r*'[ ^^*^^"^^' ^"? P"t the pilot in c ,rge-when suddenly the
ship struck upon a bank of mud. An imm Jiate rush on deck took

m W^f '°"''"' '^" ''f' 7''' ^^^^^^d i" ^" i^^^t^nt; and for a few
minutes we were m as lively a state of confusion as the greatest lov^

clstran" Tther tT '° ^^^; ^'^ r"^"^^^^' ^^ ^^^and wate^
casits. and other heavy matters, being all huddled together aft

however^ to lighten her in the head, she was soon got ofr and af^;

some driving on towards an uncomfortable line o^f ohtl^iXZ

vx^mity naa Deen amiounced very early in the disaster by a loud cry

American Notes ^q

anchor in a Strang.. onSish S^f n "^ S- J"*''J' ** "^"PP^
co.!d recogni*. although there wafan?'»ntl^\"°'"''^'.°" **"<*

stiLrtfar^e^rd ^b^^'atelrthl "'l"*"' ?" ">« "«'«•
stoppage 01 the enehie whirh h^ < k^*^ , sudden and unexpected

ear^injessantl/r rtny'1a^"tf :^S§ Thl l^f «,» °"

?s^nf rtUo'uxrth: r ^ '--^«""tg*titi°?L it?,*:

stoke,f aL*3e" hremeS torn bXl"''"'' ^ "^^ ^"^
clustered together in a smoky^^^p Sut thrw^h'''' °"^ !'.;''
engme-room, comparing notes in whlperaAft^fi,^'^**'' °' .*''^
rockets and firin? siirnal »..n= in tv,. ^ ■7^*^'^ throwing up a few
land, or at leaS ofSnlTHli,* l^P*?.' ^""^ ^^"^ f™-" the
sound presenttng itseT ^ wi?H 7 " ",'*'""'* ^"^ °*^" »«" or

over in case the tide were running n,,f if ^f^., ^^"^ heehng
to remark how desneratelv^n^^ , lu^""^ "^"^^ '* ^^«« amusing
one short mSe H^had Ld h^.T.^ *^^ ?T' P"«* ^^^«^« i^
during the whole voyage had been S^.' °".* ^'^"^ Liverpool, and

boS;r;td*rres?rnf„h^u'i^rettS.^^/^^^^^^

bnnging with him a fnl*»raKKr +0I1 **''-"™^°' i^e otticer m command

:sivfthe°^£S5S^?S^^^^^^^

had done anything but fraudrntt ^^^a W«e wav to'^Th'"""-"/
speciallv to decpiv*» fh^n- or,^ ^ "y luw d, nitie way mto the mist,

Sfwe'fad anTh"^"- " "^' ^'»"* theUfplTe'tn'th'/^ori? ™
sot'i^oron the^itor;5t°;irthe.*° '^•,;^"* ^ ''""''•' *"«• ^"

^^.irntrttltiSS^^^^^^^^^

Eased by this rerort and hvff?» ™'I° '^ ^""'"^ *•>«'■ -boots,
ebj.. weUedTfttTrtt ^t^S'^^t^^^ '''^ ^^ ^' ^^

I was dressing about half-past nine next dav wW t h. • u
humed me on deck. When I hadWt i?ov"'i^kr'^!"..*'l^°°!f f*"™
""u aamp, and there were bleak hills "ali" round "^sTNo^'we^S

if t\

American Notes

gliding down a smooth, broad stream, at the rate of eleven miles an
hour: our colmirs flying gaily; our crew rigged out in their smartest
clothes; our officers in uniform again; the sun shining as on a brilliant
^P"\*?^y *" England; the land stretched out on either side, streaked
witn light patches of snow; white wooden houses; people at their
doors; telegraphs working; flags hoisted; wharfs appearinif ships-
quays crowded with people; distant noises; shouts; men and boys
running down steep places towards the pier: a)l more bright and sky
and freshto our unused ej^es than words can paint them. We came
to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces; got alongside, and were made
fast, after some shouting and straining of cables; darted, a score of us
along the gangway, almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us
and before it had reached the ship— and leaped upon the firm glad
eartn again !

I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, though it
had been a curiosity of ugly dulness. But I carried away with me a
most pleasant impression of the town and its inhabitants, and have
preserved it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that I came home,
without having found an opportunity of returning thither, and once
more shaking hands with the friends I made that day

It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council and
General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed on the
commencement of a new Session of Parliament in England were so
closely copied, and so gravely presented on a small scale, that it was
like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope
The governor as her Majesty's representative, delivered what may
be called the Speech from the Throne. He said what he had to sav
manfully and well. The military band outside the building struck up
God save the Queen " with great vigour before his Excellency had
quite finished; the people shouted; the in's rubbed their hands- the
out s shook their heads; the Government party said there never was
such a good speech; the Opposition declared there never was such a
bad one; the Speaker and members of the House of Assembly with-
drew from the bar to say a great deal among themselves and do a
little: and, in short, everything went on, and pron:ised to go on iust
as It does at home upon th like occasions.^

The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being com-
manded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. Several streets
of good breadth and appearance extend from its summit to the
water-side, and are intersected by cross streets running parallel with
the nyer. The houses are chiefly of wood. The market is abundantly
supplied; and provisions are exceedingly cheap. The weather being
unusually mild at that time for the season of the year, there was no
sleighmg: but there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and by-
places, and some of them, from the gorgeous quality of their decora-
tions, might have " gone on" without alteration as triumphal cars
in a melodrama at Astley's. The day was uncommonly fine- the air
Q idim iieditiixUi, me vvnuit; uspcct oi tne town cheerful

American Notes 2^?

thriving, and industrious. *^

len^tl^hlv'nrcol^^^^^^^^ -^ -^^-^« the mails. At

two or three choice spirits who hf ^L^ T"" P^^^^ngers (including
and champagne^rr^jfu^nd ?y^gTn?^^^^^^^^ - »

oT£?^Sr ' ^^^ -^^-^ were^gr;^.^^n\^^t„^^^^^^^^ ^ "s??^'

tumS^Slel"^^^^^^^^^^ ^X^^yoi Fundy. we

On the next afternoon that fs?oii. ?^* ^"^ ^" "^^^^ ^^y.

secondof January an American^^Lu^^ T ^^t^^^^y. the twentir-
afterwards the BriSnnS sSlm^n^^^^^^^ ^"d soon

days out. was telegraph^ at Cton ' ' '"^ ^'"'^°°^' ^^^^^^^^

The indescribable interest with which I sfrpin^,i r^
first patches of American soil Deeo^d h J m^f k n T^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^
sea. and followed them L thev sweltn k "^^^^^^^^^om the green
ceptible degrees, into a'L'n^TnuTuf iLVcLT'c^T' T^^^^
exaggerated. A sharp keen wind blew dT^H L. !' ^ ^^''^^^^ ^
prevailed on shore; and the S was most tvf^rv^^^^^ ^^'^ ^^°^*
mtensely clear, and drv and bri^hf ^hll fu I ^* ^he an- was so
only endurable, but delkious ^ ' ^* *^' temperature was not

sideTheVoXi^nd\r Th'^^^^^^^^^ "^^' ^^'^ - — along-

should have had them^Sopen ^nd ^ll?-^^^ ^ ^'^"'^ ^

-are topics which I will ™Drolon;Th1<f "^ "^^ °^j^cts

will I more than hintlt m3^S^^^^ ^^^""^^ Neither

party of most active perTonrwho ^r^ilK??*^^!''' ^^PP^^ing that a
their lives as we appr?rchpH VL scrambled on board at the peril of
that industrio^: daSTttoml;X^^^^^ ~T to

of news slung about the neck<5 nf «nlf ' ^^1? ?^ leathern wallets
hands of all thev were Fnfw uT' ^^"^ the broad sheets in the
gentleman in a ^ScoS^^ '^Tj"" P^^«°^ (^« one

^ As quick as possible." said I.
Right away.?" said the waiter.

Alter a moment's hesitation. I answered " I " ^f h. a
Not right awav?" ct\^a +>,! **".^w*^rea i , at hazard,
that made me sTS" *^' ^^'*""' ^^th an amount of surprise

it Lthi'nrt.^?.l°.^^^^^^^^^^^^ "No; I would rather hav.
K.,.. ^, ,v -•- •"^- J^ i"tc it very much "

At th.s. I reaily thought the waiteYmust have gone out of his mind:

SS6

American Notes

as I believe he would have done, but for the interposition of another
man, who whispered in his ear, "Directly."

"Well! and that's a fact!" said the waiter, looking helplesslv at
me: "Right away." & f y »■

I saw now that "Right away" and "Directly" were one and the
same thing. So I reversed my previous answer, and sat down to
dinner in ten minutes aftenvards; and a capital dinner it was.

The hotel (a very excellent one) is called the Tremont House. It
has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and passages than I can
remember, or the reader would believe.

CHAPTER III

BOSTON

In all the public establishments of America, the utmost courtesy
prevails. Most of our Departments are susceptible of considerable
improvement in this respect, but the Custom-house above all others
would do well to take example from the United States and render it-
self somewhat less odious and offensive to foreigners. The servile
rapacity of the French off ;ials is sufficiently contemptible; but there
is a surly boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all per-
sons who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the nation that
keeps such ill-conditioned curs snarling about its gates.

When I landed in America, I could not help bemg strongly im-
pressed with the contrast their Custom-house presented, and the
attention, politeness and good humour with which its officers dis-
charged their duty.

As we did not land at Boston, in consequence of some detention at
the wharf, until after dark, I received my first imprejsions of the city
m walking down to the Custom-house on the morning after our arrival
which was Sunday. I am afraid to say, by the way. how many offers
of pews and seats in church for that morning were made ,o us, by
formal note of invitation, before we had half finished our first dinner
in America, but if I may be allowed to make a moderate guess
without going into nicer calculation, I should say that at least as
many sittings were proffered us, as would have accommodated a
score or two of grown-up families. The number of creeds and forms of
religion to which the pleasure of our company was requested, was in
very fair proportion.

Not being able, in the absence of any change of clothes, to go to
church that day, we were compelled to decline these kindnesses, one
and all; and I was reluctantly obliged to forego the delight of hearing
Dr. Channing, who happened to preach that morning for the first
time in. a very long interval. I mention the name of this distinguished

American Notes 27

«?.^nTS"'P^''^^'^ '^^'^ ^r^^ ^^°"^ I ^o" afterwards had the pleas-
ure of becoming personally acquainted), that I may have the cStm

St Zh "u^:-^""^ tny humble tribute of admiration and respfct o^
tt^i l^'^'*'^' ^""^ character; and for the bold philanthronv w th
it^l^lLTJy^'''''''' '^"^^^" '^ ^^^* --* hid'eous b&ru'l
To return to Boston. When I got into the streets upon this Sundav
mornmg the an- was so clear, the houses wc-2 so br?ht and gav the
signboards were painted in such gaudy colours; the ^Ided letter!
were so very golden; the bricks were so very red Xltone wnl ^^
very white, the blinds and area railings w?re so ver^ Zen t£
knobs and plates upon the street doSrs so marvelSuSv briS?
and twinkling; and all so slight and unsubstantial L appeLancf^
that every thoroughfare in the city looked exactly like a scene inl^
pantomime. It rarely happens in the business stre^ets that a ?rades

T^;^ei^^l "'°'r '^'^" t^y^^^y ^ tradesman, where eve^body
IS a merchant, resides above his store; so that many occupations are
often carried on m one house, and the whole front is covered with
boards and mscnptions. As I walked along. I kept glancLf up It
these boards, confidently expecting to see a few of them chang^hito
something; and I never turned a corner suddenly without SfnVou?
for the clown and pantaloon, who. I had no doubt, were hTding^n a
doorway or behind some pillar close at hand. As io HarleS Sid
Columbme I discovered immediately that they lodged (thev ar^
always lookmg after lodgings in a pantomime) at^a very small c^ock
maker s one story high, near the hotel; which in adSn^o vaSs
synibols and devices, almost covering the whole front had ISea?
dial hanging out-to be jumped through, of course. ^^^ ^ g^^^t

th JcftfTh^. f f ' '* P""?^^ u' ^"^^^ "^^"^ unsubstantial-looking than
the city. The white wooden houses (so white that it makes one win V
to look at them), with their green jalousie blinds are sTsorinlded .^^
dropped about in all directions, without seeming to have an^^^^^^^
all in the ground; and the small churches and chlpels are so Drim .nH
bright and highly varnished; that I almost beire^ed ?S who"ealSr
Stt'bt'^''" "P P^^^^"^^^^ ^^^^ ^ ^^^^^'« *-y' and^'rtimetinfo a
_ The city is a beautiful one. and cannot fail. I should ima^*n*> +^
ITforthe'r^'^r^T^ favourably. The private dweirgTouses
and the n,X K ^fT*' ^^T ^"^ "^"^^^^^ the shops extremely good

the s^f^mit of . hJ f '" V ^''^'°"'"- "^^' ^^^' H°"«« i« bu/t upon
"le summit ot a hill, which rises graduallv at fir«+ nnH o*+«, j

by a steep ascent, almost from thfwater's edee In frontt Z"^^"*^'
enclosure, called the Common. The slle Is beautTful an^^^^^^^^
inoH 1 ^ 'hJT'^^^ panoramic view of the whole towran?nS4bour
L'nL'rlfharbe^ com„,odio,s offices. ftlntLCwo

State Zh 'w^/i;J!?„°/i^?^ .?°"«^. of_ Representatives of the

PQ T eo,7"K * '-'""""S^- "i Liiu otner. tne benate. Such proceedinPQ

as I .aw here, were conducted with perfect gravity and decorum!

American Notes

Thlf • ^^?*^u?ll"^^*''^ *° ^'P^« attention and respect.

There IS no doubt that much of the intellectual refinement and
superiority of Boston, is referable to the quiet influence of the Unf
versity of Cambridge, which is within three or four Ss of the c^^'
The resident professors at that university are gentlemen of learni^;
and varied attainments; and are. without one ex?ept rtLf I can cal!
to mmd. men who would shed a grace upon, and do honour to anv
society in the civilised world. Many of the resident gen?^in Boston
and Its neighbourhood, and I think I am not mistaken ^ addhS a
large majority of those who are attached to the liberal professSns
there, have been educated at this same school. Whatever the defects
of American universities may be. they disseminate no prejudfces rear
no bigots; dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions neverlnter
nose between the people and their improvement; exclude To man
because of his religious opinions; above%:ii. in their whole cours^o^

Z"Jnrti:tn:T^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^ --''' -^ ^ ^-^^ one%:^o? lyinl
It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me to observe th^
almost imperceptible, but not less certain effect, wrough^^^^^^^^ tWs
institution among the small community of Boston- and to note a?
every turn the humanising tastes and desires it has engendered the
affectionate friendships to which it has given rise- the amount of
vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The folden calf they irsWp at
Boston IS a pigmy compared with the gilnt efii^ies set uD^n nfh^r
parts of that vast counting-house which lies beyofd the AtlLtic and
the almighty dollar sinks into something compStelv instnm^ant
amidst a whole Pantheon of better gods. P^'^'^^^^y insignificant.
Above all. I sincerely believe that the public instifii+inn« o«^
chanties of this capital of Massachusetts are L neLrp^rfe^rL
most considerate wisdom, benevolence, and humanity can r^ake
them. I never m my life was more affected by the contemplation of
happmess under circumstances of privation and berefvement than
in my visits to these establishments cavemeni, tnan

f hif fh^ ^^^^ ^-^^ P^^^'^""* ^^^^"'^^ °^ ^" «"^h institutions in America
that they are either supported by the Stato or assisted by the S-ate'

concert w1t\"ft'' '""f ""' "^'?"? ''' ""''P'^^ ^^^d) thatVhey act S
concert with it and are emphatically the people's I cannot h„t

think, with a view to the principle and its tendency to devate or
depress the character of the industrious classes, that ^Public Charitv
is immeasurably better than a Private Foundation n^^o+rT^
munificently the latter nxay be end^tl'd'^our own co^^L^r^
It has not. until within these later days, been a very populaVfaThfon
with governments to display any extraordinary reg^a?dTr the Sea?
mass of the people or to recognise their exi4en?ns improSwe
creatures, private charities, unexampled in the history o??he eirth
have ansjn. to do an incalculable amount of good amon^the desti
t.t. and afflicted But the government of the c^n^r^ h^l^'n^ LI^^^
act nor part m them, is not in the receipt of any portion ofthe"'

lot*

grati-

American Notes 20

tude they inspire; and, offering very little shelter or r«i,-«f k^ ^ ^^
which is to be found in the workhouse AnHfw m I ^^ ^Yond that
naturally, to be looked upr by t^e poor rat w' ^ 'r^' "°* "^*
quick to correct and punish than a^^fn/ ! f ^ ^^^"^ ^^^t^^"'
vigilant in their hour oWd ""^ protector. merciful and

tJ^lZ^^^^'nt^ittZe- STh?reS's^oYtr^^^ ^""^^^*^^ ^3^
in Doctors' Commons canbundantK nrote 9 ^- '°^^*^^^
old gentleman or lady, surrounded byL^^^^^^^^^^ "^^

low average, a will a-week. The old gTnttman or iJ^"" "^°'' ^

remarkable in the best of times for go^od tem^^^^ fufenT ''''?
pams from head to foot- full of fanr,-^= orT^^ ' ^ i °^ ^^^^^ ^^^
distrust, suspicion, and dishL T^cTncei^^^^^^^^ f,"» °f «Pleen,

ones, is at last the sole business of such I 1171'.^'''^.'"'^^"^ "^^^
relations and friends (somrorwLm hp^L t*^';' ^^^^t^nce; and
inherit a large share Tthf ^rorrtvL^T.v^^^^
cradles speallly disqualified fZ^dev^otfn"^^^^^^^^ ^^^

pursuit, on that account) arp sn off«« ^^a ''"'^"^seives to any useful

farily cut off, ^^relru^^^:Si:^ ^'^^^^^'^^^^'^ ^^'^-
family, down to the remote t cousin is keot in ? r,^;^!l w° '^''°'^
length it becomes plain that th^ o Hii/ '^ "Perpetual fever. At

to live; and the plaLrtWsl^c'T ^. *e"n,°;fckX"he:Mrd °"«
gentleman perceives that evervhnri,r Li^ cieariy the old lady or
poor old dying reUtivf whSe the oM T'^^^''^ .^^^^'"^ ^^^^
another last will-podiivdrt^^^^^^^^^^ tl^^ °^ gentleman makes

in a china teapot, and expirWnLr?J Th t^ ^^^ «^°^e

whole of the rL and peTsS eTal'fs^div^^^^^^^^

chanties; and that the deadanH anr,^ +^ot V u "\^^®®^ half-a-dozen

to do a great deal of good at th^^^^^^ '"^ ^"'' '^'^^ ^^^^^

passion Ind misery ^ ' ^°'* ""^ ^"^ immense amount of evil

at'btt'^n.'S^'^p^^^^^^^^^^ for the Blind,

annual report to^tL corpo^^^^^^^ Thf ^ ^^- *'".'l','' ^^° "^^^e an
are admitted gratuitousl? Thot^V^^^^ mdigent blind of that state
necticut. or fr^ the states I? M.W adjoining state of Con-

are admitted by a warrant from^l!; T^f °"^ ?^ ^^^ Hampshire,
belong; or. failW Tha" multTnH ? . "^^'"^ ^^^^ respectively
the payment of about Wnf '^5""^*^ ^"'^"^S ^^^^ fiends, for

boar^Ind l^stlttanT^e'n^rtSf^^^^^^^^ f^ ^^^^^

hTw^r s^:- ;t,-^^^^^^^^ eaTh^pi^i;:

exceed tw^offars per wLk^ T^ ^^ ^^^ ^°^^' ^^^^^ will Jot
English; "and he wm be crldSd^^fWK^ ""^"^ *^^" ^^^^t shUlings
state, or by his friend. p^S^k u-^^ t^^e amount paid for him by the

of th; stocl wh/cHf uses s^^^^^^ ""^^ ""^ ^^^ ^^^ <^o«t "

week will be his own Bribe thtdvl^^^^^^^ °"\^°"^^ P«-

earnings will mnr. fKo^ ^1.^^^ ^^^ ^^ '^^^f ^. known whether his

si>ou,d:hewillhave7tTtSoptrt^^feri^:L^t''rii'e^^

if!

American Notes

mgs, or not. Those who prove unable to earn their own livelihood will
not be letained; as it is not desirable to convert the establishment
mto an almshouse, or to retain any but working bees in the hive
Those who by physical or mental imbecility are disqualified from
work, are thereby disqualified from being members of an industrious
community; and they can be better provided for in establishments
ntted for the mfirm. •

I went to see this place one very fine winter morning: an Italian
sky above, and the air so clear and bright on every side, that even mv
eyes, which are none of the best, could follow the minute lines and
scraps of tracery in distant buildings. Like most other publi- institu-
tions m America, of the same class, it stands a mile or two without
the town, in a cheerful healthy spoi and is an airy, spacious hand-
some edifice. It IS built upon a height, commanding the harbour
When I paused for a moment at the door, and marked how fresh and
free the whole scene was— what sparkling bubbles glanced upon the
waves, and welled up every moment to the surface, as though the
world below, like that above. wer« radiant with the bright day and
gushing over m its fulness of light: when I gazed from sail to sail
away upon a ship at sea, a tiny speck of shining white, the only cloud
upon the still deep, distant blue— and. turning, saw a blind boy with
his sightless face addressed that way. as though he too had some
sense withm him of the glorious distance: I felt a kind of sorrow that
the place should be so very light, and a strange wish thflt for his sake
It were darker. It was but momentary, of course, and a mere fancy,
but I felt it keenly for all that. ^

The children were at their daily tasks in different rooms, except a
few who were already dismissed, and were at play. Here, as in many
institutions, no uniform is worn; and I was very glad of it for two
reasons. Firstly, because I am sure that nothing but senseless custom
and want of thought would reconcile us to the liveries and badges we
are so fond of at home. Secondly, because the absence of these things
presents each child to the visitor in his or her own proper character
with Its mdividuality unimpaired; not lost in a dull. ugly, monoton-
ous repetition of the same unmeaning garl}: which is really an im-
portant consideration. The wisdom of encouraging a little harmless
pnde m personal appearance eve i among the blind, or the whimsical
absurdity of considering charity and leather breeches inseparable
companions, as we do. requires no comment.

Good order, cleanliness, and comfort, pervaded every corner of the
building. The various classes, who were gathered round their teachers
answered the questions put to them with readiness and intelligence'
and m a spirit of cheerful contest for precedence which pleased me
very much. Those who were at play, were gleesome and noisy as other
children. More spiritual and affectionate friendships appeared to exist
among them, than would be found among other young persons suffer-
ing under no deprivation: but this I exnentpH anH wac r^r-^^^^^A 4.^
hnd. It is a part of the great scheme of Heaven's merciful considera-

American Notes

tion for the afflicted.

In a portion of the building, set apart for that purpose, are work-
shops for bhnd persons whose education is finished, and who have
acquured a trade, but who cannot pursue it in an ordinary manu-
factory because of their deprivation. Several people were at work
here; making brushes, mattresses, and so forth; and the cheerf-ilness
mdustry. and good order discernible in every other part of the build-
mg. extended to this department also.

On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired, without any guide
or leader, to a spacious music-hall, where they took their seats in an
orchestra erected for that purpose, and listened with manifest delight
to a voluntary on the organ, played by one of themselves. At its con-
clusion the performer, a boy of nineteen or twenty, gave place to a
gu-1; and to her accompaniment they all sang a hymn, and afterwards

?u u°!,? "'''• i* ^^^ ""^"^ ^^^ *° ^°«k "Pon and hear them, happy
though their condition unquestionably was; and I saw that one blind
girl, who (being for the time deprived of the use of her limbs, by
Illness) sat close beside me with her face towards them, wept silently
the while she listened. ^

It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see how free they
are from all concealment of what is passing in their thoughts; observ-
mg which a man with eyes may blush to contemplate the mask he
wears Allowing for one shade of anxious expression which is never
absent from their countenances, and the like of which we may readilv
detect in our own faces if we try to feel our way in the dark, every
Idea, as ic rises within therji, is expressed with the lightning's speed
and nature s truth If the company at a rout, or drawing-room at
court, could only for one time be as unconscious of the eyes upon
them as blind men and women are, what secrets would come out and
what a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so liiuch
pity, would appear to be !

a Sf W?nl^H°'r""!? ^° "^t ^i ^ '^* ^°^" ^" ^^°*^^^ ^«o°^. before
t?^'ul ' ?^' ^""^ '^""'^' destitute of smell; and nearly so of
taste: before a fair young creature with every liuman. faculty, and
hope and power of goodness and affection, inclosed within her deli-
cate irame and but one outward sense— the sense of touch. There

? anf ;.^ '?rT; ^""^^ "P- ^' '^ ^"""' ^" ^ "^^^b^^ ce». impervious
t any ray of light, or particle of sound; with her poor white hand

peeping through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for

help, that an Immortal soul might be awakened

radinnf ^H?""-^ I n''^^^ ""P"" ^^^' *^^ ^^^P ^^^ ^''^^^- Her face was
radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own

d^v.l' ^^%b°""d about a head, whose intellectual capacity and

Its bio^r"'' T' ^^f ^^i?"y expressed in its graceful outlinJ. aSd

ts broad open brow; her dress, arranged by herfelf. was a pattern of

neatness and simplicity; the work she had knitted, lav h««,d« w 1,°.

rSn'^J"'^''"!^ "^^ """ ^^^ ^^"^ '^^ ^^^"^d upon.-Fr(;m~the mournful
rum of such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle

f 1

American Notes

tender, guileless, grateful-hearted beinR

roi-.;S\:r'e;eUdrrdoiVst\'Xres^^^ ^ '^'^''^ """- "-d
I took it up. and saw ttot she had ^,H '*^"°" "I^" the ground.

wore hersel?. and fastened ittoufitTmtt^eT """' '"^•' ^' ^'"'
for^t ^XZ^'l^t:Z;j:f^^^-^^^ and
engaged in an animated commun^lZn fu'"^ *^^ '"'"•^""^ ^i-e
beside her. This was a JavourTte SeSwi^i' th^ .'""'""^ ^">° »*
couM s. the face of her fair instructor shfw^JlKt^^rieJ'iet

-^'o'Z:ZTtt:n^;^Z'^^^^^^!l^^ °'^l^ history, from an
.3 a^ver, heautifu. Ind tou?hln7n"artarera„7^^^^^^^

Ha|rpsh^roL%'hrt'^e^i^irof";fetj£.'TSo%h^^^

half old that her parenis K? S^d to re^ hlr Ih"^ "^ ^T '""' ^
severe fits, which seemed to rack Tct Lm^^ 1 S^" ™^ ^"''J«<=t *»
of endurance: and life was held bvtl^fc k "* I* "^y""* "^■' ?»«■«■•
year and a half old, shriemed^o t»n iJ''^ *^""«- >"■* "hen a

"^^h:^hTr'm1„\T'^'""*~

deve'io^dlLmsdtrr^Tdu^nr.rr ^"^ '° *^^^^^

she enlcTyed, she appir?(makr/d^f.\n " ™''?' °' health which

stpl^-tetrnd— o^^S^SF^'^^^^^^^^^

and hearing wer^^ne for ^ve? The no^rth'Sf ^ S"**"""^" ^«"

ended. The fever rtged durinT..™!,'^ . } s suffenngs were not

kept in bed in a S^keJSr^lZZ^l^^l^'Jr "r*"^ ^"^ -"«
unsupported, and two years tefor-^hl ^i^ 1°" *^ <=°"'1<* "alk
now observed that her sense n?«m^n ?",''' "" "P ^" "^ay- " was

and consequently, h"tTert::rrsmtl'ZnO^^^^^^^

heaihItm?d^:stred"/dX wal^^f*"? *■>" ^^ child's bodily
ticeship of 'ife and the worid ^"^ *° '"*"■ "P°° "er appren-

theTomb"w:re"a;^„T]trTo ^StJ^^ darkness and the sUence of
ing smUe, no father°sTOTce taS^SrtT'^fl'^'i-°'^h her answer-
brothers and siste-s weie hnf ^„! ^ ^ '™*^** his sounds:_they,

touch but whicfdird" oUromThe L'^"?„"romfhr ^*^'' "^^
warmth, and in the now«»r r^f i/^ i^ ^iture ot the house, save in

resi«cts'fromthedo7an7the°'cir'"°*'°"' ''"^ °°* «™" '^ *hese
at the imu^ortal spirit which had been implanted within her

American Notes

wi?h the form, density weieht ^nHhi * f *' ""= ^"""^^ 'f'^'""'"
lay her hands uponlLToufJed^t t he°/ SeulJ^^Vanr ""}
arms, as she was occupied about the hou^ anH hH a "S^ ^"'^

sralittTe"! a'^d t*o° ^^ ^'y*'''". SAt^'ve^ttS t'o"

tuJt: M''Tomlr:ttg":^rhe'r ^etr^^' *''^,* *« "P"-
that the moral efiects of L7^et^LJ^S!<- ^' T^ '""'*^<^: ^"d
Those who cannot be enliehLrrt J™ 1 '°°" ""^^an to appear.

by force; and this, coupfedt H^her Llf °riva«L°°'^ "! ^°"*^°"=<J
reduced her to a worse condition tL^tl ^ Au°T' ™"=* '°°" have
but for timely and unhoped for aW ^' °' *"' '^^''^ *'^* P^"^"",

imm^diltd/JSieLrt: Hanove^fsefheV" ??" °H^*' <;''"'^- -<>
formed figure- a stronrfj^marl!!^ ^°"°"^ ''«'■ "'th a well-

a large an^ biutif'uuTl^ap^edtadSh^^^^^^^^ temperament;

action. The parents were eLi^taduced to c"nsentTo h^^^ ^" "'"'l^
Boston, and on the ith of o/i-nho, .0 consent to her commg to
Institution. * October, 1837, they brought her to the

tw7,^Lu uSltheraretco'::S?e7'''-r'. '''" -'''*»S -"out

somewhat familiar wittthTinmrte" the a«emn[ Z"^ '"'f'^' ^"'^
her knowledge of arbitrary «^= k„ v, v ^P* ^^^ "^^^^ to ^ive
thoughts with others ^ * ' '^ '^'"'"' *« """^^ interch^ge

bund'uTaTngu\V'of™grnn*t°he'"h''°P*fl^'*^^ *° 80 on to

-ts?^td^:=^a¥ 9?-p^^

and the mode and cnnriiti/,1^ „* express her idea of the existence,

would have beereasy bu? ve/yTnfs"?' ?*5'3',«>ing. The formed

difficult, but, if Lc'oSplSLer7e^ efiectTal 1 1"''" ''r^" '"'^
to try the latter. ^ enectual. I determmej therefore

use!?u'ch'^t\nTes1:rt IZnTv' \'^''"'« ^^«^'- '" ^■"'"on
labels with thei names nrin'l^H.'; ^"r"'/,"- ^"'' "' ^ting upon them
carefully, and soon of cm ?,f h" k""''" • u"*.*""' ^"'^ ^^e felt very
spoo « differed Ts much fmm /h!'"®'"?''f , *'"" *'^^ "°"''^d line^
dm-ered from the keyTform °°''"' ""'^ * ^^-^ ^^ '^^ ^P°°»

the'^':"errpu"i'„tohe?hifdfa„"d'*h *'^ ^^T '^'^^ P""*^'' "P-
— •.- •, ,,'^ " "^^ nanas. and she .•so'^n r>Ksof,r«^ 4-v,--^ -^i-

aixiiijar to the onp«? npQf<:^H /^r, +1,^ x.- i ~ "i^C, "'"^"^ ^'-^^ i^"<ii. uiey were

Of this simikri?rbvTvL/th.lK'^^ ^^^ '^°^"^ ^^^ perception

^^^ miiarity by laying the label h ey upon the key, and the label

American Notes

spoon upon the spoon. She was encouraged here by the natural si^n
of approbation, patting on the head. ^ natural sign

.^.P^^^f^^ process was then repeated with all the articles which
she could handle; and she very easily learned to^l^ZthlZ
labels upon them. It ^as evident, however that ^^e onfv inftiH^^^
exercise was that of imitation and memory She recol^^^^^^^^^

^?^^^:^^^^^^ -^ ^^^^^^^^Z^^n o1

+^ i,^^*^"" ^ "I^'v ' instead of labels, the individual letters were ^iv^n
to her on detached bits of paper: they were arranapH ^^XT •?
as to spell 6 oo k key, ScJtLn theyVe^e mS up^fa heaJ^^^^^^^

S^rf "^ft ^""^ ^'' *° ^""^"^^ *^^"^ herself so iL?o express the
words book.key, &c.: and she did so express the

this truth dawned upon ier S "pread ?ts i4m to hTr"/ "T

or . ; r \"^ ^"^'"^^ ^^^"^ h^^ded to her. for instance a Dencli

Se|rt ?oLr-d ^r^ rh~e'ni^si! — -
Sh^ThTrro'^r^p-irtL*-^^^^^^^^^

begun to work i^^^i.rZ^!:^i;^:^^:-l^^ had

American Notes

A Tl !^ rT^' ^^"* *^^^^ "months after she had com-
menced that the first report of her case was made, in which it w^
stated that 'she has just learned the manual alphabet, ns used bvTS
deaf mutes, and it is a subject of delight and wonoer to see how
rapidly, correctly, and eagerly, she goes on with her labours uZ
teacher gives ht: a new object, for instance, a pencil, first lets her
examine It. and get an idea of its use. then teaches her how to spell
It by making the signs for the letters with her own fingers the chUd
grasps her hand, and feels her fingers, as the different letters are
formed; she urns her head a little on one side like a person stenrnR
closely: her lips are apart; she seems scarcely to breathe- and he?
countenance at first anxious, gradually changes to a smile as she
comprehends the lesson. She then holds ip her tiny finger^and sp^Us
the word m the manual alphabet; next, she takes her t™s?nd
arranges her letters; and last, to make sure that she is rS^t she
takes the whole of the types composing the word, and pin els them
h^'X'whr^Tlr'^ the pencil, or 'whatever the obj£ may ^
The whole of the succeeding year was passed in gratifying her
eager mquu-ies for the names of every object which she Sould possibly
handle; m exercising her in the use of the manual alphabet; in^extend^
mg m every possible way her knowledge of the physical relat^ns of
things; and m proper care of her health. relations oi

" 'It has been ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt that
she cannot see a ray of light, cannot hear the least sound and never
exercises her sense of smell, if she have any. Thus her mind SwelL S

nfJ^ 'of ^^"^ '^^^T^' ^' P'°*°"^^ ^' t^^t °f a closed tomb at miS
night. Of beautiful sights, and sweet sounds, and pleasant odours

bl^wr ^T'P^^°" '. ^^^ertheless. she seems as hCy and pl^^^^^^^
as a bird or a lamb; and the employment of her intellectual facS
or the acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure which

Ke'l^utT^^l/'J.^^j; ^"P^^"^^ ''^'^'''' ^^eleyT:ee::^t
Irepine but has all the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood She is

fond of fun and frolic, and when playing with the rest of the children
Iher shrill laugh sounds loudest of the group. cniidren.

I " 'When left alone, she seems very happy if she have her knitting
or sewing, and will busy herself for hours; if she have To occumtiSf
she evidently amuses herself by imaginary dialogues, or by re^ca^^^^^^^^
past impressions; she counts with her fingers, or spells out namef
of things which she has recently learned, in the manual a^phat^Hf

tfld' T*"'- '^.^l' ^°""^y self-communion she seems to reason
Ireflect and argue; if she spell a word wrong with the fingers of her

b^sLn'of dt' '"' w'!^ ''?^.^ ? "^*^ ^^^^^^*' ^« her Sher does!
EieaH^nl ""^^^Sr^tlT 4 "^_^*' *,^- «h- pats herself upon the
-, _-_ -....,^^ p-xvaacQ. jfiv aoiiieumes purooseiv sneik a ^x7r,r,i

md then with the right hand strikes the left, as if to correct S

'i it

. -^i Ma ... i fc - a»fea»gfcii. .i^;^ -/

Amencan Notes

" 'During the >car she has attained great dexterity in the use of
the manual alphaljet of the deaf mutes; and she spells out the words
and sentences which she knows, so fast and so deftly, that only those
accustomed to this language can follow with the eye the rapid motions
of her fingers.

" 'But wonderful as is the rapidity with which she writes her
thoughts upon the air, still more so is the ease and accuracy with
which she reads the words thus written by another; grasping their
hands in hers, and following every movement of their fingers, as
letter after letter conveys their meaning to her mind. It is in this
way that she converses with h'^r blind playmates, and nothing can
more forcibly show the power of mind in forcing matter to its pur-
pose than a meeting between them. For if great talent and skill are
necessary for two pantomimes to paint their thoughts and feelings
by the movements of the body, and the expression of the counte-
nance, how much greater the difficulty when darkness shrouds them
both, and the one can hear no sound.

" 'When Lciura is walking through a passage-way, with her hands
spread before her, she knows instantly every one she meets, and
passes them with a sign of recognition: but if it be a girl of her own
age, and especially if it be one of her favourites, there is instantly a
bright smile of recognition, a twining of arms, a grasping cf hands,
and a swift telegraphing upon the tiny fingers; whose rapid evolu-
tions convey the thoughts and feelings from the outposts of one
mind to those of the other. There are questions and answers, ex-
changeo of joy or sorrow, there are kissings and partings, just as
between little children with all their senses.'

"During this year, and six months after she had left home, her
mother came to visit her, and the scene of their meeting was an
interesting one.

"The mother stood some time, gazing ^ith overflowing eyes upon
her unfortunate child, who, all unconscious of her presence, was
playing about the room. Presently Laura ran against her, and at
once began feeling her hands, ex?<,mining. her dress, and trying to
find out if she knew her; but not succeeding in this, she turned away
as from a stranger, and the poor woman could not conceal the pang
she felt, at finding that her beloved child did not know her.

"She then gave Laura a string of beads which she i^sed to wear
at home, which were recognised by the child at once, who, with
much joy, put them around her neck, and sought me eagerly to say
she understood the string was from her home.

"The mother now sought to caress her, but poor Laura repelled
her, preferring to be with her acquaintances.

"Another article from home was now given her, and she began
to look much interested; she examined the stranger much closer,
and gave me to understand that she knew she came from Hanover;
she even endured her caresses, but would leave her with indifference
at the slightest signal. The distress of the mother was now painful

American Notes

to behold; for, although she had feared that she should not be
recognised, the painful reality of being treated with cold indifierence
by a darling child, was too much for woman's nature to bear.

"After a while, on the mother taking hold of her again, a vague
idea seemed to flit across Laura's mind, that this could not be a
stranger; she therefore felt her hands very eagerly, while her coun-
tenance assumed an expression of intense interest; she became very
pale; and then suddenly red; hope seemed struggling with doubt and
anxiety, and never were contending emotions more strongly painted
upon the human face: at this moment of painful uncertainty, the
mother drew her close to her side, and kissed her fondly, when at
once the truth flashed upon the child, and all mistrust and anxiety
disappeared from her face, as with an expression of exceeding joy
she eagerly nestled to the bosom of her parent, and yielded herself
to her fond embraces.

"After this, the beads were all unheeded; the playthings which
were offered to her were utterly disregarded; her playmates, for
whom but a moment before she gladly left the stranger, 'now vainly
strove to pull her from her mother; and though she yielded her usual
instantaneous obedience to my signal to follow me, it was evidently
with painful reluctance. She clung close to me, as if bewildered and
fearful; and when, after a moment, I took her to her mother, she
sprang to her arms, and clung to her with eager joy.

"The subsequent parting between them, showed alike the affection.
the intelligence, and the resolution of the child.

"Laura accompanied her mother to the door, clinging close to her
all the way, until they arrived at the threshold, where she paused,
and felt around, to ascert in who was near her. Perceiving the
matron, of whom she is very fond, she grasped her with one hand,
holding on convulsively to her mother with the other; and thus she
stood for a moment; then she dropped her mother's hand; put her
handkerchief to her eyes; and turning round, clung sobbing to the
matron; while her mother departed, with emotions as deep as those
of her child.

"It has been remarked in former reports, that she can distinguish
different degrees of intellect in others, and that she soon regarded,
almost with contempt, a new-comer, when, after a few days, she
discovered her weakness of mind. This unamiable part of her
character has been more strongly developed during the past year.

"She chooses for her friends and companions, those children who
are intelligent, and can talk best with her; and she evidently dislikes
to be with those who are deficient in intellect, unless, indeed, she
can make them serve her purposes, which she is evidently inclined
to do. She takes advantage of them, and makes them wait upon her,

various ways shows her Saxon blood.
"She is fond of having other children noticed and caressed by the

i '. t;

American Notes

teachers, and those whom she respects; but this must not be carried
too far. or she becomes jealous. She wants to have her share, which
If not the hon's, is the greater part; and if she does not get it. she savs'
'My mother will love me: b . ^ o^yi>,

';Her tendency tc imitation is so strong, that it leads her to actions
which must be entirely incomprehensible to her. and which can give
her no other pleasure than the gratification of an internal faculty
She has been known to sit for half an hour, holding a book before
her sightless eyes, and moving her lips, as she has observed seeing
people do when reading.

"She one day pretended that her doll was sick; and went through
all the motions of tending it. and giving it medicine; she then put
It carefully to bed. and placed a bottle of hot water to its feet, laugh-
ing all the time most heartily. When I came home, she insisted upon
my going to see it, and feel its pulse; and when I told her to put a
blister on its back, she seemed to enjoy it amazingly, and almost
screamed with delight.

"Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong; and when
she is sitting at work, or at her studies, by the side of one of her little
friends, she will break off from her task every few moments, to hug
and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is touching to
behold. ; °

"When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses herself
and seems quite contented; and so strong seems to be the natural
tendency of thought to put on the garb of language, that she often
solUoquizes m the finger language, slow and tedious as it is. But it is
only when alone, that she is quiet: for if she becomes sensible of the
presence of any one near her. she is restless until she can sit close
beside them, hold their hand, and converse with them by signs

'In her intellectual character it is pleasing to observe an insatiable
thirst for knowledge, and a quick perception of the relations of things
In her moral character, it is beautiful to behold her continual glad-
ness, her keen enjoyment of existence, her expansive love, her un-
hesitating confidence, her sympathy with sufiEering. her conscientious-
ness, truthfulness, and hopefulness."

Such are a few fragments from the simple but most interesting
and instructive history of Laura Bridgman. The name of her great
benefactor and friend, who writes it. is Dr. Howe. There are not
many persons. I hope and believe, who. after reading these passages
can ever hear that name with indifference.

A further account has been published by Dr. Howe, since the
report from which I have just quoted. It describes her rapid mental
growth and improvement during t ,velve months more, and brings
her little history down to the end of last year. It is very remarkable
that as we dream m words, and carry on imaginary conversations'
in which we speak both for ourselves and for the shadows who appear
to us m those visions of thp niahf cr» aha Vio^Mr^nr ^^ 1™ i

finger alphabet m her sleep. And it has b^e^ ascertained that w^^n

American Notes

her slumber is broken, and is much disturbed by dreams, she ex-
presses her thoughts in an irregular and confused manner on her
fingers: just as we should murmur and mutter them indistinctly, in
the like circumstances.

I turned over the leaves of her Diary, and found it written in a
fair legible square hand, and expressed in terms which were quite
intelligible without any explanation. On my saying that I should
like to see her write again, the teacher who sat beside her, bade her,
in their language, sign her name upon a slip of paper, twice or thrice.
In doing so, I observed that she kept her left hand always touching,
and following up, her right, in which, of course, she held the pen.
No line was indicated by any contrivance, but she wrote straight
and freely.

She had, until now, been quite unconscious of the presence of
visitors; but, having her hand placed in that of the gentleman who
accompanied me, she immediately expressed his name upon her
teacher's palm. Indeed her sense of touch is now so exquisite, that
having been acquainted with a person once, she can recognise him
or her after almost any interval. This gentleman had been in her
company, I believe, but very seldom, and certainly had not seen
her for many months. My hand she rejected at once, as she does
that of any man who is a stranger to her. But she retained my wife's
with evident pleasure, kissed her, and examined her dress with a
girl's curiosity and interest.

She was merry and cheerful, and showed much innocent playful-
ness in her intercourse with her teacher. Her delight on recognising
a favourite playfellow and companion — herself a blind girl — who
silently, and with an equal enjoyment of the coming surprise, took
a seat beside her, was beautiful to witness. It elicited from her at
first, as other slight circumstances did twice or thrice during my
visit, an uncouth noise which was rather painful to hear. But on her
teacher touching her lips, she immediately desisted, and embraced
her laughingly and affectionately.

I had previously been into another chamber, where a number of
blind boys were swinging, and climbing, and engaged in various
sports. They all clamoured, as we entered, to the assistant-master,
who accompanied us, "Look at me, Mr. Hart! Please, Mr, Hart, look
at me!" evincing, I thought, even in this, an anxiety peculiar to their
condition, that their little feats of agility should be seen. Among
them was a small laughing fellow, who stood aloof, entertaining him-
self with a gymnastic exercise for bringing the arms and chest into
play; which he enjoyed mightily; especially when, in thrusting out
his right arm, he brought it into contact with another boy. Like
Laura Bridgman, this young child was deaf, and dumb, and blind.

Dr. Howe's account of this pupil's first instruction is so very
striking, and so intimately connected with Laura herself, that I
cannot refrain from a short extract. I may premise that the poor
boy's name is Oliver Caswell; that he is thirteen years of age; and

American Notes

that he was in full possession of all his facultip., „n+n +1,
four months old. He was then att;^rtiVK ^' x ^*^^ *^^^® ^^^^s and
became deaf; in a few weeks mSe h^in J ''^'^'* ^''■"'' ^" ^°"^ ^^^^s
showed his anxious Tei^e of ^T.{ 1^^' '" '''' "'°"*^^' dumb. He
the lips of other^e'rsoTwhent^^^^ ,f - ^-"ng

his hand upon his own ac ,f +^ "^ l- ^^^^^^S> and then putting
the right posSioi ' ^' '^ *° ^'^"^" ^^"^^^^f that he had them if

soon^'i: hette'rTd'r^^^^^^ ^^- «°-' "P-claimed itself as

he could feel or smell in his new^loP..?^''T.'^^"'^^ °^ everything

the register of furnace h.^ if. ^''-Z^'" '"'*^"^^' treading upon
feel it.\nd soLdiso^er^d the w^^^^^^ and be|an^o

upon the lower one- but this wJt^^ ^^ ?® ""PP^^ P^^te moved
upon his face, he apZd hfs ToL^^^^^ ^°'' ^^?' «° ^^^^^ down

and seemed ti discover that the/ wpI. !?-«"^' *^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^t^er.
^ "His signs were exprls:^ Yn^^^^^^^ f -etal.

imitation) he had contrived wlr^ - i?" ^^ '"' ^^^"^t^ ^^

in. .0.4 Of his ^^^^s:^^^-^:^^

omiSd"' sev'er'a steprKrJo^' f ^' ^^ ^^^ ^ther cases, I
menced at once with the /nVla^^^^^^^^^ before employed, and corn-
articles having short names^such ?. l^^' ^^^'"§^' therefore, several
Laura for an auxihar." Tsat IL .nTvl"^' T^' *^- ^^^ with
upon one of them, and then wZ\T ^^^'""^ }'' ^^^^> Placed it

He felt my hands 4erly w'hToth okT^nTot '^' ''''''' ' ^^•
pr cess, he evidently tried to imTfi^^ .? ' ^"1? ^"^ "^^ repeating the
a few minutes he coVtr ved toTef the^S°*'°"%°^ "^^ ^^S^^'- ^^
one hand, and holding out the oth.r h^%^ iT"" • ""^ ""^ ^"§^^^« ^ith
ing most heartily wKe succeeded ? . r "^ '"^'^^^^ ^^^'^' ^^"S^"
to agitation; and the two presented". ^ 7^' ^5^' interested even
flushed and anxious! a7d W finlr^ T?"- ^' '• ^^*= ^"' ^^^^ ^^^
closely as to follow e^er^otion bft ^o iX?^ '"^ ^"1°"^ °"^^ «°
them; while OHver stood attent^^^ h; J^^*^^ ,^^ ""^t to embarrass
turued up. his le?t randgrasn^nri t-^'"^" ^^i^^' ^^^ f^^e

every motion of my finSe?s h?.^^ i ' ^""^.^'^ "^^t held out: at
tion; there was an LpSn of an^W ^^^^ ^tten-

motions; then a smfle^came steal in /o.^ as he tried to imitate the
so. and spread int^ a lo^s Wh^th ^' ^' ^!T^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ do
felt me p^t his head ind La^ratlap hirr^'t^' succeeded, and
and jump up and down^n her Joy ^ ^""^ ^^^'^'^y "P°° the back,

seem"eVre[^;ir^t^\Ts ^u'c:!::^ .\^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^n hour, and
ills attention then began to flna ' I^a r^ "' s»"""g approbation.
*cn uegan to nag. and I commenced playing wit'

pee years and
in four weeks
s, dumb. He
often feeling
then putting
had them in

ned itself as
f everything
eading upon
id began to
plate moved

lying down
o the other,
s of metal.
.1 language,
perfect.

faculty of
as the wav-
iilar one for

gns and to

ler cases, I
and com-
)re, several
, and with
I, placed it
tters key.
)eating the
fingers. In
ngers with
em, laugh-
ested even
' face was
g ours so
embarrass
3. his face
Id out: at
Jen atten-
aitate the
could do
3ded, and
the back,

lour, and
robation.
ing wit'

American Notes

him. It was evident that in all this he had n erely been imitating
the motions of my fingers, and placing his hand upon the key, cup,
&c., as part of the process, without any perception of the relation
between the sign and the object.

"When he was tired with play I took him back to the table and
he was quite ready to begin again his process of imitation. He'soon
learned to make the letters for key, pen, pin ; and by having the
object repeatedly placed in his hand, he at last perceived the relation
I wished to establish between them. This was evident, because, when
I made the letters p in, or p en, or c up, he would select the article.

"The perception of this relation was not accompanied by that
radiant flash of intelligence, and that glow of joy, which marked the
delightfrl moment when Laura first perceived it. I then placed all
the articles on the table, and going away a little distance with the
children, placed Oliver's fingers in the positions to spell key, on which
Laura went and brought the article: the little fellow seemed much
amused by this, and looked very attentive and smiling. I then caused
him to make the letters bread, and in an instant Laura went and
brought him a piece: he smelled at it; put it to his lips; cocked up his
head with a most knowing look; seemed to reflect a moment- and
then laughed outright, as much as to say, 'Aha ! I understand now
how something may be made out of this.'

"It was now clear that he had the capacity and inclination to
learn, that he was a proper subject for instruction, and needed only
persevering attention. I therefore put him in the hands of an intelli-
gent teacher, nothing doubting of his rapid progress."

Well may this gentleman call that a delightful moment, in which
some distant promise of her present state first gleamed upon the
darkened mmd of Laura Bridgman. Throughout his life, the recollec-
tion of that moment will be to him a source of pure, unfading
happiness; nor will it shine less brightly on the evening of his davs
of Noble Usefulness.

The affection which exists between these two— the master and the
pupil— is as far removed from all ordinary care and regard as +he
curcumstances in which it has had its growth, are apart from the
common occurrences of life. He is occupied now, in devising means
of imparting to her. higher knowledge; and of conveying to her some
adequate idea of the Great Creatoi of that universe in which, dark
and silent and scentless though it be to her. she has such deep
delight and glad enjoyment.

Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear not; ye who
are as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and disf.gure your faces
tnat ye may seem unto men to fast; learn healthy cheerfulness, and
mild contentment, from the deaf, and dumb, and blind! Self-elected
saints with gloomy brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless child may
teach you lessons you will do well to follow. Let that poor h?.rxd ^f
hers he gently on your hearts; for there may be something in its heal-
ing touch akm to that of the Great Master whose precepts you mis-
320*

American Notes

construe, whose lessons you pervert, of whose charity and sympathy
with all the world, not one among you in his daily practice knows
as much as many of the worst among those fallen sinners, to whom
you are liberal in nothing but the preachment of perdition !

As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of one of the
attendants came running in to greet its father. For the moment, a
child with eyes, among the sightless crowd, impressed me almost as
painfully as the blind boy in the porch had done, two hours ago.
Ah! how much brighter and more deeply blue, glowing and rich
though it had been before, was the scene without, contrasting with
the darkness of so many youthful lives within !

At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently adapted
for the purpose, several charitable institutions are clustered together.
One of these, is the State Hospital for the insane; admirably con-
ducted on those enlightened principles of conciliation and kindness,
which twenty years ago would have been worse than heretical, and
which have been acted upon with so much success in our own pauper
Asylum at Hanwell. "Evince a desire to show some confidence, and
repose some trust, even in mad people," said the resident physician,
as we walked along the galleries, his patients flocking round us un-
restrained. Of those who deny or doubt the wisdom of this maxim
after witnessing its effects, if there be such people still alive, I can
only say that I hope I may never be summoned as a Juryman on a
Commission of Lunacy whereof they are the subjects; for I should
certainly find them out of their senses, on such evidence alone.

Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery or hall,
with the dormitories of the patients opening from it on either hand!
Here they work, read, play at skittles, and other games; and wheii
the weather does not admit of their taking exercise out of doors, pass
the day together. In one of these rooms, seated, calmly, and quite
as a matter of course, among a throng of mad-women, black and
white, were the physician's wife and another lady, with a couple of
children. These ladies were graceful and handsome; and it was not
difficult to perceive at a glance that even their presence there, had
a highly beneficial influence on the patients who were grouped about
them.

Leaning her head against the chimney-piece, with a great assump-
tion of dignity and refinement of manner, sat an elderly female, in
as many scraps of finery as Madge Wildfire herself. Her head in
particular was so strewn with scraps of gauze and cotton and bits
of paper, and had so many queer odds and ends stuck all about it,
that it looked like a bird's-nest. She was radiant with imaginary
jewels; wore a rich pair of undoubted gold spectacles; and gracefully
dropped upon her lap, as we approached, a very old greasy news-
paper, in which I dare say she had been reading an account of her
own presentation at some Foreign Court.

I have been thus particular in describing her, because she will

serve to
the conl
"This
the fant
by the s
lady is 1
else has

i mcongn

I Ever)

la knife i

I manner

J meal, m

[from cu

is reduc

of restra

more ef

cuffs, tl

I since thi

In th(

[the tool

I on the fc

[they wa

I carriage

sewing s

passes I

isane ass

its proc(

would o"

American Notes

serve to exemplify the physician's manner of acquiring and retaining
the confidence of his patients.

"This," he said aloud, taking me by the hand, and advancing to
the fantastic figure with great politeness — not raising her suspicions
by the slightest look or whisper, or any kind of aside, to me: "This
lady is the hostess of this mansion, sir. It belongs to her. Nobody
else has anything whatever to do with it. It is a large establishment,
as you see, and requires a great number of attendants. She lives, you
observe, in the very first style. She is kind enough to receive my
visits, and to permit my wife and family to reside here; for which it
is hardly necessary to say, we are much indebted to her. She is
exceedingly courteous, you perceive," on this hint she bowed con-
descendingly, "and will permit me to have the pleasure of intro-
ducing you: a gentleman from England, Ma'am: newly arrived from
England, after a very tempestuous passage: Mr. Dickens, — the lady
of the house!"

We exchanged the most dignified salutations with profound
gravity and respect, and so went on. The rest of the mad-women
seemed to understand the joke perfectly (not only in this case, but

I in all the others, except their own), and be highly amused by it.
The nature of their several kinds of insanity was made known to
me in the same way, and we left each of them in high good humour.
Not only is a thorough confidence established, by those means,
between the physician and patient, in respect of the nature and
extent of their hallucinations, but it is easy to understand that
opportunities are afforded for seizing any moment of reason, to

[startle them by placing their own delusion before them in its most

[incongruous and ridiculous light.

Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner every day with
knife and fork; and in the midst of them sits the gentleman, whose
lanner of deaUng with his charges, I have just described. At every

Imeal, moral influence alone restrains the more violent among them

[from cutting the throats of the rest; but the effect of that influence

[is reduced to an absolute certainty, and is found, even as a means

[of restraint, to say nothing of it as a means of cure, a hundred times
more eflicacious than all the strait-waistcoats, fetters, and hand-
cuffs, that ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have manufactured

[since the creation of the world.

In the labour department, every patient is as freely trusted with

I the tools of his trade as if he were a sane man. In the garden, and
on the farm, they work with spades, rakes, and hoes. For amusement,
they walk, run, fish, paint, read, and ride out to take the air in
carriages provided for the purpose. They have among themselves a
sewing society to make clothes for the poor, which holds meetings,
passes resolutions, never comes to fisty-cuffs or bowie-knives as

I sane assemblies have been known to do elsewhere; and conducts ail
its proceedings with the greatest decorum. The irritability, which

[would otherwise be expended on their own flesh, clothes, and furni-

American Notes

ture, is dissipated in these pursuits. They are cheerful, tranquil,
and healthy.

Once a week they have a ball, in which the Doctor and his family,
with all the nurses and attendants, take an active part. Dances and
marches are performed alternately, to the enlivening strains of a
piano; and now and then some gentleman or lady (whose proficiency
has been previously ascertained) obliges the company with a song:
nor does it ever degenerate, at a tender crisis, into a screech or howl;
wherein, I must confess, I should have thought the danger lay. At
an early hour they all meet together for these festive purposes; at
eight o'clock refreshments are served; and at nine they separate.

Immense politeness and good breeding are observed throughout.
They all take their tone from the Doctor; and he moves a very
Chesterfield among the company. Like other assemblies, these enter-
tainments afEord a fruitful topic of conversation among the ladies
for some days; and the gentlemen are so anxious to shine on these
occasions, that they have been sometimes found "practising their
steps" in private, to cut a more distinguished figure in the dance.

It is obvious that one great feature of this system, is the inculca-
tion and encouragement, even among such unhappy persons, of a
decent self-respect. Something of the same spirit pervades all the
Institutions at South Boston.

There is the House of Industry. In that branch of it, which is
devoted to the reception of old or otherwise helpless paupers, these
words are painted on the walls: "Worthy of Notice. Self-Govern-
MENT, Quietude, and Peace, are Blessings." It is not assumed
and taken for granted that being there they must be evil-disposed
and wicked people, before whose vicious eyes it is necessary to
flourish threats and harsh restraints. They are met at the very
threshold with this mild appeal. All within-doors is very plain and
simple, as it ought to be, but arranged with a view to peace and
comfort. It costs no more than any other plan of arrangement, but
it speaks an amount of consideration for those who are reduced to
seek a shelter there, which puts them at once upon their gratitude
and good behaviour. Instead of being parcelled out in great, long,
rambling wards, where a certain amount of weazen life may mope,
and pine, and shiver, all day long, the building is divided into separate
rooms, each with its share of light and air. In these, the better kind
of paupers live. They have a motive for exertion and becoming pride,
in the desire to make these little chambers comfortable and decent.

I do not remember one but it was clean and neat, and had its
plant or two upon the window-sill, or row of crockery upon the shelf,
or small display of coloured prints upon the whitewashed wall, or,
perhaps, its wooden clock behind the door.

The orphans and young children are in an adjoining building;
separate from this, but a part of the same Institution. Some are such
little creatures, that the stairs are of Lilliputian measurement, fitted
to their tiny strides. The same consideration for their years and

ranquil,

family,
ices and
ins of a
(ficiency

a song:
or howl;

lay. At
)Oses; at
arate.
•ughout.

a very
56 enter-
ic ladies
5n these
ng their
lance,
inculca-
ns, of a
i all the

;vhich is
rs, these

tOVERN-

issumed
iisposed
3sary to
he very
lain and
ace and
ent, but
luced to
ratitude
at, long,
y mope,
separate
;ter kind
ig pride,
[ decent,
had its
he shelf,
wall, or,

Duilding;
are such
at, fitted
sars and

American Notes

weakness is expressed in their very seats, which are perfect curiosi-
ties, and look like articles of furniture for a pauper doll's-house. I
can imagine the glee of our Poor Law Commissioners at the notion
of these seats having arms and backs; but small spines being of older
date than their occupation of the Board-room at Somerset House,
I thought even this provision very merciful and kind.

Here again, I was greatly pleased with the inscriptions on the wall,
which were scraps of plain morality, easily remembered and under-
stood : such as "Love one another" — "God remembers the smallest
creature in his creation:" and straightforward advice of that nature.

^ books and tasks of these smallest of scholars, were adapted, in
.ii, ;^ame judicious manner, to their childish powers. When we had
examined these lessons, four morsels of girls (of whom one was blind)
sang a little song, about the merry month of May, which I thought
(being extremely dismal) would have suited an English November
better. That done, we went to see their sleeping-rooms on the floor
above, in which the arrangements were no less excellent and gentle
than those we had seen below. And after observing that the
teachers were of a class and character well suited to the spirit of the
place, I took leave of the inxants with a lighter heart than ever I have
taken leave of pauper infants yet.

Connected with the House of Industry, there is also an Hospital,
which was in the best order, and had, I am glad to say, many beds
unoccupied. It had one fault, however, which is common to all
American interiors : the presence of the eternal, accursed, suffoca-
ting, red-hot demon of a stove, whose breath would blight the purest
air under Heaven.

There are two establishments for boys in this same neighbourhood.
One is called the Boylston school, and is an asylum for neglected and
indigent boys who have committed no crime, but who in the ordinary
course of things would very soon be purged of that distinction if they
were not taken from the hungry streets and sent here. The other is
a House of Reformation for Juvenile Offenders. They are both under
the same roof, but the two classes of boys never come in contact.

The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed, have very much
the advantage of the others in point of personal appearance. They
were in their school-room when I came upon them, and answered
correctly, without book, such questions as where was England; how
far was it; what was its population; its capital city; its form of
gov^- xment; and so forth. They sang a song too, about a farmer
sowmg his seed: with corresponding action at such parts as "'tis thus
he sows," "he turns him round," "he claps his hands;" which gave it
greater interest for them, and accustomed them to act together, in an
orderly manner. They appeared exceedingly well-taught, and not
better taught than fed; for a more chubby-looking full-waistcoated
set of boys, I never saw.

The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant faces by a great deal,
and in this establishment there were many boys of colour, I saw

■f, f

American Notes

them first at their work (basket-mak. ig, and the manufacture of
palm-leaf hats), afterwards in their school, where they sang a chorus
in praise of Liberty: an odd. and, one would think rather aggravating
theme for prisoners. These boys are divided into four classes, each
denoted by a numeral, worn on a badge upon the arm. On the
arrival of a new-comer, he is put into the fourth or lowest class, and
left, oy good behaviour, to work his way up into the first. The design
and object of this Institution is to reclaim the youchful criminal bv
firm but kind and judicious treatment; to make his prison a place of
purification and improvement, not of demoralisation and corruption-
to impress upon him that there is but one path, and that one sober
industry, which can ever lead him to happiness; to teach him how it
may be trodden, if his footsteps have never yet been led that wav
and to lure him back to it if they have strayed: in a word, to snatch
him from destruction, and restore him to society a penitent and useful
member. The importance of such an establishment, in every poin+ of
view and with reference to every consideration of humanity and
social policy, requires no comment.

One other establishment closes the catalogue. It is the .xouse of
Correction for the State, in which silence is strictly maintained but
where the prisoners have the comfort and mental relief of seeing each
other, and of working together. This is the improved system of Prison a
Discipline which we have imported into England, and which has been I
m successful o^/eration among us for some years past. *

America, as a new and not over-populated country, has in all h(
prisons the one great advantage, of being enabled to find useful ai.
profitable work for the inmates; whereas, with us, the prejudice
against prison labour is naturally very strong, and almost insur-
mountable, when honest men who have not offended against the laws
are frequently doomed to seek employment in vain. Even in the
United States, the principle of bringing convict labour and free
la,bour into a competition which must obviously be to the dis-
advantage of the latter, has already found many opponents whose
number is not likely to diminish with access of years.

For this very reason though, our best prisons would seem at the
lirst glance to be better conducted than'those of America. The tread-
mill IS conducted with little or no noise; five hundred men may pick
oakum in the same room, without a sound; and both kinds of labour
admit of such keen and vigilant superintendence, as will render even a
word of personal communication amongst the prisoners almost
impossible. On the other hand, the noise of the loom, the forge the
carpenter s hammer, or the stonemason's saw. greatly favour those
opportunities of intercourse— hurried and brief no doubt but
opportunities still— which these several kinds of work, by rendering
It necessary for men to be employed very near to each other, and »
olten side by side, without any barrier or partition between them in M
tneir very nature present. A visitor, too, requires to reason and reflect ""
a little, before the sight of a number of men engaged in ordinary

lor

The

American Notes

labour, such as he is accustomed to out of doors, will impress him
half as strongly as the contemplation of the same persons in the same
place and garb would, if they were occupied in some task, marked and
degraded everywhere as belonging only to felons in jails. In an
American state prison or house of correction, I found it difficult at
first to persuade myself that I was really in a jail: a place of
ignommious punishment and endurance. And to this hour I very
much question whether the humane boast that it is not like one, has
its root in the true wisdom or philosophy of the matter.

I hope I may not be misunderstood on this subject, for it is one
in which I take a strong and deep interest. I incline as little to the
sickly feeling which makes every canting lie or maudlin speech of a
notorious criminal a subject of newspaper report and general
sympathy, as I do to those good old customs of the good old times
which made England, even so recently as in the reign of the Third
King George, in respect of her criminal code and her prison regula-
tions, one of the most bloody-minded and barbarous countries on the
earth. If I thought it would do any good to the rising generation I
would cheerfully give my consent to the disinterment of the bones'of
any genteel highwayman (the more genteel, the more cheerfully),
and to their exposure, piecemeal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet'
that might be deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My reason is
as well convinced that these gentry were as utterly worthless and
debauched villains, as it is that the laws and jails hardened them in
their evil courses, or that their wonderful escapes were effected by the
prison-turnkeys who, in those admirable days, had always been felons
themselves, and were, to the last, their bosom-friends and pot-
companions. At the same time I know, as all men do or should, that
the subject of Prison Discipline is one of the highest importance to
any community; and that in her sweeping reform and bright example
to other countries on this head, America has shown great wisdom,
great benevolence, and exalted policy. In contrasting her system with
that which we have modelled upon it. I merely seek to show that with
all its drawbacks, ours has some advantages of its own.

The House of Correction which has led to these remarks, is not
walled, like other prisons, but is palisaded round about with tall
rough stakes, something after the manner of an enclosure for keeping
elephants in, as we see it represented in Eastern prints and pictures
The prisoners wear a parti-coloured dress; and those who are sentenced
to hard labour, work at nail-making, or stone-cutting. When I was
there, the latter class of labourers were employed upon the stone for
a new custom-house in course of erection at Boston. They appeared
to shape it skilfully and with expedition, though there were very few
among them (if any) who had not acquired the art within the prison
gates. ^

_ne v/omen, axl m one large room, were employed in making light
clothing, for New Orleans and the Southern States. They did their
work m silence like the men; and like them were overlooked by the

i I

American Notes

person contracting for their labour, or by some agent of his apnoint-
mcnt In addition to this, they are every moment liable to be^vSd
by the prison officers appointed for that purpose

«r/m^..T^"^^"?K"*'', ^°'' ^°?^^"^' "^^^^^S of clothes, and so forth
are much upon the plan of those I have seen at home Their mode of
bestowing the prisoners .t night (which is of ^eneLl ad^p^fon^
differs from ours, and is both simple and effective In the centre of a
lofty area, lighted by windows in the four walls, are Le tiers 5 cells
one above the other; each tier having before ii a ligh ^ iro? gaS'
attainable by stairs of the same construction and mairia^exSS
the lowc one which is on the ground. Behind these, back to back
with them and facing the opposite wall, are five corresponding rows
ot cells, accessib e by similar means: so that supposing the prisoners
locked up in their cells, an officer stationed on the ground.^w'th hS
back to the wall, has half their number under his lye at once the
remaining half being equally under the observation of^Lother officer
on the opposite side; and all in one great apartment. Unless this
watch be corrupted or sleeping on his post, it is impossible fofa man
to escape; for even m the event of his forcing the iron door of hls^eU
without noise (which is exceedingly improbable), the moment he
appears outside, and steps into that one of the five galleries on which

Each'orth '' ^' Tl' t' P^^^^^y ^"^ ^""y visible to?hercerb"?ow
Each of these cells holds a small truckle bed. in which one prisoner
sleeps; never more. It is small, of course; and the door being not soSd
but grated, and without blind or curtain, the prisoner within^s at all
^mes exposed to the observation and inspection of any guard 4ho
may pass along that tier at any hour or minute of the nifht Ev^r?

kShenTr.'^n? ''T" '^''' ^^"\^^ ^^"S^y- th^°"gh ^ trap in tS
kitchen wal . and each man carries his to his sleeping cell to eat it
where h. is locked up. alone, for that purpose, one hour. The whole
of this a.rangement struck me as being admirable; and I hope that
the next new prison we erect in England may be built on tKlan

I was given to understand that in this prison no swords or fire-
arms, or even cudgels, are kept; nor is it probable chat, so long as its
present excellent management continues, any weapon, off enfive or
defensive, will ever be required within it* bounds

Such are the Institutions at South Boston! In all of them the
unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the State are carefX in!
structed in their duties both to God and man; are surrounded by aU
Zt'^^l^ "'^^°' of comfort and happiness that their condition will
admit of; ^e appealed to. as members of the great human familv
however afflicted, indigent, or fallen; are ruled by tL strong H?art'
hL ""k i'^.?® ^^^''S ^t^°"^^ immeasurably weaker) Hand I have
^.n^'.H >*^'? ^* some length; firstly, because their worth de!
^H 1^ '/".^ secondly, because I mean to take them for a model,
and to content myself with saying of others we may come to. whose

design and nurnose are-, fh^ QQmo 4-KO+ ,•„ 4.u: A .^ ' ,'*""^*'

aesign and purpose axe the same
practically fail.^or differ.

t**«.t iii uiiio ui iii'cii respect they

5 appoint-
be visited

so forth,
r mode of
idoption)
2ntre of a
•s of cells,
1 gallei-y,
excepting
: to back
ling rows
prisoners

with his
mce; the
er ofl&cer
iless this
or a man
if his cell
ment he
)n which
;r below,
prisoner
lot solid,
I is at all
ard who
:. Every
p in the

eat it,
e whole
>pe that
3 plan.

or fire-
ig as its
isive or

;m, the
illy in-
J by all
ion will
family.
Heart,

1 have
•th de-
model,

whose
't they

American Notes

I wish by this accounf of them, imperfect in its execution, but in its
just mtention. honest. I could hope to convey to mv readers nn!
affortd me"'^ °' ''^ gratificatiL, the siglTtsI haVe'dtcrin;

To an Englishman, accustomed to the paraphernalia of West-
minster Hall an Amencan Court of Law is as odd a sight ^ I sun
pose an English Court of Law would be to an American Sceptfn
the Supreme Court at Washington (where the judges wefr a pla n
black robe), there is no such thing as a wig or gown coiTnected wSh
the admmistration of justice. The gentlemen o? the ba" bdn^
barristers and attorneys too (for there is no division of those function!
as in England) are no more removed from their clients than attornevs
in our Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors are, f rom theS
The jury are quite at home, and make themselves as comfortable ag
circumstances will permit. The witness is so little elevated above o?
put aloof from, the crowd in the court, that a stranger entering
during a pause m the proceedings would find it difficult to pick W
out from the rest. And if it chanced to be a criminal trial hfs eve
m nine cases out of ten, would wander to the dock in search of the
prisoner in vain; for that gentleman would most likely be lounging
among the most distinguished ornaments of the legal profession
whispering suggestions in his counsel's ear, or making Itoothpick out
of an old quill with his penknife. ^ tootnpick out

I could not but notice these differences, when I visited the courts at
Boston I was much surprised at first, too, to observe that the
counsel who interrogated the witness under examination at the time
did so szmng. But seeing that he was also occupied in writing dowrl
the answers, and remembering that he was alone and had no
junior I quickly consoled myself with the reflection that law was
not quite so expensive an article here, as at home; and tha^ The
absence of sundry formalities which we regard as indispensable had
doubtless a very favourable influence upon the bill of ?osts '

m every Court, ample and commodious provision is made for the
accommodation of the citizens. This is the case all thrL^h America
In every Public Institution, the right of the people to attend ^nd to
have an interest in the proceedings, is most Lly and dttlnctfy
recogmsed. There are no grim door-keepers to dole out their tardv
civility by the sixpenny-worth; nor is there. I sincerely belfeveanv
insolence of office of any kind. Nothing national isLh Sled for
money; and no public officer is a showman. We have begun of late
LTth^r^'f^" *?^f ^°°^ f ^°^P^^- ^ ^°P^ ^^ «^^" continf e ?o do s^
converted!'' ''"""' '"^'^ '^'^''' ^^^ "^^P*^^^ "^^y be

«.i'i*^^?'''l ''°"'^ ^"^ m''*'°'' "^^^ *^"g' fo^ damages sustained in
some accident upon a railwav. Th^ wifneA^o i-o^ u^^^ _. " " ^^

counsel was addressing the juryT The" Iea^n;rgenflemln '(U^a few
of his Enghsh brethxen) was desperately loni-winded, ind had I

f (I

Iff i.

5^ American Notes

into the service of every sentence he"ut ered I'ii.Tetd to hT',^"
about a quarter of an hour; and, cominR out of court ItTh. 1 J
of tliat time, witliout tlie faintest ra„„7likI^°'^''P"'**'°"
merits of the case, felt f, ^'l^re aTLme^S """* " *° '"^
a charg:Pf'reft 'w"''7bov""TW3''ir/^"'f'.''V/'^ magistrate on

apprentice to some respectable master Thur h?« h^? ? ^ •^''""'^
offence, instead of being the prelTcL to "^Tif^^ detection in this

I am by no means a wholesale admirer of our le7al <;n?i^ ^;-
many of which impress me as being exceedlngriidlcLui^S^^^^^^^
as It may seem too. there is undoubtedly a degreLf nJotec^^^
w,g and gown-a dismissal of individual refponSy in drei n^
for the part—which encourages that insolent bear na In J i ^^^^^^"8

rrrerr4eT,-a"n1a'ndr^^^^^^^^^

prisoners and many witnesses TheiTtt^iVT ^ includes some

owf r^l^y'^- ^^ poweriess!td crot. t tSI S^^^^

Blue ladies there are/ irBS^onburnLnv"^' "^^1"°* disappointed,
and sex in most other^a^fudes ?hiy^^^^^^^^^^^

superior than to be so. E^ mgelical lad J^f w« , m ^? t^^ought

attachment to the forms f,frSi^^l'rv*J^5_^_^.^^,,^^ whose

tainments,aremostexempla^I^-es;^oW— -^^

American Notes

ing lectures are to be found among all classes and all conditions In
the kind of provincial life which prevails in cities such as this the
Pu.p.t has great influence. The peculiar province of the Pulp t in
New England (always excepting the Unitarian Ministry) would
appear to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational amuse-
ments. The church the chapel, and the lecture-room, ^re the only
means of excitement excepted; and to the church, the ch^.pel. and the
1. cture-room. the ladies resort in crowds

Wherever religion is resorted to. as a strong drink, and as an escape
from the dull njonotonous round of home, those of ts ministers who
pepper the highest will be the surest to please. They whor'ew the
Eternal Path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and v. ■ o most
ruthlessly tread down the flowers and leaves that griw by t ° w^v-
side. ' I be voted the most righteous; and they whS enlarge wi~th the
grea^ ' Pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into heav^en wUl be
consiu .d by all true believers certain of going there: though it
would De hard to say by what process of reasoning this conclusfon s
arrived at. It is so at home, and it is so abroad. With regard to ?he
other means of excitement, the Lecture, it has at least the merit of
being always new. One lecture treads so quickly on the heels of
another, that none are remembered; and the course of this month mav

i'^tet:{^uXtd' "^^^' ^''' ''' ''-- ^' --^^^ -^-^-. -^ s

philosophers known as TranscendentaLts.^On^nqSr Srwhat th"
appellation might be supposed to signify. I was given to understand
Nnf H r- "^'^ ^^t^^i^t/^igjble. would be certahily transcendental
Not deriving much comfort from this elucidation. I pursued the H
quiry still f urther^and found that the Transcendentalists are followers
of my friend Mr. Carlyle. or I should rather say. of a follower oH^o
Mr. Ralph \Valdo Emerson. This gentleman has written a volume of
Essays, in which, among much that is dreamy and fanciful (if he wS
pardon me for saying so), there is much more that is true and mai^y
honest and bold. Transcendentalism has its occasional vagaries

W nn^lT' ^^' "°'- ^^."' '' ^^^ ^°°^ h^^^*hf"l qualities in spite o
them, not least among the numbe- a hearty disgust of Cant and an

aptitude to detect her in all the million vSiet fs of hc^ eve^^^^^^^^

The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor, who addresses
himself peculiarly to seamen, and who was once a^ma^i^er hhns3f I
found his chapel down among the shipping, in one of the narrow old
water-side streets, with a gay blue flag waving freely froi^ftrroof
In the gallery opposite to the pulpit were a little choir of male and
female sineers. a violnnr.f>lln anH o ,m«i;., ti. u-„ , ^-^^ '^n^

in the pulpit, which was raised on pillars, and ornamented behind him
with painted drapery of a lively and somewhat theatrical appeiani^

ilJ

1 i...

American Notes

He looked a weather-beaten hard-featured man of ab out six or f^iaU^
and fifty; with deep lines graven as it were into Ws face darlLTr ^ J^

preheusive in its doctrines, and tSd a tone oTfen'^r^atmnX

Wilderness leaning on the arm of her beloved !" ^ ^

He handled his text in all kinds of ways and twisted ,> ,«+« oii

weTarn4d?1i.^"* "'"^^^ ingeniously. Ind wTth I^ude ^^^^^^^^^^
well adapted to the comprehension of his hearers Indeed if t k! « *

tTanth?dtt'"A'^^^^

ren^arkably good. He spokft^them o "hat' g^rCs'mln LorS
Nelson/' and of Collingwood; and drew not^ngfr^s the savin. [,
by the head and shoulders, but brought it to bear «nnn hl^^ ^ '

Zf H-,'"S "" ^^ P*'^"? "P ^^<J down thi pulpit wV?TfooWne
steadily down, meantime, into the midst of the - ni-r, ■•„■ t? '^
when he applied his text to the first assembag. '"^^> ^l^^rs and

Who are these— who are they— who are these fellows? where Hr.
inX^r°"^ 'r™ ^''T f " *'^«y soing to?-Come fromTwhaSthe
ri^M hL7 -r^^K f °',?^ P"'P"' ^°'' P"'-*'"? downward wth his

Stors before iSS'Trom^^^^ '^^l'' "l'^'"' '"<' '"oking a?the

hatTes of S. S WH^ °T' "y brethren. From under the
uaicnes oi sm, battened down above you by the evil ono Thai-',
where you came froml"_a walk up and dJwn the nuS't "»nH
where are you going"_stopping ab^ptly: '■wherrLryJu goiS^
^ofti-^aerlSil' ..^v,^.P°'f "8 "P^^^-i-- ' 'Aloft l'^°J^,IS:

wri^autt^t' an*?trim^: e'e„tg"^ir^t^oTH!:t^^^^
where there are no storms or f^l weather and X?e^h. ?'f^.'

"Tw'""^ *""""> ^"'^ *•><> weai^'^re ai ^est'^^Anofter'Sl^

Twt l^^^'ty°X'^ ?°'"8 *°- ""y «^°ds. Thafs it. That°s toe oT^e
That s the port. Thafs the haven. If., a bl»c=<.^ k,:^.".!;: .3H K^^-

there, in all changes of the winds and" tidesFno ^Zg^^^^T^

l':>.

American Notes

the rocks, or slipping your cables and running out to sea there-

S-Kf^^^^l^w^'^^"^^ peace !"-Another walk, and patt'ing the
Bible under his left arm: "What! These fellows are coming from the
wilderness, are they? Yes. From the dreary, blighted wilderness of
Imquity. whose only crop is Death. But do they lean upon anything
:^lu^^'}^Au "P""" nothing, these poor seamen? "-Three raps upon
the Bible: "Oh yes.-Yes.-They lean upon the arm of their Bdoved"
-three more raps: upon the arm of their Beloved "-three more, and
a walk: Pilot, guiding-star. and compass, all in one. lo all hands-
here It is -three more: "Here it is. They can do their seaman's duty

^th fhil''^^ ^^'^ '^.ii^''' "^^^^ ^" *^^ "*"^°^t Pe"l and danger,
with this -two more: "They can come, even these poor fellows Ian
come, from the wilderness leaning on the arm of their Beloved and
go up— up— up! —raising his hand higher, and higher, and higher

^i7t'^'"lP^*'*i°^ °^ *^^ wo^^' so that he stood with it at last
stretched above his head, regarding them in a strange, rapt manner
and pressing the book triumphantly to his breast, until he gradually
subsided into some other portion of his discourse
. .^.?^''?^'^^*t^. this, rather as an instance of the preacher's eccen-
tricities than his ments. though taken in connection with his look and
manner, and the character of his audience, even this was striking
It is possible, however, that my favourable impression of him may
have been greatly influenced and strengthened, firstly, by his im-
pressing upon his hearers that the true observance of religion was not
inconsistent mth a cheerful deportment and an exact discharge of
the duties of their station, which, indeed, it scrupulously required of
them; and secondly, by his cautioning them not to set up any
monopoly m Paradise and its mercies. I never heard these t-wo points
so wisely touched (if indeed I have ever heard them touched at all)
by any preacher of that kind before. ''

Having passed the time I spent in Boston, in making myself
acquainted with these things, in settling the course I should take in
my future travels, and in mixing constantly with its society. I am
not aware that I have any occasion to prolong this chapter. Such of
Its social customs as I have not mentioned, however, may be told in
a very few words. ^

The usual dinner-hour is two o'clock. A dinner party takes place at

.r,l T-^ ^* ^u ^Tt"'"^ P^''^^' *^^y s^l^o"^ sup later than eleven;
so that It goes hard but one gets home, even from a rout, by midnight
I never could find out any difference between a party at Boston and
a party m London, saving that at the former place all assemblies are
held at more rational hours; that the conversation mav possibly be a
il f^ II ^""^ ""^""^ cheerful; and a guest is usually expected to
ascend to the very top of the house to take his cloak off; that he is

f.f5ro*?ill\flr!!?:f!""^f%^^ unusual amount of pou.Hry on the
n^Iwe^"-"' "^ """"•^' ''r"^^^\' ""^ '^^^^ ^° mignty bowis of hot stewed
smothered eaSly!" ^ half-grown Duke of Clarence might be

fi 'i

li ''

sjt^f

54 American Notes

laid m a very handsome hall for breakfast anH w hF« table is

.ilT^^K V°. **° """idred: sometimes more The advent nf

shaki the ver'^'T *•? "^y *^ proclaimed by an awfiuontwhich

^th the ve^ blackest of^r'"'"-^? *" """^ """«'• ^"^ «P"-M«d
nrZ fK ?^i""^ii"re, having no curtains to the French bedstead

it was a shower-bath ° ^' ^"'* "'«'"' '" *" fi'" "^"^l «>»*

CHAPTER IV

AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM

Lown^r'"^""^ ^°'*°"' ^ '^'™t«"l o"« day to an excursion to

^..,^.., ^i.cii gciicrai cnaracteristics are easily described °

There are no first and second class carriageLs IJith „s,: but there is

American Notes 55

whfcf fsTat in%h?1. %*^^'''' l^''- *^^ "^^^^ distinction between
nobodv does AsVhlnl^^ everybody smokes; and in the second!

Gulliver put to sea in from flit' *'^""^^""|' clumsy chest, such as
prppf Hp^i ,;/ ^i7- ' *^^ kingdom of Brobdingnag. There is a

mMmmMm

who hits his fancy If vou are a?, L^ Uh^ '' "i,' ^ *° ^"ybody «lse

says Yes? (interrogatively , and asks in what resoect thfiv Hiffit
^Yes?'"r!r *: *''' ^^■''•^' °* difference, one by oTe and L sivs

else ^ ' ""^ *^^* ^^^ *^^ g^^a* sights are somewhere

. I

miih i - rm

American Notes

vacates it with great politeness. Politics are much discussed, so are
Danks, so IS cotton. [^ aiet people avoid the question of the Presidencv
for there will be a new election in three years and a half, and party
feeling runs very high: the great constitutional feature of this institu-
tion being, that directly the acrimony of the last election is over the
acnmony of the next one begins; which is an unspeakable comfort to
all strong politicians and true lovers of their country: that is to say to
ninety-nme men and boys out of every ninety-nine and a quarter.

Itxcept when a branch road joins the main one, there is seldom
more than one track of rails; so that the road is very narrow, and the
view, where there is a deep cutting, by no means extensive. When
there is not the character of the scenery is always the same. Mile
alter mile of stunted trees: some hewn down by the axe. some blown
down by the wind, some half fallen and resting on their neighbours
many mere logs half hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to
spongy chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute frag-
ments such as these; each pool of stagnant water has its crust of
vegetable rottenness; on every side there are the boughs, and trunks
and stumps ottrees. in every possible stage of decay, decomposition,'
and neglect Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an open
country, glittenn ; with some bright laKe or pool, broad as many an
English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a name; now catch
hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white houses and
their cool piazzas Its prim New England church and school-house;
when whir-r-r-r! almost before you have seen them, comes the same
dark screen: the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant
water—all so like the last that you seem to have been transported
back again by magic. ^

The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild impossi-
bility of anybody having the smallest reason to get out. is only to
be equalled by the apparently desperate hopelessness of there being
anybody to get m. It rushes across the turnpike road, where there it
no gate, no policeman, no signal: nothing but a rough wooden arch
on which IS pamted "When the bell rings, look out for the
LOCOMOTIVE On it whirls headlong, div^s through the woods again
emerges m the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the
heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the
light for a second like a wink, suddenly uwakens all the slumbering
echoes in the mam street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard
pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road There-
with mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning from their
doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and
men smoking, and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs
burrowmg. and unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to
the very rails— there— on, on. on— tears the mad dragon of an engine
with Its train of cars; scattering in all directions a shower of burnincr

S1«f fi'"i-^\'^°°'^ ^?' S'^'^^ect^ing' hissing, yelling, panting; until
at last the thirsty monster stops beneath a covered way to drink the

American Notes cj

people cluster round, and you have time to breathe again

I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman int'^'o* i
nected with the management of the factWfthi^^^^^^

t7wf in" wtch'ihr^^^^^^^^ ^HiTifcf orr° ^'^^"^^"^

Although only just of agei:fo'^ my^SLSecTiLVerv'e mHt harbet
a manufacturmg town barely ope-and-twenty Tel^s-iiweiMs a
large, populous, thrivmg place. Those indications of its v^th which

might have been deposited theron&rdiLTof the wlS
the Deluge In one place, there was a new wooden chuTchwhkh
having no steeple^ and being yet unpalnted, looked Ske an eAomona
packing-case without any direction UDon it In aww «, '

large hotel, whose walls Ind colc^Ldes were so cn^o Ld'^f^^ "^ 2
slight, that it had exactly the appearaLrofbeinrb'^iU ^th ckrd"^^
T IZ f^'"' ""t t° d™* "y breath as we passed, fndtreiSiedwh,!;
I saw a workman come out upon the roof 1p«t Jrfti, ^rTv JI^T
stamp ol his foot he should ^^s^tte stricfurTbeneatte^?^
bring it rattlmg down. The verv river tw^o„ °?'^^*'» j!"^. and
the Inn (for thiy are alf^orreTbTwIt^^S seeL"tot^^^^ "
new character from the fresh building of briZ „d S *°h ^„i,"'? "
wood among which it takes its course; a^d t "be as bVhfS*!?
ttoughtless, and brisk a young river, in to mumuringf ^id ^m'
"ter^''°Tro7"'''"'''''r^..*° r- 0°« would "wei^ttTtev"^

to^kltYshut'^t °r 7own"J^r t^ ^SftS" ^"d ^T J"^ t '^'^
yesterday The golden pesLs and molars feed aTsli"„^Z"the
sun-blmd frames outside the Druesists" ann»»V^t„ vl^ u^^ .*''®
turned out of the United States" St! and w"en I stw a birJ

;^s?scirhar- *^^* " coSii^t-tn^r^Tsun

There are several factories in Lowell earh nf wVuVt, v.^^
:'?m:?itra"'cVrra?i^T^^°'^°^^^^^^^^^^

Sno T"^ Pf *■ ^"i* ^"^ *«"' '° their ordinary working a?p«t
»X^=MZyl^d^hIttarw"S£^^^^^^^

c^mItT^aH" • f "'"''' """^ ""^^ °^'^"'' ^a-ctory just as the dinner hour was

^hTmm ^\?'"^' ^^^^ returning to their work, indeed the stakHf

, the mill were thronged with them as I ascended. They were aS well

American Notes

dressed but not to my thinking above their condition; for I like to
see the humbler classes of society careful of their dress and appear
ance. and even, if they please, decorated with such little trinkets as
come withm the compass of their means. Supposing it confined with-
in reasonable limits., I would always encourage this kind of pride as k
worthy element of self-respect, m any person I employed7and should
no more be deterred from doing so. because some ^^etched femak
referred her fall to a love of dress, than I would allow my (Sructo

wiJ^InT '^*r*^^1?'^"^"§^^/^" Sabbath to be influenced by any
warning to the well-disposed, founded on his backslidings on that
particular day, which might emanate from the rather^ doubtfu
authority of a murderer in Newgate. uouotiui

These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed: and that rhrase
necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had serviceable
bonnets good warm cloaks, and shawls; and were not above clogs
and pattens. Moreover, there were places in the mill in whi^h thev
cou d deposit these things without injury; and there were co/
veniences for washing. Thsy were healthy in appearance manvo
them remarkably so. and had the manners and deportmeni 5 vounl
women: not of degraded brutes of burden. If I had s^en in o^ne of
those mills (but I di4 not. though I looked for something of tWs
kind with a sharp eye), the most lisping, mincing, affected and rid?
culous young creature that my imagination could suggest I should
have thought of the careless, moping. slatternV dISaded dull

SoTrp<^n he?. "'" ''''^' ^"' ^'°"'' ^^' ^^^^ ^ tXpt'sed"to

..u^! w"?^ '''• '^^'''^ ^^^^ worked, were as well ordered as them-
selves In the windows of some, there were green plants which weTe
tramed to shade the glass; in all. there was as mudi fresh air cW

aS oT oT^*',^' '^" ^^'"^" °^ '^^ occupation would possX
admit of. 9ut of so large a number of females, many of whom were
only then just vergmg upon womanhood, it may be reasonabTylup!
posed that some were delicate and fragile in appearance: no doubt
there were. But I solemnly declare, that from all the crowd I saw in

f ace ih.T?* '"''^"'^ '"^-^'/f^' ' ^^"^°* '^'^'' ^' separate one yo'ng
face that gave me a pamful impression; not one young girl whom

assuming It to be matter o^ necessity that she should glin her daUv

the possession of these houses, whose character^ have not undergone
the most searchmg and thorough inquiry. And complaii.t that is
made against them by the boarders, or by any one else, is fully inves!
tigated; and if good ground of complaint be shown to exist agaTnst
^r^Tj^^!L^'^ removed.^nd their occupation is handed over to some
rn,..,. V.V.V. vuxj^ peison. xnere are a few children employed in these
factories, but not m^ny. The laws of the State forbid their workSg

American Notes

J V4

more than nine months in the year, and require that thev be ediiMt»H
during the other three. For this puri>ose there are spools in w!?
and there are churches and chapels of various persuasions in whfch

At some distance from the factories, and on the highest anH
pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood. stanS^hel h&

w°.f hnlf; h°'''' ^""^ *^' r ^' '' '' '^^ ^^«* ^^""'^ in those pa?ts? and
was built by an emment merchant for his own residence Like thaf
mstitute at Boston, which I have before described. UsTotparc^^^^^^^
out into wards, but is divided into convenient chambers^tlch of
which has all the comforts of a very comfortable home. S prTncipa
medical attendant resides under the same roof; and were the^pSts
members of his own family, they could not be better cared for or
attended with greater gentleness and consideration. The weekly
charge m this establishment for each female patient is three dSl^s^
or twelve shillings English; but no girl employed by any of the c^r-'
porations is ever excluded for want of the means of payment That

facT "nTuTv^xsTx'^'V^^ T.""^' "^"^ ^^ gathered from the
lact that in July. 1841, no fewer than nine hundred and seventy-
eight of these girls were depositors in the Lowell Savings Sank' the
amount of whose joint savings was estimated at one hundred thou-
sand dollars, or twenty thousand English pounds ""'''''^^'^ ^^°^'
I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a large class
of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much

in Jwic^^f ^ '^f^ joint-stock piano in a great many of the board-
ing-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscrihp fn
circulating libraries. Thirdlyf they have got up among themselves a
periodical called The Lowell Offering. ''A repository ofoS
^ticles. writt^en exclusively by females actively employed If the
mills, -which is duly printed, published, and sold; and whereof I
brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages which I
have read from beginning to end. ^^ ' ^ ^

wiS'L^f ^^•''^^'^x?* ''^^^^'■^' ^*^^*^^^ ^y *^«se facts, will exclaim
with one voice. "How very preposterous!" On my deferentially S
quirmg why. they will answer, "These things are above tSir statL^'
In reply to that objection. I would beg to Isk what their stato^^^^^

It IS their station to work. And they do work. They labour in these
mills, upon an average, twelve hours a day. which is unquestionablv
work and pretty tight work too. Perhapsit is above ?LTr statTon S
indulge m such amusements, on any terms. Are we quite sure that we
m England have not formed our ideas of the "station" of working
people, from accustoming ourselves to the contemplation of that
class as they are. and not as they might be.? I think that if we examine
our ow. 'eelmgs. we shall find that the pianos, and theclrcuS
libraries, and evpn th*» Ty^w«n nff^r.; „^„-xi_ .._ ,. ,, ^"^uidtmg

J . ' i / . — — """ -'-^^^^"^5. staitic uo uy tneir noveltv

^TOHg ^^^"°^ "^°'' ^""^ ^^ -^^^^^ ciuestioij of right or

, i

I I'l

American Notes

.hl/f I^^^S ' ^?^J^° station in which, the occupation of to-day
cheerfully done and the occupr.tion of to-morrow cheerfully looked

fkn^nw n^'ntf^l k?k""^*' !f "°] ""^'^ humanising and laudable.

I know no station which is rendered more endurable to the person in
It. or more safe to the person out of it. by having ignorance for its

ZlTni^ ^"T"°. ''^.'^°^ ^^^^^ ^^' ^ "g^t to monopolise the
means of mutual instruction, improvement, and rational entertain-
ment, or which has ever continued to be a station very lone after
Seeking to do so. ^ °'

Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary production I will
only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the articles
having been written by these girls after the arduous labours of the
day. that It will compare advantageously with a great many English
Annuals It is pleasant to find that many of its Tales are of the Mills
and of those who work in them; that they inculcate habits of self-
denial and contentment, and teach good doctrines of enlarged
benevolence A strong feeling for the beauties of nature, as displayed
m the solitudes the writers have left at home, breathes through its
pages like wholesome village air; and though a circulating library is a
?.T/o i^ school for the study of such topics, it has ver^ scant allu^
sion to iJne clothes, fine marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some

?.?w fi""'^^* °^Jl^V*° *^« papers being signed occasionally with
rather fine names, but this is an American fr- ,hion. One of the oro-
yinces of the state legislature of Massachusetts is to alter ugly names
mto pretty ones, as the childr-. improve upon the tastel of their
parents. These changes costing little or nothing, scores of Marv
Annes are solemnly converted into Bevelinas every session
ri!;r!f M^ ^^^^ °? the occasion of a visit from General Jackson or
General Harrison to this town (I forget which, but it is not to the
purpose) he walked through three miles and a half of these young
ladies all dressed out with parasols and silk stockings But as I am
not aware that any worse consequence ensued, than a sudden lookine-
up of al the parasols and silk stockings in the market; and perhaps
the bankruptcy of some speculative New Englander who bought

W?no Itll t?^ P K^'^vi?' expectation of a.demand that never came;
1 set no great store by the circumstance.

^?i^^f>"ff account of Lowell, and inadequate expression of the
gratification it yielded me. and cannot fail to afford to any foreigner
to whom the condition of such people at home is a subject of interest
and anxious speculation. I have carefully abstained from drawing a
comparison between these factories and those of our own land
Many of the circumstances whose strong influence has been at work
for years in our manufacturing towns have not arisen here; and there
is no manufacturing population in Lowell, so to speak: for these girls
(often the daughters of small farmers) come from other States
remain a few years in the mills, and then go home for good
n ''T ''^"^''.f .Y'^V.^'^. be a strong one. for it would be between the
Good and Evil, the living light and deepest shadow. I abstain from it

American Notes 6i

because I deem it just to do so. But I only the more earnestly adjure

^In fll"^ S'^'^^^'w^ '^'* ""^ *^^"^ P^g^«' to pause and reflect
upon the difference between this town and those great haunts of
desperate misery: to call to mind, if they can in the midst of party
strife and squabble the efforts that must be made to purge them of
their suffermg and danger: and last, and foremost, to remember how
the precious Time is rushing by.

r.l ^;^t"^^^l^*= ^ig^t by the same railroad and in the same kind of
a^l'Sr .w^ passengers being exceedingly anxious to expound at
great length to my companion (not to me. of course) the true prin-
ciples on which books of travel in America should be writteS by
Englishmen. I feigned to fall asleep. But glancing all the way out at
window from the corners of my eyes. I found abundance of entertain-

"'i!"t^'"i K^ ''^'* °^ ^uf ""^^ ^^ watching the effects of the wood fire
which had been invisible in the morning but were now brought out in
hrUf i .^ the darkness: for we were travelling in a whirlwind of
bright sparks, which showered about us like a storm of fiery snow

CHAPTER V

WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD. NEW HAVEN.

TO NEW YORK

Leaving Boston on the afternoon of Saturday the fifth of Februarv
we proceeded by another railroad to Worcester: a pretty New
England town, where we had arranged to remain under the hospitable
ro^of the Governor of the State, until Monday morning °'P''''^'®

Sv ?!, • ^"S^^?^)' are as favourable specimens of rural
America as their people are of rural Americans. The well-trimmed
lawns and green meadows of home are not there; and the grass, com-
w .T:J*1? o^^ .ornamental plots and pastures, is rank. Ind ^ough
and wild: but delicate slopes of land, gently-swelling hills, wooded
valleys and slender streams, abound. Every little colony of houses
rooVl'nS r."? T^ school-house peeping from among"^ the white
Vpn!f . w '^J'iJ^^'' ^""^'^ ^°"'^ '^ t^^ ^^itest of the white; every
Wn.!? f.i. Ki"^ *^^ P^^^'* °^ t^^ g'"^^"' every fi^e day's sky tS
bluest of the blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight frost had so hardened

wer. ifi?' '^H^''' ^' alighted at Worcester, that their furrowed tracks
were like ridges of gramte. There was the usual aspect of newness on

buil7and^'''' f h'?w'- ^'' '^^ ^^^^^^"g^ l°^k-d a^ if they hTd been
^^^^i^^fitl":.^.!^?^^^^^ -"1^. ^^ t-^- ^-wn In Monday
Innto^"/ r""j '""'7:''"- -"^"^^ ^ccii evening air, every sliarp outline

cdonn.l« r^''^ ^'"""^ '^^'P"' *^^" ^^^^- The clean cTrdboard
colonnades had no more perspective than a Chinese bridge on a tea-

American Notes

^^Lo ?.tPP?^^^l^^''*"y ^^" calculated for use. The ra2or-like
edges of the detached cottages seemed to cut the very wind as it
whistled against them, and t.. send it smarting on it7way with a

SdwhTch\t".^''°''- T?°^^ slightly-builf wooden Jw^^ngs
Wir^M ^ u*"® ''^'' "^^^ ^^**^"g ^it^ a brilliant lustre, could be so
iwefoh?H°K^^ and through, that the idea of any inhabitant beinR
?he n,?Wi> t '^" ^'T ^^^ P"^^^' «^^^' °^ to have any secrets frorS
W..F" i T' "^^1^°* entertainable for a moment. Even where^
house ^it hid t°h"' *^^7«^.*^« uncurtained windows of sor^e distant
and fniin .f \' ""^-^^'"^ "^^^y ^^8^*^^' ^"d of lacking warmth'
?.ol .1 fl^l^'^^^^^'^g thoughts of a snug chamber bright with

wUh wafmTanr..'^f. 1^^"' ^°""^ *^^^ ''^' hearth, anfru^dy
new mTt^r anSSp waC' "P°" '"^ ^"^^^^*^^^ ^' ^^^ ^"^^^' ^^

wa!°shinW ^Hahf/^^'*'^*^;* ^T^"^"S- ^^^* "^^"'^i^g when the sun
was Shining brightly, and the clear church bells were rin^ina an^J

sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathwafnfkr at

SaSba?S^.et"f 1 *^' ^"*""* *^^^^^ °^ ^°^^' the™ a^^pS^^^
saDbath peacefulness on everything which it w^q ar>r^H f/^*Iti tZ

rve?^;;? Li? 4'^'^*^^h^ f ^^ ^^''^^"-^' ^««- s^tnirsom o d

the scene which Tff.V^.ir^ 'ff ""^ ''^'^ ^"^ tranquillity pervaded
do:brg;aTet^^^^^^^^^^^ -^ *^« ^--d ci?y. had a

thlXTtoHarTflT'^v^^^^ ''^" ^y '^^^^°^^' t« Springfield. From
five and Lin? °^'»7?'*^^'' "^^ ^^^^ ^°""d' ^^ a distance of only
SJttw r''*^ °'''^^' ^"t ^t that time of the year the roads were so

hoL Fortunirr^^^ "°"'^ P.^°^"^^y ^^"^ °^^"Pi«d ten orTw Ive

the CorneSt fe^^^^^ '^'^'"" ^^^'""^ ^""" unusually mild!

tJIV^!^? • . ^^^ "^^^ "open," or, in other words, not frozen

the seasortht^^'^'^.V'*'^^^^^^^ S°^"g to make his first tr?p for
tne season that day the second February trio I beli^vp wi+>,i« fvll
memory of man), and only waited for usX go on boarLrrdS^^^^^
we went on board, with as little delay as milht be He w^ argood Is
his word, and started directly ^ ^°°^ ^^

om^i^tteftollTSf n''^^'^"'^ ^ f"'^" steamboat without reason. I
aS,ut Llf fJ^ question but I should think it must have been of

have lived IZI JT""' ^'■- ^^^^' *^^ celebrated Dwarf, might
nave lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted wlfh
common sash-windows like"^ an ordinary' Snrhouse T^se
winaows had bright-red curtains, too. hung on slack strings across

hoi rwS hid V'.^'i* ^?-'^' '^' ^ P^^^°- °" aSSpubTi"
?^i ' "^J^eji.ha^ got afloat m a flood or some other water accident

was Z^f^^^'J^'^r^l/ '^''Z r ^^" ^"^ ^^^^ - thisThamrer the" e
WicTw^u^^^^^^ '^ g^^ - -y-here, in

n, J.f,"i/i't^L*l*.^i^°^ P^^ f-^t short this vessel was. or how
meas'uremenrwnnM''K "^^'' ^^^e words length and width to such
measurement would be a contradiction in terms. But I may state

American Notes g^

forming a warm sandwich, about three feet thick ''°'*

inrSfhu'idtjflc^oS*^^^^^^^^^^

ice. which were constantly crunching an 7rr. A ?*'"^ ^^°^^^ °^

depth of water, in the cLrse we tLk ^^^^^^^ "'' ^"^ '^"^

, carried down the middle of the riv^r hxffvl the larger masses.

!few inches. NeverthS we moveJ o^^^^^^ did not exceed a
I well wrapped up. bade drfiance to ^Srweather Tnd'^Jnf"^^^^^

pumey. The Connecticut River il\^^LZt ' f enjoyed the

summeUmeare.Ihavenodoubt beaJ^^^^^^ the banks in

-Jif^d.. wej-e very conducfveTe^rTy rising" """°'* "^^ P""=«

bal' S"^tn'Sls°"theTi.^sUr '^!'-"t»-"y -tuated in a
improved It is the seat nfthiw,!*'- ,™f"-™°<led, and carefully
sage body enacted in bveone ^^i!^?^^'"'' °' Connecticut, which

bnioird3S5?3-r

not tended, that I Jow. to maLTe pLp°:"^ess haSte thrh**^

P am accustoS with Vfe"ence*to '^^^^^ ^^''- I-d^^d.

Jfaces, to judge of the ^rifrtf ^? tl *f *^* professions and severe

judge the goSs of this ?nH 1 °*^^^ '^"''^ P"«"y ""^ as I

lust the same as at Bos w fl l\ • ''"'''^ *^^ ^°"^*s «* ^^w here,

lns\ns7u*,ir*rer^S!?.'::j;riL-i.r^'''i^. '-j-^i the

P'thfs^o^ct^r/rrS:/^™™

r octor. m reference to the persons under their charge. Of

i» t

E< <

If'f

lit'

American Notes

course I limit this remark merely to their looks; for the conversation
of the mad people was mad enough.

There was one little, prim old lady, of very smiling and good-
humoured appearance, who came sidling up to me from the end of a
long passage, and with a curtsey of inexpressible condescension,
propounded this anaccountable inquiry:

"Does Pontefract still flourish sir, upon the soil of England?"

"He does, ma'am," I rejoined.

"When you last saw him, sir, he was "

"Well, ma'am," said I, "extremely well. He begged me to present
his compliments. I never saw him looking better."

At this, the old lady was very much delighted. After glancing at
me for a moment, as if to be quite sure that I was serious in my
respectful air, she sidled back some paces; sidled forward again;
made a sudden skip (at which I precipitately retreated a step or two);
and said:

"/ am an antediluvian, sir."

I thought the best thing to say was, that I had suspected as much
from the first. Therefore I said so.

"It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, sir, to be an ante-
diluvian," said the old lady.

"I should think it was, ma'am," I rejoined.

The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip, smirked and
sidled down the gallery in a most extraordinary manner, and ambled
gracefully into her own bed-chamber.

In another part of the building, there was a male patient in bed;
very much flushed and heated.

"Well," said he, starting up, and pulling off his night-cap: "It's all
settled at last. I have arranged it with Queen Victoria."

j 'Arranged what?" asked the Doctor.

"Why, that business," passing his hand wearily across hjs fore-
head, "about the siege of New York."

"Oh I" said I, like a man suddenly enlightened. For he looked at mc
for an answer.

"Yes. Every house without a signal will be fired upon by the
British troops. No harm will be done to the others. No harm at all.
Those that want to be safe, must hoist flags. That's all they'll have
to do. They must hoist flags."

Even while he was speaking he seemed, I thought, to have some
faint idea that his talk was incoherent. Directly he had said these
words, he lay down again; gave a kind of -> groan; and covered his
hot head with the blankets.

There was another: a young man, whose madness was love and
music. After playing on the accordion a march he had composed, he
was very anxious that I should walk into his chamoer, which I
immediately did.

— ,- J 1^ .»..j. -

his bent.

)f ht
I went

I* t*\.^ Tr ill

iiliii

to the window, which commanded a

LiiU

t(Jp Oi

beautiful

nversation

and good-
ie end of a
lescensipn,

and?"

to present

[lancing at
ous in my
ird again;
2p or two);

d as much
e an ante-
irked and
id ambled

nt in bed;
?: "It's all

3 his fore-

ked at mo

)n by the
Lrm at all.
ey'll have

lave some
said these
)vered his

love and
iposed, he
, which I

LiiC LOp Ui

beautiful

Aiiiericaii Notes 65

prospect, and remarked, with an address upon which I greatly
i>liinied myself: *^ gicdny

^-What a delicious country you have about these lodgings of

"Pohl" said he, moving his fingers carelessly over the notes of hU
.nstrument: ;P^.// enough for such an InstitutLZ7thi!r
I don t thmk I was ever so taken aback in all my life

4hl That "a\ir ti^l^"^'" '^ '""^ ^°°"^- '^^'"^'^ ^'•'
., ''y,^^- That's all The Doctor's a smart man. He quite enters into
It. It 8 a ]oke of mine. I like it for a time. You needn't men "on "t
but I thmk I shall go out next Tuesday 1" luenuon it,

I assured him that I would consider our interview perfectly
confidential; and rejomed the Doctor. As we were passing throueh a
gallery on our way out. a welWressed lady, of quiet and coSed
manners, came up. and proffering a slip of pape? and a pen K^
paid.'"'' ^ ^' ^"" "^''^ ^^ autograph. I complied/ and^^^

1 i\**''^^^ J ^^"'^"'i'f ^^^i"g had a few interviews like that t ith
ladies out of doors. I hope she is not mad?"

'|0n what Subject? Autographs?"

"No. She hears voices in the air."

"Well!" thought!, "it would be well if we could shut up afew false
prophets of these later times, who have professed to d? the same
begin ^th"'' " '" '"^ '^' experiment o^n a Mormonist or two to

In this place, there is the best Jail for untried offenders in the
world. There is also a very well-ordered State prison, arranged upon
the same plan as that at Bo3ton. except that here, therels always a
sentry on the wall with a loaded gu.. It contained it that l!me about
two hundred prisoners. A spot was shown me in the sleepSg ward
where a watchman was murdered some years since in the deld of
mght, m a desperate attempt to escape, made by a priiner who had
broken from his oell A woman, too. was pointed out to me. who for
the murder of her husband, had been a close prisoner for s^ieen

"Do you think." I asked of my conductor, "that after so very

SiWtT""""*' "''" ""'' '"^ ''''"'^' °' ^°P^ "' ever regaining
"Oh dear yes," he answered. "To be sure she has."
bhe has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose >"

.'w n** ^^f y/*^l' *^^y couldn't get her out. I suppose?"
Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the second 1

321

tiring

American Notes

and wearying for a few years might do it."

"Does that ever do it?"

"Why yes, that'll do it sometimes. Political friends'll do it some-
times. It's pretty often done, one way or another."

I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recollection
of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends there, whom
I can never remember with indifference. We left it with no little
regret on the evening of Fridr-y the nth, and travelled that night
by railroad to New Haven. Upon the way, the guard and I were
formally introduced to each other (as we usually were on such
occasions), and exchanged a variety of small- talk. We reached New
Haven at about eight o'clock, after a journey of three hours, and put
up for the night at the best inn.

New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. Many
of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted with rows
of grand old elm-troes; and the same natural ornaments surround
Yale College, an establishment of considerable eminence and repu-
tation. The ' arious departments of this Institution are erected in a
kind of park or common in the middle of the town, where they are
dimly visible among the shadowing trees. The effect is very like
that of an old cathedral yard in England; and when their branches
are in full leaf, must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter
time, these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy
streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appearance:
seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town and
country; as if each had met the other half-way, and shaken hands
upon it; which is at once novel and pleasant.

After a night's rest we rose early, and in good time went down to
the wharf, and on board the packet New York for New York. This
was the first American steamboat of any size that I had seen; and
certainly to an English eye it was infinitely less like a steamboat' than
a huge floating bath. I could hardly persuade myself, indeed, but
that the bathing establishment off Westminster Bridge, which I left
a baby, had suddenly grown to an enormous size; run away from
home; and set up in foreign parts as a steapier. Being in America, too,
which our vagabonds do so particularly favour, it seemed the more
probable.

The great difference in appearance between these packets and ours,
is, that there is so much of them out of the water: the main-deck
being enclosed on all sides, and filled with casks and goods, like any
second or third floor in a stack of warehouses; and the promenade
or hurricane-deck being a-top of that again. A part of the machinery
is always above this deck; where the connecting-rod, in a strong ar^;
lofty frame, is seen working away like an iron top-sawyer. Ther^ is
seldom any mast or tackle: nothing aloft but two tall black chimneys.
The man at the helm is shut up in a little house in the fore part of

tllP hnnf {■^Ytfi wViool Vioirirr />i-\rir»or>f«y4 ori^-V. 4-V>^ ^..J.1_» 1 : _i _• _

^ , ,„_,„, j^ v-_-iiiiT.VLt.ti YTXi-ii tHc X uuuci uy null Cilcims,

working the whole length of the deck); and the passengerc, unless

American Notes 5^

the weather be very fine in(>prl iic»nii„ ^ . , '

you have left the wharf Xhe lil^i Jcf"^'^?^ ^^^°^- ^^^^^tlv
cease. You wondeXr a lonftim^ h. ?'"' ^"""^ ^"'^^^ °^ « P^^^ket
to be nobody in charge of he^^^T '^^ ^^^^ «"' ^^^ there seems

machines corses spthfnVoy.'^'ou feel qufte indi^' ."' t^.^^^ ^""
sullen, cumbrous ungraceful unshinHi.^V indignant with it. as a

that the vessel you afe^'^bLTo'ft^^^^ vTrV^oTntetan ^^^^^^

yolr^flre; f SL^ fa^^^.'.^ ,t?agT In'd ^^tf "^^^^^ ^^ P^^
room; and in short a greai vS of nlni .?^ '°2"''' ^"gi^eer's
discovery of the gentleman's cabin f ^P^^f ^'^^"^^^^^ ^^"^^^ the
It often^ccupies trSe Lngth o? the "oat Li dT^ .^.'^^"^^y-
and has th e or four tiers of Wi^c^ ^u -/^^ ^"^ ^^^^ ^ase).
descended into theTabrof^L'SL" Vo'rk if Too^^ •' ^^^^
unaccustomed eyes, about as long as the Burltgton ^^1 '" "'^
The Sound which has to be crossed on fT„-c ^ ^ Arcade.

v.ry safe or pleasant navigation Id has^^^^^^^^^
unfortunate accidents It was ^ w^f^ ■ "^ ?^ ^^^"® of some
we soon lost sight ofiand The drv w?,Ti"^\^"^ ^"^ "^^^^y- ^"^
ened towards noon After exhaus^i^Jf??""' ^^^^^^r. and bright-
the larder, and the'stoctoT^^td !, ^I fav dowJtoT ^ '^ ^^
very much tired with the fatigues of y;sterdav B^if T ^^E' ^/'"^
my nap in time to hurry ud and «;pp MliTr- f ^'t. tt ^ ^°^® ^^^m
Frying Pan. and otSotorious locaHtii ^Jr *^^ "^^'^ ^^^k' ^^e
of famous Diedrich Kni?Scker'f hSo^^^^^^ *° ^" '^^^^'^
narrow channel, with sloping banks on ^ill^-^^t "^^""^ "**^ ^^ a
pleasant villas, and madrref reSi^^^^^^^ ^^th

Soon we shot in qu^fsucfessSi Vast ^"iSf^^ ^^ *"'^ ^"^ *^^^^-
(how the lunatics flung urthefr canrand rn/^^ ^ madhouse

Cloudless s^^^^^^^^^^^ ^:^e;^;:^^^^^^ «. no^w

heJps^y^Sfd^ls^^^^^^^^^^^^^ -' trthe'^Sglf confused

dow^n upon the feW'b^'lo'w" a^^^^^^^^^^ Se^Igtn^^^el^l^?

lazy smoke; and in the forparonnri o , " '"f^v . ^gam, a cloud of
with flappiAg sails and wavf„r/aicms^'°^='''P^' -^t^- -cheery
the oppositelhore. were steSerrTboaSTaSf „ Sh ^ri^ ^''"i *°

restless Insects, wire two or three CI l'"' "*^'"''^ ^""""K t*'^^^
majestic pace, 'as crea ures of ap'oX SS'' dTrt^""^, 7"? ^^"'^
puny journeys, and making for the broad sea R^^^h"' "l*''^''"
heights, and islands in the rfandn^ stl t' ?^°?''; "'^'^ *'"™E
less blue and bright than theTky ?!eemed to meef TW-.^^T^'^

I »ibu..._the_clinking of capsta':,s, tS rtaeta "„f Ll'^t.'Lt.l^l'J"
•-■^uugb, tne ciattenng of wheels tinf??:»H in+i7^ r Z~"-'' ""^ ^-a^i^nig

^ Which life and stir. coLng ac^rt Stt^i^g^tttcrulhTneru?:

I i\

I i

if.!

K h

American Notes

and animation from its free companionship; and, sympathising
with its buoyant spirits, glistened as it seemed in sport upon its
surface, and hemmed the vessel round, and plashed the water
high about her sides, and, floating her gallantly into the dock, flew
off again to welcome other comers, and speed before them to the busy
port.

CHAPTER VI

NEW YORK

The beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so clean a city
as Boston, but many of its streets have the same characteristics;
except that the houses are not quite so fresh-coloured, the sign-
boards are not quite so gaudy, the gilded letters not quite so golden,
the bricks not quite so red, the stone not quite so white, the blinds
and area railings not quite so green, the knobs and pUtes upon the
street doors not quite so bright and twinkling. There are many by-
streets, almost as neutral in clean colours, and positive in dirty ones,
as by-streets in London; and there is one quarter, commonly called
the Five Points, which, in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be
safely backed against Seven Dials, or any other part of famed St.
Giles's.

The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most people know, is
Broadway; a wide and bustling street, which, from the Battery
Gardens to its opposite termination in a country road, may be four
miles long. Shall we sit down in an upper floor of the Carlton House
Hotel (situated in the best part of this main artery of New York),
and when we are tired of looking down upon the life below, sally
forth arm-in-arm, and mingle with the stream?

Warm weather! The sun strikes upon our heads at this open win-
dow, as though its rays were concentrate/i through a burning-glass;
but the day is in its zenith, and the season an unusual one. Was there
ever such a sunny street as this Broadway! The pavement stones are
polished with the tread of feet until they shine again; the red bricks
of the houses might be yet in the dr^r, hot kilns; and the roofs of those
omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, they would
hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. No stint of
omnibuses here ! Half a-dozen have gone by within as many minutes.
Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches too; gigs, phaetons, large-
wheeled tilburies, and private carriages — rather of a clumsy make,
and not very different from the public vehicles, but built for the
heavy roads beyond the city pavement. Negro coachmen and white;
in straw hats, black hats, whifft hnfs ala»f>rl ra-nc fnt- /^o.^o. ;^ ^ — 4.^

of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nankeen, striped jean and linen;

ipathising
t upon its
the water
dock, flew
o the busy

American Notes

ean a city
,cteristics;

the sign-
so golden,
the blinds

upon the
many by-
iirty ones,
nly called
s, may be
[amed St.

i know, is
! Battery
y be four
on House
!W York),
iow, sally

)pen win-
ing-glass;
Vas there
itones are
ed bricks
s of those
ley would
stint of
minutes.
IS, large-
sy make,
t for the
rid white;

.nd linen;

late) in suits of hvery. Some southern republican that, who puts his
blacks in uniform, and swells with SultaS pomp and power Yondl

sla'dW at tSe.:;'*^ *^' well-clipped pair oF grays^Is stop^'d-!!
verv lon/in th^^^^^^^ """"^rr^'f Yorkshire groom, who has not beer
nak o? ton hno?« ^I'^l' V""^ ^°^^' sorrowfully round for a companion
pair of top-boots, which he may traverse the city half a year without

TobSn trele^tf "' *^V"^ir ^°" ^^^^ ^'^^'^ ^e ha^rsel more
colours m these ten minutes, than we should have seen -Isewhere in

whatTnkT. ^^f,t.--rtP-asols! what rainbo^si^ks ^nd sa^^^^^^^^
what pmking of thm stockmgs, and pinching of thin shoes and
lluttering of ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks wi^h
gaudy hoods and linings! The young gentlemen are fond you Tee
of turning down their shirt-collars and cultivating thek 'wWskers'

SrdtL^or'bear^nf r-'"\^'^^ ^T"^^ approlch^Te TaS?n
rneir aress or bearing, being, to say the truth, humanity of auite

"e whlt'^nd^nr"' 1.'^^ ^^^^ "^^ counter,'pass on Ld l?t us

hohlv cloihl of K *^°'^ ^'^ ^^^^^^ y^" t^°«^ two labourers in
Holiday clothes of whom one carries in his hand a crumpled scrao

lt'k?aW?o7?t"on^.'ll'^^^^ 'P^" T ^ ^^^^ --^' -^"- tl- "tS
looKs about tor it on all the doors and windows.

theSloTtanS' lJ°" ""^l^* know them, if they were masked, by
roisers wWrh fh """"^ri ^^^ ^"^^^ buttons, and their drab

^ousers. which they wear like men well used to working dresses
who are easy m no others. It would be hard to keep vour model
republics gomg without the countrymen and count^m^en ofThose
Z^^^^"""""'; ^^'7^° ^^'^ ^^"1^ di^' ^"d delve. an^Xdge. and do
ofTnt.^ Jt'^' ^"^ "^^^^ "^"^^^ ^"d ^°^ds. and execute |reat lines
find o^wLfT^^f V l"'^"^"" ^°th. and sorely puzzled too, to
of Lme and th.Tf -; ^ft^^ ^° ^°^"' ^^^ *^^^P ^h^em, for the love
honesTmen .n^ i ^'"1* ""^ ^iK^'^^ ^^^^^ ^^"^^^s of honest service to
Tha-? w;itrw r'* "^^^^ for honest bread, no matter what it be.
written J I ^ ^r^ ^°* ^t the right address at last, though it is

S than . ipn tI ^ ""^ *v ^ 'P^^^ t^^ ^iter better knows the use
there? TtfJ; "^^ ^ ^'^' y°"^^^' ^^^ ^'"^^ business takes them

there? They carry savings: to hoard up? No. They are brothers

harveTand'l- '''.^ '^^ ''" "^°^^' ^"^ ^^^^^^g ^^^ hard ^r one
out Thl;^ Tv? '^^'■^^'■' "^^^^ ^^"-^^ ^"0"gh to bring the other
sharini'hli^^^' ^^"^7°^^/?. ^^g^*^^^^ «ide by side, contented^
3isS.^. ^^tl ^""^ ^Y.^ ^^^^"^ ^^" ^^°th«^ t^^"^' an^ then their

and vearn. ?rL ^^' k ^ P^'^'"/'^^ ^^^"^ ^^ ^^^^less in a strange land,
gravS .t h^ '" ^r^'' ?^ '^y^' ^"^°"S ^^^ P^^Ple in the old
God hlt^ 1, T.I- ^"^ '° they go to pay her passage back: .nd
God help her and them, and every simple heart, and .11 who . „^ %

comS^TS tiei^i^C^^^ '^^' ^"' '^^^ an altar:fire upon the

^ ^1 .'■

I '

1 i

l!!t ' i'

American Notes

This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in the sun, is
Wall Street: the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street of New York.
Many a rapid fortune has been made in this street, and many a no
less rapid ruin. Some of these very merchants whom you see hanging
about here now, have locked up money in their strong-boxes, like
the man in the Arabian Nights, and opening them again, have found
but withered leaves. Below, here by the water-side, where the bow-
sprits of ships stretch across the footway, and almost thrust them-
selves into the windows, lie the noble American vessels which have
made their Packet Service the finest in the world. They have brought
hither the foreigners who abound in all the streets: not. perhaps, that
there are more here, than in other commercial" cities; but elsewhere,
they have particular haunts, and you must find them out; here,'
they pervade the town.

We must cross Broadway again; gaining some refreshment from
the heat, in the sight of the great blocks of clean ice which are being
carried into shops and bar-rooms; and the pine-apples and water
n--lons profusely displayed for sale. Fine streets of spacious houses
here, you see!— Wall Street has furnished and dismantled many
of them very often — and here a deep green leafy square. Be sure that
it is a hospitable house With inmates to be affectior«ately remembered
always, where they have the open door and pretty show of plants
within, and where the child with laughing eyes is peeping out of
window at the little dog below. You wonder what may be the use
of this tall flagstaff in the by-street, with something like Liberty's
head-dress on its top: so do I. But there is a passion for tall flagstaff s
hereabout, and you may see its twin brother in five minutes, if you
have a mind.

Again across Broadway, and so — passing from the many-coloured
crowd and glittering shops — into another long main street, the
Bowery. A railroad yonder, see, where two stout horses trot along,
drawing a score or two of people and a great wooden ark, with ease.
The stores are poorer here; the passengers less gay. Clothes ready-
made, and meat ready-cooked, are to be bought in these parts; and
the lively whirl of carriages is exchanged for the deep rumble of
carts and waggons. These signs which are so plentiful, in shape like
river buoys, or small balloons, hoisted by cords to poles, and dangling
there, announce, as you may see by looking up, "Oysters in every
Style." They tempt the hungry most at night, for then dull candles
ghmme.ing inside, illuminate these dainty words, and make the
mouths of idlers water, as they read and linger.

What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an
enchanter's palace in a meloaiama! — a famous prison, called The
Tombs. Shall we go in?

So. A long, narrow, lofty building, stove-heated as usual, with
four galleries, one above the other, going round it, and communicat-
ing >^y stairs. Between the two sides of each gallery, and in its centre,
a bridge, for the greater convenience of crossing. On each of these

bridges

p?nion

They 1(

fires wi

with dr

is light

dangle,

A m;

fellow,

"Are

"Yes

"Are

"Wei

about i1

"Thoi

"Whj

"Whe

"Wei]

"Do t

"Cons

"Som(

"Well

"But !

only a pi

they are

affords c

trials, an

here iFor

•'Well,

"Bo y<

at that li

"He ra

"Will ^

"All, ii

The fa

on its hir

enters th

washing,

sixty; rea

shake; an

heads, thi

has murd

"How 1

"A mor

"When

"Nexti

vv neii

he sun, is
STew York,
nany a no
ie hanging
)oxes, like
ave found
i the bow-
ust them-
hich have
'^e brought
haps, that
elsewhere,
out; here,

Qent from

are being

md water

>us houses

led many

! sure that

nembered

of plants

ng out of

e the use

Liberty's

. flagstaff s

:es, if you

-coloured
:reet, the
rot along,
Arith ease,
ies ready-
>arts; and
umble of
ihape like
[ dangling

IN EVERY

11 candles
nake the

, like an
illed The

ual, with

municat-

is Centre,

of these

American Notes

bridges sits a man: dozing or reading or falUnrr i-^ -^t
' p?nion. On each tipr ^t^ L ^L talkmg to an idle com-

Are those black doors the cells?"
"Yes."

"Are they all full?"

ab3 1" '^''^''' P''"^ "^^^ '""' ^^^ *^^^'« - ^--t' -nd no two ways
''Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely'"

Why, we do only put coloured people in 'em. That's the truth "
^ When do the prisoners take exercise?" ^ *'^"*^-

Well they do without it pretty much."

Do they never walk in the yard?"

Considerable seldom."
"Sometimes, I suppose?"
''Well, it's rare they do. They keep pretty bright without it "

^ He might walk some, perhaps— not much."
Will you open one of the doors?"
All, if you like."

on^?s%tn1esTett'ln"? '^'t' ^^?, °"" °^ *^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ns slowly

How long has he been here?"
'A month."

"When will he be tried?"
I'Next term."
"When is that?"
"Next month."

fit

rtf^'i

f'lF

! f: ii

American Notes

"In England, if a man be under sentence of death, even he has air
and exercise at certain periods of the day."
"Possible?"

With what stupendous and untranslatable coolness he says this,
and how loungingly he leads on to the women's side: making, as be
^oe£ a kind of iron castanet of the key and the stair-rail!

Each cell door on this side has a square aperture in it. Some of the
women peep anxiously through it at the sound of footsteps; others
shrink away in shame. — For what offence can that lonely child, of
ten or twelve years old, be shut up here? Oh! that boy? He is the son
of the prisoner we saw just now; is a witness against his father; and
is detained here for safe keeping, until the trial; that'^ all.

But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass the long c.ays and
nights in. This is rather hard treatment for a young witness, is it
not? — ^What says our conductor?

"Well, it an't a very rowdy life, and thaVs a fact!"
Again he clinks his metal castanet, and leads us L surely away.
I have a question to ask him as we go.

"Pray why do they call this place The Tombs?"
"Well, it's the cant name."
"I know it is. Why?"

"Some suicides happened here, when it was first built. I expect it
come about from that."

"I saw just now, that that man's clothes were scattered auout the
floor of his cell. Don't you oblige the prisoners to be orderly, and put
such things away? "

"Where should they put 'em?"

"Not on the ground surely. What do you say to hanging them
up?"

He stops and looks round to emphasise his answer:
"Why, I say that's just it. When they had hooks they wouldhssig
themselves, so they're taken out of every cell, and there's only the
marks left where they used to be!"

The prison-yard in which he pauses now, has been the scene of
terrible performances. Into this narrow, ^grave-like place, men are
brought out to die. The wretched creature stands beneath the gibbet
on the ground; the rope about his neck; and when the sign is given,
a weight at its other end comes running down, and swings him up
into the air — a corpse.

The law requires that there be present at this dismal spectacle,
the judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount of twenty-five.
From the community it is hidden. To the dissolute and bad, the
thing remains a frightful mystery. Between the criminal and them,
the p-^i son- wall is interposed as a thick gloomy veil. It is the curtain
to hib bed of death, his winding-sheet, and grave. From him it shuts
out IJin, and all the motives to unrepenting hardihood in that last

sustain. There are no bold eyes to make him bold; no ruffians to

American Notes

Let us go forth again into the cheerful streets

blue parasol which pas^d a„d reoass4/tS» Lt.? *^ '*'"*' ''«'''
times while we were^sitting tht^ ^Hfe glg1:';ro:' hire "xaS
an? a sfkc^'^a^" ?r',^ ^T ""^ *™*«"S upUi"d tWs''S„lg'^'=
?u^ed ttcofnen'^ half-a-doeen gentlemeu hogs have just n^

Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward bv himwif H. l,,. .

St;;3Ktrg:?s^r-VeidS^"^^^
ihiro^f orrbi'^^n aTsr^tael' t rS^^^^^^^^

at a certain hour, throw.Tn,s"^f '^^^the ttTferSo^^hif
day m some manner quite satisfactory to himself and .^i^ .
appears at the door of his own house again at nirtT lit. ft "f"''?'''^
master of Gil Bias He is •> frer3 .!t? t ? ' '•*!.*''^ mysterious

pg. having a verylaryacqu:i:Ll.rjm:ng o^^^^^^^^^ °'

character, whom he rather know«! hv =t,iV It ^^ *^® ^^"^^

seldom troubles himsdf Wop'a/dTxchanS cSiS^Tv"' ''^
?r!;rf&*^ l^-'-V^J; *"™'"S «P thetwILTsmr't^fof'SI
buTh£ o^ :t?i ht^ve^nitltrfort?'- ST"* ""^""^ ^ *^"'
h.ve been at that too^7IU^:Zn'^d°iXtrZ^^ ^t^Z
^^Vmi;|^7^rtt^St"^X^t^^^^^^^^

»e Sm-h7w-tTft pXr&elsiSS"^^ F^"

^» ^or.TeiTis'^d-Xi-iSli^^^

Whose carcase garnishes a butcher's drroost W h^ 1"^"^'

"Such is hfe: all flesh is porkl'' bSs hi nose ,V. fh.\. ^''"*' °"*

They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes th^v ar«.
having, for the most part, scanty brown Lckslil.^fi;!r!i ^.?j
horsehair trunks: spotted'with u';iwhoTesomf &^^^^ 1^'^

have long gaunt legs, too, and such peaked snoutf that ? one 'V +h
could be persuaded to sit for his profile, nobody w^juldreco^isi I ^
a pig's likeness. They are never attended utS^ or Th^^^ ^^ '* ^°^
caught, but are thrown upon their own Xu^ces n ;ariv^ir' °^'
become preternaturally knowing in consequence Fv^^t^ 5^- u^ ^""^
where he lives, much letter thL anyTdrcouM l^r^.^^^A^.^?
bed hv^'iof ^''''T^ is closing in, you will see them roam'ing towards
bed by^scores, eatmg their way to the last. Occasionally, some ye^

American Notes

1 1:

among them who has over-eaten himself, or has been worried by dogs,
trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son: but this is a rare
case: perfect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable com-
posure, being their foremost attributes.

The streets and shops are lighted now; and as the eye travels down
the long thoroughfare, dotted with bright jets of gas, it is reminded
of Oxford Street, or Piccadilly. Here and there a flight of broad stone
cellar-steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you to the Bowling
Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley; Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance
and skill, invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding
Nine-Pins. At other downward flight of steps, are other lamps,
marking the whereabouts of oyster-cellars — pleasant retreats, say I:
not only by reason of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty nigh
as large as cheese-plates (or for thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek
Professors !) , but because of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or
fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not
gregarious; but subduing thvimselves, as it were, to the nature of
what they work in, and copying the coyness of the thing they eat, do
sit apart in curtained boxes, and consort by twos, not by two hun-
dreds.

But how quiet the streets are! Are there not itinerant bands; no
wind or stringed instruments? No, not one. By day, are there no
Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers, Conjurers, Orches-
trinas, or even Barrel-organs? No, not one. Yes, I remember one.
One barrel-organ and a dancing-monkey — sportive by nature, but
fast fading into a dull, lumpish monkey, of the Utilitarian school,
Beyond that, nothing lively; no, not so much as a white mouse in a
twirling cage.

Are there no amusements? Yes. There is a lecture-room across the
way, from v/hich that glare of light proceeds, and there may be
evening service for the ladies thrice a week, or oftener. For the young
gentlemen, there is the counting-house, the store, the bar-ioom:
the latter, as you may see through these windows, pretty full. Hark!
to the clinking sound of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the
cool gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, they
are poured from glass to glass! No amusements? What are these
suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong drinks, whose hats and
legs we see in every possible variety of twist, doing, but amusing
themselves? What are the fifty newspapers, which those precocious
urchins are bawling down the street, and which are kept filed within,
what are they but amusements? Not vapid, waterish amusements,
but good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and blackguard
names; pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil
did in Spain; pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste,
and gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw; imputing to
every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring
away from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan
of clear conscience and good deeds; and setting on, with yell and

American Notes 75

whistle and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst
birds of prey. — No amusements!

Let us go on again; and passing this wilderness of an hotel with
stores about its base, like some Continental theatre, or the London
Opera House shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the Five Points
But It IS needful, first, that we take as our escort these two heads of
the police, whom you would know for sharp and well-trained officers
If you met them in the Great Desert. So true it is. that certain
pursuits, wherever carried on, will stamp men with the same
character. These two might have been begotten, born, and bred in
Bow btreet.

We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day; but of
other kinds of strollers, plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are
rife enough where we are going now.

This is the place: these narrow ways, diverging to the right and
left, and reekmg every^vhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led
here bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated
faces at the doors, have counterparts at home, and all the wide world
over Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See
how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and
broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt
in drunken frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do they ever wonder
why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours? and
why they talk instead of grunting?

So far. nearly every house is a low tavern; and on the bar-room
walls, are coloured prints of Washington, and Queen Victoria of
fu^uli' ^""^ the American Eagle. Among the pigeon-holes that hold
the bottles, are pieces of plate-glass and coloured paper, for there is
m some sort, a taste for decoration, even here And as seamen
irequent these haunts, there are maritime pictures by the dozen- of
^f^K^^K ^etween sailors and their lady-loves, portraits of William
of the ballad and his Black-Eyed Susan; of Will Watch, the Bo?d
Smuggler; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like: on which the painted
eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot, rest in as strange
companionship, as on most of the scenes that are enacted in their
wondering presence.

What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind
of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable onlv bv
crazy wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering flight
of steps that creak beneath our tread?-a miserable room, lighted
by one dim candle, and destitute of all comfort, save that which mav

knees: his forehead hidden m his hands. "What ails that man?'' asks

I Ton "''T^'* ?'^'''' T"T'" ^' ^""^^^y ^^Pli^«' without looking S
Conceive the fancies of a feverish brain in such a place as this' ^'

wm" ?^^^Pitc^-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the

tremui.ng L,oarus, anu grope your way with me into this wolfish den

where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come A

i>i

American Notes

negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice — he knows it
well — but comforted by his assurance that he has not come on
business, officiously bestirs himself to light a candle. The match
flickers for a moment, and shows great mounds of dusty rags upon
the ground; then dies away and leaves a denser darkness than before,
if there can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the
stairs and presently comes back, shading a flaring taper with his
hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly
up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negro women, waking from
their sleep: their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes
glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like the
countless repetition of one astonished African face in some strange
mirror.

Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there are traps,
and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted as ourselves)
into the housetop; where the bare beams and rafters meet overhead,
and calm night looks down through the crevices in the roof. Open the
door of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. Pah !
They have a charcoal fire within; there is a smell of singeing clothes,
or flesh, so close they gather round the brazier; and vapours issue
forth that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance
about you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls half-awakened,
as if the judgment-hour were near at hand, and every obscene grave
were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to lie, women, and
men, and boys slink off to sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to move
away in quest of better lodgings.

Here too are lanes and alleys, paved with mud knee-deep, under-
ground chambers, where they dance and game; the walls bedecked
with rough designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and American
eagles out of number: ruined houses, open to the street, whence,
through wide gaps in the walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as
though the world of vice and misery had nothing else to show;
hideous tenements which take their name from robbery and murder;
all that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here.

Our leader has his hand upon the latch of "Almack's." and calls
to us from the bottom of the steps; for the assembly-rc ti of the
Five Point fashionables is approached by a descent. Shall we go in.'
It is but a moment.

Heyday! the landlady of Almack's thrives! A buxom fat mulatto
woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily ornamented with
a handkerchief of many colours. Nor is the landlord much behind her
in his finery, being attired in a smart blue jacket, like a ship's
steward, with a thick gold ring upon his little finger, and round his
neck a gleaming golden watch-guard. How glad he is to see us ! What
will we please to call for? A dance? It shall be done directly, sir; "a
regular break-down."

The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the tambourine,

sed orchestra in which they

4-1. -

^£ J.-U^ _.

American Notes *jm

sit. and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come uoon the flnnr
marshaUed by a lively young negro, who is tL^t of tKsemSl'
and the greatest dancer known. He never lPa^/,«« ^« r^li . ^^"^^'y-
faces, and is the delight of all thTresTwlTo ^r ntort"r^r^^^^^^
incessantly Among the dancers are two younf mulX gfrls with
arge, black, droopmg eyes, and head-gear aftir th^fashfon ^f th^
hostess, who are as shy, or feign to be. L though tLy never da^^^^^^

st^Sh1ng\^r .^ong^^^^^^^ -- ^^^ ^^-^^^

ong about It that the sport beginsTlangu^sl whe^^uddenlv th^
lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the fiddler grlns^ and
goes at It tooth and nail; there is new energy in the tambourW- T
laughter m the dancers; new smiles in theYaidlady n^t con^^^^^^^
in the landlord; new brightness in the very candles Sin aufK^
double shuffle, cut and cro'ss-cut; snapping hfs fmge s roS'h s e^vt '
turning m his knees, presenting the backs of his iL inTront SDinTn^

fh.'^Sn.to^'' *°f ^"^ *^".^^^ "^^ ^«*hi"g but the mar?s finSrs on
the tambourme; dancmg with two left legs, two right legs two wooden

lf;,Z\w""t ^^^^S^riP""^ ^^^^-^11 ««^ts of legfand noTegs-
what IS this to him? And in what walk of life, or dince of Hfe dnTI
man ever get such stimulating applause as thundere abm t' hfr^
when, having danced his partner off her feet, and h^mse^rtoo he
finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter and call w' }Z
somethmg to drink, with the chuckle of a mmion of counterfe^S m
Crows, in one mimitable sound! ^"""xerieit jim

atmosphe^e^rf^if.^h"'^ distempered parts, is fresh after the stifling
atmosphere of the houses; and now. as we emerge into a br >adf.r

What! do you thrust your common offenders against tho t,„t,,..
discplme of the town, into such holes as thesef Do Srand women

su^'oTn Jed rrhaTo" ^'''^'^' "^ """'^ *" ""S"^' » ^rfec?dSe™;
surrounded by the noisome vapours which encircle that flavin,;

ten^hrwh'^''* f •""''• ^°<1 breathing this fi'?hy and oSi vf
stench! Why such mdecent and disgusting dangeons as these c^N.

Lo"hfm S'" "^^ '^' ""* ^^'^"^ ^^^"^ *^ "™'^^'
LOOK at them, man— you, who see them every night and keen th^

be^w^h ''^ T ""■".* *'y *^«? '°° y°^ know-how dktas are madi

betrata^rst^gnrntp"*''^^^ '"^^ '"'■"^'' — ^^-- '-?' ^

locted''„!if f''°?h* ^°^- "^ "^^ ^'^ five-and-twenty young women

It 1,a?H^V'2 ™7.5!'.^*- °- *™«. ^'nd you'd hardl^ reaTs^
T^ n"l\ — ' r""^ "^ciu wcic among 'em.
In God s name I shut the door upon the wretched creature who is

American Notes

m It now, and put its screen before a place, quite unsurpassed in all
the vice, neglect, and devilry, of the worst old town in Europe.

Are people really left all night, untried, in those black sties> -Ev jry
night. The watch is set at seven in the evening. The magi - .te o'jcns
his court at ^ve in the morning. That is the earliest horr ;t wii oh the
first prisoner can be released; and if an officer appear ags . . m he
IS not taken out till nine o'clock or ten.— But if any one an. them
die m the interval, as one man did, not long ago? Then he .^ half-
eaten by the rats in an hour's time; as that man wiiS- '-1 there
an end.

What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing of
wheels, and shouting in the distance? A fire. And what that deep red
light m the opposite direction? Another fire. And what these charred
And blackened walls we stand before? A dwelling where a fire has
been. It was more than hinted, in an official report, not long ago that
some of these conflagrations were not wholly accidental, and' tfcat
speculation and enterprise found a field of exertion, even in flames
but be this as it may, there was a fire last night, there are two to-
night, and you may lay an even wager there will be at least one
to-morrow. So, carrying that with us for our comfort, let us sav'
Good night, and climb up-stairs to bed. '

One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the different
public institutions on Long Island, or Rhode Island- I forget which
One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The building is handsome; and is
remarkable foi- a spacious and elegant staircase. The whole structure
is not yet finished, but it is already one of considerable size and
extent, and is capable of accommodating a very large number of

I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspection of
this charity. The different wards might have been cleaner and better
ordered; I saw nothing of that salutary system which had impressed
me so favourably elsewhere; and everything had a lounging, listless
madhouse air. which was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering
down with long dishevelled hair; the gibbering maniac, with his
hideous laugh and pointed finger; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face
the gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails
there they were all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror In
the dinmg-room a bare, dull, dreary place, with nothing for the eye
to rest on but the empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. She
was bent, they told me. on committing suicide. If anything could
have strengthened her in her resolution, it would certainly have been
the insupportable monotony of such an existence

The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled
so shocked me. that I abridged my stay within the shortest limits'
and declined to see that portion of the building in which the re-
tractory and violent were under closer restraint I ha^/o n^ 'i—b^
that tne gentleman who presided over this establishment at the time

American Notes yg

I write of, was competent to manage it. and had done ail in hia
power to promote its usefulness: but will it be Meved tLT .k!

oTffflft V'"?H°' ''^rju'^^^'"^ ^^ ^-"-d even into Js sad Xe
w4h are t'o watcTn'"' humanity? Will it be believed that Vhe lyS
wmcn are to watch over and control the wanderings of minds on
u^ich the most dreadful visitat^m to which our nature is exposeS

Wi Vh be beHevrtha't%t"" "' --« -etched sicIe'i'pXics?
It De Deiieved that the governor of such a house ai thU i.

K'2^''' h"*^ '^•'P°'""^' '">'' "^h^-^gcd perpetaally a^ Parties
thTs way or thS^'A^h" ^ '!lf despic'able'^eWrc.^ks Le Wow^

I never turned my back upon it with feelings of such d^o dk^n!; ,nH
measureless contempt, as when I crossed tUthreshofd'oUh^i^lrd'

Ho1,se^ ?Saf iftn*"'^ ^IS'" ^'f ''""'"8 '^ *"°ther called the Alms
rn:tStfon'afso:°lSrging^ TStT whe'l'^T ^'"\^*"' '^ ' '"^e
thousand poor.. It wa! "bld.y vlSieXt^d bad?^ UghSd'^I^L?

good and eviftsrnrrm1xed\'n1rumb,iZprget\:r^^ =""°""' °'

nu[L?LXed"fdiZrstit*ttY'S^H^°"°«°'^^

and I can the more easUv L^dii if ? 'f '"'"^ '* '' ™" conducted;

usually are.1n AmerSi of that L',.??"? '"°^'"? ''°"' ""■"^'"' ^W
rememUaU l^Crrnlanl yZg c^WreT '" *^ "^''"^ ^'^''^
the' MLT^:il'i:^ro::rtT:^Jyj:Z'' *" ^^ ^oat be.ongi„g to

itpLessS/a-n^^tjrSg^-lSf^^^^^^^^^^^

;eLtb-^Tht^ttr:rSo?st'tS:^ iS^k- " '

hanri TKo^o K • ^^I'uur m certam stone-q

Jiand. The day bemg very wet indeed, this labour w Jc„o^.„^„. __ ,

"ic prisoners were in their cpll<? Tmao^ir,^ ^Tu'"" ■—■^"^t"-'-^^^^. and
three hundred in n„mber:i;Ste4^Ca*t;SedTprtiron°I

?il

American Notes

., iF

at his door for air, with his hands thrust through the grate; this one
in bed (in the middle of the day, remember); and this one flung down
in a heap upon the ground, with his head against the bars, like a wild
beast. Make the rain pour down, outside, in torrents. Put the ever-
lasting stove in the niidst; hot, and suffocating, and vaporous, as a
witch's cauldron. Add a collection of gentle odours, such as would
arise from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet through, and a
thousand buck-baskets, full of half-washed linen— and there is the
prison, as it was that day.

The prison for the State at Sing Sing, is, on the other hand, a
model jail. That, and Aubuia, are, I believe, the largest and best
examples of the silent system.

In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the Destitute: an
Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, male and
female, black and white, wit'iout distinction; to teach them useful
trades, apprentice them tc respectable masters, and make them
worthy members of society. Its design, it will be seen, is similar to
that at Boston; and it is a no less meritorious and admirable estab-
lishment. A suspicion crossed my mind during my inspection of this
noble charity, whether the superintendent had quite sufficient know-
ledge of the world and worldly characters; and whether he did not
commit a great mistake in treating some young girls, who were to all
intents and purposes, by their years and their past lives, women, as
though they were little children; which certainly had a ludicrous
effect in my eyes, and, or I am much mistaken, in theirs also. As the
Institution, however, is always under a vigilant examination of a
body of gentlemen of great intelligence and experience, it cannot fail
to be well conducted; and whether I am right or wrong in this slight
particular, is unimportant to its deserts and character, which it
would be difficult to estimate too higaly.

In addition to these establishments, there are in New York,
excellent hospitals and schools, literary institutions and libraries;
an admirable fire department (as indeed it should be, having constant
practice), and charities of every sort and kind. In the suburbs there
is a spacious cemetery: unfinished yet, but every day improvmg. The
saddest tomb I saw there was "The Strangers' Grave. Dedicated to
the different hotels in this city."

There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the Park and the
Bowery, are large, elegant, and handsome buildings, and are, I grieve
to write it, generally deserted. The third, the Olympic, is a tiny show-
box for vaudevilles and burlesques. It is singularly well conducted
by Mr. Mitchell, a comic actor of great quiet humour and originality,
who is well remembered and esteemed by London playgoers. I am
happy to report of this deserving gentleman, that his benches are
usually well filled, and that his theatre rings with merriment every
night. I had almost forgotten a small summer theatre, called Niblo's,
with gardens and open air amusements attached: but I believe it is
not exempt from the general depression under vvhich Theatrical

American Notes

StXre^' °' ^^*^* " humorousJ.y called by that name, unfortunately
The country round New York is surpassingly and exquisitely

SlhrwlTrnS'ww'^' ^' ^5^r ^^"^^y intimated, is somewhat
of the warmest What it would be. without the sea breezes which
come from its beautiful Bay in the evening time, I will not throw
myself or my readers into a fever by inquiring.

The toae of the best society in this city, is like that of Boston-
here and there, it nay be. with a greater infusion of the mercantile
spirit, but generally polished and refined, and always most nospitable.
The houses and tables are elegant; the hours later and more rakish-
and there is. perhaps, a greater spirit of contention in reference to
appearances, and the display of wealth ar i costly living The ladies
are singularly beautiful. J & '=> ictuicj,

hn^^lZ\lAr ^^"^ w "■ u ^ ''f "^^ arrangements for securing a passage
home in th^ George Washington packet ship, which was advertised to
sail m June: that being the month in which I had determined if
America '''' accident in the course of my ramblings, to leive

I never thought that going back to England, returning to all who
are dear to me. and to pursuits that have insensibly grSwn to be a
part of my nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as I endured
when I parted at last, on board this ship, with the friends who had
accompanied me from this city. I never thought the name of anv
place, so far away and so lately known, could ever associate itself in
my mmd with the crowd of affectionate remembrances that now
cluster about it. There are those in this city who would brighten to
me, the darkest wmter-day that ever glimmered and went out in
Lapland; and before whoL3 presence even Home grew dim. when they
and I exchanged that painful word wnich mingles with our everv
thought ajid deed; which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy, and
closes up the vista of oui lives in age.

1^ 1

CHAPTER VIl

PHILADELPHIA. AND ITS SOLITARY PRISOr

The journey from New York to Philadelphia, is made by railroad
and two femes; and usually occupies between five and six hours It
was a fine evening when we were passengers in the train: and watch-
ing the bngLc sunset from a little window near the door by which we
sat. my attention was attracted to a remarkable appearance issuing
from the windows of the gentleman s car immediately in front of us

which I siinnospr! fnr cnme. +iwyc. ,.ra« : j »_■' . '

mdustrjous persons mside. rippmg open feather beds, and giving the

.* ''%

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feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to me that they were onlv
spitting, which was indeed the case; though how any number of
passengers which it was possible for that car to contain, could have
maintained such a playful and incessant shower of expectoration I
am still at a loss to understand: notwithstanding the experience 'in
all sahvatory phenomena which I afterwards acquired

I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and modest
young quaker. who opened the discourse by informing me, in a grave
whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn castor
oil I mention the circumstance here, thinking it probable that this
is the first occasion on which the valuable medicine in question was
ever used as a conversational aperient.

We reached the city, late that night. Looking out of my chamber-
window, before gomg to bed, I saw, on the opposite side of the wav
a handsome building of white marble, which had a mournful ghost-
like aspect, dreary to behold. I attributed this to the sombre inilu-
ence of the night, and on rising in the morning looked out again
expecting to see its steps and portico thronged with groups of people
passing m and out. The door was still tight shut, however; the^same
cold cheerless air prevailed; and the building looked as if the marble
statue of Don Guzman could alone have any business to transact
within its gloomy walls. I hastened to inquire its name and purpose
and tht-n my surprise vanished. It was the tomb of many fortunes'
toe^Great Catacomb of investment; the Memorable United States

The stoppage of this Bank, with all its ruinous consequences had
cast (as I was told on every side) a gloom on Philadelphia, under the
depressing effect of which it yet laboured. It certainly did seem
rather dull and out of spirits. .y ^ ^ seem

.u^i\% handsome city, but distractingly regular. After walking
about it for an hour or two. I felt that I would have given the world
for a crooked street. The collar of my coat kppeared to stiffen and
h.t /v!"" I ""^ hat to expand, beneath its quakery influence. My
hair shrunk in a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselve upon
my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings
m Mark Lane over against the Market Pla^.e. and of m^Ving a large
tortune by speculations in corn, came over me involunta i

Philadelphia IS most bountifully provided wit) .freshw^ic- which
is showered and jerked about, and turned on, and r. ured off eveiv-
where. The Waterworks, which are on a height iv.ar the citv are?o
'.ess ornamental than useful, being tastefully laid r t a«« a oublic
garden, and kept in the best and neatest ord.^r. Th nver is dammed
at this point and forced by its ov;n power into certain bif h tanks or
re.«;ervoirs. whence the whole city, to the top stories o. the houses is
supplied at a very trifling expense. ""ubcb, is

I'here are various public institutions. Among thera - mo ,t excellent
Hospital-a quaker establishment, but not sectarian in thf great
-enexxts u couxcrs; a quiet, quaint old library, named atier Frc^nklin-

American Notes

a handsome Exchange and Post Office; and so forth. In connection
w th the quaker Hospital, there Is a picture by West, which is exh^
b ted for the benefit of the funds of the institiition. Th^Iubleci is our

f f r"i. 'f^'"'^ *^^ 'If^' ^^^ '^ ''' P^^h^Ps. as favourable a spedmen
of the master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be hi^h nr^
praise, depends upon the reader's taste. ^"'^'^ ^^'^ ^^ ^'^^ ^^ ^ow

In the same room, there is a very charar+^ristir anH Uf^ n
portrait of Mr. Sully, a distinguished AmerSn'artf^^^^ ^"^ ^'^'-^'^'

My stay m Philadelphia was very short but what I ..w .f •.

T'^K' r'^'V'^'''' Treating S its g^nerll char^^^

taste and criticism, savouring ratL of thoi^c;on?.t^^
upon the same themes, in conSctLn t^h ShfSsS^^^^^^^
Musical Glasses, of which we read in the Vic^r of Wak?fi^' Near h^

CntZ ^'^'''^ f k"^^^ unfinished marble structure' ? the G^a^d
College, founded by a deceased gertleman of that name and 0I
enormous wealth, which, if comoL-ted arr .rHincr +^ ^vT ■■ t
design will be perhaps the ricS^idifice"oTmode?„ dmes' Buft"h
bequest IS involved in legal disputes, and pending thSi the work
has stopped; so that like many other great undertakin"^^^ A^ •
'T '^' '' I^*"^' 8°'"8 to be done one^f these Xs than dotnTnow

^"s^:^ ^ s?t:r.::i?nrr:r "^ -^^-

In its intention. I am well convinced that it is kind humane anrl'
meant for retormation; but I am persuaded that those X demised
whn 'r*'"^.°^^"'"^ Discipline, .n.l those benevolenrgLtiemen
who carry it into execv,,tion. do not know what it is that thev are
domg. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating th.^
immense amount of torture and agony whic^h this dreiruf punish!
ment. prolonged for year., inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessTne
at It myself, ard in reasoning Lorn v.hat I have seen wri?tf n uDon
their faces, and what to my ce.tn^ln knowledge they ^eel w thl^ I^am
on y the more convinced th.f there is a depth of iexribllenduranS
in It which none bu. the sm . .jrs themselves can fathom and whth
no man has a right t. ir.lict upon his fellow-cxeature I hoM t^^^
slow and daily tamperiag with the mysteries of the brain f o be im
measurably worse than any (orture of the body and because Ss
ghastly sigr. .nd tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of
touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not nno^ f i?l
sumce. and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear thTefor:
I the more denounce 1- as a secret punishment which slumberW
h... amty iH not re a ^p to stay. I hesitated once. debaW S
myself, whether, u • had the power of saying "Yes" or ''No - T
., , ,..io-. ir ^o t>.- r leu 111 jcrtain cases, where the tprm<! r,f ;«,
.nsonment were sh. but now. I solemnly decUe ZTjbZ

K,v\ ^^'ii-*''

■ mm-.^^sAi

Pill.

American Notes

rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open skv
by day. or he me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness
that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay
sutfermg this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause
or I consentmg to it in the least degree.

I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially
connected with its management, and passed the day in going from
cell to cell and talking with the inmates. Every facility was afforded
me, that the utmost courtesy could suggest. Nothing was concealed
or hidden from my view, and every piece of information that I
sought, was openly and frankly given. The perfect order of the build-
ing cannot be praised too highly, and of the excellent motives of all
who are immediately concerned in the administration of the system
there can be no kind of question. ^ '

Between the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is a
spacious garden. Entering it. by a wicket in the massive gate we
pursued the path before us to its other termination, and passed 'into
a large chamber, from which seven long passages radiate. On either
side of each is a long, long row of low cell doors, with a certain number
over every one. Above, a gallery of cells, like those below, except
that they have no narrow yard attached (as those in the ground tier
have), and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of these
IS supposec to compensate for the absence of so much air and exercise
as can be had m the dull strip attached to each of the others in an
hour s time every da- d therefore every prisoner in this upper
story has two cells, a^ ig and communicating with, each other

btandmg at the c point, and looking down these dreary

passages, the dull repose ^nd quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasion-
ally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver's shuttle or
shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heivy
dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more
profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into
this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark
shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the livine:
world he is led to the cell from which he aever again comes forth
until his whole term of imprisonment has expired. He never hears of
wife and children; home or friends; the life or death of any single
creature. He sees the prison officers, but with that exception he never
looks upon a human countenance, or hears a human vo^re He is a
man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of 3 ea- ■ and in the
dlT air'""^ *° everything but torturing anxieties and horrible

His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown even
to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is a nuX'r over
his ceh -door, and in a book of which the governor of the prison has
sZ^^^^""^ ^^1'^'''^' instructor another: this is the index of Ms
and^-„^"/?"?.^^l^" P^?^^*h^ P'^''^ 1^^'^ no record of his existence
ana .x^v^ugx. i^c iive to vc m tne same cell ten weary years, he has no

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means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in what part of the
building It IS situated; what kind of men there ai about him whethe?
m the long winter nights there are living peoole near or ir^Tn !
lonely corner of the great jail, with wXSd passages "^^^
doors bel^een him and the nearest sharer in its solita^ Srrors
Every cell has doub e doors: the outer one of sturdy^akX other

hL^ed He h'L'.^''5T," '^T '^^ *^^P ^^^-"g^ wh'lch his food is
handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, and under certain

restrictions has sometimes other books, provided foV the puSose

and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate"^ and can, Sid bas^Han^

upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf Fresh water i^laH r^"^

every cell and he can dl^aw it at his pleasure Du'wth^^^^^

bedstead turns up against the wall, and leaves more smce for hLfo

work m. His loom, or bench, or wheel, ^s there; ?nd there h^Lb^^^

sle^eps and wakes, and counts the seasons as they chan":, and grows

The first man I saw. was seated at his loom, at work He had been

He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles nnA
ansvered freely to everything that was said to him. but alwa^^^^

a pap^harof M??'' ^^-""^ '" " ^°-' thoughtfurvoice He r^
a paper hat of his own making, and was pleased to have it noticed

D^ln^'w"^- ^" ^^^.^"^ ingeniously manufactured a sort 0I
£)ttte served for'thr' ^ I'^^^lf^.^dds and ends; and his vinegar-
Dottie served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in this cotSt-,-
vance. Le looked up at it with a great deal of prSe and said that he
and .r.,''''"^'"^^^ improving it. and that he hiped the har^Ler

lont '' He had'? f ^'°J'^ ^'^'' ""'''^^ '' "^°"ld P^^y music bXe
v^rt ^ / extracted some colours from the yarn with which he
worked, and painted a few poor figures on the waH Ore of rfemale
over the door, he called. "The Lady of the Lake." ' ^^^^'

fiW^K^^ V ^%} ^?''^^^ ^* ^^^^^ contrivances to while away the
time; but when I looked from them to him I saw that hisin f^.mKi^-?
and could have counted the beating of ihirWrt T forL/h 5
came about, but some allusion was^made to hrhavinrf ^il'^He
^rhandf'^' "' *'' "^^'' *™^^ ^''^^' -d covere7L%:c"
"But you are resigned now!" said one of the eentlempn afw o
short pause, during which he had resumed h^fofmer manner He
answered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless in Ttsh^pelessne^^^
th^nk?'''.Werf ■' ^ '^fP'^ '^ ''■" "A"" ^^- ^ better man ^ou
pr tt^ quS^" T^-?'"' '"'? ' ^°P^ ' "^^y ^''" "And time g^oes
walls!"^ ^ "^^"^ ^°"^' gentlemen, within these four

He gazed about him— Heaven only knows how wearily!— as he

American Notes

I' tii^

illlll

said these words; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare
as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed
heavily, put on his spectacles, and went about his work again.

In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five years
imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. With
colours procured in the same manner, he had painted every inch of
the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had laid out the few feet
of ground, behind, with exquisite neatness, and had made a little bed
in the centre, that looked by-the-bye, like a grave. The taste and
ingenuity he had displayed in everything were most extraordinary;
and yet a more dejected, heart-broken, wretched creature, it would
be difficult to imagine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction
and distress of mind. My heart bled for him; and when the tears ran
down his cheeks, and he took one of the visitors aside, to ask, with
his trembling hands nervously clutching at his coat to detain him,
whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence being commuted;
the spectacle was really too painful to witness. I never saw or heard
of any kind of misery that impressed me more than the wretchedness
of this man.

In a third cell, was a tall, strong black, a burglar, working at his
proper trade of making screws and the like. His time was nearly out.
He was not only a very dexterous thief, but was notorious for his
boldness and hardihood, and for the number of his previous con-
victions. He entertained us with a long account of his achievements,
which he narrated with such infinite relish, that he actually seemed to
lick his lips as he told us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old
ladies whom he had watched as they sat at windows in silver spect-
acles (he had plainly had an eye to their metal even from the other
side of the street) and had afterwards robbed. This fellow, upon {he
slightest encouragement, would have mingled with his professional
recollections the most detestable cant; but I am very much mistaken
if he could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy with which he
declared that he blessed the day on which he came into that prison,
and that he never would commit another ro])bery as long as he lived!
There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to keep
rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in consequence, they
called to him at the door to come out into the passage. He com-
plied of course, and stood shading his haggard face in the unwonted
sunlight of the great window, looking as wan and unearthly as if he
had been summoned from the grave. He had a white rabbit in his
jreast; and when the little creature, getting down upon the ground,
! tole back into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after
it, I thought it would have been very hard to say in what respect the
man was the nobler animal of the two.

There was an English thief who had been there but a few days out
of seven years: a villainous, low-browed, thin-lipped fellow, with a
white face; who had as yet no relish for visitors, and who, but for the

additional npnalfv WrtuM ha\7« orlarlUr o+-oV»l-io/4 »r»" ti.-**^ *--'- -1

American Notes

maker s knife. There was another German who had entered the iail
but yesterday, and who started from his bed when we looked in ind
pleaded, m his broken English, very hard for work. There was a Doet
who after doing two days' work in everv fn„rVtJ JV V ^ ^ ^'
for himself anione for'the pdson. l^oTe ve^r'eT^^^^^^^^
by trade a mariner), and "the maddening wine-cup '' and his frtn^!
at horne. There were very many of them.^Some red^deneda^ the sight
of visitors, and some turned very pale. Some two or three h«H
prisoner nurses with them, for they were very sick and nn^ J f!f 1^
negro whose leg had been take/ olwS the iaU h!dW
^n:^^:^ti^^ ^"' .If acconlpirshld^r^^^^^^^^^
fvXwafrp Stty^^^^^^ -- slight

criminals in Philadelphia thenP'-^saii I "veshnf"^? ^T ^^.^-^^
children." Noble aristocracy in crime i ' ^* ""^^ ^°' ^^^*"

There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven vears
and who in a few months' time would be free. E even veJrs of
solidary confinement! -cieven years ot

. I ^'^.Z'''^ S^rl"^ ^'^ ^^^"^ y°"^ t^"^e is nearly out." What does h^

say? Nothing Why does he stare at his hands, and pick the flesh unon

his hngers. and raise his eyes for an instant, every now and then^ to

harslm^rimef "'^^' '^^' ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ grey? uTsV.X' h^

Does he never look men in the facp anri «^r.oc v,^ ^1 1 ,

Srfor :eerv?h°S; "i'^'"^' ^ ^'"^ '""« -SoXtt ts' os °a°U

broken mIn^lr,S^H„V '"l'"V»°"^. *» be a helpless, crushed, and

th^rougSyVatifik?"™" "' '" """^" *''^' "^ h- his humour

There were three young women in adjoining cells all convicted

at the same time of a conspiracy to rob theil DrosecnMr In t^

recollect; whose snow-white room was hu„g\?th the w^rk of 's^e
former prisoner, and upon whose downcast fa-e the ^?n i„ ^^
splendour shone down through the hSh rWnVfrth. u '? ^" "'
narrow strip of bright blue sk'y was%'Sble "he vaf ver^^nte'n? :n"d

rnd^at^lTcT.^^n'rwrd^''' *^ ->J,<-'^ I beli:S?raad"h:,"^
uiiuu at peace, in a word, you are happy here?" saiH nn« r^f ^,

companions. She struggled-she did struggle vei^ hard Zanswe?
■^^ v..«.i..a..,., uu. ic was natural that she should sometimes long to go

i J

American Notes

out of that one cell: she could not help that," she sobbed, poor thing!

I went from cell to cell that day; and every face I saw, or word I
heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in all its painful-
ness. But let me pass them by, for one, more pleasant, glance of a
prison on the same plan which I afterwards saw at Pittsburg.

When I had gone over thai in the same manner, I asked the
governor if he had any person in his charge who was shortly going
out. He had one, he said, whose time was up next day; but he had
only been a prisoner two years.

Two years! I looked back through two years of my own life — out
of jail, prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, comforts, good
fortune — and thought how wide a gap it was, and how long those
two years passed in solitary captivity would have been. I have the
face of this man, who was going to be released next day, before me
now. It is almost more memorable in its happiness than the other
faces in their misery. How easy and how natural it was for him to say
that the system was a good one; and that the time went "pretty
quick— considering;" and that when a man once felt that he had
offended the law, and must satisfy it, "he got along, somehow:" and
so forth !

"What did he call you back to say to you, in that strange flutter? "
J asked of my conductor, when he had locked the door and joined me
in the passage.

"Oh! That he was afraid the soles of his boots were not fit for
walking, as they were a good deal worn when he came in; and that he
would thank me very much to have them mended, ready."

Those boots had been taken off his feet, and put away with the rest
of his clothes, two years before !

I took the opportunity of inquiring how they conducted themselves
immediately before going out; adding that I presumed they trembled
very much.

"Well, it's not so much a trembling," was the answer — "though
they do quiver — as a complete derangement of the nervous system.
They can't sign their names to the book; sometimes can't even hold
the pen; look about 'em without appearing to know why, or where
they are; and sometimes get up and sit down again, twenty times in a
minute. This is when they're in the office, where they are taken with
the hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside the
gate, they stop, and look first one way and then the other; not
knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if thev .ore
drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the fence, they're so
bad: — but they clear off in course of time."

As I walked aJhong these solitary cells, and looked at the faces cf
the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the thoughts and
feelings natural to their condition. I imagined the hood just taken off,
and the scene of their captivity disclosed to them in all ics dismal
monotony.

At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous vision;

and his

there ab

and ban

the trap

work. "C

He ha

every no

years th;

piercing :

knowledj

narrow r

spirits te

Again

starts up

another c

There i

remembe

here him

could not

is the nea

both dire(

or is he -v

long? Is '.

Does he tl

Scarcel

conjures

moving al

certain of

other side

Day after

night, he

never cha

them — an

hidden fe;

makes hin

The we;

funeral; ai

have some

their smoo

which ton

head bene

lor <ing do

ugly phan-

prison win

By slow

until they

hideous, ar

American Notes

and his old life a reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and lies
there abandoned to despair. By degrees the insupportable solitude
and barrenness of the place rouses him from this stupor, and when
the trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly begs and prays for
work. "Give me some work to do, or I shall go raving mad!"

He has it; and by fits and starts applies himself to labour; but
every now and then there comes upon him a burning sense of the
years that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and an agony so
piercmg in the recollection of those who are hidden from his view and
knowledge, that he starts from his seat, and striding up and down the
narrow room with both hands clasped on his uplifted head, hears
spirits tempting him to beat his brains out on the wall.

Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there, moaning. Suddenly he
starts up, wondering whether any other man is near; whether there is
another cell like that on either side of him: and listens keenly.

There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near for all that He
remembers to have heard once, when he little thought of comin^
here himself, that the cells were so constructed that the prisoners
could not hear each other, though the officers could hear them. Where
is the nearest man— upon the right, or on the left? or is there one in
both directions? Where is he sitting now— with his face to the light?
or is he walking to and fro? How is he dressed? Has he been here
long? Is he much worn away? Is he very white and spectre-like?
Does he think of his neighbour too?

Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he thinks he
conjures up a figure with his back towards him, and imagines it
moving about in this next cell. He has no idea of the face, but he is
certain of the dark form of a stooping man. In the cell upon the
other side, he puts another figure, whose face is hidden from him also
Day after day, and often when he wakes up in the middle of the
night, he thinks of these two men until he is almost distracted He
never changes them. There they are always as he first imagined
^ • j^~^" ^^^ "^^" ^^ *^^ ^^^ht; a younger man upon the left— whose
hidden features torture him to death, and have a mystery that
makes him tremble.

The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like mourners at a
funeral; and slowly he begins to feel that the white walls of the cell
have something dreadful in them: that their colour is horrible- that
their smooth surface chills his blood: that there is one hateful corner
which torments him. Every morning when he wakes, he hides his
head beneath the coverlet, and shudders to see the ghastly ceilina
lor ung down upon him. The blessed light of day itself peeps in an
ugly phantom face, through the unchangeable crevice which is' his
prison window.

By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful comer swell
until they beset him at all times; invade his rest, make his dreams
hideous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took a strange dislikp to
it; iceimg as tnough it gave birth in his brain to something of corre-

American Notes

spondinR shape, which ought not to he there, and racked his head
with pains. 'I'hen ho began to fear it, then to dream of it, and of men
whispering its name and pointing to it. Then he could not bear to
look at it, nor yet to turn his back upon it. Now, it is every night the
lurking-place of a ghost: a shadow: — a silent something, horrible to
see, but whether bird, or beast, or muflied human shape, he cannot
tell.

When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard without.
When he is in the yard, he dre;uls to re-enter the cell. When night
comes, there stands the phantom in the corner. If he have the courage
to stand in its place, antl drive it out (he had once: being desperate),
it broods upon his bed. In the twilight, and always at the same hour,
a voice calls to him by name; as the darkness thickens, his Loom
begins to live; and even that, his comfort, is a hideous figure, watching
him till daybreak.

Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart from him one
by one: returning .sometimes, unexpectedly, but at longer intervals,
and in less alarming shapes. He has talked upon religious matters
with the gentleman who visits him, and has read his IMble. and has
written a prayer upon his slate, and hung it up as a kind of protection,
and an assurance of Hea,venly companionship. He dreams now, some-
times, of his children or his wife, but is sure that they are dead, or
have deserted him. He is easily moved to tears; is gentle, submissive,
and broken-spirited. Occasionally, the old agony comes back: a very
little thing will revive it; even a familiar sound, or the scent of sum-
mi ^iowers in the air; but it does not last long, now: for the world
wi. .out, has come to be the vision, and this solitary life, the sad
reality.

If his term of imprisonment be short — I mean comparatively, for
short it cannot be — the last half year is almost worse than all; for
then he thinks the prison will take fire and he be burnt in the ruins, or
that he is doomed to die within the walls, or that he will be detained
on some false charge and sentenced for another term: or that some-
thing, no matter what, must happen to prevent his going at large.
And this is natural, and impossible to be reasoned against, because,
after his long separation from human life, aYid his great suffering, any
event will appear to him more probable in the contemplation, than
the being restored to liberty and his fellow-creatures.

If his period of confinement have been very long, the prospect of
release bewilders and confuses him. His broken heart may flutter for
a moment, when he thinks of the world outside, and what it might
have been to him in all those lonely years, but that is all. The cell-
door has been closed too long on all his hopes and cares. Better to
have hanged him in the beginning than bring him to this pass, and
send him forth to mingle with his kind, who are his kind no more.

On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners, the same
expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It had something of
that strained attention which we see upon the faces of the blind and

American Notes

(leaf mingled with a kind of horror, as though they had all been
secretly terrified. In every little chamber that I entered and at
every grate through which I looked. I seemed to see the sumo appallinL'
countenance. It lives in my memory, with the fascination of a
remarkable picture. Parade before my eyes, a hundred men. with one
among them newly released from this solitary suffering, and I would
point him out.

^v^^l^''''^u•"u*^u ^o"^^"' as I have said, it humanises and refines.
Whether this be because of their better nature, which is elicited in
schtude. or because of their l)eing gentler creatures, of greater
patience and ^.nger suffering. I do not know; but so it is. That the
pimishment .., nevertheless, to my thinking, fully as cruel and as
wrong m their case, as in that of the men, I need scarcely add

My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental anguish it
occasions— an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all imagina-
tion of it must fall far short of the reality— it wears the mind into a
morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough contact and busy
action of the world. It is my fixed opinion that those who have
undergone this punishment, must pass into society again morally
unhealthy and diseased. There are many instances on record of men
vvlio havechosen, or have been condemned, tolives of perfect solitude
but I scarcely remember one. even among sages of strong and
vigorous intellect, where its effect has not becoi. apparent, in some
disordered tram of thought, or some gloomy hallucination What
monstrous phantoms, bred of despondency and doubt, and born and
reared m solitude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation
ugly, and darkening the face of Heaven!

Suicides are rare among these prisoners: are almost, indeed
unknown. But no argument in favour of the system, can reasonably
he deduced from this circumstance, although it is very often urged
All men who have made diseases of the mind their study, know
perfectly^ well that such extreme depression and despair as will
change the whole character, and beat down all its powers of elasticity
and self-r»sistance. may be at work within a man, and yet stop short
of self-destruction. This is a common case.

That it makes the senses dull, and by degr< ea impairs the bodily
laculties. I am quite sure. I remarked to those who were with me in this
very establishment at Philadelphia, that the criminals who had been
there long, were deaf. They, who were in the habit of seeing these men
constantly, were perfectly amazed at the idea, which they regarded
as groundless and fanciful. And yet the very first prisoner to whom
they appealed— one of their own selection— confirmed my im-
pression (which was unknown to him) instantly, and said with a
genuine air it was impossible to doubt, that he couldn't think how it
happened, but he was growing very dull of hearing.

That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and affects the worst
man least, there is no doubt. In its superior efficiency as a m^ans r.f
reformation, compared with that other code of regulations which

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American Notes

allows the prisoners to work in company without communicating
together, I have not the smalle3t faith. All the instaixes of reforma-
tion that were mentioned to me, were of a kind that might have
been— and I have no doubt whatever, in my own mind, would have
been— equally well brought about by the Silent System. With
regard to such men as the negro burglar and the English thief, even
the most enthusiastic have scarcely any hope of their conversion.

It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome or good
has ever had its growth in such unnatural solitude, and that even
a dog or any of the more intelligent among beasts, would pine, and
mope and rust away, oeneath its influence, would be in itself a
sufficient argument against this system. But when we recollect in
addition, how very cruel and severe it is, and that a solitary life is
always liable to peculiar and distinct objections of a most deplorable
nature which have arisen here, and oall to mind, moreover, that the
choice 'is not between this system, and a bad or ill-considered one,
but between it and another which has worked well, and is, in its
whole design and practice, excellent; there is surely more than
sufficient reason for abandoning a mode of punishment attended by
so little hope or promise, and fraught, beyond dispute, with such a

a host of evils. ; ^ .„ , ^r.- i, i. -^.u

As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this chapter with a
curious story arising out of the same theme, which was related to me,
on the occasion of this visit, by some of the gentlemen concerned.

At one of the periodical meetings of the inspectors of this prison, a
working man of Philadelphia presented himself before the Board,
and earnestly requested to be placed m solitar^r confinement. On
being asked what motive could possibly prompt him to make this
strange demand, he answered that he had an irresistible propensity
to get drunk; that he was constantly indulging it, to his great misery
and ruin- that he had no power of resistance; that he wished to be
put beyond the reach of temptation; and that he could think of no
better way than this. It was pointed out to him, in reply, that the
prison was for criminals who had been tried and sentenced by the
law and could not be made available for any such fanciful purpc >s;
he was exhorted to abstain from intoxicating drinks, as he surely
mi^ht if he would; and received other very good advice, with which
he retired, exceedingly dissatisfied with the result of his application.
He came again, and again, and again, and was so very earnest and
importunate, that at last they took counsel together, and said, "He
will certainly qualify himself for admission, if we reject him any
more. Let us shut him up. He will soon be glad to go away, and then
we shall get rid of him." So they made him sign a statement which
would prevent his ever sustaining an action for false imprisonment,
to the effect that his incarceration was voluntary, and of his own
seeking; they requested him to take notice that the officer in atten-
dance had orders to release him at any hour of the day or night,
when he might knock upon his door for that purpose; but desired

WASHING

We left P

American Notes

him to understand, that once going out, he would not be admitted
any more. These conditions agreed upon, and he still remaining in the
same mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up in one of the
cells.

In this cell, the man, who had not the firmness to leave a glass of
liquor standing untasted on a table before him — in this qell, in solitary
confinement, and working every da-y at his trade of shoemaking, this
man remained nearly two years. His health beginning to fail at the
expiration of thq^t time, the surgeon recommended that he should
work occasionally in the garden; and as he liked the notion very
much, he went about this new occupation with great cheerfulness.

He was digging here, one summer day, very industriously, when the
wicket in the outer gate chanced to be left open: showing, beyond,
the well-remembered dusty road and sun-burnt fields. The way was
as free to him as any man living, but he no sooner raised his head and
caught sight of it, all shining in the light, than, with the involuntary
I.istinct of a prisoner, he cast away his spade, scampered off as fast
as his legs would carry him, and never cnce looked back.

CHAPTER VIII

WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE

We left Philadelphia by steamboat, at six o'clock one very cold
morning, and turned our faces towards Washington.

In the course of this day's journey, as on subsequent occasions, we
encountered some Englishmen (small farmers, perhaps, or country
publicans at home) who were settled in America, and were travelling
on their own affairs. Of all grades and kinds of men that jostle one in
the public conveyances of the States, these are often the most intoler-
able and the most insufferable companions. United to every disagree-
able characteristic that the worst kind of American travellers
possess, these countrymen of ours display an amount of insc'ent
conceit and cool assumption of superiority, quite monstrous to be-
hold. In the coarse familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery
of their inquisitiveness (which they are in great haste to assert, as if
they panted to revenge themselves upon the decent old restraints of
home), they surpass any native specimens that came within my range
of observation; and I often grew go patriotic when I saw and heard
them, that I would cheerfully have submitted to a reasonable fine,
if I could have given any other country in the whole world, the
honour of claiming them for its children.

As Washington may be called the headquarters of tobacco-tinc-
tured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any
disguis;, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing

American Notes

I t

and expectoratingbegan about this time to be anything but agreeable,
and soon became most offensive and sickening. In all the public
places of America, this filthy custom is recognised. In the courts of
law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the
prisoner his; while th? jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so
many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly.
In the hospitals, the students of medicine are requested, by notices
upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes provided for
that purpose, and not to discolour the stairs. In public buildings,
visitors are implored, through the same agency, to squirt the essence
of their quids, or "plugs," as I have heard them called by gentlemen
learned in this kind of sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and
not about the bases of the marble columnr . But in some parts, this
custom Is inseparably mixed up with every meal and morning call,
and with all the transactions of social life. The stranger, who follows
in the track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory,
luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let
him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that previous
tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggera-
tion of nastiness, which cannot be outdone.

On board this steaniboat, there were two young gentlemen, with
shirt-collars reversed as usual, and r^^ned with very big walking-
sticks; who planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance
of some four paces apart; took out their tobacco-boxes; and sat down
opposite each other to chew. In less than a quarter of an hour's time,
these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a
copious shower of yellow rain; clearing, by that means, a kind of
magic circle, within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and
which they never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was
dry. This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, 1 confess, to
nausea; but looking attentively at one of the expectorators, I plainly
saw that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy, himself.
A glow of delight came over me at this discovery; and as I marked
his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco in his left
cheek, quiver with his suppressed agony, while yet he spat, and chewed,
and spat again, in emulation of his older friend, I could have fallen
on his neck and implored him to go on for hours.

We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin below,
where there was no more hurry or confusion than at such a meal in
England, and where there was certainly greater politeness exhibited
than at most of our stage-coach banquets. At about nine o'clock we
arrived at the railroad station, and went on by the cars. At noon we
turned out again, to cross a wide river in another steamboat; landed
at a continuation of the railroad on the opposite shore: and went on
by other cars; in which, in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed
by wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two creeks, called respec-
tively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both was blackened
with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are most delicious eating,

and aboun
These bi
enough fo:
smallest a(
are startlii
We stoj
were waite
ing any sej
being, for
enviable o
and most r
though I V
me with a

After dii
seats in th(
boys who
curious in :
in which I
shoulders;
fell to com
with as mu
so much ur
and eyes, c
on difteren
behind, as
by exercisi]
precocious
return to tl
has walked
his pocketJ
refreshing ]
water-jug; <
the street I
"Come on
entreaties c

We read
had upon t
building of
manding er
that night;

Breakfasi
or two, and
back, and 1<
my eye.

Take the
straggling (
serving all •
ings, occupi

, American Notes

and abound hereabouts at that season of the year.

These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only just wide
enough for the passage of the trains; which, in the event of the
smallest accident, would iiv vitably be plunged into the river. They
are startling contrivances, and are most agreeable when passed.

We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Maryland,
were waited on, for the fint time, by slaves. The sensation of exact-
ing any service from human creatures who are bought and sold, and
being, for the time, a party as it were to their condition, is not an
enviable one. The institution exists, perhaps, in its least repulsive
and most mitigated form in such a town as this; but it is slavery; and
though I was, with respect to it, an innocent man, its presence filled
me with a sense of shame and self-reproach.

After dinner, we went down to the railroad again, and took our
seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those men and
boys who happened to have nothing particular to do, and were
curious in foreigners, came (according to custom) round the carriage
in which I sat; let down all the windows; thrust in their heads and
shoulders; hooked themselves on conveniently, by their elbows; and
fell to comparing notes on the subject of my personal appearance,
with as much indifference as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained
so much uncompromising information with reference to my own nose
and eyes, and various impressions wrought by my mouth and chin
on different minds, and how my head looks when it is viewed from
behind, as on these occasions. Some gentlemen were only satisfied
by exercising their sense of touch; and the boys (who are surprisingly
precocious in America) were seldom satisfied, even by that, but would
return to the charge over and over again. Many a budding president
has walked into my room with his cap on his head and his hands in
his pockets, and stared at me for two whole hours: occasionally
refreshing himself with a tweak of his nose, or a draught from the
water-jug; or by walking to the windows and inviting other boys in
the street below, to come up and do likewise: crying, "Here he is!"
"Come on!" "Bring all your Brothers!" with other hospitable
entreaties of that nature.

We reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, and
had upon the way a beautiful view of the Capitol, which is a fine
building of the Corinthian order, placed upon a noble and com-
manding eminence. Arrived at the hotel; I saw no more of the place
that night; Doing very tired, and glad to get to bed.

Breakfast over next morning, I walk about the streets for an hour
or two, and, coming home, throw up the window in the front and
back, and look out. Here is Washington, fresh in my mind and under
iny eye.

Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, or the
straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest, pre-
serving all their oddities, but especially the small shops and dwell-
ings, occupied in Pentonville (but not in Washington) by fumiture-

If-'

l.li-T;

T^'

American Notes

brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn the
whole down; build it up again in wood and plaster, widen it a ittle;
throw in part of St. John's Wood; put green blinds outside all the
private houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every wuidow;
plough up all the roads: plant a great deal of coarse turf m every place
where it ought not to be; erect three handsome buildings in stone and
marble, anywhere, but the more entirely out of eveg^body s way the
better; call one the Post Office, one the Patent Office, and one the
Treasury; make it scorching hot in the morning, and freezing cold m
the afternoon, with an occasional tornado of wind and dust; leave a
brick-field without the bricks, in all central places where a street may
naturally be expected: and that's Washington.

The hotel in which we live, is a long row of small houses fronting
on the street, md opening at the back upon a common yard, in which
hangs a great triangle. Whenever a servant is wanted, somebody
beats on this triangle from one stroke up to seven, according to the
number of the house in which his presence is required; and as all the
servants arc always being wanted, and none of them ever come this
enlivening engine is in full performance the whole day through.
Clothes arc drying in the same yard; female slaves, with cotton
handkerchiefs twisted' round their heads, are runnmg to and fro
on the hotel business; black waiters cross and recross w-th dishes in
their hands; two great dogs are playing upon a mound of loose bricks
in the centre of the little square; a pig is turnmg up his stomach to
the sun. and grunting "that's comfortable!" and neither the men.
nor the women, nor the dogs, nor the pig. nor any created creature
takes the smallest notice of the triangle, which is tmghng madly all

I wSk to the front window, and look across the road upon a long,
straggling row of houses, one story high, terminating, nearly
opposite, but a little to the left, in a melancholy piece of wa^te
gfound with frowzy grass, which looks like a small piece of country
Sat has taken to drinking, and has quite lost itself Standing any-
how and all wrong, upon this open space, like something meteoric
that has lallen down from the moon, is an odd lop-sided. one-eyed
kind of wooden building, that looks like a church, with a, flag-staff as
long as itself sticking out of a steeple something larger than a tea-
chelt. Under the window is a small stand of coaches, whose slave-
drivers are sunning themselves on the steps of our door and talking
idlv together. The three most obtrusive houses near at hand are the
three meanest. On one -a shop, which never has anything m the
window, and never has the door open— is painted m large characters.
"The City Lunch." At another, which looks hke a backway to some-
where else, but is an independent building in itself, oysters are pm-
cui^ble in every style. At the third, which is a very, very httle
taSr4 shop. pSits ire fixed to order, or in other words pantaloons
are made to measure. And that is our street m ^yashlngton.

It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, Imt it

American Notes

might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent
Intentions; for It IS only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from the
top of the Capitol, that one can at all comprehend the vast designs
of its projector an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin
in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, mile-long, that only want
houses roads and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a
public to be complete; and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which
only lack great thoroughfares to ornament-are its leading features
One might fancy the season over, and most of the houses gone out of
town for ever with their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a
Barmecide Feast: a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in- a
monument raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible
inscription to record its departed greatness.

Such as it is. it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen for the
seat of Government, as a means of averting the conflictine iealonsiPQ
and interests of the different States; and ve^ry probably to^o'asS
remote from mobs: a consideration not to be slighted, even in
America. It has no trade or commerce of its own: having little or no
population beyond the President and his establishment; the members
of the egislature who reside there during the session; the Govern-
ment clerks and officers employed in the various departments; the
keepers of the hotels and boarding houses; and the tradesmen who
supply their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few people would live in
Washington. I take it. who were not obliged to reside there; and the
tides of emigration and speculation, those rapid and regardless
currents, are little likely to flow at any time towards such dull and
sluggish water.

The principal features of the Capitol, are. of course, the two houses
of Assembly. But there is, be. ' Jes. in the centre of the building a
fine rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and ninety-six high whose
circular wall is divided into compartments, ornamented by historical
pictures. Four of these have for their subjects prominent events in the
revolutionary struggle. They were painted by Colonel Trumbull
himself a member of Washington's staff at the time of their occur-
rence; from which circumstance they derive a peculiar interest of their
own In this same hall Mr. Greenough's large statue of Washington
has been lately placed. It has great merits of course, but it struck me
as being rather strained and violent for its subject. I could wish
however, to have seen it in a better light than it can ever be viewed
m, where it stands.

There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the Capitol
and from a balcony in front, the bird's-eye view, of which I fiave
]ust spoken, may be had. together with a beautiful prospect of the
adjacent country. In one of the ornamented portions of the building
there is a figure of Justice; whereunto the Guide Book says "the
artist at first contemplated giving more of nudity, but he was warned
that the public sentiment in this country would not admit of it and
in his caution he has gone, perhaps, into the opposite extreme."
322

>)i

h n

American Notes

IS If

l!ili?.<

Poor Justice I she has been made to wear much stranger garments
in America than those she pines in, in the Capitol. Let us hope that
she has changed her dress-maker since they were fashioned, and that
the public sentiment of the country did not cut out the clothes she
hides her lovely figure in, just now.

The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious hall, of
semicirculai saape, supported by handsome pillars. One part of the
gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there they sit in front rows,
and come in, and go out, as at a play or concert. The chair is canopied,
and raised considerably above the floor of the House; and every
member hai an easy chair and a writing desk to himself: which is
denounced by some people out of doors as a most unfortunate and
injudicious arrangement, tending to long sittings and prosaic
speeches. It is an elegant chamber to lobk at, but a singularly bad
one for all purposes of hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is free
from this objection, and is exceedingly well adapted to the uses fcr
which it is designed. The sittings, I need hardly add, take place in the
day; and the parliamentary forms are modelled on those of the old
country.

I was sometimes asked, in my progress through other places,
vvhether I had not been ,very much impressed by the heads of the law-
makers at Washington; meaning not their chiefs and leaders, but
literally their individual and personal heads, whereon their hair
grew, and whereby the phrenological character of each legislator was
expressed: and I almost as often struck my questioner dumb with
indignant consternation by answering "No, that I didn't remember
being at all overcome." As I must, at whatever hazard, repeat the
avowal here, I will follow it up by relating my impressions on this
subject in as few words as possible.

In the first place — it may be from some imperfect development of
my organ of veneration — I do not remcaiber having ever fainted
away, or having even been moved to tears of joyful pride, at sight of
any legislative body. I have borne the House of Commons like a man,
and have yielded to no weakness, but slumber, in the House of Lords.
I have seen elections for borough and county, and have never been
impelled (no matter which party won) to damage my hat by throwing
it up into the air in triumph, or to crack my voice by shouting forth
any reference to our Glorious Constitution, to the noble purity of our
independent voters, or, the unimpeachable integrity of our inde-
pendent members. Having withstood such strong attack^ upon my
fortitude, it is possible that I may be of a cold and insensible tempera-
ment, amounting to iciness, in such matters; and therefore my
impressions of the live pillars of the Capitol at Washington must be
received with such grains of allowance as this free confession may
seem to demand.

Did I see in this public body an assemblage of men, bound together
in the sacred names of Liberty and Freedom, and so asserting the
chaste dignity of those twin goddesses, in all their discussions, as to

American Notes

exalt at once the Eternal Principles to which their names are Riven
and their own character and the character of their countrymen in the
adminng eyes of the whole world? ^

It was but a week, since an aged, grey-haired man. a lasting honour
to the land that gave him birth, who has done good servife to nis
country, as his lorefathers did. and who will be remembered scores
upon scores of years after the worms bred in its corruption, are but S
many grams of dust-it was but a week, since this old man had stood
for days upon his trial before this very body, charged with havSg
dared to assert the infamy of that traffic, which has for its accursed
merchandise men and women, and their unborn children Yes And
publicly exhibited in the same city all the while; gilded, framed and
glazed; hung up for general admiration, shown to strangers not with
shame, but pride; its face not turned towards the will, itself not
taken down and burned; is the Unanimous Declaration of the
Thuteen United States of America, which solemnly declares that All
Men are created Equal; and are endowed by their Creator with the
Inalienable Rights of Life. Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiliess !

It was not a month, since this same body hud sat calmly by and
heard a man. one of themselves, with oaths which beggars in their
dnnk reject, threaten to cut another's throat from ear to ear There
he sat^ among them; not crushed by the general feeling of the
assembly, but as good a man as any. **

There was but a week to come, and another of that body, for doing
his duty to those who sent him there; for claiming in a Republic thi
Liberty and Freedom of expressing their sentiments, and makine
known theu- prayer; would be tried, found guilty, and have stroni
censure passed upon him by the rest. His was a grave offence indeed •
for years before, he had risen up and said. "A gang of male and female
slaves for sale, warranted to breed like cattle, linked to each otheTbv
iron fetters, are passing now along the open street beneath the
windows of your Temple of Equality! Look!" But there are many
kinds of hunters engaged in the Pursuit of Happiness, and they eo
variously armed It is the Inalienable Right of some among them, to
take the field after thetr Happiuess equipped with cat and cartv/hio
stocks, and iron collar, and to shout their view halloa! (always in
praise of Liberty) to the music of clanking chains and bloody stripes

VVhere sat the many legislators of coarse threats; of "words and blows
such as coalheavers deal upon each other, when they forget their
breeding? On every side. Every session had its anecdotes of that
kind, and the actors were all there.

Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men, who. applying
themselves m a new world to correct some of the falsehoods and vices
of the old. purified the avenuesto Public Life, paved the dirty ways to
Place and Power, debated and made laws for the Common Good, and
had no parly but their Country?

I saw in them the wheels that move the meanest perversion of
virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.

1, M

r I

^"P^flPprP^«P»«rP5HI!»WfP!l™1^«^^

. 1

100 American ^ otes

Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with
public officers; co\va,rdly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous
newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful truck-
lings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that
every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal
types, which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharp-
ness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular
mind, and artful suppressions of all its good influences: such things as
these, and in a word. Dishonest Faction in its inoat depraved and
most unblushing form, stared out from every comer of the crowded hall.

Did I see among them, the intelligence and refintment: the true,
honest, patriotic heart of America? Here and there, were drops of its
blood and life, but they scarcely coloured the stren.Ti of desperate
adventurers which sets that way for profit and for pay. It is the
game of these men, and of their profligate organs, to make the strife
of politics so fierce and brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in
worthy men, that sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall be
kept aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out their
selfish views unchecked. And thus this lowest of all scrambling
fights goes on, and they who in other countries would, from their
intelligence and station,, most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil
the farthest from that degradation.

That there are, among the representatives of the people in both
Houses, and among all parties, some men of high character and great
abilities, I need not say. The foremost among those politicians who
are known in Europe, have been already described, and I see no
reason to depart from the rule I have laid down for my guidance, of
abstaining from all mention of individuals. It will be sufficient to add,
that to the most favourable accounts that have been written of them,
I more than fully and most heartily subscribe; and that personal
intercourse and free communication have bred within me, not the
result predicted in the very doubtful proverb, but increased admira-
tion and respect. They are striking men to look at, hard to deceive,
prompt to act, lions in energy, Crichtons in varied accomplishments,
Indians in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong and generous
impulse; and they as well represent the hbnour and wisdom of their
country at home, as the distinguished gentleman who is now its
Minister at the British Court sustains its highest character abroad.

I visited both houses nearly every day, during my stay in Wash-
ington. On my initiatory visit to the House of Representatives, they
divided against a decision of the chair; but the chair won. The second
time I went, the member who was speaking, being interrupted by a
laugh, mimicked it, as one child would in quarrelling with another,
and added, "that he would make honourable gentlemen opposite,
sing out a little more on the other side of their mouths presently."
But interruptions are rare; the speaker being usually heard in silence.
There are more quarrels than with us, and more threatenings than
gentlemen are accustomed to exchange in any civilised society of

American Notes 10.1

which we have record: but farm-yard imitations have not as 3ret been
imported from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The feature
m oratory which appears to be the most practised, and most relished
1? the constant repetition of the same idea or shadow of an idea in
fresh words; and the inquiry out of doors is not, "What did he
say?" but. "How long did he speak'" These, however, are but
enlargements of a principle whi:h prevails elsewhere.

The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceedings
are conducted with much gravity and order. Both houses are hand-
somely carpeted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by
the universal disregp.d of the spittoon with which every honourable
member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on
the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction,
do not admit of being described. I will merely observe, that I strongly
recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen
to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with aii
ungloved hand on any account.

It is somewhat remarkable too. at first, to say the least, to see so
many honourable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less
remarkable to discover that this appearance is caused by the
quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the
cheek. It is strange enough too, to see an honourable gentleman
leaning back in his tilted chair with his legs on the desk before him
shaping a convenient "plug" with his penknife, and when it is quite
ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth, as from a pop-
gun, and clapping the new one in its place,

I was surprised to observe that even steady old chcwers of great
experience. ar'=> not always good marksmen, which has rather
incline ' ': doubt that general proficiency with the rifle, of which
we h,? "o much in England. Several gentlemen called upon

^® w^ ^ >■' se of conversation, frequently missed the spittoon

^^ fi^*- ■>ne (but he was certainly short-sighted) mistook

the clot the open window, at three. On another occasion

when I dui md was sitting with two ladies and some gentle-

men round a lire before dinner, on-, of the company fell short of the
fireplace, six distinct times, l an. disposed to think, however, that
this was occasioned by his not aiming at that object; as there was a
white marble hearth before the fender which was more convenient,
and may have suited his purpose better.

The Patent Office at Washington, furnishes an extraordinary
example of American enterprise and ingenuity; for the immense
number of models it contai.iS are the accumulated inventions of
only five years; the whole of the previous collection having been
ciestroyed by fire. The elegant structure in which they are arranged
is one of design rather than execution, for there is but one side
erected out of four, though the works are stopped. The Post Office
IS a very compact and very beautiful building. In one of the depart-
ments, among a collection of rare and curious articles, are deposited

MpmRiPPiMip

loa Anioricuin Nt>tcs

llm ptrNrHtii whUh 5mx"* Ihth n>tt«lc fnun time ti) time t<» tho Ainrri-
i*n ttn»UiiHtt»lorn «( Iui.Imu ruurtu by lli»^ vitrl«»UH potnuUtrn In
whom thry wrrr thi* mt lotlltfU mr'^hIm of llio Koi.ubllc; Hilin which
by Ih'^ U\v lhc»y wrr not iH'riuittrtI to irtuiii. I toiil. hh thut I Uiokrd
upon thi« fts H vory paiulul rxhlhitliui, unci one l»y no n»runf< llutterinK
to Ww national htrtiuhinl ot lionoMty unci htMUUir. Ihut cun m an c ly bo
u high KtMto ot moiul Irt'lInK whUh inrnKinoH ii Kcntlonmn ol n^iuit.
and Httttion. likoly to l>c riinnptrd. in tlio .lini harx«^ of uin tbity. by
tJ>o pirxent oi a Hnull box. oi a i u hly niotinttnl Hwonl. or an hiuNtrrn
..hawl. luul Kutvly tl>o Nation who' rop«moH ionll«|rnce in hrr ap-
pointcil Noivrtnt;^," In Ukolv to Jw better Hrrvnl. than who who mukcN
thon\ tho nnbioct of such vi rv moan an«l paltry suNpit ions.

At t;<H>rno Town. n» tho HU^nirbs. tnoto »m a josnit tolloKo; uoliKht-
fully NituatoM. atul. m» far uh I Iwul an t»pportunlty of t ^m, woll
inrtimKod. Mnny porNoUH who arc not nuinlKiH of tho UomlHh
Chunh. avail tiuMn.HolvoH. I In^liovo. of t bono institutions, and of tho
advat»t'\Koous op!H)VtunitioM thry a»'t»rd h»r t)u> oducation of thoir
chlldivn. I ho homhts of this ijoiKbi onrhoovl. abovo tho l\»t<>n»ac
Kivcr, art» vory pictnro.s»pio: and aro (roo. I Hhould concolvo. i.on*
somo of tho insiilubritioH of Washinnto i. Iho air. at that olovatior,
wa.N Muito cool and rofivsbinK. whot» in t»»o city H wan burning hot.

Tho IhvHidont's mansion is moro like an ICnglish clnb-houso. both
within and without, than any t>thor kind of ostablishmont with. wh«cl\
1 can c<m\varr it. Iho ornamoiHal grnind abo\it it has boon laid out
in tho ganicn walks: thov aiv protty. ami aKrooablt* t.^ tho oyo; thonKlj
thoy have that unct>mfortablo air of having Ihhmi mado yesterday,
which is tar frxun favourable to tho tlisplay of such boautios.

My first viwit tv» this house was on the morning after n»y arrival,
when I was c-turied thither by an olficial gojitloinan. who was su
kind as to chargt^ himself with xwy presentation to tho I'rosident.

We otilereil a largo hall, and having twUe or thrico rung a bell
which nolHuly answeu^l. walkovl without further ceremony through
the riHims on tho groiuul lloor. as divera other gentlemen (mostly
with their hats on. and their hands in their pockets) wore domg very
leisun^ly. Sv>me of these had ladies with them, tti whom thoy were
showing the pi-omisos; others were lounging on tho chairs and sofas;
others, in a i^rfect state of exhaustitui from listlessness, were
vawning dr^^arily. The gn.\iter portion of this assemblage were rather
assertii\g their supr'.Muacv than doing anything else, as they bad no
jvarticular business theW\ that anybody knew of. A few were
closely e\^ing the movables, as if to make quite sure that tho Presi-
dent (who was far from iK)pular) had not made away with any of the
furniture, or sold the fixtures for his private benefit.

After glancing st these loungers; who were scattered over a pretty
drawing-room, opening upoa a terrace which commanded a beautiful
pn>spect of the river and the adjacent country: and who were
sauntering, too, about a larger state-room called the Eastern Drawmg-
rooni; we went vp-stairs into another chamber, where were certam

Amefickin Kites 103

vlnltofi, wniHnR f(ir nn.llnncf m nl^ht nf my coRr1u'-*or. a black in
plnlti ( IcJthrH tvu\ yrllow nli,r,«.rM who wan KlMing noiiwl«Hnly atKiiit,
ind whlMp'TtnK mcuHaK^^n 1 tho *?ttrii ot i\w morn Impatient, made a
.iKM «pf m Munition, nnd ^lldinl nfi to unnr»unrr» him.

VVr hiu! jni'vinuNly !««.l<<vl Into anothrr rh.'iml)rr flttrd all round
wilh HK»'*''»1. '"irr. "/oodnn drHk ortriiinirr, wh<Tcofi hiy ftleN of n«wii-
p.ipcrH, i'> which Niindry Kimtlnmon wore rRfrrrln^. Mut thcr« were no
!ni(li mc(in« of hcKuliinx thn tim« In thh Hpni.mont, which wan an
impntmlHinK und tlrr;«omc nn any waltlnj^-room in <»no of our public
rsl.ihllMhiiirntM, or any phyHician'M dlninK-room during hid ..jur» of
( oMNiiltatlon at homn.

Thrrr wrrn somn fUt»i<in or twenty poriion t in thft room. One, a talt,
wiry, mnmiilar old num. from thn wi-Mt; Munburnt and Hwarthy; with
a brown whitn hat on IiIh kn»wH, and a ^iant indmilla reciting l>ctwecn
hif« Ickn; who Mat bolt unrl^ht in hin cliair, frowning Mtcadily at the
(arppt, and twitching the hard HnrM abfjMt hhi mouth, an if he had
made up his mind "to fix" the l>refiident on what he had to Hay. and
wouldn't bate him a grain. .Another, a Kentucky farmer, Hix-fcet-«ix
in height, with bin hat on. and hin handH under IiIh coat-tailn, who
h'aned against the wall an<l kicked tho floor with hl« heel. aN though
he had I'ime'M head r !' r his shoo, and were literaUy "killing" him.
A third, nn oval-fac- .1, bilious-l(;oking man, with sleek black hair
cropped close, and whiskenj and beard 8havod down to blue dots, who
sucked the head of a thick .stick, and from time to time took it out
of his mouth, to sec how it was getting on. A fourth did nothing but
whistle. A fifth did nothing but spit. And indeed all these gentlemen
wcfe so very ]>er.scvcring and energetic in this latter particulai-, and
bestowed their favours so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take it
for granted tho l^esldcntial h)U.semaids have high wages, or, to
speak more genteelly, an ample amount of "compensation:" which is
the American word for salary, in the ca.se of nil public servants.

We had not rva'ted in this room many minutes, before the black
incs.songer returned, and conducted us into another of 8r»ialler
dimensions, where, at a busine.s3-likc table covered with papers, sat
t!ic President himself. He looked somewhat worn and anxious, and
\volI he might; being at war with everybody — but the expression cf
his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner was remarkably
unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable. I thought that in his whole
carriage and demeanour, he became his station singularly wed.

Being advised that the .sensible etiquette of the republican court
julmitted of a traveller, like myself, declining, without any impro-
priety, an invitation to dinner, which did not reach me until I had
concluded my arrangements for leaving Washington scmj days
before that to which it referred, 7 only '•eturiiAd to this house once. It
was on the occasion of one of those general assemblies which are held
on csrtain nights, between the hours of nine and twelve o'clock, and
are called, rather oddly, Levees.

I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was a pretty dense

104

American Notes

crowd of carriages and people in the court-yard, and so far as I
could make out, there were no very clear regulations for the taking
up or the setting down of company. There were certainly no police-
men to soothe startled horses, either by sawing at their bridles or
flourishing truncheons in their eyes; and I am ready to make oath
that no inoffensive persons were knocked violently on the head, or
poked acutely in their backs or stomachs; or brought to a st:.nd-still
by any siTch gentle means, and then taken into custody for not
moving on. But there was no confusion or disorder. Our carriage
reached the porch in its turn, without any blustering, swearing,
shouting, backing, or other disturbance: and we dismounted with as
much ease and comfort as though we had been escorted by the whole
Metropolitan Force from A to Z inclusive.

The suite of rooms on the ground-floor were lighted up and a
military band was playing in the hall. In the smaller drawing-room,
the centre of a circle of company, were the President and his daughter-
in-law, who acted as the lady of the mansion; and a very interesting,
graceful, and accomplished lady too. One gentleman who stood
among this group, appeared to take upon himself the functions of a
master of the ceremonies. I saw no other officers or attendants, and
none were needed.

The great drawing-room, which I have already mentioned, and the
other chambers on the ground-floor, were crowded to excess. The
company was not, in our sense of the term, select, for it comprehended
persons of very many grades and classes; nor was there any great
display of costly attire: indeed, some of the costumes may have been,
for aught I know, grotesque enough. But the decorum and propriety
of behaviour which prevailed, were unbroken by any rude or disagree-
able incident; and every man, even among the miscellaneous crowd
in the hall who wee admitted without any orders or tickets to look
on, appeared to feel that he was a part of the Institution, and was
respciisible for its preserving a becoming character, and appearing
to the best advantage.

That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were not without
some refinement of taste and appreciation of intellectual gifts, and
gratitude to those men who, by the peaceful exercise of great abilities,
shed new charms and associations upon the homes of their country-
men, and elevate their character in other lands, was most earnestly
testified by their reception of Washington Irving, my dear friend,
who had recently been appointed Minister at the court of Spain, and
who was among them that night, in his new character, for the first
and last time before going abroad. I sincerely believe that in all the
madness of American politics, few public men would have been so
earnestly, devotedly, and affectionately caressed, as this most charm-
ing writer: and I have seldom respected a public assembly more, than
I did this eager throng, when I saw them turning with one mind from
noisy s..ratnrs and officers of state, and flockinp^ with a p'enerous and
honest impulse round the man of quiet pursuits: proud in his promo-

American Notes

105

tion as reflecting back upon their country: and grateful to him with
their whole hearts for the store of graceful fancies he had poured out
among them. Long may he dispense such treasures with unsparing
hand; and long may they remember him as worthily !

rhe term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in Washing-
ton was now at an end. and we were to begin to travel; for llie rail-
road distances we had traversed yet. in journeying among these older
towns, are on that great continent looked upon as nothing

I had at first intended going South— to Charleston. But when I
came to consider the length of time which this journey would occupv
and the premature heat of the season, which even at Washington had
been often very trying; anc weighed moreover, in my own mind the
pam of hvmg in the constant contemplation of slavery against the
more than doubtful chances of my ever seeing it. in the time I had to
spare, stripped of the disguises in which it would certainly be dressed
and so adding any item to the host of facts already heaped togethe^
on the subject; I began to listen to old whisperings which had often
been present to me at home in England, when I little thought of ever
Wbmg here; and to dream again of cities growing up. like palaces in
tairy tales, among the wilds and forests of the west

The advice I received in most quarters when I began to yield to mv
desire of traveUmg towards chat point of the compass was. according
to custom, sufficiently cheerless: my companion being threatened
with more perils, dangers, and discomforts, than I can remember or
would catalogue if I could; but of which it will be sufficient to remark
that blowmgs-up in steamboats and breakings-down in coaches
were among the least. But. having a western route sketched out for
me by the best and kindest authority to which I could have resorted
and putting no great faith in these discouragements, I soon deter-
mined on my plan of action.

This was to travel south, only to Richmond in Virginia; and then
to turn, and shape our course for the Far West; whither I beseech the
reader s company, in a new chapter.

CHAPTER IX

A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. VIRGINIA ROAD AND A
BLACK DRIVER. RICHMOND. BALTIMORE. THE HARRISBURG MAIL
AND A GLIMPSE OF THE CITY. A CANAL BOAT.

We were to proceed in the first instance by steamboat; and as it is
usual to sleep on board, in consequence of the starting-hour being
tour o c^ocxciii the luummg, we went down to where she lay at that
very uncomfortable time for such expeditions when slippers are most
322*

■3 i , I

io6

American Notes

valuable, and a familiar bed, in the perspective of an hour or two,
looks uncommonly pleasant.

It is ten o'clock at night: say half-past ten: moonlight, warm, and
dull enough. The steamer (not unlike a child's Noah's ark in form,
with the machinery on the top of the roof) is riding lazily up and down,
and bumping clumsily against the wooden pier, as the ripple of the
river trifles with its unwieldly carcase. The wharf is some distance
from the city. There is nobody down here; and one or two dull lamps
upon the steamer's decks are the only signs of life remaining, when
our coach has driven away. As soon as our footsteps are heard upon
the planks, a fat negress, particularly favoured by nature in respect
of bustle, emerges from some dark stairs, and marshals my wife to-
wards the ladies' cabin, to which retreat she goes, foUowedby a mighty
bale of cloaks and great-coats. I valiantly resolve not to go to bed at
all, but to walk up and down the pier till morning.

I begin my promenade — thinking of all kinds of distant things and
persons, and of nothing near — and pace up and down for half-an-
hour. Then I go on board again; and getting into the light of one of
the lamps, look at my watch and think it must have stopped; and
wonder what has become of the faithful secretary whom I brought
along with me from Boston. He is supping with our late landlord (a
Field Marshal, at least, no doubt) in honors of our departure, and
may be two hours longer. I walk again, but it gets duller and duller:
the moon goes down: next June seems farther off in the dark, and the
echoes of my footsteps ir^ake me nervous. It has turned cold too;
and walking up and down without my companion in such lonely
circumstances, is but poor amusement. So I break my staunch
resolution, and think it may be, perhaps, as well to go to bed.

I go on board again; open the door of the gentlemen's cabin; and
walk in. Somehow or other — from its being so quiet, I suppose — I
have taken it into my head that there is nobody there. To my horror
and amazement it is full of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude,
and variety of slumber: in the berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on
the tables, and particularly round the stove, my detested enemy. I
take another step forward, and slip on the shining face of a black
steward, who lies rolled in a blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins
half in pain and half in hospitality; whispers my own name in my ear;
and groping among the sleepers, leads me to my berth. Standing
beside it, I count these slumbering passengers, a, '\ get past forty.
There is no use in going further, so I begin to undress. As the chairs
are all occupied, and there is nothing else to put my clothes on, I
deposit them on the ground: not without soiling my hands, for it is
in the same condition as the carpets in the Capitol, and from the same
cause. Having but partially undressed, I clamber on my shelf, and
hold the curtain open for a few minutes while I look round on all my
fellow-travellers again. That done, I let it fall on them, and on the
^vorld: turn round: and go to sleep.

i wake, of course, when we get under weigh, for there is a good deal

American Notes

107

of noise. The day is then just breaking. Everybody wakes at the same
time. Some are self-possessed directly, and some are much perplexed
to niake out where they are until they have rubbed their eyes, and
leaning on one elbow, looked about them. Some yawn, some groan
nearly all spit, and a few get up. I am among the risers: for it is easy
to feel, without going into the fresh air, that the atmosphere of the
cabin is vile in the last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go down into
the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, and wash myself. The wash-
ing and dressing apparatus for the passengers generally, consists of
two jack-towels, three small wooden basins, a keg of water and a
ladle to serve it out wi^h, six square inches of looking-glass, two
ditto ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush for the head! and
nothing for the teeth. Everybody uses the comb and brush, except
myself. Everybody stares to see me using my own; ard two or threo
gentlemen are strongly disposed to banter me on my prejudices, but
don't. When I have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane-deck,
and set in for two hours of hard walking up and down. The sun is
rising brilliantly; we are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington
lies buried; the river is wide and rapid; and its banks are beautiful.
All the glory and splendour of the day are coming on, and growing
brighter every minute.

At eight o'clock we breakfast in the cabin where I passed the night,
but the windows and doors are all thrown open, and now it is fresh
enough. There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the despatch
of the meal. It is longer than a travelling breakfast with us; more
orderly, and more polite.

Soon after nine o'clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we are
to land; and then comes the oddest part of the journey. Seven stage-
coaches are preparing to carry us on. Some of them are ready, some
of them are not ready. Some of the drivers are blacks, some whites.
There are four horses to each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or
unharnessed, are there. The passengers are getting out of the steam-
boat, and into the coaches; the luggage is being transferred in noisy
wheelbarrows; the horses are frightened, and impatient to start; the
black drivers are chattering to them like so many monkeys, and the
white ones whooping like so many drovers: for the main thing to be
done in all kinds of hostlering here, is to make as m-^ch noise as possi-
ble. The coaches are something like the French coaches, but not nearly
so good. In lieu of springs, they are hung on bands of the strongest
leather. There is very little choice or difference between them; and
they may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an English fair,
roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels, and curtained with painted
canvas. They are covered with mud from the roof to the wheel-tire,
and have never been cleaned since they were first built.

The tickets we have received on board the steamboat are marked
No. I, so we belong to coach No. i. I throw my coat on the box, and
..•-•t.,v xixjf rrii^, aiiu iici liiaiu. ixiLu Liic iiisiuc. it HEo OHiy Ouc sicp, and
that being about a yard from the ground, is usually approached by

I Si

io8

American Notes

i»,;' 'i!'

Il'i

ll 'I

a chair: when there is no chair, ladies trust in Providence. The coach
holds nine inside, having a seat across from door to door, where we in
England put our legs: so that there is only one feat more difficult in the
performance than getting in, and that is, getting out again. There is
only one outside passenger, and he sits upon the box. As I am that
one, I climb up; and v/hile they are strapping the luggage on the roof,
and heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a good opportxmity
of looking at the driver.

He is a negro — very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse pepper-
and-salt suit excessively patched and darned (particularly at the
knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and
veiy short trousers. He has two odd gloves: one of parti-coloured
worsted, and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the
middle and bandaged up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned,
broad-brimmed, black hat: faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane
imitation of an English coachman ! But somebody in authority cries
"Go ahead!" as I am making these observations. The mail takes the
lead in a four-horse waggon, and all the coaches follow in procession:
headed by No. i.

By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry "All right!" an
American cries "Go ahead!" which is somewhat expressive of the
national character of the two countries.

The first half-mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks
laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over
them; and in the river. The river has a clayey bottom and is full of
holes, so that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly,
and can't be found again for some time.

But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a
series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A tremendous place is
close before us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up
very round, and looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were
saying to himself, "We have done this often before, but now I think
we shall have a crash." He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls
at both; and dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping his
seat, of course) like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery
coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the
coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and
stick there. The insides scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses
flounder; all the other six coaches stop; and their four-and-twenty
horses flounder likewise: but merely for company, and in sympathy
with ours. Then the following circumstances occur.

Black Driver (to the horses). "Hi!"

Nothing happens. Insides scream again.

Black Driver (to the horses). "Ho!"

Horses plunge, and splash the black driver.

Gentleman inside (looking out). "Why, what on airth — *'

Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in
again, without finishing his question or waiting for an answer.

-I. JL11.0

American Notes

109

Black Driver (stiU to the horses). "Jiddy! Jiddy!"

Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and draw it
up a bank; so steep, that the black driver's legs fly up into the air,
and he goes back among the luggage on the roof. But he immediately
recovers himself, and cries (still to the horses),

"Pill!"

No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon
No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and
so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a
mile behind.

Black Driver (louder than before). "Pill!"

Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the
coach rolls backward.

Black Driver (louder than before). "Pe-e-e-illl"

Horses make a desperate struggle.

Black Driver (recovering spirits). "Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill!"

Horses make another effort.

Black Driver (with great vigour). "Ally Loo! Hi. Jiddy. Jiddy.
Pill. Ally Loo!"

Horses almost do it.

Black Driver (with his eyes starting out of his head). "Lee, den.
Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. Lee-e-e-e-e!"

They run up the bank, and go down again on the other side at a
fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at the bottom there is
a deep hollow, full of water. The coach rolls frightfully. The insides
scream. The mud and water fly about us. The black driver dances like
a madman. Suddenly we are all right by some extraordinary means,
and stop to breathe.

A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. The bh ,^
driver recognises him by twirling his head round and round like a
harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, and grinning from
ear to ear. He stops short, turns to me, and says:

"We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you
when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sa:" chuckling very
much. "Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old 'ooman at
home sa," grinning again.

"Ay ay, we'll take care of the old woman. Don't be afraid."

The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, and beyond
that, another bank, close before us. So he stops short: cries (to
the horses again) "Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady. Hi. Jiddy. Pill.
Ally. Loo," but never "Lee!" until we are reduced to the very last
extremity, and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication from which
appears to be all but impossible.

And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and a
half; breaking no bones, though bruising a great many; and in short
getting through the distance, "like a fiddle."

whence there is a railway to Richmond. The tract of country through

< !-■

.1.

110 American Notes

which it takes its course was once productive; but the soil has been
exhausted by the system of employing a great amount of slave labour
in forcing crops, without strengthening the land; and it is now little
better than a sandy desert overgrown with t-ees. Dreary and unin-
teresting as its aspect is, I was glad to the heart to find anything on
which one of the curses of this horrible institution has fallen; and had
greater pleasure in contemplating the withered ground, than the
richest and most thriving cultivation in the same place could possibly
have afforded me.

In this district, as in all others where slavery sits.broodmg, (I
have frequently heard this admitted, even by those who are its
warmest advocates:) there is an air of ruin and decay abroad, which
is inseparable from the system. The bams and outhouses are moulder-
ing away; the sheds are patched and half roofless; the log cabins
(built in Virginia with external chimneys made of clay or wood) are
squalid in the last degree. There is no look of decent comfort any-
where. The miserable stations by the railway side; the great wild
wood-yards, whence the engine is supplied with fuel; the negro
children rolling on the ground before the cabin doors, with dogs and
pigs; the biped beasts of burden sinking past: gloom and dejection
are upon them all.

In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made this
journey, were a mother and her children who had just been pur-
chased; the husband and father being left behind with their old
owner. The children cried the whol ^ray, and the mother was misery's
picture. The champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happi-
ness, who had bought them, rode in the same train; and, every time
we stopped, got down to see that they were safe. The black in Sin-
bad's Travels with one eye in the middle of his forehead which shone
like a burning coal, was nature's aristocrat compared with this white
gentleman.

It was between six and seven o'clock in the evening, when we
drove to the hotel: in front of which, and on the top of the broad
flight of steps leading to the door, two or three citizens were balancing
themselves on rocking-chairs, and smoking cigars. We found it a
very large and elegant establishment, and were as well entertained as
travellers need desire to be. The cUmate being a thirsty one, there
was never, at any hour of the day, a scarcity of 1 lungers in the
spacious bar, or a cessation of the mixing of cool liquors: but they
were a merrier people here, and had musical instruments playing
to them o' nights, which it was a treat to hear again.

The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about the town,
which is delightfully situated on eight hills, overhanging James
River; a sparkling stream, studded here and there with bright
islands, or brawling over broken rocks. Although it was yet but the
middle of March, the weather in this southern temperature was
extremely warm; the peach-trees and magnolias were m full bloom;
and the trees were green. In a low ground among the hills, is a valley

known t
which o
and, lik<
wild peo
much.

Theci
shady le
the hot
constitu
many pj
lounge :
volumes
are all s]

I saw
drying,
with, w£
suppose(
the com;
the oil-c
to its CO

Many
necessar
two o'cl
at a tim
hymn ir
nieanwh
forth inl
said sev<
the gent
denly ti
appeara

On th
twelve h
althougl
as that ]
to enter
very crc
children
believe
who inh
human !
viction.

The J
Defoe's
day was
and dooi
which w
Before t

American Notes iii

known as "Bloody Run," from a terrible conflict with the Indians
which once occurred there. It is a good place for such a struggle,
and, like every other spot I saw associated with any legend of 'hat
wild people now so rapidly fading from the earth, interested me very
much.

The city is the seat of the local parliament of Virginia; and in its
shady legislative halls, some orators were drowsily holding forth to
the hot noon day. By dint of constant repetition, however, these
constitutional sights had very little more interest for me than so
many parochial vestries; and I was glad to exchange this one for a.
lounge in a well-arranged public library of some ten thousand
volumes, and a visit to a tobacco manufactory, where the workmen
are all slaves.

I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, pressing,
drying, packing in casks, and branding. All the tobacco thus dealt
with, was in course of manufacture for chewing; and one would have
supposed there was enough in that one storehouse to have filled even
the comprehensive jaws of America. In this form, the weed looks like
the oil-cake on which we fatten cattle; and even without reference
to its consequences, is sufficiently uninviting.

Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and it is hardly
necessary to a Id that they were all labouring quietly, then. After
two o'clock in the day, they are allowed to sing, a certain number
at a time. The hour striking while I was there, some twenty sang a
hymn in parts, and sang it by no means ill; pursuing their work
meanwhile. A bell rang as I was about to leave, and they all poured
forth into a building on the opposite side of the street to dinner. I
said several times that I should like to see them at their meal; but as
the gentleman to whom I mentioned this desire appeared to be sud-
denly taken rather deaf, I did not pursue the request. Of their
appearance I shall have something to say, presently.

On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of about
twelve hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. Here again,
although I went down with the owner of the estate, to "the quarter,"
as that part of it in which the slaves live is called, I was not invited
to enter into any of their huts. All I saw of them, was, that they were
very crazy, wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked
children basked in the sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I
believe that this gentleman is a considerate and excellent master,
who inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a seller of
human stock; and I am sure, from my own observation and con-
viction, that he is a kind-hearted, worthy man.

The planter's house was an airy, rustic dwelling, that brought
Defce's description of such places strongly to my recollection. The
day was very warm, but the blinds being all closed, and the windows
and doors set wide open, a shady coolness rustled through the rooms,
which was exquisitely refreshing after the glare and heat without.
Before the windows was an open piazza, where, in what they call tUo

V:' m

112 American Notes

hot weather — ^whatever that may be — they sling hammocks, and
drink and doze luxuriously. I do not know how their cool reflections
may taste within the hammocks, but having experience, I can
report that, cut of them, the mounds of ices and the bowls of mint-
julep and sherry-cobbler they make in these latitudes, are refresh-
ments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who
would preserve contented minds.

There are two bridges across the river: one belongs to the railroad,
and the other, whk:h is a very crazy affair, is the private property
of some old lady in the neighbourhood, who levies tolls upon the
townspeople. Crossing this bridge, on my way back, I saw a notice
painted on the gate, cautioning all persons to drive slowly: under a
penalty, if the offender were a whice man, of five dollars; if a negro,
fifteen stripes.

The same deciv- and gloom that overhang the way by which it is
approached, hover above the town of Richmond. TTiere are pretty
villas and cheerful houses in its streets, and Nature smiles upon
the country round; but jostling its handsome residences, like slavery
itself going hand in hand with many lofty virtues, are deplorable
tenements, fences unrepaired, walls crumblmg into ruinous heaps.
Hinting gloomily at things below the surface, these, and many other
tokens of the same description, force themselves upon the notice, and
are remembered with depressing influence, when livelier features are
forgotten.

To those who are happily unaccustomed to them, .he countenances
in the streets and labouring-places, too, are shocking. All men who
know that there are laws against instructing slaves, of which the
pains and penalties greatly exceed in their amount the fines imposed
on those who maim and torture them, must be prepared to find their
faces very low in the scale of intellectual expression. But the darkness
— not of skin, but mind — which meets the stranger's eye at every
turn; the brutalizing and blotting out of all fairer characters traced
by Nature's hand; immeasurably outdo his worst belief. That
travelled creation of the great satirist's brain, who fresh from living
among horses, peered from a high casement down upon his own kind
with trembling horror, was scarcely more repelled and daunted by
the sight, than those who look upon some of these faces for the first
time must surely be.

I left the last of them behind me in the person of a wretched
drudge, who, after running to and fro all day till midnight, and
moping in his stealthy winks of sleep upon the stairs between whiles,
was washing the dark passag3s at four o'clock in the morning; and
went upon my way with a grateful heart that I was not doomed to
live where slavery was, and had never had my senses blunted to its
wrongs and horrors in a slave-rocked cradle.

It had been my intention to proceed by James River and Chesa-
peake Bay to Baltimore; but one of the steamboats being ausent
from her station through some ac ^nt and the means of conveyance

American Notes

being consequently rendered uncertain, we returned to Washington
by the way we had come (there were two constables on board the
steamboat, in pursuit of runaway slaves), and h 'ting there again for
one night, went on to Baltimore next afternoon.

The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any experi-
ence in the United States, and they were not a few, is Bamum's, in
that city: where the English traveller will find curtains to his bed, for
the first and probably the last time in America (this is a disinterested
remark, for I never use them); and where he will be likely to have
enough water for washing himself, which is not at all a common case.

This capital of the state of Maryland is a bustling, busy town,
with a great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in particular of water
commerce. That portion of the town which it most favours is none
of the cleanest, it is true; but the upper part is of a very different
character, and has many agreeable streets and public buildings.
The Washington Monument, which is a handsome pillar with a
statue on its summit; the Medical College; and the Battle Monument
in memory of an engagement with the British at North Point; are
the most conspicuous among them.

There is a very good prison in this city, and the State Penitentiary
is also among its institutions. In this latter establishment there were
two curious cases.

One was that of a young man, who had been tried for the murder
of his father. The evidence was entirely circumstantial, and was very
conflicting and doubtful; nor was it possible to assign any motive
which could have tempted him to the commission of so tremendous
a crime. He had been tried twice; and on the second occasion the
jury felt so much hesitation in convicting him, that they found a
verdict of manslaughter, or murder in the second degree; which it
could not possibly be, as there had, beyond all doubt, been no quarrel
or provocation, and if he were guilty at all, he was unquestionably
guilty of murder ir its broadest and worst signification.

The remarkable feature in the case was, that if the unfortunate
deceased were not really murdered by this own son of his he must
have been murdered by his own brother. The evidence lay in a most
remarkable manner, between those two. On all the suspicious points,
the dead man's brother was the witness: all the explanations for the
prisoner (some of them extremely plausible) went, by construction
and inference, to inculcate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon his
nephew. It must have been one of them; and the jury had to decide
between two sets of suspicions, almost equally unnatural, unac-
countable, and strange.

The other case, was that of a man who once went to a certain
distiller's and stole a copper measure containing a quantity ox liquor.
He was pursued and taken with the property in his possession, and
was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On coming out of the

jail.

a,(. thu

CXpliu.i.IUIi Ui. thut tcXUI, he WCXxt bu^K LU (.lie oUUiU Ulci-

1; I

tiller's, and stole the same copper measure containing the same

wi»«tta mtf.wB Bfeiiaft«

114

American Notes

ilii

quantity of liquor. There was not the slightest reason to suppose that
the man wished to return to prison: indeed ever>'thing, but the com-
mission of the offence, made directly against that assumption.
There aie only two ways of accounting for this extraordmary proceed-
ing One is. that after undergoing so much for this copper measure
he conceived he had established a sort of claim and right to it. The
other that, by dint of long thinking about, it had become a mono-
mania with him. and had acquired a fascination which he found it
impossible to resist; swelling from an Earthly Coppei Gallon into an
Ethereal Golden Vat. .

After remaining here a couple of days I bound myself to a ngid
adherence to the plan I had laid down so recently, and resolved to
set forward on our western journev without any more delay. Accord-
ingly having reduced the luggage within the smallest possible com-
pass (by sending back to New York, to be afterwards forwarded to us
in Canada, so much of it as was not absolutely wanted); and having
procured the necessary credentials to banking-houses on the way;
and having moreover looked for two evenings at the setting sun, with
as well-def.ned an idea of thf country before us as if we had been
going to travel into the very centre of that planet; we left Baltimore
by another railway at half-past eight in the morning, and reached
the town of York, some sixty miles off. by the early dinner-time of
the Hotel which was the starting-place .. the four-horse coach,
wherein we were to proceed to Harrisbufg.

This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough to
secure, had come down to meet us at the railroad station, and was
as muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more passengers were
waiting for us at the inn-door, the coachman observed under his
breath, in the usual self-communicative voice, looking the wh^e at
his mouldy harness as if it were to that he was addressing himself,

"I expect we shall want /Ae fcig- coach." , , . v-

I could not help wondering within myself what the size of this big
coach might be. and how many persons it might be designed to hold;
for the vehicle which was too small for our purpose was something
larger than two English heavy night coaches, and might have been
the twin-brother of a French Diligence. My speculations were speedily
at rest however, for as soon as we had dined, there came rumbling
up the street, shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge
on wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped at tae door:
rolling heavily from side to side when its other motion had ceased,
as if it had taken cold in its damp stable, and between that, and the
having been required in its dropsical old age to move at any faster
pace than a walk, were distressed by shortness of wind.

"If here ain't the Harrisburg mail at last, and dreadful bright and
smart to look at too. " cried an elderly gentleman in some excitement,
"dam mv mother!"

* I don't know what the sensation of being darned may be, or
whether a man's mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the process

American Notes

115

than anybody else; but if the endurance of this mysterious ceremony
by the old lady in question had depended on the accuracy of her son's
vision in respect to the abstract brightness and smartness of tho
Harrisburg mail, she would certainly have undergone its infliction.
However, they booked twelve people inside; and the luggage
(including such trifles as a large rocking-chair, and a good-sized
(lining-table) being at length made fast upon the roof, we started off
in great state.

At the door of another hotel, there was another passenger to be
taken up.

"Any room, sir?" cries the new passenger to the coachman.

"Well, there's room enough," replies the coachman, without
getting down, or even looking at him.

"There an't no room at all, sir," bawls a gentleman inside. Which
another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by predicting that tho
attempt to introduce any more passengers ' v/on't fit nohow."

The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety, lool.s into
the coach, and then looks up at the coachman: "Now, how do you
mean to fix it?" says he, after a pause: 'for I must go."

The corchman employs himself in twisting the lash of his whip
into a knot, and takes no more notice of the question: clearly signi-
fying that it is anybody's business but his, and that the passengers
would do well to fix it, among themselves. In this state of things,
matters seem to be approximating to a fix of another kind, when
another inside passenger in a corner, who is nearly suffocated, cries
faintly, "I'll get out."

This is no matter of relief or self-congratulation to the driver, for
his immovable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed by anything that
happens in the coach. Of all things in the world, the coach would
seem to be the very last upon his mind. The exchange is made,
however, and then the passenger who has given up his seat makes a
third upon the box, seating himself in what he calls the middle; that
is, with half his person on my legs, and the other half on the driver's.

"Go a-head, cap'en," cries the colonel, who directs.

"G6-lang!" cries the cap'en to his company, the horses, and away
we go.

We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few miles, an
intoxicated gentleman who climbed upon the roof among the lug-
gage, and subsequently slipping off without hurting himself, was seen
in the distant perspective reeling back to the grog-shop where we
had found him. We also parted with more of our freight at diffe; ~nt
times, so that when we came to change horses, I was again alone
outside.

The coachmen always change with the horses, and are usually as
dirty as the coach. The first was dressed like very shabby English
baker; the second like a Russian peasant: for he wore a loose purple
camlet robe, with a fur collar, tied round his waist with a paxti-
coloured worsted sash; grey trousers; light blue gloves: and a cap of

i 1

i'"

ii6

American Notes

%<j

lii

bearskin. It had by this time come on to rain verj' heavily, and there
was a cold damp mist besides, which penetrated to the skin. I was
Rlad to take advantage of a stoppage and get down to stretch my
legs, shake the water off my great-coat, and swallov/ the usual anti-
temperance recipe for keeping out the cold.

When I mounted to my seat again, I observed a new parcel lying
on the coach roof, which I took to be a rather large fiddle in a brown
bag. In the course of a few miles, however, I discovered t^hat it had
a glazed ccip at one end and a pair of muddy shoes at the other; and
further observation demonstrated it to be a small boy in a snuff-
coloured coat, with his arms pinioned to his sides, by deep forcing
into his pockets. He was, I presume, a relative or friend of the coach-
man's, as he lay a-top of the luggage with his face towards the rain;
and except when a change of position brought his shoes in contact
with my hat, he appeared to be asleep. At last, on some occasion of
our stopping, this thing slowly upreared itself to the height of three
feet six, and fixing its eyes on me, observed in piping accents, with
a complaisant yawn, half quenched in an obliging air of friendly
patronage, "Well now, stranger, I guess you find this a'most like an
English arternoon, hey?"

The scenery which had been tame enough at first, was, for the last
ten or twelve miles, beatitiful. Our road wound through the pleasant
valley of the Susquehanna; the river, dotted with innumerable green
islands, lay upon our right; and on the left, a steep ascent, craggy with
broken rock, and dark with pine trees. The mist, wreathing itself into
a hundred fantastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water; and the
gloom of evening gave to all an air of mystery and silence which
greatly enhanced its natural interest.

We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered in
on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly dark;
perplexed, with great beams, crossing and recrossing it at every
possible angle; and through the broad chinks and crevices in the floor,
the rapid river gleamed, far down beiow, like a legion of eyes. We
had no lamps; and as the horses stumbled and floundered through
this place, towards the distant speck of dying light, it seemed
interminable. I really could not at first persuade myself as we
rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with hollow noises, and I held
down my head to save it from the rafters above, but that I was in a
painful dream; for I have often dreamed of toiling through such
places, and as often argued, even at the time, "this cannot be
reality."

At lengi , however, we emerged upon the streets of Harrisburg,
whose feeble lights, reflected aismally from the wet ground, did not
shine out upon a very cheerful city. We were soon established in a
snug hotel, which though smaller and far less splendid than many we
put up at, is raised above them all in my remembrance, by having
for its landlord the most obliging, considerate, and gentlemanly
person I ever had to deal with.

d u

ily, and there
le skin. I was
to stretch my
he usual anti-

V parcel lying
lie in a brown
:d that it had
he other; and
)y in a snuff-
deep forcing
of the coach -
ards the rain;
)es in contact
le occasion of
eight of three
accents, with
ir of friendly
I'most like an

IS, for the last
I the pleasant
nerable green
t, craggy with
ing itself into
^ater; and the
silence which

id covered in
oundly dark;
J it at every
;s in the floor,
I of eyes. "We
ered through
t, it seemed
lyself as we
55, and I held
at I was in a
ihrough such
is cannot be

: Harrisburg,
►und, did not
ablished in a
lan many we
e, by having
gentlemanly

American Notes u^

.^u^^ were not to proceed upon our journey until the afternoon. I
walked out after breakfast the next morning, to look about m^ai d
was duly shown a model prison on the solitary system, just ereited
and as yet without an inmate; the trunk ofan old ^e toThkh

h!f«^;'' T^- " ^* ^"^^1^1 ^^'^ (afterwards buried under it), was tied by
hostile Indians, with his funeral pile about him, when L was saved

the river S Kf ^"?f ^ ^ ^?^°^5 P^'^^ °" ^« °PI««»^^« «hore oi
tne river, the local legislature for there was another of those bodies

here again, m full debate); and the other curiosities of the town
•nnr^r^rn.^^*™"''^. interested in looking over a number of treaties
u%.Jl^- ^'""f.u^ *'°'® "^'^^ *^® P°^' Indians, signed by the
imZni fu'^^V^ *^.^ P'^"^^ °^ ^^^'' ratification, and preserved in the
office of the Secretary to the Commonwealth. These signatures,
traced of course by their own hands, are rough drawings of the
creatures or weapons they were called after. Thus, the Great Turtle
Iw.^'k ' ^^«^ked pen-and-ink outline of a great turtle; the Buffalo
sketches a buffalo; the War Hatchet sets a rough image of that
weapon for his mark. So with the Arrow, the Fish, the Scalp, the Big
Canoe, nd all of them. ^ **

Jj°!^}^ "°^^u"* think-as I looked at these feeble and tremulous
productions of hands which could draw the longest arrow to the head
in a .tout elk-horn bow, or split a bead or feather with a rifle-ball^-of
Crabbe s musiags over the Parish Register, -^nd the irregular
scratches made with a pen. by men who wo; , olough aTengthv

or'iT/wK^^* u?"" *^"^ *° ^°^- ^°' ^°"^d I aelp bestowing r^any
sorrowful thoughts upon the simple warrior, whose hands and
hearts were set there, m all truth and honesty, and who only learned
in course of time from white men how to break their fith^
?r".dnln„?« x'"'^" and bonds. I wonder, too. how many times the
frt^^!Z ?l^"'*^^'.°f *^^'*^"S ^-^"^« Hatchet, had put his mark to
treaties which were falsely read to him; and had signed away he
knew not what, until it went and cast him loose upon the^Aew
possessors of the land, a savage indeed.

n^?!."!! ?''-\^?''°"u^!'^' ^^^""^^ ^^'^ ^^^^y ^^"^e^' that some members
of the legislative body proposed to do us the honour of calling He
had kindly yielded up to us his wife's own little parlour and when
1 begged that he would show them in. I saw him look with painful
apprehension at its pretty carpet; though, being otherwise occupied
at the time, the cause of his uneasiness did not occur to me.
Jri ^^rtffly would have been more pleasant to all parties concerned,
and would not. I thmk. have compromised their independence in any
material degree, if some of these gentlemen had not only yielded to
the prejudice m favour of spittoons, but had -.bandoned themselves
handkerc^°eTs^°*' ^""^"^ *° *^^ conventional absurdity of pocket-
It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went down to the
L.anai tsoat (for that was the mode of convev.anrf* hv whif'h '-- "--^-
to proceed) after dinner, the weather w^'as uiipr^^ng '^d

M. i

t^ '■ f

Ii5

American Notes

I; nil

obstinately wet as one would desire to see. Nor was the sight of this
canal boat, in which we were to spend three or four days, by any
means a cheerful one; as it involved some uneasy speculations
concerning the disposal of the passengers at night, and opened a
wide field of inquiry touching the other domestic arrangements of
the ertablishment, which was sufficiently disconcerting.

However, there it was — a barge with a little house in it, viewed
from the outside; and a caravan at a fair, viewed from within: the
gentlemen being accommodated, as the spectators usually are, in one
of those locomotive museums of .penny wonders; and the ladies being
partitioned off by a red curtain, after the manner of the dwarfs and
giants in the same establishments, whose private lives are passed in
rather close exclusiveness.

We sat here, looking silently at the row of little tables, which
extended down both sides of the cabin, and listening to the rain as it
dripped and pattered on the boat, and plashed with a dismal mem-
ment in the water, until the arrival of the railway train, for whose
final contribution to our stock of passengers, our departure was
alone deferred. It brought a great many boxes, which were bumped
and tossed upon the roof, almost as painfully as if they had been
deposited on one's own head, without the intervention of a porter's
knot; and several damp gentlemen, whose clothes, on their drawing
round the stove, began to steam again. No doubt it would have been
a thought more comfortable if the driving rain, which now poured
down more soakingly than ever, had admitted of a window being
opened, or if our number had been something less than thirty; but
there was scarcely time to think as much, when a train of three
horses v/as attached to the tow-rope, the boy upon the leader
smacked his whip, the i adder creaked and groaned complainingly,
and we had begun our journey.

CHAPTER X.

SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS DOMESTIC ECON-
OMY, AND ITS PASSENGERS, JOURNEY TO PITTSBURG ACROSS THE
ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS. PITTSBURG.

As it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all remained below:
the damp gentlemen round the stove, gradually becoming mildewed
by the action of the fire; and the dry gentlemen lying at full length
upon the seats, or slumbering uneasily with their faces on the tables,
or walking up and down the cabin, which it was barely possible for a
man of the middle height to do, without making bald places on his
head by scraping it against the roof. At about six o'clock, all the
small tables were put together to form one long table, and every-

body sai

steaks, p

"Will

potatoes

fixings?"

There

word "fij

call upor

that he i

which yc

board a s

ready soc

below, tl

cloth. Yo

not to be

indisposil

who will '

One nij

was stayi

the table

"fixed pr

overheari

sented hii

that, fixinj

There i

tendered

of somew]

bladed kn

than I eve

skilful jug

omitted a

comfort. I

rambles ii

rudeness.

By the

worn itsel:

it became

standing i1

by the lug

tarpaulin <

became a s

the canal.

duck nimb

"Bridge!"

down near]

were so mj

this.

As night

ht of this
3, by any
iculations
opened a
ments of

t, viewed
ithin: the
re, in one
lies being
varfs and
passed in

3S, which
rain as it
lal meiTi-
'or whose
ture was
! bumped
had been
I porter's
■ drawing
lave been
w poured
ow being
lirty; but
of three
le leader
iainingly,

IC ECON-
ROSS THE

!d below:
nildewed
ill length
le tables,
ible for a
es on his
:, all the
id every-

American Notes

119

body sat down to tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad liver
steaks potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black-puddings, ind saisages
nnf^Yoic^K" l'^' '^^^ ""^ ^PP^'^^^ neighbour, handiAg me a dish oi
fixings?" "^ '" "^'^^ ^^^ ^"""'' "^"^ y°" ^^ «^«^^ of these

^Jrd^'L^'M^^.^''r^^^ u^.""^ P^^^°"" ""^^ ^^^iO"S duties as this
word fix. It IS the Caleb Quotem of the American vocabulary You
call upon a gentleman ma country town, and his help informs you
that he IS fixmg nimself" ust now, but will be down direcTlv-T
which you are to understand that he is dressing. You inquire' on
board a steamboat, of a fellow-passenger, whether breakfast wfl'l be
ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, for when he w^ las?
below, they were "fixing the tables:" in other words! lay W the
cloth. You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and he entr Jatlvon
not to be uneasy, for he'll "fix it presently?' 'lAd?fyouco^^^^^^^^
'::^^&^J^^:^ '^ ^^- — ^^ ^-t- So^Lnd^o
One night. I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an hotel where I

r/ilT""^;^"^ "^^''^"^ ^ 1^^^ *^°^^ ^^' i*' ^t ^^"gth it was put upon
he table with an apology from the landlord that he feared it wasn't
fixed properly." And I recollect once, at a stage-coach dTnner
overhearing a very stern gentleman demand of a waiter who pri
sented him with a plate of underdone roast-beef, "whether he callfS
thai, fixing God A'mighty's vittles?" wnetner he called

There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invitation was
tendered to me which has occasioned this digression, w^dTspoIed
somewhat ravenously; and that the gentlemen thrust the Sold-
bladed knives and the two-pronged forks further down their throats
than I ever saw the same weapons go before, except in the hands of a
Skilful juggler: but no man sat down until the ladies were seated or

cTmfort Sd dr^' °' P°''''"^^^ "^^^^ ^^"^^ contribute ?othe'r
r.^w!c* A ? ^"'^'^ ''''^^' '''' ^"y occasion, anywhere, during my
rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the slightest act of
rudeness, incivility, or even inattention. °

By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed to have

worn Itself out by coming down so fast, was nearly over too and

t became feasible to go on deck: which was a great relief. no?Wuh-

standing its being a very small deck, and being rendered st 11 smlller

ta^rnanl n ^^^^'' ""^i"^ ^^' ^"^^"^ ^^^ethcr in the middle u^er a

arpdulin covering; leavmg. on either side, a path so narrow that it

became a science to walk to and fro without tumbling overboard ?nto

the canal It was somewhat embarrassing at first. .00. to have to

'Brti".H '' J 7""'' ^:' ""^""'u"' ^^^^"^^^^ '^'^ "^^" ^t tt^. helm cried
Bridge! and sc etimes. when the cry was "Low Bridge " to lie

down nearly flat. But custom familiarises one to anything lid there

were so many bridges that it took a very short time to get used to

As night came on, and we drew in sight of the first range of hills.

120

American Notes

lii'l

■ii

which are the outposts of the Alleghany Mountains, the scenery,
which had been uninteresting hitherto, became more bold and
striking. The wet ground reeked and smoked, after the heavy fall of
rain; and the croaking of the frogs (whose noise in these parts is
almost incredible) sounded as though a million of fairy teams with
bells were travelling through the air, and keeping pace with us. The
night was cloudy yet, but moonlight too: and when we crossed the
Susquehanna river — over which there is an extraordinary wooden
bridge with two galleries, one above the other, so that even there,
two boat teams meeting, may pass without confusion — it was wild
and grand.

I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and doubt,
at first, relative to the sleeping arrangements on board this boat. I
remained in the same vague state of mind until ten o'clock or
thereabouts, ^vilen going below, I found suspended on either side of
the cabin, three long tiers of hanging book-shelves, designed appar-
ently for volumes of the small octavo size. Looking with greater
attention at these contrivances (wondering to find such literary
preparations in such a place), I descried on each shelf a sort of
microscopic sheet and blanket; then I began dimly to comprehend
that the passengers were the library, and that they were to be
arranged edge-wise, on these shelves, till morning.

I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them gathered
round the master of the boat, at one of the tables, drawing lots with
all the anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted in their counte-
nances; while others, with small pieces of cardboard in their hands,
were groping among the shelves in search of numbers corresponding
with those they had drawn. As soon as any gentleman found his
number, he took possession of ?t by immediately undressing himself
and crawling into bed. The rapidity with which an agitated gambler
subsided into a snoring slumberer, was one of the most singular
effects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies, they were already
abed, behind the red curtain, which was carefully drawn and pinned
up the centre; though as every cough, or sneeze, or whisper, behind
this curtain, was perfectly audible before it, we had still a lively
consciousness of their society . *■

The politeness of the person in authority had secured to me a shelf
in a nook near this red curtain, in some degree removed from the
great body of sleepers: to which place I retired, with many acknow-
ledgments to him for his attention. I found it, on after-measurement,
just the width of an ordinary sheet of Bath post letter-paper; and I
was at first in some uncertainty as to the best means of getting into
it. But the shelf being a bottom one, I finally determined on lying
upon the floor, rolling gently in, stojpping immediately I touched the
mattress, and remaining for the night with that side uppermost,
whatever it might be. Luckily, I came upon my back at exactly the
right moment. I was much alarmed on looking upward, to see. by the
shape of his half-yard of sacking (which his weight had bent into an

. xeedir

me, who

could nc

event of

again wi

ladies; a

upon th<

One o

reference

they car

all; or t]

mingling

canal, th

coat, bei

gentleme

Theory c

on the c

conditioi

Betwe

of us wen

down; wl

rusty stc

with the

liberal alj

was a tin

thought i

weakness

z tin basi

hanging i

vicinity c

hair-brus:

At eigl:

the table

bread, bi

chops, blc

of compoi

As each j

coffee, br

ham, choj

When ev(

cleared av

of a barbi

while the

Dinner wj

and breali

There v

face pnri !

scenery,
3old and
vy fall of
! parts is
ims with
1 us. The
Dssed the
^ wooden
en there,
was wild

id doubt,
s boat. I
'clock or
sr side of
id appar-
1 greater
literary
1 sort of
iprehend
re to be

gathered
lots with
r counte-
ir hands,
sponding
ound his
^ himself
gambler
singular
: already
d pinned
*, behind
a lively

le a shelf
from the
acknow-
irement,
2r; and I
ting into
on lying
ched the
permost,
Lctly the
e. by the
t into an

American Notes 121

- xeedingly tight bag), that there was a very heavy gentleman above
me whom the slender cords seemed quite incapable of holding; and I
could not help reflectmg upon the grief of my wife and family in the
event of his commg down in the night. But as I could not have got up
agam without a severe bodily struggle, which might have alarmed the
ladies; and as I had nowhere to go to, even if I had; I shut my eves
upon the danger, and remained there.

One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact with
reference to tha. class of society who travel in these boats. Either
they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they never sleep at
all; or they expectorate in dreams, which would be a remarkable
mingling of the real and ideal. All night long, and every night, on this
canal, there was a perfect storm and tempest of spitting; and once mv
coat being in the very centre of the hurricane sustained by five
gentlemen (which moved vertically, strictly carrying out Reids
Theory of the Law of Storms), I was fain the next morning to lay it
on the deck, and rub it down with fair water before it was in a
condition to be worn again.

Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up and some
of us went on deck, to give them an opportunity of taking the shelves
aown; while others the morning being very cold, crowded round the
rusty stove, cherishing the newly kindled fire, and filling the grate
with those voluntary contributions of which they had been so
hberal all night. The washing accommodations were primitive There
was a tin ladle chained to the deck, with which every gentleman who
thought it necessary to cleanse himself (many were superior to this
weakness), fished the dirty water out of the canal, and poured it into
2 tin basm. secured in like manner. There was also a jack-towel And
hanging up before a little looking-glass in the bar. in the immediate
hS^brus'h ^^^^^^ ^""^ biscuits, were a public comb and

^u^i ^l^^^ o'clock, the shelves being taken down and put away and
the tables joined together, everybody sat down to the tea. coffee
bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham'
chops, black-puddings, and sausages, all over again. Some were fond
of compounding this variety, and having it all on their plates at once
As each gentleman got through his own personal amount of tea'
coffee, bread butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles'
ham, chops, black-puddings, and sausages, he rose up and walked off'
When everybody had done with everything, the fragments were
of'f btl^J^Lr"^ T °f the waiters-appearing anew in the character
Of a barber, shaved such of the company as desired to be shaved-
while the remainder looked on. or yawned over their newspapers!
Dhmer was breakfast again, without the tea and coffee; and supper
and breakfast were identical. s-upper

tJ^^'^^7'^ ^ ""^"^ ^"^ ^°^^^ *h^s boat, with a light fresh-coloured
f,-.;AVIii";: - i--^-t-— "--^<xxt oait yx wudico, wno was the most inquisi-
tive fellow that can possibly be imagined. He never spoke otherwise

■ .K

I M

|i,f

I ^

122 American Notes

than interrogatively. He was an embodied inquiry. Sitting down or
standing up. still or moving, walking the deck or taking his meals,
there he was, with a great note of interrogation in each eye, two in
his cocked ears, two more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least
half a dozen more about the corners of his mouth, and the largest one
of all in his hair, which was brushed pertly off his forehead in a flaxen
clump. Every button in his clothes said, "Eh? What's that? Did you
speak? Say that again, will you?" He was always wide awake, like
the enchanted bride who drove her husband frantic; always restless;
always thirsting for answers; perpetually seeking and never finding!
There never was such a curious man.

I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we were well clear
of the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and its price, and
where I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and what it
weighed, ?,nd what it cost. Then he took notice of my watch, and
asked me what that cost, and whether it was a French watch, and
where I got it, and how I got it, and whether I bought it or had it
given me, and how it went, and where the key-hole was, and when I
wound it, every night or every morning, and whether I ever forgot to
wind it at all, and if I did, what then? Where had I been to last, and
where was I going next, and where was I going after that, and haci I
seen the President, and what did he say, and what did I say, and
what did he say when I had said that? Eh? Lor now ! do tell !

Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his questions
after the first score or two, and in particular pleaded ignorance
respecting the name of the fur whereof the coat was made. I am
unable to say whether this was the reason, but that coat fascinated
him afterwards; he usually kept close behind me as 1 walked, and
moved as I moved, that he might look at it the better; and he frequently
dived into narrow places after me at the risk of his life, that he might
have the satisfaction of passing his hand up the back, and rubbing
it the wrong way.

We had another odd specimen on board, of a different kind. This
was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and stature, dressed
in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I^never saw before. He was
perfectly quiet during the first part of the journey: indeed I don't
remember having so much as seen him until he was brought out by
circumstances, as great men often are. The conjunction of events
which made him famous, happened, briefly, thus.

The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there, of
course, it stops; the passengers being conveyed across it by land
carriage, and taken on afterwards by another canal boat, the counter-
part of the first, which awaits them on the other side. There are two
canal lines of passage-boats; one is called The Express, and one (a
cheaper one) The Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first to the mountain, and
waits for the Express people to come up; both sets of passengers being
Gonveved across it at the same f imf W^f* *vf»rf* fhf* 'c'-vr'.rr»cc r'—.rrt— .■sr-.-ir-
but when we had crossed the mountain, and had come to the second

boat, th(
into it ]
accessioi
the pros
people d
whole fr(
At home
I held n:
people o:
anybodj

"This
very wel
suit my i
Now! I 'I
the sun s
/ live, th
Cake. Th
Rather,
glad of ii
company
'em, / ar
little too
sentence:
himself a
turning I

It is in
the word
sengers Ic
boat was
be coaxe(

When
bold to !
prospects
(waving ]
"No you
you may,
Cakes cai
from the 1
He was u
there is a
services: i
rest of th
except sil
of the buj
Pittsburg
steps, an(

of the Mi!

down or
is meals,
e, two in
at least
rgest one
I a flaxen
Did you
ake, like
restless;
■ finding.

irell clear
ice, and
what it
tch, and
tch, and
)r had it
i when I
forgot to
last, and
id had I
say, and
!

uestions
[norance
le. I am
scinated
ced, and
jquently
le might
rubbing

nd. This
, dressed
, He was
I don't
b out by
f events

here, of
by land
:ounter-
are two
i one (a
ain, and
!rs being

s second

American Notes

123

boat, the proprietors took it into their heads to draft all the Pioneers
mto It likewise, so that we were five-and-forty at least and the
accession of passengers was not at all of that kind which improved
the prospect of sleeping at night. Our people grumbled at this as
people do in such cases; but suffered ^he boat to be towed off with the
whole freight aboard nevertheless; and away we went down the canal.
At home, I should have protested lustily, but being a foreigner here*
I held my peace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path among the
people on deck (we were nearly all on deck), and without addressing
anybody whomsoever, soliloquised as follows;

"This may suit:voM, this may. but it don't suit me. 1 j m.:^y be all
very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston raising, but it won't
suit my figure nohow; and no two ways about that: and so I tell you
Now! I'm from the brown forests of the Mississippi, / am, and when
the sun shines on me, it does shine — a little. It don't glimmer where
/ live, the sun don't. No. I'm a brown forester. I am. I an't a Johnny
Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. We're rough men there.
Rather. If Down Easters and men of Boston raising like this, I'm
glad of it, but I'm none of that raising nor of that breed. No.'This
company wants a little fixing, it does. I'm the wrong sort of man for
'em, / am. They won't hke me, they won't. This is piling of it up a
httle too mountainoiis, this is." At the end of every one of these short
sentences he turned upon his heel, and walked the other way checkin<»
himself abruptly when he had finished another short sentence and
turning back again.

It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in
the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other pas-
sengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and that presently the
boat was put back to the wharf, and as many of the Pioneers as could
be coaxed or bullied into going away, were got rid of.

When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board, made
bold to say to the obvious occasion of this improvement in our
prospects, "Much obliged to you, sir;" whcreunto the brown forester
(waving his hand, and still walking up and down as before), replied
"No you an't. You're none o' my raising. You may act for yourselves'
you may. I have pinted out the way. Down Easters and Johnny
Cakes can follow if they please. I an't a Johnny Cake. / an't. I am
from the brown forests of the Mississippi, / am"— and so on as before
He was unanimously voted one of the tables fo^- his bed at night-
there IS a great contest for the tables— in consid. ation for his public
services: and he had the warmest corner by the stove throughout the
rest of the journey. But I never could find out that he did anything
except sit there; nor did I hear him speak again until, in the midst
of the bustle and turmoil of getting the luggage ashore in the dark at
Pittsburg, I stumbled over him as he sat smoking a cigar on the cabin
steps, and heard him muttering to himself, with a short laugh of
•^•wiiaiiv-w, i dii i, a juiiiiuy v-.aK:e, i an t. i'ai iroiii the brown forests
of the Mississippi, / am, damme 1" I am inclined to argue from this.

■i I

124

American Notes

AnH \ ^^ Of Game, not mentioned in the Bill of Fare
And yet despite these oddities— and even thev hpHfnV r«o ^
least, a humour of their own-there was mnrh^ii^+K- ^® ""^

looking through, rather than at, the deep blue skv- the ^Udi^l ^l^i
night, so noiselessly, past frownine hills snnlnSu^ T ? ^ °" ^*

hmp5d^„pp,.ng of the water as the boat went'^n* aU thesf we'^pur:

a.r without the door, whereon was rangS the household storeTn^
hard to count, of earthen iars anrf r„^t? -ri, """^""O'" store, not

the st„n,ps of great trees tSrst^e™' in te^'fiddoTwhl^^^ '1

StTeftirn^f aVdl^s'teTr^ f' ^".Sa^sf wfth^S^^^dred
water It wi Quite Jr/nH ''^^"<=''«^ stopped in its unwholesome

where;s^ttTe?srr4trrnT„rr„%tri"?l" S'^i*. *-^^
wounaeu bodies lay about, like those of mura^^ed creatures: ;hre

seeme<

had cc

out th(

new cc

Wei

at the i

ten inc

are dra

of stati

travers

as the c

verge o

travelle

into the

howeve

precaut

Itwa;

of the r

light ar

scattere

bark, w]

homewa

upward

on at th

we ridinj

too, whe

other mc

see the (

like a gr(

that if it

have had

short of ij

and, befc

the passe

the road

On the

the banks

tion of thi

place — a

stranger t

chamber f

01 buildinj

water, wh(

American Notes

times, at nighi. the wa^lund thro^^^^^^ ?" ""1' ^°' ^°"^«-
mountain pass in ScotlaL Snl aXniT^ f^T^V 8^°"«^' ^'^^ ^
of the moon, and so closed in by h"|hsteeS-"^ '''" ^'^^'

seemed to be no egress save through ^1^,? ^" '■°""'*' *^^* *^ere

had come, until one rugged hnSet^^^^^ ^y ^^ich we

out the moonlight as we^ssed in o its gSoml^'thfo "^ ^"^ '"^""^"^
new course in shade and darkness ^^^^"'y th^at. wrapped our

at fh: t't ol^^e'^un^^^^^^^ Sis^^cro'^^H^?^^ "^^^"^^ - ^-ved
ten inclined planes; five asce^^inl .n^^^^^ ^^ ''^"^°^^- There are
are dragged up the former and let slotfv "/'""^k^^?^' *^^ ^^"^^ges
of stationary Ingines; the compISttel^^^Ieve^^^^^^ 'T/' ^^ "^^ '"«
traversed, sometimes by hor?e and Ini Jf ^ T between, being
as the case demands Occa4nalivth^r!.T '"I^^.^y ^"^^"« Po^er!
verge of a giddy precipice! aSk^n/from^^^^ ^^'"^ "P^" '^" «^^^«"^«
traveller gazes sheer down without a ftn^^^^ ""^"'f^^ ^^"^°^' ^^e
into the mountain depths bdowTht io?,rnf '""'^^ °^ ^^"^^ ^^*^««"'
however; only two clTrLsesTr^t^Uil^^^^^^

precautions a^e taken. isTot toTe .^^fadTfor^V "h^ ^^"^ P^^P^^

It was very prettvtravpllinc,fi,!;o ^l^^^^^. for its dangers,
of the mountain Keef S to lL\'T^ P^"" ^^^"^ *^^ ^^^^^^
light and softness; cSinT glimpses th^^ i^^^^^
scattered cabins; children runnS^tn f hi h "^? ^^® tree-tops. of
bark, whom we could see wXut hS^^^^ ^"^«*^"g ^"^ to

homewards; families sitting out in the r^r',,!?^ ^5 P'^' scampering
upward with a stupid indifference men In^^ • ^l"""^^""' ^°^« g^«"g
on at their unfinished W^ pTan^n^ on. ?' '^'"^-'^"^^^^ ^o«ki"g
we riding onward, high above ihemhkf.whT'"°7°T^'' ^°^k' ^"^
too, when we had dined and rat^;i.f/ ''"^r^''^- 1* was amusing
other moving power ?Sk the we ^ht of^^^^ ^ P P^''' ^^^^"^ ^^°
see the engine released lonffTfSr n. ? ^^"^ges themselves, to
like a great insect, its bkck o^f ^reen fn/°"i? ^'"^^ "^ ^°^^ ^^0"^'
that if it had spread a pair of Ss ."h .^"^^^^ '^^"^"^ ^" ^^^ ^un
have had occasion. aslfandS forthe?.-f ^'^^^' "° °"^ ^^^^^

short of us in a very businS hkl ^. least surprise. But it stopped

and. before we lef t^ the Srt 4ntT/n'/^

the passengers whohadwS our iritpl?.^.^^^ ^^'^ ^'^^ ^S^^"' ^^^^
the road by which we hld^come *^^ ""^^"^ °^ *^^^^^sing

the^bVnt ofThtcVnirwf^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^.-^ hammers on

tion of this part of our ^rnev Aftlrl approached the termina-
Place~a long aqueS ISs fhe IX^'^'^'^i^-^^^^^^^^^^^n^y

stranger than the bridge at Harrisburth^ ^'^^'■' ^^^^^ ^^
chamberfullofwater^i'eemVr^'n'i^^^^^^ i<^w> wooden

oi Duiidings and crazy galleries and 'st^frT''"^-^''"?''''''^"^*^^^^^

water, whether it be rive? sea canS nr^^f k ? ^^"^^^^ ^^"^^ «»

iver, sea. canal, or ditch; and were at Pittsburg

126

American Notes

'I
i.

Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England, at least its townspeople
say so. Setting anide the streets, the shops, the houses, waggons,
factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps it may be. It
certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging about it, and is
famous for its iron-works. Besides the prison to which I have already
referred, this town contains a pretty arsenal and other institutions.
It is very beautifully situated on the Alleghany River, over which
there are two bridges; and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled
about the high grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty enough.
We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served.
As usual it was full of boarders, was very large, and had a broad
colonnade to every story of the house.

We tarried here three days. Our next point was Cincinnati: and as
this was a steamboat journey, and western steamboats usually blow
up one or two a week in the season, it was advisable to collect opinions
in reference to the comparative safety of the vessel bound that way,
then lying in the river. One called the Messenger was the best recom-
mended. Sb" had been advertised to start positively, every day for a
fortnight or so, and had not gone yet, nor did her captain seem to
have any very fixed intention on the subject. But this is the custom:
for if the law were to bi'nd down a free and independent citizen to
keep his word with the public, what would become of the liberty of
the subject? Besides, it is in the way of trade. And if passengers be
decoyed in the way of trade, and people be inconvenienced in the
way of trade, what man, who is a sharp tra 'esman himself, shall say,
"We must put a stop to this?"

Impressed by the deep solemnity of the public announcement, I
(being then ignorant of these usages) was for hurrying on board in a
breati^less state, immediately; but receiving private and confidential
information that the boat would certainly not start until Friday,
April the First, we made ourselves very comfortable in the mean
while, and went on board at noon that day.

CHAPTER XI

FROM PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAMBOAT.

CINCINNATI

The Messenger was one among a crowd of high-pressure steamboats,
clustered together by a wharf-side, which, looked down upon from
the rising ground that forms the landing-place, and backed by the
lofty bank on the opposite side of the river, appeared no larger than
so many floating models. She had some forty passengers on board,
exclusive of the poorer persons on the lower deck; and iu half an hour,
or less, proceeded on her way.

We had

opening ou

satisfactor

we had be€

as far aft

forward."]

circumstan

ciently test

an unspeal

where one <

this was oii

cabin, whic

the other p

and gaze u]

quarters wi

If the na

we are in tl:

more foreig

I hardly kn

In the fir

other such I

calculated t

that they ar

might be ir

perform son

There is no

covered wit]

chimneys, a

Then, in ore

and doors,

together as

tastes of a c

resting on a

in the narro

deck, are th<

wind that bl

Passing 01

fire, exposed

the frail piL

guarded in a

idlers and en

the manager

mysteries mj

that the won

but that any

Within, th

ho;if • {rr\nn t^r]

of it at the st

American Notes 127

We had, for ourselves, a tiny state-room with two berths in if

sTtiSo^l* fi iv ^f.f -' -bi/xhere was. undoubt:dly^meiSi;*g
satisfactory in this "location," inasmuch as it was in the s* rn and

ls^^aftZ^^'%'^''^ '''^'' T^ ^'^^''y -ecommendeu to'keep
fomard •• Nnr^wf '?i^' ^""^"'^ *^^ steamboats generally blew up
forward Nor was this ai. unnecessary caution, as the occurrence and

riwi ^'I'f j'^."'^'^ *^^" °"« «"^^ fatality during our stay suffi-
ciently testified. Apart from this source of self-congrltulation it was

whero^^ne ro'' H K^'^f '° ^"7 ^"^ P^^^^' "° "^^"^^ how confined!
f hi w.?^ V, "^ ,^^ ^ u "^= ^"^ ^' *^^ "°^ °* l»^tl« chambers of which
cabin wh,Vh ^^"^ ^^?^ ^ '''°"^ glass-door besides that in the ladies'
^^r ^/k ''P^''^'^ °'' ^ ""^"^^ g^^le^y outside the vessel, where

the other passengers seldom came, and where one could sit in pea 'e

nnf rf.^"? "T '\'^\^'^S prospect. we took possession of ou?new
quarters with much pleasure.

vve^Lei^nTh^hT.^^'/' ^^^""^ ^^''^^^ described be unlike anything
we are in the habit of seeing on water, these western vessels are still

TZJ?'^^^'' *° ^i^ *A' '??^' ^^ ^^ accustomed to entertain of boats
I hardly know what to liken them to, or how to describe them.

in the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging or
c1ku?j2 ,^°^*-^^.k«/^^'' r^ have they anything in their'shf pe ft all

f hi?/h ° ^Tu"""^ °"^ °^ ^ ^°^^'" h^^d' «t^^"' sides, or keel. Except
that they are in the water, and display a couple of paddle-boxes thev
might be intended, for anything thlt appears to the conSy to

T wJ^ '°°'^- "Ki^'^r? '^'''^^^' ^^8h and dry. upon a mountain top.
There is no visible deck, even: nothing but a long, black, ugly roof
covered with burnt-out feathery .parks; above which tower twoTron
chimneys, and a hoarse escape valve, and a glass steerage-house.
Then in order as the eye descends towards the water, are the sides
and doors, and windows of the state-rooms, jumbled as oddl^
together as though they formed a small street, built by the varying
tastes of a dozen men: the whole is supported on beams and pillar!
resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the water's edge- and
ILt l^Tv,""^. 'P'""® between this upper structure and this barge's
wln^'fw Jjf ^'''''^^! ^''^' ^""^ machinery, open at the sides to every
wind that blows and every storm of raux it drives along its path.

Passing one of these boats at right, and seeing the great bodv of
fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath
the frail pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded off or
guarded m any way. but doing its wci'k in the midst of the crowd of
dlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck: under
the management, oc of reckless men whose acquaintance with its
mysteries may have been cf six months' standing: one feels directly
that the wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents
but that any journey should be safely made.

hn^??'"' ^^'u'^li''''^ ^"""S ""^"^^ ^a^i"' ^^^ whole length of the
^fT+'oV^u* "/"""•'"'' ^'-'t'-r^"""" ^pen, on Doili sides. A smaUT>ortion
01 it at the stem is partitioned off for the ladies; and the bar ii at the

4 i

'u >

s ■■ ■ i

128

American Notes

if'
M

121

opposite extreme. There is a long table down the cen\ie, and at either
end a stove. The washing apparatus is forward, on the de^K. It is a
little better than on board the canal boat, but not much. In all
modes of travelling, the American customs, with reference to the
means of personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, arc extremely
negligent and filthy; and I strongly incline to the belief that a con-
siderable amount of illness is referable to this cause.

We are to be on board the Messenger three days: arriving at
Cincinnati (barring accidents) on Monday morning. There are three
meals a day. Breakfast at seven, dinner at half-past twelve, supper
about six. At each, there are a great many small dishes and plates
upon the table, with very little in them; so that although there is
every appearance of a mighty "spread," there is seldom really more
than a joint: except for those who fancy slices of beet-root, shreds of
dried beef, comj^iicatcd entanglements of yellow pickle; maize,
Indian com, applv-^-snuce, and pumpkin.

Some people fancy all these little dainties together (and sweet
preserves beside), by way of relish to their roast pig. They are
generally those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat unheard-of
quantities of hot com tjread (almost as good for the digestion as a
kneaded pin-cushion), for breakfast, and for supper. Those who do
not observe this custom, and who help themselves several times
instead, usually suck their knives and forks meditatively, until they
have decided what to take next: then pull them out of their mouths:
put them in the dish; help themselves; and fall to work again. At
dinner, there is nothing to drink upon the table, but great jugs full
of cold water. Nobody says anything, at any meal, to anybody. All
the passengers are very dismal, and seem to have tremendous secrets
weighing on their minds. There is no conversation, no laughter, no
cheerfulness, np sociality, except in spitting; and that is done in
silent fellowship round the stove, when the meal is over. Every man
sits down, dull and languid; swallows his fare as if breakfasts, dinners,
and suppers, were necessities of nature never to be coupled with
recreation or enjoyment; and having bolted his food in a gloomy
silence, bolts himself, in the same state. -^ But for these animal ob-
servances, you might suppose the whole male portion of the company
to be the melancholy ghosts of departed book-keepers, who had
fallen dead at the desk: such is their weary air of business and
calculation. Undertakers on duty would be sprightly beside them;
and a collation of funeral-baked meats, in comparison with these
meals, would be a sparkling festivity.

The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of character.
They travel about on the same errands, say and do the same things
in exactly the same manner, and follow in the same dull cheerless
round. All down the long table, there is scarcely a man who is in
anything different from his neighbour. It is quite a relief to have,
sitting opposite, that iittie girl of fifteen with the loquacious chin:
who, to do her justice, acts up to it, and fully identifies nature's

handwr

repose t

beautifi

there — i

beyond

West, w

They w

omen ai

liead, w

She was

bright a

Furth

their ph

mine. H

cottages

people t

together

evening

off pisto

They,

rise, and

room, re

A fine

others: a

dividing

maybe t(

village (]

are for t

hereabou

and mile

trace of '.

but the I

it looks 1:

its little !

and send

in the cor

stumps, ]

just now

house on

leans up(

from the

is like a §

The dog c

face agaii

common

still there

itc

American Notes

It either
:, It is a
I. In all
i to the
;tremely
t a con-

iving at
re three
, supper
d plates
there is
lly more
hreds of
maize,

d sweet
hey are
heard-of
ion as a
who do
a.1 times
itil they
mouths:
gain. At
jugs full
ody. All
s secrets
hter, no
done in
ery man
dinners,
led with
gloomy
mal ob-
ompany
vho had
less and
le them;
th these

laracter.
le things
:heerless
rho is in
to have,
>U3 chin:
nature's

129

handwntmg. for of all the small chatterboxes that ever invaded the
repose of drowsy ladies' cabin, she is the first and foremost The
beautiful girl, who sits a little beyond her— farther down the table
there— married the young man with the dark whiskers, who sits
beyond her. only la . month. They are going to settle in the very Far
West, where he has lived four years, but where she has never been
Ihey were both overturned in a stage-coach the other day (a bad
omen anywhere else, where overturns are not so common), and his
head, which bears the marks of a recent wound, is bound up still
She was hurt too. at the same time, and lay insensible for some davs'
bright as her eyes are, now. ^ '

Further down still, sits a man who is going some miles beyond
their place of destination, to "improve" a newly-discovered copper
mine. He carries the village— that is to be— with him: a few frame
cottages, and an apparatus for smelting the copper. He carries its
people too. They are partly American and partly Irish, and herd
together on the lower deck; where they amused themselves last
evening till the night was pretty far advanced, by alternately firing
oft pistols and singing hymns. -^ 6

They, and the very few who have been left at table twenty minutes
rise, and go away. We do so too; and passing through our little state-
room. resuHxC our seats in the quiet gallery without.

A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than in
others: and then there is usually a green island, covered with trees
dividing It into two streams. Occasionally, we stop for a few minutes'
maybe to take m wood, maybe for passengers, at some small town or
village (I ought to say city, every place is a city here); bx>.t the banks
are lor the most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees which
hereabouts, are already in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles'
and miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life or
l''^.^!u° i""™^^ footstep; nor is anything seen to move about them
but the blue jay, whose colour is so bright, and yet so delicate, that
It looks like a flying flower. At lengthened intervals a log cabin wi^h
Its httle space of cleared land about it. nestles under a rising gr'ound
and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands
m the corner of the poor field of wheat, which is full of great unsightlv
stumps, like earthly butchers'-blocks. Sometimes the ground is only
]ust now cleared: the felled trees lying yet upon the soil: and the log-
house only this morning begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler
leans upon his axe or hammer, and looks wistfully at the people
from the world. The children creep out of the temporary hut which
IS like a gipsy tent upon the ground, and clap their hands and shout
I he dog only glances round at us, and then looks up into his master's
lace again, as if he were rendered uneasy by any suspension of the
common business, and had nothing more to do with pleasures. And
still there is the same, eternal foreground. The ri"- - has washed away
I ^^P-'^^' ^"" stateiy trees have fallen down into the stream Some
have been there so long, that they are mere dry, grizzly skeletons.
323

' 1

mmtm

130

American Notes

Some have just toppled over, and having earth yet about their roots,
ate bathing their green heads in the river, and putting forth new
shoots and branches. Some arc almost sliding down, as you look at
them. And some were drowned so long ago, that their bleached arms
start out from the middle of the current, and seem to try to grasp the
boat, and drag it under water.

Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine takes its
hoarse, sullen way: venting, at every revolution of the paddles, a
loud high-pressure blast; enough, one would think, to waken up the
host of Indians who lie buried in a great mound yonder: so old, that
mighty oaks and other forest trees have struck their roots into its
earth; and so high, that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature
planted round it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings
of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in
their blessed ignorance of white existence, hundreds of years ago,
steals out of its way to ripple near this mound: and there are few places
where the Ohio sparkles more brightly than in the Big Grave Creek.

All this I see as I sit in the little stem-galley mentioned just now.
Evening slowly steals upon the landscape and changes it before me,
when we stop to set some emigrants ashore.

Five men, as many wopien, and a little girl. All their worldly goods
are a bag, a large chest and an old chair: one, old, high-backed, rush-
bottomed chair: a solitary settler in itself. They are rowed ashore in
the boat, while the vessel stands a little off awaiting its return, the
water being shallow. They are landed at the foot of a high bank, on
the summit of which are a few log cabins, attainable only by a long
winding path. It is growing dusk; but the sun is very red, and shines
in the water and on some of the tree-tops, like fire.

The men get out of the boat first; help out the women; take out the
bag, the chest, the chair; bid th^ rowers "good-bye;" and shove the
boat off for them. At the first plash of the oars in the water, the
oldest woman of the party sits down in the old chair, close to the
water's edge, without speaking a word. None of the others sit down,
though the chest is large enough for many seats. They all stand where
they landed, as if stricken into stone; and look after the boat. So they
remain, quite still and silent: the old womaai and her old chair, in the
centre; the bag and chest upon the shore, without anybody heeding
them: all eyes fixed upon the boat. It comes alongside, is made fast,
the men jump on board, the engine is put in motion, and we go
hoarsely on again. There they stand yet, without the motion of a
hand. I can see them through my glass, when, in the distance and
increasing darkness, they are mere specks to the eye: lingering there
still: the old woman i" th^ oid chair, and all the rest about her: not
stirring in the least degree. And thus I slowly lose them.

The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow of the wooded
bank, which makes it darker. After gliding past the sombre maze of
boughs for a long time, we come upon an open space where the tall
trees are burning. Tuc shape Oi every uiancu snu twig is cxp-resscu

in a dee]
to vegel
enchant
ing awa]
and go i
this grot
ashes, th
men of d
their fell
the roUii
but verj
heard, ai
foot.

Midnij
the mor
before w
and flag!
there we
of a thoi

Cincin
I have n
pleasant!
houses oj
tile. Nor
The stret
residence
thing of
erections
fectly de
qualities
villas am
flowers, i
to those
agreeable
its adjoir
an amph:
is seen to

There
on the dc
processio
they star
It compri
ington A
officers o:
with scar
gaily. Th
and it wii

I was

American Notes

131

in a deep red glow, and as the light wind stirs and ruffles it. they seem
to vegetate in fire. It is such a sight as we read of in legends of
enchanted forests: saving that it is sad to see these noble works wast-
ing away so awfully, alone; and to think how many years must come
and go before the magic that created them will rear their like upon
this ground again. But the time will come: and when, in their changed
ashes, the growth of centuries unborn has struck its roots, the restless
men of distant ages will repair to these again unpeopled solitudes; and
their fellows, in cities far away, that slumber now, perhaps, beneath
the rolling sea, will read in language strange to any ears in being now,
but very old to them, of primeval forests where the axe was never
heard, and where the jungled ground was never trodden by a human
foot.

Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and thoughts: and wheji
the morning shines again, it gilds the house-tops of a lively city,
before whose broad paved wharf the boat is moored; with other boats,'
and flags, and moving wheels, and hum of men around it; as though
there were not a solitary or silent rood of ground within the compass
of a thousand miles.

Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and animated.
I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favourably and
pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does: with its clean
houses of red and white, its well-paved roads, and loot-ways of bright
tile. Nor does it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance.
The streets are broad and airy, the shops extremely good, the private
residences remarkable for their elegance and neatness. There is some-
thing of invention and fancy in the varying styles of these latter
erections, which, after the dull company of the steamboat, is per-
fectly delightful, as conveying an assurance that there are such
qualities still in existence. The disposition to ornament these pretty
villas and render them attractive, leads to the culture of trees and
flowers, and the laying out of well-kept gardens, the sight of which,
to those who walk along the streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and
agreeable. I was quite charmed with the appearance of the town, and
its adjoining suburb of Mount Auburn: from which the cily, lying in
an amphitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remarkable beauty, and
is seen to great advantage.

There happened to be a great Temperance Convention held here
on the day after our arrival; and as the order of march brought the
procession under the windows of the hotel in which we lodged, when
they started in the morning, I had a good opportunity of seeing it.
It comprised several thousand men; the members of various "Wash-
ington Auxiliary Temperance Societies;" and was marshalled by
officers on horseback, who cantered briskly up and down the line,
with scarves and ribbons of bright colours fluttering out behind them
gaily. There were bands of music too, and banners out of number:
and it was a fresh, holiday-looking concourse altogether.

I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a

'■mm

132

American Notes

distinct society among themselves, and mustered very strong with
their green scarves; carrying their national Harp and their Portrait
of Father Mathew, high above the people's heads. They looked as
jolly and good-humoured as ever; and, working (here) the hardest
for their living and doing any kind of sturdy labour that came in
their way, were the most independent fellows there, I thought.

The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the street
famously. There was the smiting of the rock, and the gushing forth
of the waters; and there was a temperate man with "considerable of
a hatchet" (as the standard-bearer would probably have said), aiming
a deadly blow at a serpent which was apparently about to spring
upon him from the top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of
this part of the show was a huge allegorical device, borne among the
ship-carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol was
represented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash,
while upon the other, the good ship Temperance sailed away with a
fair wind, to the heart's content of the captain, crew, and passengers.
After going round the town, the procession repaired to a certain
appointed place, where, as the printed programme set forth, it would
be received by the children of the different free schools, "singing
Temperance Songs." I was prevented from getting there, in time to
hear these Little Warblers, or to report upon this novel kind of vocal
entertainment: novel, at least, to me: but I found in a large open
space, each society gathered round its own banners, and listening in
silent attention to its own orator. The speeches, judging from the
little I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion, as
having that degree of relationship to cold water which wet blankets
may claim: but the main thing was the conduct and appearance of
the audience throughout the day; and that was admirable and full
of promise.

Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free schools, of which it
has so many that no person's child among its population can, by
possibility, want the means of education, which are extended, upon
an average, to four thousand pupils, annually. 1 was only present in
one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the
boys' department, which was full of little urchins (varying in their
ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master
offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils in
algebra; a proposal, which, as I was by no means confident of my
aDility to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm.
In the girls' school, reading was proposed; and as I felt tolerably
equal to that art, I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Bocks
were distributed accordingly, and some half-dozen girls relieved each
other in reading paragraphs from English History. But it seemed to
be a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers; and when they
had blundered through three or four dreary passages concerning the

- X1.2. x^x^xlg

same ixaLUic

(obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself

American Notes

A nuisance cause ;™n^ ttre wetlt ''^"^ ""■^^''y '«*''"^d-
the witnesses, r.unsel and i,,rf f^ i^ "''"y spectators; and
sufficiently jocose and snug ' ^^ """""^ ^ ^°"'' °' *a">"y "rcle,

ag^tMe'"*?h:th:btonLr!ln^ --.-t-1'igent, courteous, and
one of the most iSeresti"*g^n ^^"^^^^^^^^^ P-T" "'.^"^"- "'^ "^
beautiful and thrivine a-Tit i= „™ j '' ""* 8°°<1 reason: for

population of flftyttoSsanV ,„^r' k"." j»"'aining, as it does, a
parsed away since the eroundnni' ., v* t^-^nd-fifty years have
for a few doLSrwS?d tood and i t ''^"'^' '"""S" ^* '"at time
of dweliers in scittereVr^^rts^tprthl^^erTshTr" '"* =" '^^"'^'"'

CHAPTER XII

Pittsburg. As tms passage dL l^^ '"^ ""^^^^ ^^ ^^^ *=°"^e from
thirteen hours we TSed to U . i?''"?? "^°"^ *^^^ ^^^^ve or
the distinction oTsSnffn I .f^.""'^ *^t* "^^^*- "«* ^o^etrng
sleep anywhere else ^^ ^ state-room, when it was possible tS

dre^rrcrtTof ptst.^^^^^^^^^^ '^1'^^'' ^° ^^^^^^^ *« ^^^ usual
tribeof Indlns. whHS'/i?^^^^^^^ ^/^^"^ °^ *^« ^^o^^t^^

pleasure of a long conve'sl^^^^^ '° °''' ^^^ ^^*^ ^^°°^ ^ ^^^ the

the^'ll^fuage^^f 4^^^^^^^^ ^^-^^ ^^ had not begun to learn

read mfnyt;<^ls and Sco"^*'^,^^^^^^^^ ^ y°""? "^^^ g^own. He had
impressio? on his Snd'^e^V/J^^^^^^^ 'f'/ ^^^^^

Lake, and the great battle scene in M^?^^^ ^?^ ^^^^ °^ ^^^
from the congeniality of the suwLtst^^^^^^^ '^ '^^^^' ^° ^°"bt
he had great interest °pH 11 -^j^t 4* -- -°''" P""'"^*' ^^^ *^«t^«'
rectlvalihe harl rp.a ^- or,^ - ••t.i^i. x^c vippcarea to understand cor-

.» J.eliel'-l^^^Xt- Uil^^ran^dir^ri'tl^^^^^^^^^

134

American Notes

fiercely. He was dressed in our ordinary every-day costume, which
hung about his fine figure loosely, and with indifferent grace. On my
telling him that I regretted not to see him in his own attire, he threw
up his right arm, for a moment, as though he were brandishing some
heavy weapon, and answered, as he let it fall again, that his race
were losing many things besides their dress, and would soon be seen
upon the earth no more: but he wore it at home, he added proudly.

He told me that he had been away from his home, west of the
Mississippi, seventeen months: and was now returning. He had been
chiefly at Washington on some negotiations pending between his
Tribe and the Government: which were not settled yet (he said in a
melancholy way), and he feared n(;ver would be: for what could a few
poor Indians do, against such well-skilled men of business as the
whites? He had no love for Washington; tired of towns and cities
very soon; and longed for the Forest and the Prairie.

I asked him what he thought of Congress? He answered, with a
smile, that it wanted dignity, in an Indian's eyes.

He would very much like, he said, to see England before he died;
and spoke with much interest about the great things to be seen there.
When I told him of that chamber in the British Museum wherein are
preserved household rriemorials of a race that ceased to be, thousands
of years ago, he was very attentive, and it was not hard to see that
he had a reference in his mind to the gradual fading away of his own
people.

This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin's gallery, which he praised highly:
observing that his* own portrait was among the collection, and that
all the likenesses were "elegant." Mr. Cooper, he said, had painted
the Red Man well; and so would I, he knew, if I would go home with
him and hunt buffaloes, which he was quite anxious I should do.
When I told him that supposing I went, I should not be very likely
to damage the buffaloes much, he took it as a great joke and laughed
heartily.

He was a remarkably handsome man; some years past forty, I
should judge; with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad cheek-
bones, a sunburnt complexion, and a v.ery bright, keen, dark, and
piercing eye. There were but twenty thousand of the Choctaws left,
he said, and their number was decreasing every day. A few of his
brother chiefs had been obliged to become civilised, and to make
themselves acquainted with what the whites knew, for it was their
only chance of existence. But they were not many; and the rest were
as they always had been. He dwelt on this: and said several times
that unless they tried to assimilate themselves to their conquerors,
they nmst be swnpt away before the strides of civilised society.

When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must come to
England, as he longed to see the land so much: that I should hope to
see him there, one day: and that I could promise him he would be
well received and kindly treated. He was evidently pleased by this
assurance, though he rejoined /ith a good-humoured smile and an

American Notes

Jf35

arch shake of is head, that the English used to be very fond of the
Red Men when they wanted their help, but had not cared much for
them, since.

He took his leave; as stately and complete a gentleman of Nature's
making, as ever I beheld; and moved among the people in the boat,
another kind of being. He sent me a lithographed portrait of himself
soon afterwards; very like, though scarcely handsome enough; which
I have carefully preserved in memory of our brief acquaintance.

There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this day's
journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We slept at the
Gait House; a splendid hotel; and were as handsomely lodged as
though we had been in Paris, rather than hundreds of miles beyond
the AUeghanies.

The city presenting no objects of sufficient interest to detain us on
our way, -e resolved to proceed next day by another steamboat, the
Fulton, and to join it, about noon, at a suburb called Portland, where
it would be delayed some time in passing through a canal.

The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding through the
town, which is regular and cheerful: the streets being laid out at
right angles, and planted with young trees. The buildings are smoky
and blackened, from the use of bituminous ;oal, but an Englishman
is well used to that appearance, and indisposed to quarrel with it.
There did not appear to be much business stirring; and some un-
finished buildings and improvements seemed to intimate that the
city had been overbuilt in the ardour of "going-a-head," and waa
suffering under the re-action consequent upon such feverish forcing
of its powers.

On our way to Portland, we passed a "Magistrate's office," which
amused me, as looking far more like a dame school than any police
establishment: for this awful Institution was nothing but a little
lazy, good-for-nothing front parlour, open to the street; wherein two
or three figures (I presume the magistrate and his myrmidons) were
basking in the sunshine, the very effigies of languor and repose. It
was a perfect picture of Justice retired from business for want of
customers; her sword and scales sold off; napping comfortably with
her legs upon the table.

Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road was perfectly alive with
pi|^s of all ages; lying about in every direction, fast asleep; or grunting
along in quest of hidden dainties. I had always a sneaking kindness
for these odd animals, and found a constant source of amusement,
when all others failed, in watching their proceedings. As we were
riding along this morning, I observed a little incident between two
youthful pigs, which was so very human as to be inexpressibly
comical and grotesque at the time, though I dare say, in telling, it
is tame enough.

One young gentleman (a very delicafR porker with several strawf>
sticking about his nose, betokening recent investigations in a dung-
hill) was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, when suddenly

I J^^M^^^^H

'-^1

■

l'.>

136

American Notes

his brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up
immediately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp mud. Never
was pig's whole mass of blood so turned. He turned back at least
three feet, gazed for a moment, and then shot off as hard as he could
go: his excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror like a
distracted pendulum. But before he had gone very far, he began to
reason with himself as to the nature of this frightful appearance;
and as he reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees; until at
last he stopped, and faced about. There was his brother, with the
mud upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring out of the very same
hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings ! He was no sooner assured
ot this; and he assured himself so carefully that one may almost say
he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better; than he came back
at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of
his tail; as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the
future, and never to play tricks with his family any more.

We found the steamboat in the canal, waiting for the slow process
of getting through the lock, and went on board, where we shortly
afterwards had a new kind of visitor in the person of a certain
Kentucky Giant whose name is Porter, and who is of the moderate
height of seven feet eight inches, in his stockings.

There never was a race of people who so completely gave the lie to
history as these giants, or whom all the chroniclers have so cruelly
libelled. Instead of roaring and ravaging about the world, constantly
catering for their cannibal larders, and perpetually going to market
in an unlawful manner, they are the meekest people in any man's
acquaintance: rather inclining to milk and vegetable diet, and bearing
anything for a quiet life. So decidedly are amiability and mildness
their characteristics, that I confess I look upon that youth who
distinguished himself by the slaughter of these inoffensive persons,
as a false-hearted brigand, who, pre jnding to philanthropic motives,
was secretly influenced only by the wealth stored up within their
castles, and the hope of plunder. And I lean the more to this opinion
from finding that even the historian" of those exploits, with all his
partiality for his hero, is fain to admit that the slaughtered monsters
in question were of a very innocent and simple turn; extremely
guileless and ready of belief; lending a credulous ear to the most
improbable tales; suffering themselves to be easily entrapped into
pits; and even (as in the case of the Welsh Giant) with an excess of
the hospitable politeness of a landlord, ripping themselves open,
rather than hint at the possibility of their guests being versed in the
vagabond arts of sleight-of-hand and hocus-pocus.

The Kentucky Giant was but another illustration of the truth of
this position. He had a weakness in the region of the knees, and a
trustfulness in his long face, which appealed even to five-feet nine
for encouragement and support. He was only twenty-five years old,
he said, and had grown recently, for it had been found necessary to
make an addition to the legs of his inexpressibles. At fifteen he was a

short be
had rati
credit o
though
whisper

I und
unless h
upon hi
comprel
"The Li
make ti
shown h
instrum(
feet higl

Withi
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The a
and the
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see such
recollect
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and was
or a pui
part of i
Sage's st
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There
in the 0I
handson
able, as
us at the
against ■
magnetis
most fac
have be<
horror,
weary, ii

323'

American Notes

137

short boy, and in those days his English father and his Irish mother
had rather snubbed him, as being too small of stature to sustain the
credit of the family. He added that his health had not been good,
though it was better now; but short people are not wanting who
whisper that he drinks too hard.

I understand he drives a hackney-coach, though how he does it,
unless he stands on the footboard behind, and lies along the roof
upon his chest, with his chin in the box, it would be difficult to
comprehend. He brought his gun with him, as a curiosity. Christened
"The Little Rifle," and displayed outside a shop-window, it would
make the fortune of any retail business in Holborn. When he had
shown himself and talked a little while, he withdrew with his pocket-
instrument, and went bobbing down the cabin, among men of six
feet high and upwards, like a lighthouse walking among lamp-posts.

Within a few minutes afterwards, we were out of the canal, and
in the Ohio river again.

The arrangements of the boat were like those of the Messenger,
and the passengers were of the same order of people. We fed at the
same times, on the same kind of viands, in the same dull manner,
and with the same observances. The company appeared to be
oppressed by the same tremendous concealments, and had as little
capacity of enjoyment or light-heartedness. I never in my life did
see such listless, heavy dulness as brooded over these meals: the very
recollection of it weighs me down, and makes me, for the moment,
wretched. Reading and writing on my knee, in our little cabin, I
really dreaded the coming of the hour that srmmoned us > table;
and was as glad to escape from it again, as if it had been a penance
or a punishment. Healthy cheerfulness and good spirits forming a
part of the banquet, I could soak my crusts in the fountain with Jbe
Sage's strolling player, and revel in their glad enjoyment: but sitting
down with so many fellow-animals to ward off thirst and hunger as
a business; to empty, each creature, his Yahoo's trough as quickly
as he can, and then slink sullenly away; to have these social sacra-
ments stripped of everything but the mere greedy satisfaction of the
natural cravings; goes so against the grain with me, that I seriously
believe the recollection of these funeral feasts will be a waking night-
mare to me all my life.

There Jva3 some relief in this boat, too, which there had not been
in the other, for the captain (a blunt, good-natured fellow) had his
handsome wife with him, who was disposed to be lively and agree-
able, as were a few other lady-passengers who had their seats about
us at the same end of the table. But nothing could have made head
against the depressing influence of the general body. There was a
magnetism of dulness in them which would have beaten down the
most facetious companion that the earth ever knew. A jest would
have been a crime, and a smile would have faded into a grinning
horror. Such deadly, leaden people; such systematic plodding,
weary, insupportable heaviness; such a mass of animated indigestion

323*

138

American Notes

mm'i

W^t

in respect of all that was genial, jovial, frank, social, or hearty; never,
sure, was brought together elsewhere since the world began.

Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction of the Ohio
and Mississippi rivers, at all inspiriting in its influence. The trees were
stunted in their growth; the banks were low and flat; the settlements
and log cabins fewer in number: their inhabitants more wan and
wretched than any we had encountered yet. No songs of birds were
in the air, no pleasant scents, no moving lights and shadows from
swift passing clouds. Hour after hour, the changeless glare of the hot,
unwinking sky, shone upon the same monotonous objects. Hour after
hour, the river rollcv' along, as wear' '>'- i slowly as the time itself.

At length, upon the morning of th^ tn. \y, we arrived at a spot
so much more desolate than any we had yet beheld, that the forlorn-
est places we had passed, were, in comparison with it, full of interest.
At the junction of the two rivers, on ground so flat and low and
marshy, that at certain seasons of the year it is inundated to the
house-tops, lies a breeding-place of fever, ague, and death; vaunted in
England as a mine of Golden Hope, and speculated in, on the faith of
monstrous representations, to many people's ruin. A dismal swamp
an which the half -built houses rot away: cleared here and there for th
space of a few yards; ^nd teeming, then, with rank unwholesome
vegetation, in whose baleful shade the wretched wanderers who are
tempted hither, droop, and die, and lay their bones; the hateful
Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and turning off upon its
southern course a slimy monster hideous to behold; a hotbed of
disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of
promise: a place without one single quality, in earth or air or water,
to commend it: such is this dismal Cairo.

But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of
rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him!
An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid
mud, six miles an hour: its strong and frothy current choked and
obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest trees: now
twining themselves together in great rafts, from the interstices of
which a sedgy, lazy foam works up, to float upon the water'r top;
now rolling past like monstrous bodies, ttieir tangled roots showing
like matted hair; now glancing singly by like giant leeches; and now
writhing round and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool, like
wounded snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshes
swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their
inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes
penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, mud and slime
on everything: nothing pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless light-
ning which flickers every night upon the dark horizon.

For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking constantly
against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those more danger-

trees that have their roots below the tide. When the nights are very

American Notes

139

dark, the look-out stationed in the head of the boat, knows by the
ripple of the water if any great impediment be near at hand, and
rings a bell beside him, which is the signal for the engine to be
stopped; but always in the night this bell has work to do, and after
every ring, there comes a blow which renders it no easy matter to
remain in bed.

The decline of day here was very gorgeous; tingeing the firmament
deeply with red and gold, up to the very keystone of the arch above
us. As the sun went down behind the bank, the slightest blades c.
grass upon it seemed to become as distinctly visible as the arteries
in the skeleton of a leaf; and when, as it slowly sank, the red and
golden bars upon the water grew dimmer, and dimmer yet, as if they
were sinking too; and all the glowing colours of departing day paled,
inch by inch, before the sombre night; the scene became a thousand
times more lonesome and j more dreary than before, and all its
influences darkened with the sky.

We drank the muddy water of this river while we were upon it. It
is considered wholesome by the natives, and is something more
opaque than gruel. I have seen water like it at the Filter-shops, but
nowhere else.

On the fourth night after leaving Louisville, we reached St. Louis,
and here I witnessed the conclusion of an incident, trifling enough in
itself, but very pleasant to see, which had interested me during the
whole journey.

There was a little woman on board, with a little baby; and both
little woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, bright-
eyed, and fair to see. The little woman had been passing a long time
with her sick mother in New York, and had left her home in St.
Louis, in that condition in which ladies who truly love their lords
desire to be. The baby was born in her mother's house; and she had
not seen her husband (to whom she was now returning), for twelve
months: having left him a month or two after their marriage.

Well, to be sure, there never was a little v/oman so full of hope, and
tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as this little woman was: and all
day long she wondered whether " He " would be at the wharf and
whether "He" had got her letter; and whether, if she sent the baby
ashore by somebody else, "He" would know it, meeting it in the
street: which, seeing that he had never set eyes upon it in his life, was
not very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough, to the
young mother. She was such an artless little creature; and was in such
a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out all this matter clinging
close about her heart, so freely; that all the other lady passengers
entered into the spirit of it as much as she; and the captain (who
heard all about it from his wife) was wondrous sly, I promise you:
inquiring, every time we met at table, as in forgetfulness, whether
she expected anybody to meet her at St. Louis, and whether she
would w^ant to go ashore the night vve reached it (but he supposed she
wouldn't) , and cutting many other dry jokes of that nature. There was

^^^n

' ^'"'

>*f i'i

> 'I

140

American Notes

one htt' 3 weazen, dried-apple-faced old woman, who took occasion
to doub. the constancy of husbands in such circumstances of bereave-
ment; and there was another lady (with a lap-dog) old enough to
moralize on the lightness of human affections, and yet not so old that
she could help nursing the baby, now and then, or laughing with the
rest, when the little woman called it by its father's name, and asked
It all manner of fantastic questions concerning him in the joy of her
heart.

It was something of a blow to the little woman, that when we were
within twenty miles of our destination, it became clearly necessary
to put this baby to bed. But she got over it with the same good
humour; tied a handkerchief round her head; and came out into the
little gallery with the rest. Then, such an oracle as she became in
reference to the localities ! and such facetiousness as was displayed
by the married ladies! and such sympathy as was shown by the
single ones! and such peals of laughter as the little woman herself
(who would just as soon have cried) greeted every jest with!

At last, there were the lights of St. LouIlv and here was the wharf,
and those were the steps: a. ' the little woman covering her face with
her hands, and laughing (or seeming to laugh) more than ever, ran
into her own cabin, and shut herself up. I have no doubt that in the
charming inconsistency of such excitement, she stopped her ears, lest
she should hear "Him" asking for her: but I did not see her do it.

Then, a great crowd of people rushed on board, though the boat
was not yet made fast, but was wandering about, among the other
boats, to find a landing-place: an( verybody looked for the husband-
and nobody saw him: when, in the midst of us all— Heaven knows
how she ever got there— there was the little woman clinging with
both arms tight round the neck of a fine, good-looking, sturdy young
fellow! and in a moment afterwards, there she was again, actually
clapping her little hands for joy. as she dragged him through the small
door of her small cabin, to look at the baby as he lay asleep!

We went to a large hotel, called the Planter's House: built like an
English hospital, with long passages and bare walls, and skylights
above the room-doors for the free circulation of air. There were a
great many boarders in it; and as many lights sparkled and glistened
from the windows down into the street below, when we drove up,
as if it had been illuminated on some occasion of rejoicing. It is an
excellent house, and the proprietors have most bountiful notions of
providing the creature comforts. Dining alone with my wife in our
own room, one day, I counted fourteen dishes on the table at
once.

In the old French portion of the town, the thoroughfares are
narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and
picturesque: being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before
the windows, approachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street.

There arn mippr lif+l^ l-»arl-»oT"o' cKnno r,r>A a

•«*^1ip««^#v l«^-w..»^

— -p'-j ana Gnninng-iiOuses luu, iii xiua
quarter; and abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking case-

ments,
habitat
have a
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ing in a

It is
warehoi
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The
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Belgium

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. church,
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The I
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it befriei
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rather di
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own opir

As I h
the furth
town had
me; a da
Looki-.g-
Deeming

.^rib J^Rl

American Notes

141

ments, such as may be seen in Flanders. Some of rhese ancient
habitations, with high garret gable-windows perking to the roofs
have a kind of French shrug about them ; and being lop-sided with
age, appear to hold their heads askew, besides, as if they were grimac-
mg in astonishment at the American Improvements.

It is hardly necessary to say, that these consist of wharfs and
warehouses, and new buildings in all directions; and of a great many
vast plans which are still "progressing." Already, however, some very
good houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted shops, have gone so
far a-head as to be in a state of completion; and the town bids fair in
a few years to improve considerably: though it is not likely ever to
vie, in point of elegance or beauty, with Cincinnati.

The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by the early
French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public institutions
are a Jesuit college; a convent for "the Ladies of the Sacred Heart"
and a large chapel attached to the college, which was in course of
erection at the time of my visit, and was intended to be consecrated
on the second of December in the next year. The architect of
this building, is one of the reverend fathers of the school, and the
works proceed under his sole direction. The organ will be sent from
Belgium.

In addition to these establishments, there is a Roman Catholic
cathedral, dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier; and a hospital, founded
by the munificence of a deceased resident, who was a member of that
church. It also sends missionaries from hence among the Indian
tribes.

The Unitarian church is represented, in this remote place, as in
most other parts of America, by a gentleman of great worth and
excellence. The poor have good reason to remember and bless it; for
it befriends them and aids the cause of rational education, without
any sectarian or selfish views. It is liberal in all its actions; of kind
construction; and of wide benevolence.

There are three free-schools already erected, and in full operation
in this city. A fourth is building, and will soon be opened.

No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells in
(unless he is going away from it), and I shall therefore, I have no
doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis, in questioning
the perfect salubrity of its climate, and in hinting that I think it must
rather dispose to fever, in the summer and autumnal seasons. Just
adding, that it is very hot. lies among great rivers, and has vast tracts
of undrained swampy land around it. I leave the reader to form his
own opinion.

As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back from
the furthest point of my wanderings; and as some gentlemen of the
town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal desire to gratify
me; a dav was fixed, hefnrp mv rlAr«arfiiro fn-r o« ^-u-ry^AUi^.^ ^^ au_
Lookiy.g-Glass Prairie, which is within thirty miles of the town.
Deeming it possible that my readers max ot objec. to know what

tu ii

■I IlllLUUItl WUMM

142

American Notes

kind of thing such a gipsy party may be at that distance from home,
and among what sort of objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt in
another chapter.

CHAPTER XIII

A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK

I MAY premise that the word Prairie is variously pronounced paraaer,
parearer, and paroarer. The latter mode of pronunciation is perhaps
the most in favour.

We were fourteen in all, and all young men: indeed it is a singular
though very natural feature in the society of these distant settle-
ments, that it is mainly composed of adventurous persons in tho
prime of life, and has very few grey heads among it. There were no
ladies: the trip being a fatiguing one: and we were to start at five
o'clock in the morning punctually.

I was called at four,; that I might be certain of keeping nobody
waiting; and having got some bread and milk for breakfast, threw up
the window and loolfcd down into the street, expecting to see the
whole party busily astir, and great preparations going on below. But
as everything was very quiet, and the street presented that hopeless
aspect with which five o'clock in the morning is familiar elsewhere, I
deemed it as well to go to bed again, and went accordingly.

I woke again at seven o'clock, and by that time the party had
assembled, and were gathered round, one light carriage, with a very
stout axletree; one something on wheels like an amateur carrier's
cart; one double phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly con-
struction; one gig with a great hole in its back and a broken head; and
one rider on horseback who was to go on before. I got into the first
coach with three companions; the rest bestowed themselves in the
other vehicles; two large baskets were made fast to the lightest; two
large stone jars in wicker cases, technicaUy kaown as demi-johns,
were consigned to the "least rowdy" of the party for safe-keeping;
and the procession moved oflE to the ferry-boat, in which it was to
cross the river bodily, men, horses, carriages, and all, as the manner
in these parts is.

We got over the river in due course, and mustered again before a
little wooden box on wheels, hove down al) aslant in a morass, with
"merchant tailor" painted in very lar'i^e letters over the door.
Having settled the order of proceeding, and the road to be taken, we
started off once more and began to make our way through an ill-
favoured Black Hollow, called, less expressively, the American

The previous day had been— not to say hot, for the term is weak

'«• I

American Notes

143

and lukewarm m its power of conveying an idea of the temperature.
The town had been on fire; in a blaze. But at night it had come on tu

[?/"J".*°"®"*^' *"*** *^^ "*^^* '°"8? ** ^^^ ^ai'^ed without cessation.
We had a pair of very strong horses, but travelled at the rat^ of little
more than a couple of miles an hour, through one unbroken slough
of black mud and water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was
only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now the coach
sank down m it almost to the windows. The air resounded in all
directions with the loud chirping of the frogs, who. with the pigs (a
coarse, ngly breed, as unwholesome-looking as though they were
the spontaneous growth of the country), had the whole scene to
themselves. Here and there we passed a log hut: but the wretched
cabins were wide apart and thinly scattered, for though the soil is
very rich in this place, few people can exist in such a deadly atmo-
sphere. On either side of the track, if it deserve the name, was the
thick bush;" and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy

As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or so of
cold water whenever he is in - foam with heat, we halted for that
purpose, at a log inn in the wood, far rer oved from any other
residence. It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare-walled of
course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was a swarthy
young savage, in a shirt of cotton print like bed-furniture, and a pair
of ragged trousers. There were a couple of young boys, too. nearly
naked, lying idle by the well; and they, and he, and the traveUer at the
mn, turned out to look at us.

The traveller was an old man with a grey gristly beard two inches
long a shaggy moustache of the same hue, and enom.ous eyebrows-
which almost obscured his lazy, semi-drunken glance, as he stood
regarding us with folded arms: poising himself alternately upon his
toes and heels. On being addressed by one of the party, he drew
nearer and said, rubbing his chin (which scraped under his horny
hand like fresh gravel beneath a nailed shoe), that he was from Dela-
ware, and had lately bought a farm "down there," pointing into one
ot the marshes where the stunted trees were. thickest. He was "going "
he added, to St. Louis, to fetch his family, whom he had left behind-
but he seemed m no great hurry to bring on these incumbrances, for
when we moved away, he loitered back into the cabin, and was
plainly bent on stopping there so long as his money lasted. He was a
great politician of course, and explained his opinions at some length
to one of our company; but I only remember that he concluded with
two sentiments one of which was. Somebody for ever; and the other.
Blast everybody else! which is by no means a bad abstract of the
general creed in these mat+ers.

When the horses were swollen out to about twice their natural
dimensions (there seems to be an idea hftm fha^- +>ii= i^i"^ «f i«flo4.;^^
improves their going), we went forward again, through muT and
mire, and damp, and festering heat, and brake and bush, attended

144

American Notes

always by the music of the frogs and pigs, until nearly noon, when
we halted at a place called Belleville.

Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled
together in the very heart of the bush and swamp. Many of them
had singularly bright doors of red and yellow; for the place had been
lately visited by a travelling pamter, "who got along," as I was told,
"by eating his way." The criminal court was sitting, and was at that
moment trying some criminals for horse-stealirj;: with whom it would
most likely go hard: for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very
much exposed in the woods, is held by the community in rather
higher value than human life; and for this reason, juries generally
make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty,
whether or no.

The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, ar ^ witnesses, were
tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the roac y which is to be
understood, a forest path, nearly knee-deep in mv ^nd slime.

There was an hotel in this place, which, like all hotels in America,
had its large dining-room for the public table. It was an odd, sham-
bling, low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed and half-kitchen, with a
coarse brown canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces stuck against the
walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone forward
to have cofifee and some eatables prepared, and they were by this
time nearly ready. He had ordered "wheat-bread and chicken
fixing," in preference to "corn-bread and common doings." The
latter kind of refection includes only pork and bacon. The former
comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such
other viands of that nature as may be supposed, by a toleraoly wide
poetical construction, "to fix" a chicken comfortably in the digestive
organs of any lady or gentleman.

On one of the door-posts at this inn, was a tin plate, whereon was
inscribed in characters of gold, "Doctor Crocus;" and on a sheet of
paper, pasted up by the side of this plate, was a written announce-
ment that Dr. Crocus would that evening deliver a lecture on Phren-
ology for the benefit of the Belleville public; at a charge, for ad^nis-
sion, of so much a head.

Straying up-stairs, during the preparation of the chicken fixings,
I happened to pass the doctor's chamber; and as the door stood wide
open, and the room was empty, I made bold to peep in.

It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an unframed
portrait hanging up at the head of the bed; a likeness I take it, of the
/^octor, for the forehead was fully displayed, and great stress was laid
ay the artist upon its phrenological develr oments. The bed itself was
covered with an old patch-work counterpane. The room was destitute
of carpet or of curtain. There was a damp fireplace without any stove,
full of wood ashes; a chair, and a very small table; and on the last-
named piece of furniture was displayed, 'n grand array, the doctor's

llVfc^O«»«» ^^^-k'

AJL S^'* "LUX. ■

^■C

.«. u^\e A^^^^ ««.

Liix^ \_-i ovuic iia.ii-u.VyZ.cii

gi-^-isy

-^u 1 1

Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on the whole

American Notes

145

earth out of which any man would be likely to get anything to do ' .m
good. But the door, as I have said, stood coaxingly open, and -^'amly
said in conjunction with the chair, the portrait, the table, a». 1 the
books, "Walk in, gentlemen, walk in I Don't be ill, gentlemen, when
you may be well in no time. Doctor « rocus is here, gentlemen, the
celebrated Dr. Croc v ! Doctor Crocus has come all this way to cure
you, gentlemen. If you haven't heard of Dr. Crocus, it's your fault,
gentlemen, who live a little way out of the wor'.d here: not Dr!
Crocus's. Walk in. gentlemen, walk in!"

In the passage below, when I went down-stairs again, was Dr.
Crocus himself. A crowd '^ad flocked in from the Court House, and a
voice from among them c, - 2d out to the landlord, ' * Colonel i introduce
Doctor Crocus."
"Mr. Dickens," says the colonel. "Doctor Crocus."
Upon which Doctor Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking Scotchman,
but rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a professor of the
peaceful art of healing, bursts out of the concourse with his right arm
extended, and his chest thrown out as far as it will possibly come
and says: '

"Your countryman, sir I"

Whereupon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands; and Doctor Crocus
looks as if I didn't by any means realise his expectations, which, in
a linen blouse, and a great straw hat. with a green ribbon, and' no
gloves, and my face and nose profusely ornamented with the stings
of mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it is very likely I did not.
"Long in these parts, sir?" says I.
"Three or four months, sir," says the Doctor.
"Do you think of soon returning to the old country?" «?ayR I.
Doctor Crocus makes no verbfJ answer, but gives me an imploring
look, which says so plainly 'Will you ask me that ag^in. a little
louder, if you please?" that I repeat the question.

"Think of soon returning to the old country, sir!" repeats the
Doctor.

"To the old country, sir," I rejoin.

Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the effect
he produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud voice:

"Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won't Cctch me at that just yet,
sir, I am a little too fond of freedom for that, sir. Ha, ha! It's not so
easy for a man to tear himself from a free country such as this is
sir. Ha, ha! No, no! Ha. ha! None of that till one's obliged to do it'
sir. No, no!" *

As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his head,
knowingly, and laughs again. Many of the bystanders shake their
heads in concert with the doctor, and laugh too, and look at each
other as much as to say, "A pretty bright and first-rate sort of chap
is Crocus ! " and unless I am very much mistaken, a good many people
went to the lecture that night, who never thought about phrenology,
or about Doctor Crocus either, in all their lives before.

W. . I.

iL.

Hi if'

I
.1

ii:<

146

American Notes

From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate kind of
waste, and constantly attended, without the interval of a moment,
by the same music; until, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we
halted once more at a village called Lebanon to inflate the horses
again, and give them some corn besides: of which they stood much in
need. Pending this ceremony, I walked into the village, where I
met a full-sized dwelling-house coming down-hill at a round trot,
drawn by a score or more of oxen.

The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the
managers of the jaunt resolved to rotum to it and put up there for
the night, if possible. This course decided on, and the horses being
well refreshed, we again pushed forward, and came upon the Prairie
at sunset.

It would be difficult to say why, or how — though it was possibly
from having heard and read so much about it — but the effect on me
was disappointment. Looking towards the setting sun, there lay,
stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of level ground; un-
broken, save by one thin line of trees, which scarcely amounted to a
scratch upon the great blank; until it met the glowing sky, wherein
it seemed to dip: mingling with its rich colours, and mellowing in its
distant blue. There it! lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if
such a simile be admissible, with the day going down upon it: a few
birds wheeling here and there: and solitude and silence reigning
paramount around. But the grass was not yet high; there were bare
black patches on the f;round; and the few wild flowers that the eye
could see, v"^re pc nnri scanty. Great as the picture was, its very
flatness and • 't^n ,. uich left nothing to the imagination, tamed it
down and ci ii|>.-,d s interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom
and exhilarat*-^ nich a Scottish heath inspires, or even our
English downs awaken. It was loiiely and wild, but oppressive in its
barren monotony. I felt that in traversing the Prairies, I could never
abandon myself to the scene, forgetful of all else; as I should do
instinctively, were the heathei underneath my feet, or an iron-
bound coast beyond; but should often glance towards the distant
and frequently-receding line of the >iorizon, and wish it gained and
passed. It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely one, I
think (at ail events, as I saw it), to remember with much pleasure,
or to covet the looking-on again, in after-life.

We encamped near a solitary log-house, for the sake of its water,
and dined upon the plain. The baskets contained roast fowls,
buffalo's tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), ham, bread,
cheese, and butter; biscuits, champagne, sherry; lemons and sugar
for punch; and abundance of rough ice. The meal was delicious, and
the entertainers were the soul of kindness and good humour. I have
often recalled that cheerful party to my pleasant recollection since,
and shall not easily forget, in junketings nearer home with friends of
older date, my boon companions 01 the Prairie.

Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at which

we had

it woul

of a ho

Risir
villaee:

American Notes

147

we had halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness and comfort
it would have suffered by no comparison with any English alehouse,
of a homely kind, in England.

Rising at five o'clock next morning, I took a walk about the
village: none of the houses were strolling about to-day, but it was
early for them yet, perhaps: and then amused myself by lounging
in a kind of xarm-yard behind the tavern, of which the leading
features were, a strange jumble of rough sheds for stables; a rude
colonnade, ! ailt as a cool place of summer resort; a deep v/ell; a
great earthen mound for keeping vegetables in, in winter time; and
a pigeon-house, whose little apertures looked, as they do in all
pigeon-houses, very much too small for the admission of the plump
and swelling-lDreasted birds who were strutting about it, though
they tried to get in never so hard. That interest exhausted, I took a
survey of the inn's two parlours, which were decorated with coloured
prints of Washington, and President Madison, and of a white-faced
young lady (much speckled by the flies), who held up her gold neck-
chain for the admiration of the spectator, and informed all admiring
comers that she was "Just Seventeen:" although I should have
thought her older. In the best room were two oil portraits of the kit-
cat size, representing the landlord and his infant son; both looking
as bold as lions, and staring out of the canvas with an intensity that
would have been cheap at any price, They were painted, I think,
by the artist who had touched up the Belleville doors with red and
gold; for I seemed to recognise his style immediately.

After breakfast, we started to return by a different way from that
which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock with
an encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods in carts,
who had made a rousing fire which they were just quitting, stopped
there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire was; for, hot though it
had been yesterday, it was quite cold to-day, and the wind blew
keenly. Looming in the distance, as we rode along, was another of
the ancient Indian burial-places, called The Monks' Mound; in
memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded
a desolate convent there, many years ago, when there were no
settlers within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the
pernicious climate: in which lamentable fatality, few rational people
will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very severe
deprivation.

The track of to-day had the same features as the track of yester-
day. There was the swamp, the bush, and the perpetual chorus of
frogs, the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome steaming earth.
Here and there, and frequently too, we encountered a solitary broken-
down waggon, full of some new settler's goods. It was a pitiful sight
to see one of these vehicles leep in the mire; the axletree broken; the
wheel lying idly by ts side; the man eone miles? away, to look for
assistance; the woman seated among their wandering household
gods with a baby at her breast, a picture of forlorn, dejected

t II

148

American Notes

patience; the team of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud,
and breathing forth such clouds of vapour from their mouths and
nostrils, that all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have come
direct from them.

In due time we mustered once again before the merchant tailor's,
and having done so, crossed over to the city in the ferry-boat:
passing, on the way, a spot called Bloody Island, the duelling-ground
of St. Louis, and so designated in honour of the last fatal combat
fought there, which was with pistols, breast to breast. Both com-
batants fell dead upon the ground; and possibly some rational people
may think of them, as of the gloomy madmen on the Monks' Mound,
that they were no great loss to the community

CHAPTER XIV

RETURN TO CINCINNATI. A STAGE-COACH RIDE FROM THAT CITY TO
COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO SANDUSKY. SO, BY LAKE ERIE,
TO THE FALLS OF NIAGARA

As I had a desire to travel through the interior of the state of Ohio,
and to "strike the lakes," as the phrase is, at a small town called
Sandusky, to which that route would conduct us on our way to
Niagara, we had to return from St. Louis by the way we had come,
and to retrace our former track as far as Cincinnati.

The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis being very
fine; and the steamboat, which was to have started I don't know
how early in the morning, postponing, for the third or fourth time,
her departure until the afternoon; we rode forward to an old French
village on the river, called properly Carondelet, and nicknamed Vide
Pochs, and arranged that the packet should call for us there.

The place consisted of a few poor cottages, and two or three
public-houses; the state of whose larders certainly seemed to justify
the second designation of the village, for there was nothing to eat in
any of them. At length, however, by going back some half a mile or
so, we found a solitary house where ham ana coffee were procurable;
and there we tarried to await the advent of the boat, which would
come in sight from the green before the door, a long way off.

It was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we took our repast
in a quaint little room with a bed in it, decorated with some old oil
paintings, which in their time had probably done duty in a Catholic
chapel or monastery. The fare was very good, and served with great
cleanliness. The house was kept by a characteristic old couple, with
whom we had a long talk, and who were perhaps a very good sample
of that kind of people in the West.

The la
old eith(
had beti
seen all
near seei
and loco
the son (
said (slij
the roon
the hou£
morrow
proper t
serve as
year to
behind t
left thoi
succeed.

His wi
with hin
Philadel]
had littl(
die here
heart wa
even to :
eased it

The b(
old lady
place, wi
and stea

If the
stream, 1
current i
twelve o
labyrintl
to see be
for five :
again, so
dealt in
enough 1
Looking
with mo
came sta
way amc
for the n
a long in
about he
that she
was Cv.n£

American Notes

149

The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow (not so very
old either, for he was but just turned sixty, I should think), who
had been out with the militia in the last war with England, and had
seen all kinds of service, — except a battle; and he had been very
near seeing that, he added: very near. He had all his life been restless
and locomotive, with an irresistible desire for change; and was still
the son of his old self: for if he had nothing to keep him at home, he
said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb towards the window of
the room in which the old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of
the house), he would clean up his musket, and be off to Texas to-
morrow morning. He was one of the very many descendants of Cain
proper to this continent, who seem destined from their birth to
serve as pioneers in the great human army: who gladly go on from
year to year extending its outposts, and leaving home after home
behind them; and die at last, utterly regardless of their graves being
left thousands of miles behind, by the wandering generation who
succeed.

His wife was a domesticated, kind-hearted old soul, who had come
with him, "from the queen city of the world," which, it seemed, was
Philadelphia; but had no love for this Western country, and indeed
had little reason to bear it any; having seen her children, one by one,
die here of fever, in the full prime and beauty of their youth. Her
heart was sore, she said, to think of them; and to talk on this theme,
even to strangers, in that blighted place, so far from her old home,
eased it somewhat, and became a melancholy pleasure.

The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu to the poor
old lady and her vagrant spouse, and making for the nearest landing-
place, were soon on board The Messenger again, in our old cabin,
and steaming down the Mississippi.

If the coming up this river, slowly making head against the
stream, be an irksome journey, the shooting down it with the turbid
current is almost worse; for then the boat, proceeding at the rate of
twelve or fifteen miles an hour, has to force its passage through a
labyrinth of floating logs, which, in the dark, it is often npossible
to see beforehand or avoid. All that night, the bell was never silent
for five minutes at a time; and after every ring the vessel reeled
again, sometimes beneath a single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen
dealt in quick succession, the lightest of which seemed more than
enough to beat in her frail keel, as though it had been pie-crust.
Looking down upon the filthy river after dark, it seemed to be alive
with monsters, as these black masses rolled upon the surface, or
came starting up again, head first, when the boat, in ploughing her
way among a shoal of such obstructions, drove a few among them
for the moment under water. Sometimes the engine stopped during
a long interval, and then before her and behind, and gathering close
about her on all sides, were so many of these ill-favoured obstacles
that she was fairly lieiumed in; the centre of a floating island; and
was constrained to pause until they parted, somewhere, as dark

ill

150

American Notes

clouds will do before the wind, and opened by degrees a channel out.

In good time next morning, however, we came again in sight of
the detestable morass called Cairo; and stopping there to take in
wood, lay alongside a barge, whose starting timbers scarcely held
together. It was moored to the bank, and on its side was painted
"Coffee House;" that being, I suppose, the floating paradise to
which the people fly for shelter when they lose their houses for a
month or two beneath the hideous waters of the Mississippi. But
looking southwards from this point, we had the satisfaction of seeing
that intolerable river dragging its slimy length and ugly freight
abruptly off towards New Orleans; and passing a yellow line which
stretched across the current, were again upon the clear Ohio, never,
I trust, to see the Mississippi more, saving in troubled dreams and
nightmares. Leaving it for the company of its sparkling neighbour,
was like the transition from pain to ease, or the awakening from a
horrible vision to cheerful realities.

We arrived at Louisville on the fourth night, and gladly availed
ourselves of its excellent hotel. Next day we went on in the Ben
Franklin, a beautiful mail steamboat, and reached Cincinnati shortly
after midnight. Being by this time nearly tired of sleeping upon
shelves, we had remained awake to go ashore straightway; and
groping a passage across the dark decks of other boats, and among
labyrinths of engine-machinery and leaking casks of molasses, we
reached the streets, knocked up the porter at the >otel where we had
stayed before, and were, to our great joy, safely housed soon after-
wards.

We rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our journey
to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stage-coach travelling,
which, with those I have already glanced at, comprehend the main
characteristics of this mode of transit in America, I will take the
reader as our fellow-passenger, and pledge myself to perform the
distance with all possible despatch.

Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It is
distant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, but there
is a macadamised road (rare blessing!) the whole way, and the rate
of travelling upon it is six miles an hour. '

We start at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail-coach,
whose I uge cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric, that it appears
to be troubled with a tendency of blood to the head. Dropsical it
certainly is, for it will hold a dozen passengers inside. But, wonderful
to add, it is very clean and bright, being nearly new; and rattles
through the streets of Cincinnati gaily.

Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, and
luxuriant in its promise of an abundant harvest. Sometimes we pass
a field where the strong bristling stalks of Indian corn look like a
crop of walking-sticks, and sometimes an enclosure where the green
wheat is springing up among a iabjorinth of stumps; the primitive
worm-fence is universal, and an ugly thing it is; but the farms are

American Notes

151

neatly kept and. save for these differences, one might be travelling
just now m Kent. ^

We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull
and silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and holds
It to the horses' heads. There is scarcely ever any one to help him-
there are seldom any loungers standing round; and never any stable-
company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we have changed
our team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising out of the
prevalent mode of breaking a young horse: which is to catch him
harness him against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without
further notice: but we get on somehow or other, after a great many
kicks and a violent struggle; and jog on as before again.

Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three half-
drunken loafers will come loitering out with then: hands in their
pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking-chairs or
lounging on the wmdow-sill, or sitting on a rail within the colonnade-
they have not often anything to say though, either to us or to each
other, but sit there idly staring at the coach and horses. The landlord
of the mn is usually among them, and seems, of all the party, to be
the least connected with the business of the house. Indeed he is
with reference to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the
coach and passengers: whatever happens in his sphere of action he
is quite indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind.

The frequent change of coachmen works no change or variety in
the coachman's character. He is always durty. sullen, and taciturn.
11 he be capable of smartness of any kind, moral or physical, he has
a faculty of concealing it which is truly marvellous. He never speaks
to you as you sit beside him on the box, and if you speak to him he
answers (if at all) in monosyllables. He points out nothing on the
road and seldom looks at anything: being, to all appearance, thor-
oughly weary of it and of existence generally. As to doing the
honours of his coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses.
1 he coach follows because it is attached to them and goes on wheels-
not because you are in it. Sometimes, towards the end of a long stage'
he suddenly breaks out into a discordant fragment of an election
song, but his face never sings along with him: it is only his voice
and not often that. '

He always chews and always spits, and never encumbers himself
with a pocket-handkerchief. The consequences to the box passenger
especially when the wind blows towards him, are not agreeable '

Whenever the coach stops, and you can hear the voices of the
mside passengers; or whenever any bystander addresses them or
any one among them; or they address each other; you will hear one
phrase repeated over and over and over again to the most extra-
ordinary extent. It IS an ordinary and unpromising phrase enough
being neither more nor less than "Yes, sir;" but it is adapted +0

Sr^tioi^fThus-l"''"'''^''''^' ^"""^ ^^^" "P ^""^"^ pause ^in "the

152

American Notes

!>■

The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene, a place where we are
to stay and dine, on this journey. The coach drives up to the door cf
an inn. The day is warm, and there are several idlers lingering about
the tavern, and waiting for the public dinner. Among them, is a
stout gentleman in a brown hat, swinging himself to and fro in a
rocking-chair on the pavement.

As the coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat looks out of the
window:

Straw Hat. (To the stout gentleman in the rocking-chair.) 1
reckon that's Judge Jefferson, an't it?

Brown Hat. (Still swinging; speaking very slowly; and without
any emotion whatever.) Yes, sir.

Straw Hat. Warm weather, Judge.

Brown Hat. Yes, sir.

Straw Hat. There was a snap of cold, last week.

Brown Hat. Yes, «^ir.

Straw Hat. Yes, sir.

A. pause. They look at each other, very seriously.

Straw Hat. I calculate you'll have got through that case of the
corporation. Judge, by this time, now?

Brown Hat. Yes, sir^

Straw Hat. How did the verdict go, sir?

Brown Hat. For the defendant, sir.

Straw Hat. ( Interrogatively.) Yes, sir?

Brown Hat. (Affirmatively.) Yes, sir.

Both. (Musingly, as each gazes down the street.) Yes, sir.

Another pause. They look at each other again, still more seriously
than before.

Brown Hat. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, I guess.

Straw Hat. (Doubtingly.) Yes, sir.

Brown Hat. (Looking at his watch.) Yes, sir; nigh upon two
hours.

Straw Hat. (Raising his eyebrows in very great surprise.) Yes,
sir!

Brown Hat. (Decisively, as he puts up his watch.) Yes, sir.

All the other inside Passengers. (Among themselves.) Yes,
sir.

Coachman. (In a very surly tone.) No it an't.

Straw Hat. (To the coachman.) Well, I don't know, sir. We were
a pretty tali time coming that last fifteen mile. That's a fact.

The coachman making no reply, and plainly declining to enter
into any controversy on a subject so far removed from his sympathies
and feelings, another passenger says, "Yes, sir;" and the gentleman
in the straw hat in acknowledgment of his courtesy, says "Yes, sir,"
to him, in return. The straw hat then inquires of the brown hat,
whether that coach in which he (the straw hat) tiien sits, is not a
new one? To wiisch the brown i^at again maices answer, j. es, sir.

Straw Hat. I thought so. Pretty loud smell of varnish, sir?

Brow:

All ti
Brow:
The c<
time pre
out; and
boarders
As they ;
but it is
or mone^
reluctani
but I ne
induced
quality c
rather su
by way
spirituou
of such
tavern-k(
Dinnei
(for the
journey;
evening,
supper; a
through 1
(the draj
a piece oi
There be
very mel
head of i
his wife a
than per
subjects (
In it we I
when we
hour or s(
ton over
table: to ■
selves the
Sangrado
a very bi
and stati
always sp
with ver^
me how t
away and
this uncle
he were t

American Notes

153

Brown Hat. Yes, sir.

All the other inside Passengers. Yes, sir.

Brown Hat. (To the company in general.) Yes, sir.

The conversational powers of the company having been by this
time pretty heavily taxed, the straw hat opens the door and gets
out; and all the rest alight also. We dine soon afterwards with the
boarders in the house, and have nothing to drink but tea and coffee.
As they are both very bad and the water is worse, I ask for brandy;
but it is a Temperance Hotel, and spirits are not to be had for love
or money. This preposterous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the
reluctant throats of travellers is not at all uncommon in America,
but I never discovered that the scruples of such wincing landlords
induced them to preserve any unusually nice balance between the
quality of their fare, and their scale of charges: on the contrary, I
rather suspected them of diminishing the one and exalting the other,
by way of recompense for the loss of their profit on the sale of
spirituous liquors. After ail, perhaps, the p' linest course for persons
of such tender consciences, would be ,, total abstinence from
tavern-keeping.

Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is ready at the door
(for the coach has been changed in the interval), and resume our
journey; which continues through the same kind of country until
evening, when we come to the town where we are to stop for tea and
supper; and having delivered the mail bags at the Post-office, ride
through the usual wide street, lined with the usual stores and houses
(the drapers always having hung up at their door, by way of sign,
a piece of bright red cloth), to the hotel where this meal is prepared!
There being many boarders here, we sit down, a large party, and a
very melancholy one as usual. But there is a buxom hostess at the
head of the table, and opposite, a simple Welsh schoolmaster with
his wife and child; who came here, on a speculation of greater promise
than performance, to teach the classics: and they are sufficient
subjects of interest until the meal is over, and another coach is ready.
In it we go on once more, lighted by a bright moon, until midnight;
when we stop to change the coach again, and remain for half an
hour or so in a miserable room, with a blurred lithograph of Washing-
ton over the smoky fireplace, and a mighty jug of cold water on the
table: to which refreshment the moody passengers do so apply them-
selves that they would seem to be, one and all, keen patients of Dr.
Sangrado. Among them is a very little boy, who chews tobacco like
a very big one; and a droning gentleman, who talks arithmetically
and statistically on all subjects, from poetry downwards; and who
always speaks in the same key, with exactly the same emphasis, and
with very grave deliberation. He came outside just now, and told
me how that the uncle of a certain young lady who had been spirited
away and married by a certain captain, lived in these parts; and how
this uncle was so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn't wonder if
he were to follow the said captain to England, "and shoot him dov/n

}'j» :

154

American Notes

in the street wherever he found him," in the feasibility of which
strong measure I. being for the moment rather prone to contradic-
tion, from feeling half asleep and very tired, declined to acquiesce:
assuring him that if the uncle did resort to it, or gratified any other
little whim of the like nature, he would find himself one morning
prematurely throttled at the Old Bailey: and that he would do well
to make his will before he went, as he would certainly want it
before he had been in Britain very long.

On we go, all night, and by-and-by the day begins to break,
and presently the first cheerful rays of the warm sun come slanting
on us brightly. It sheds its light upon a miserable waste of sodden
grass, and dull trees, and squalid huts, whose aspect is forlorn and
grievous in the last degree. A very desert in the wood, whose growth
of green is dank and noxious like that upon the top of standmg
water: where poisonous fungus grows in the rare footprint on the
oozy ground, and sprouts like witches' coral, from the crevices in
the cabin wall and floor; it is a hideous thing to lie upon the very
threshold of a city. But it was purchased years ago, and as the owner
cannot be discovered, the State has been unable to reclaim it. So
there it remains, in the midst of cultivation and improvement, like
ground accursed, and m^-de obscene and rank by some great crime.
We reached Columbus shortly before seven o'clock, and stayed
there, to refresh, that day and night: having excellent apartments in
a very lar-c unfinished hotel called the Neill House, which were
richly fitted with the polished wood of the black walnut, and opened
on a handsome portico and stone verandah, like rooms in some
Italian mansion. The town is clean and pretty, and of course is
"going to be" much larger. It is the seat of the State legislature of
Ohio, and lays claim, in consequence, to some consideration and
importance.

There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road we wished to
take, I hired "an extra," at a reasonable charge, to carry us to Tiffin;
a small town from whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This
extra was an ordinary four-horse stage-coach, such as I have de-
scribed, changing horses and drivers, as the stage-coach would, but
was exclusively our own for the journe)^. To ensure our having
horses at the proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers,
the proprietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us
the whole way through; and thus attended, and bearing with us,
besides a hamper full of savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine,'
we started off again in high spirits, at half-past six o'clock next
morning, very much delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to
enjoy even the roughest journey.

It was well for us, that we were in this humour, for the road we
went over that day, was certainly enough to have shaken tempers
that were not resolutely at Set Fair, down to some inches below
wtorm3\ At one time we were all fiung together in a heap at the
bottom of the coach, and at another we were crushing our heads

against

were he

of the t

state, w

eminen<

"Unhar

certain!

so twisi

fashion,

circums

with th

nothing,

expecte(

getting

called a

into a m

the jolts

enough,

body. It

in any c

to the tc

was the

we are

approacl

vehicle t

Still, i

though A

leaving 1

alighted

on a fall

and our

like grai:

commissi

As nig

at last it

find his A

that ther

a wheel \

he was fa

upon the

from fur

horses ha

for that;

such a V

along, qu

These s

The vary

grows da]

American Notes 155

against the roof. Now. one side was down deep in the ..lire, and we
were holding on to the other. Now. the coach was lying on the tails
of the two wheelers; and now it was rearing up in the air. in a frantic
state, with all four horses standing on tke top of an insurmountable
eminence. looking coolly back at it, as though they would sav
Unharness us. It can't be done." The drivers on these roads who
certainly get over the ground in a manner which is quite miraculous
so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew
fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common
circumstance on looking out of the window, to see the coachman
with the ends of a pair of reins in his hands, apparently driving
nothing, or playing at horses, and the leaders scaring at one un-
expectedly from the back of the coach, as if they had some idea of
getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over what is
called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing trunks of trees
mto a marsh, and leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of
the jolts with which the ponderous can ge fell from log to log was
enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the bones in the human
body. It would be impossible to experience a similar set of sensations
in any other circumstances, unless perhaps in attempting to go up
to the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never once that dav
was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion to which
we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest
approach to one's experience of the proceedings of anv sort of
vehicle that goes on wheels.

Still, it was a l.ne day. and the temperature was delicious and
though we had left Summer behind us in the west, and were fast
leaving Spring, we were moving towards Niagara and homr We
alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of the day dined
on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager
and our worst with the pigs (who swarm in this part of the countr^^
like grains of sand on the sea-shore, to the great comfort of our
commissariat in Canada), we went forward again, gaily.

As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower until
at last it so lost Itself among the trees, that the driver seemed to
find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of knowing at least
that there was no danger of his falling asleep, for every now' and then
a wheel would strike against an unseen stump with such a jerk that
he was fain to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep himself
upon the box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger
from furious driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the
horses had enough to do to walk; as to shying, there was no room
for that; and a herd of wild elephants could not have run away in
such a wood, with such a coach at their heels. So we stumbled
along, quite satisfied.

These stumps of trees are a curious featnrA in Amorio-ir, +^o,,«ii:-„
I he varymg illusions they present to the unaccustomed eye as it
grows dark, are quite astonishing in their number and reality. Now,

m-ii

1 '

E I

156

American Notes

:t* (

f SI*

T (

kill'

there is a Grecian urn erected in the centre of a lonely field; now there
is a woman weeping at a tomb; now a very commonplace old gentle-
man in a white waistcoat, with a thumb thrust into each arm-hole
of his coat; now a student poring on a book; now a crouching negro;
now, a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man; a hunch-back throw-
ing off his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were often
as entertaining to me as so many glasses in a magic lantern, and
never took their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force them-
selves upon me, whether I would or no; and strange to say, I some-
times recognised in them counterparts of figures once familiar to me
in pictures attached to childish books, forgotten long ago.

It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, and
the trees were so close together that their dry branches rattled
against the coach on either side, and obliged us all to keep our heads
within. It lightened too, for three whole hours; each flash being very
bright, and blue, and long; and as the vivid streaks came darting in
among the crowded branches, and the thunder rolled gloomily above
the tree tops, one could scarcely help thinking that there were better
neighbourhoods at such a time than thick woods afforded.

At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a few feeble
lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian
village, where we were to stay till morning, lay before us.

They were gone to bed at the log Inn, which was the only house
of entertainment in the place, but soon answered to our knocking,
and got some tea for us in a sort of kitchen or common room,
tapestried with old newspapers, pasted against the wall. The bed-
chamber to which my wife - nd I were shown, was a large, low,
ghostly room; with a quantity of withered branches on the hearth'
and two doors without any fastening, opposite to each other, both
opening on the black night and wild country, and so contrived, that
one of them always blew the other open; a novelty in domestic
architecture, which I do not remember to have seen before, and
which I was somewhat disconcerted to have forced on my attention
after getting into bed, as I had a considerable sum in gold for our
travelling expenses, in my dressing-case. Some of the luggage, how-
ever, piled against the panels, soon settled this difficulty, and my
sleep would not have been very much affected that night, I believe,
though it had failed to do so.

My Boston friend climbed up to bed, somewhere in the roof,
where another guest was already snoring hugely. But being bitten
beyond his power of endurance, he turned out &.gain, and fled for
shelter tc the coach, which was airing itself in front of the house.
This was not a very politic step, as it turned out; for the pigs scenting
him, and looking upon the coach as a kind of pie with some manner
of meat inside, grunted round it so hideously, that he was afraid to
come out again, and lay there shivering, till morning. N'^r was it
possible to warm hirn, when he did come out, by means of a glass of
brandy: for in Indian villages, the legislature, with a very good and

'.vise inte
precautic
to procu]
pedlars.

It is a
Among t
had been
in condu(
eluded a
in consid
some Ian
way beyc
attachme
to the bi
to leave
with pair
The ques-
among tl
the logs c
speaking
and even
known, t]
withdrew

We me
ponies. T
have seer
matter of
people.

Leavin;
again, ov
arrived a
two o'cloi
slow, its
marshy; j
put up at
there thai
a steamb
sluggish a
an Englis

Our hos
able, was
from New
When I s{
his hat on
and lay dc
and read i
of the cou
been disaj

American Notes

157

'.vise intention, forbids the sale of spirits by tavern keepers. The
precaution, however, is quite inefficacious, for the Indians never fail
to procure liquor of a worse kind, at a dearer price, from travelling
pedlars.

It is a settlement of the Wyandot Indians who inhabit this place.
Among the company at breakfast was a mild old gentleman, who
had been for many years employed by the United States Government
m conducting negotiations with the Indians, and who had just con-
cluded a treaty with these people by which they bound themselves,
in consideration of a certain annual sum, to remove next year to
some land piwyided for them, west of the Mississippi, and a little
way beyond St. Louis. He gave me a moving account of their strong
attachment to the familiar scenes of their infancy, and in particular
to the burial-places of their kindred; and of their great reluctance
to leave them. He had witnessed many such removals, and always
with pain, though he knew that they departed for their own good.
The question whether this tribe should go or stay, had been discussed
among them a day or two before, in a hut erected for the purpose,
the logs of which still lay upon the ground before the inn. When the
speaking was done, the ayes and noes were ranged on opposite sides,
and every male adult voted in his turn. The moment the result was
known, the minority (a large one) cheerfully yielded to the rest, and
withdrew all kind of opposition.

We met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding on shaggy
ponies. They were so like the meaner sort of gipsies, that if I could
have seen any of them in England. I should have concluded, as a
matter of course, that they belonged to that wandering ani restless
people.

Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed forward
agam, over a rather worse road than yesterday, if possible, and
arrived about noon at Tiffin, where we parted with the extra. At
two o'clock we took the railroad; the travelling on which was very
slow, its construction being indifferent, and the ground wet and
marshy; and arrived at Sandusky in time to dine that evening. We
put up at a comfortable little hotel on the brink of Lake Erie, lay
there that night, and had no choice but to wait there next day, until
a steamboat bound for Buffalo appeared. The town, which was
sluggish and uninteresting enough, was something hke the back of
an English watering-place, out of the season.

Our host, who was very attentive and anxious to make us comfort-
able, was a handsome middle-aged man, who had come to this town
from New England, in which part of the country he was "raised."
When I say that he constantly walked in and out of the room with
his hat on; and stopped to converse in the same free-and-easy state;
and lay down on our sofa, and pulled his newspaper out of his pocket,
and read it at his ease; I merely mention these traits as characteristic
of the country: not at ail as being matter of complaint, or as having
been disagreeable to me. I should undoubtedly be offended by such

1^ 1

158

American Notes

Hil'

proceedings at home, because there they are not the custom, and
where they are not, they would be impertinencies; but in America,
the only desire of a good-natured fellow of this kind, is to treat his
guests hospitably and well; and I had no more right, and I can truly
say no more disposition, to measure his conduct by our English rule
and standard, than I had to quarrel with him for not being of the
exact p';ature which would qualify him for admission into the Queen's
grenadier guards. As little inclination had I to find fault with a funny
old lady who was an upper domestic in this establishment, and who,
when she came to wait upon us at any meal, sat herself down com-
fortably in the most convenient chair, and producing a large pin to
pick her teeth with, remained performing that ceremony, and stead-
fastly regarding us meanwhile with much gravity and composure
(now and then pressing us to eat a little more), until it was time to
clear away. It was enough for us, that whatever we wished done was
done with great civility and readiness, and a desire to oblige, not
only here, but everywhere else; and that all our wants were, in
general, zealously anticipated.

We were taking an early dinner at this house, on the day after our
arrival, which was Sunday, when a steamboat came in sight, and
presently touched at the wharf. As she proved to be on her way to
Buffalo, we hurried on board with all speed, and soon left Sandusky
far behind us.

She was a large vessel of five hundred tons, and handsomely fitted
up, though with high-pressure engines; which always conveyed that
kind of feeling to me, which I should be likely to experiencfe, I think,
if I had lodgings on the first-floor of a powder-mill. She was laden
with flour, some casks of which commodity were stored upon the
deck. The captain coming up to have a little conversation, and to
introduce a friend, seated himself astride of one of these barrels, like
a Bacchus of private life; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his
pocket, began to "whittle" it as he talked, by paring thin slices off
the edges. And he whittled with such industry and hearty good will,
that but for his being called away very soon, it must have disap-
peared bodily, and left nothing in its place but grist f^nd shavings.

After calling at one or two flat places, with low dams stretching
out into the lake, whereon were stumpy lighthouses, like windmills
without sails, the whole looking like a Dutch vignette, we came at
midnight to Cleveland, where we lay all night, and until nine o'clock
next morning.

I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, from
having s an at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in the shape of
a newspaper, which was very strong indeed upon the subject of
Lord Ashburton's recent arrival at Washington, to adjust the points
in dispute between tne United States Government and Great Britain:
informing its readers that as America had "whipped" England in her

sary that she must whip her once again in her maturity; and pledging

its credil

the appr(

in doubh

Doodle i

Westmin

beholdinj

just quot

the parai

man in h

There

learned 1

from the

unwittinf

or wherei

dissatisfy

ludicrous

and couk

leaned up

my dear.

"Boz kee

not very

done with

elapsed, c

from side

"I suppoj

all our m

board a b

We call

there an

Buffalo, V

to wait p;

morning s

It was J

the trees ;

the train 1

my eyes ir

the river

behold th(

I saw two

the depth!

then for t

the groun(

The bai

melted ice

bottom, ai

and had j<

half-blind«

of the Am<

American Notes

159

ftffl'j

Its credit to all True Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty in
the approaching negotiations, and sent the English Lord home again
in double quick time, they should, within two years, sing "Yankee
Doodle m Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia in the scarlet courts of
Westminster!" I found it a pretty town, and had the satisfaction of
beholding the outside of the office of the journal from which I 1 ve
just quoted. I did not enjoy the delight of seeing the wit who indited
the paragraph in question, but I have no doubt he is a prodigious
man m his way, and held in high repute by a select circle.

There was a gentleman on board, to whom, as I uniatentionally
learned through the thin partition which divided our state-room
froni the cabin in which he and his wife conversed together, I was
unwittingly the occasion of very great uneasiness. I don't know why
or wherefore, but I appeared to run in iiis mind perpetually, and to
dissatisfy him very much. First of all I heard him cay: an. I the most
ludicrous part of the business was, that he said it in my very ear,
and could not have communicated more directly with me, if he had
leaned upon my shoulder, and whispered me: 'Boz is m board still,
my dear." After a considerable pause, he added, com >lainingly,
• Boz keeps himself very < 'ose;" which was true enough, for I was
not very well, and was i>in^' down, with a book. I thotg'r.t he had
done with me T,fter this, but I was deceived; for a long inter val having
elapsed, dur ag which I imai^ine him to have been +urnini' restlessly
from side to side, and trying to go to sleep; he broke out I'^'ain, with
I suppose that Boz will be writing a book by-and-by, and putting
all our names in it!" at which imaginarj^ consequence of boing on
board a boat with Boz, he groaned, and became silent.

We called at the town of Erie, at eight o'clock that night, and lay
there an hour. Between five and Six next morr' g, we arrived at
Buffalo, where we breakfasted; and being too near the Great Falls
to wait patiently anywhere else, wf. set off by the train, the same
morning at nine o'clock, to Niagara.

It was a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling- and
the trees m that northern region quite bare and . Intry. Whenever
the train halted, I listened for the roar; and was constantly straining
my eyes in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, frr .;n seeing
the river rolling on towards them; every moment expecting to
behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before
I saw two great white clouds rising up slowly and majestically from
the depths of the earth. That was all. At length we alighted- and
then for the first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt
the ground tremble underneath my feet.

The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and half-
melted ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was soon at the
bottom, and climbing, with two English officers wio were crossing
and had joined me, over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise

Iialf-hlinHprl hir ■t-'ho. c-nm^r riry^

wSi. to

tiic skin.

we were at tne loot

01 the American Fall. I could see an immense torrent of water tearing

?* ,•

a f.

i6o

American Notes

lieacllong down from some great height, but had no idea of shape, or
situation, or anything but vague immensity.

When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing the
swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what
It was: but I was in p. manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the
vastness of the scene: It was not until I came on Table Rock, and
ooked— Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright-green water!— that
it came upon me m its full might and majesty.

rhen. when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first
eltect, and the enduring one— instant and lasting— of the tremendous
spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections
o the Dead, great thoughts of Eternal iiest and Happiness: nothing
ot gloom or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an
image of Beauty; to remain there, changeless and indc ble. until its
p\Mses cease to beat, for ever.

Oh how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from mv view
and lessened in the distance, during the ten memorable days we
passed on that Enchanted Ground! V/hat -oices spoke from out the
thundering water; what faces, faded from tae earth, looked out upon
me from its gleaming depths; what Heavenly promise glistened in
those angeis tears, the drops of many hues, that showered around
and twined themselves about the gorgeous arches which the changing
lainbows made! ° °

I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side, whither I
nad gone at first. I never crossed the river again; for I knew there
were people on the other shore, and in such a place it is natural to
Shan strange company. To wander to and fro all day. and see the
cataracts from all points of view; to stand upon the edge of the great
Horse-Shoe Fall, marking the hurried water gathering strength as
t approached the verge, yet seeming, too, to pause before it shot
into the gulf below; to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent
as It came streaming down; to climb the neighbouring heights and
watch It through the trees, and see the wreathing water in the rapids
hurrying on to take its fearful plunge; to linger in the shadow of the
solemn rocks three miles below; watching the river as, stirred bv no
visible cause. It heaved and eddied and awoke the echoes, being
troubled yet. far down beneath the surface, by its giant leap; to have
iSiagam before iie. lighted by the sun and by the moon, red in the
flay s decline, and grey as evening slowly fell upon it; to look upon
It every day, and wake up in the night and hear its ceaseless voice-
this was enough.

I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll and

r.?-,' ^" .k""^' ""l'"^ *.""\^^^' ^^^ ^^y ^°"g' «till are the rainbows
spanning them, a hundred leet below. Still, when the sun is on them
do they shme and glow like mo'.en gold. Still, when the day is
gloomy do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the
front of a great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white
"' --"- "^^''"j'a uoca fciiu raigaty stream appear to die as it comes

down, a
dous gh<
this plac
the dee]
rushing

IN CANA]
IN T

WES'

I WISH t(

parallel \
ard thosi
shall conl
latter ter
But bei
stance wJ
traveller
On Tal
little relic
names in
which a g
request is
remarks a
here."

But for

on which

drawing-n

certain sta

framed an

this annot

preserved,

with the ^

delighted i

Itishun

so obscene

able profai

But that tl

swine, and

disgrace to

I hope few

reproach to

The qua]

324

American Notes j^j

this place with the same dread soIemnitrsTnce LTknes^^^^^^^
the deep, and that first flood be W the DelJee Ti^^^^^^^
rushing on Creation at the word of God. ^^^"8^— Light— came

CHAPTER XV

IN CANADA; TORONTO; KINGSTON; MONTREAL' QUEBEC «;t t^^xxt'o
IN THE UNITED STAnT<5 Ar-ATM. r t^t, . «UtBEC, ST. JOHNS.

WEST POINT ' ^^^^N°N; '^HE shaker VILLAGE;

shall confine myself to a verTbrief account nfnf; °' *""' ''=^'°°' '
latter territory ^ account of our journeyings in the

stanch whth carSrdiXvclrcSf tlfo^" °"^ f'''"f^^« "-—
traveller who has visited the FaS ""-''"ation of any decent

litt°e%lHc"he'p?aS'ie''soH"rH''l°"^'"? *° ^ Guide, where
names in a book\e^rL%he 'urpo"e On th^'^'T /!P'^^ *>>"'

which a great man/of these%S:-a?e"preteTved1hefo^^^^^^
request is posted: "Visitors will r,lP«<=A r^^+ ' lollowing

r^ar.s anS poetical e^^LltSTe ^i^^^^^

0^^^':^^:;^ wrca-^^fuVfeisr rv^or-"-
fhr:ir„ct?„t-to-ftS^^^^^^^^^

sooVs^nfShTe^fth^t'^hTvtn^'^^^^^^^^
able profanatiorupoT the lery^tens : '^ ^'^^'"^ *"" '"'^"-

But that these should be hoarded . p (or the deirh? n?S* w n*"^'
swme, and kept in a public place where any eyes mavLetif-^^^
disgrare to the English laneuaire in ^hiXZu ^ ^^ *'='"• "^ »

I hope few of thesf entr^fesSbeen 4ade I f17h"'" f*""^''
reproach to the Enoii.i, .;a„ t_ ..° : ° 7?*^^ "^ Englishmen), and a

Xh^^«-o?our soldic;;;rNilg2a!'LrfiSf and airily

i il

:- r

l62

American Notes

ii f

situated. Some of them are large detached houses on the plain above
the Falls, which were originally designed for hotels; and in the even-
ing time, when the women and children were leaning over the
balconies watching the men as they played at ball and other games
upon the grass before, the door, they often presented a little picture
of cheerfulness and animation which made it quite a pleasure to pass
that way.

At any garrisoned point where the line of demarcation between
one country and another is so very narrow as at Niagara, desertion
from the ranks can scarcely fail to be of frequent occurrence: and it
may be reasonably supposed that when the soldiers entertain the
wildest and maddest hopes of the fortune and independence that
await them on the other side, the impulse to play traitor, which such
a place suggests to dishonest minds, is not weakened. But it very
rarely happens that the men who do desert, are happy or contented
afterwards; and many instances have been known in which they
have confessed their grievous disappointment, and their earnest
desire to return to their old service if they could but be assured of
pardon, or lenient treatment. Many of their comrades, notwith-
standmg, do the like, from time to time; and instances of loss of life
in the effort to cross the river with this object, are far from being
uncommon. Several men were drowned in the attempt to swim across,
not long ago; and one, who had the madness to trust himself upon a
table as a raft, was swept down to the whirlpool, where his mangled
body eddied round and round some days.

I am inclined to think that the noise of the Falls is very much
exaggerated; and this will appear the more probable when the depth
of the great basin in which the water is received, is taken into account.
At no time during our stay there, was the wind at all high or
boisterous, but we never heard them, three miles off, even at the
very quiet time of sunset, though we often tried.

Queenston, at whxh place the steamboats start for Toronto (or I
should rather say at which place they call, for their wharf is at
Lewiston, on the opposite shore), is situated in a delicious valley,
through which the Niagara river, in colour a very deep green, pursues
its course. It is approached by a road that takes its winding way
among the heights by which the town is sheltered; and seen from
this point is extremely beautiful and picturesque. On the most con-
spicuous of these heights stood a monument erected by the Provincial
Legislature in memory of General Brock, who was slain in a battle
with the American forces, after having won the victory. Some
vagabond, supposed to be a fellow of the name of Lett, who is now,
or who lately was, in prison as a felon, blew up this monument two
years ago, and it is now a melancholy ruin, with a long fragment of
iron railing hanging dejectedly from its top, and waving to and fro
like a wild ivy branch or broken vine stem. It is of much higher
importance than it may seem, that this statue should be repaired at
the public cost, as it ought to have been long ago. Firstly, because

American Notes

163

very spot where he died Sec^^^^^^ Ss" "he sT^hT.'''^ ' ^ *^^
sent state, and the recollectir . nf fh« the sight o. it m its pre-
broiicrhf if fr. +V,,- ^^^°V^<^"o 1 of the unpunished outrage which

S Sir a ■."-«"i".sr ;™ trJ

wife was collecting her few goods WeihZ I " " sergeant's

eye hard upon the%ortersT&e°lhXTn;S Tboard'^l
the other on a hoooless wac;hina f^K ^^^ u- u , ? board, and

utteriy worthless :ftrLro™rs"'hee:medVen^^

wLf rboaT^""-^" '''"'' °-- '°" ^X^'- -^-^ ' rruit-Sin^^uTan^d

attrMs'?hrS.«nTt\^^^^^^^^^^^

st^^anTc;^;:rrat-o2;^o~^^^

contmually, like a roaring idle dog as ..e was. ^ """^ ^"""^^^

The soldiers rather Iaugh«d at this blade than with him- seeming t„

requu-ed to tell it, they had him out again, fe^et first wUSTe taSs o?
1 he half-sobered recruit glanced round for a moment as if his fir«f

s^LTtifh s^<^:is^:^:^r'T^^ '"

P^sented to h™ with an oath ?y tLToSS :"ho t^lf^Tfj?.!
-10.. anxious of the party, he stuck it in his mouth thru"st h'ishkndl
mto his mo.st pockets, and without even shaking the wateiofflt

1*1 i

I f

[

i64

American Notes

clothes, walked on board whistling; not to say as if nothing had
happened, but as if he had meant to do it. and it had been a perfect
success.

Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, and soon
bore us to the mouth of the Niagara; where the stars and stripes of
America flutter on one side and the Union Jack of England on the
other; and so narrow is the space between them that the sentinels in
either fort can often hear the watchword of the other country given.
Thence we emerged on Lake Ontario, an inland sea; and by half-past
six o'clock were at Toronto.

The country round this town being very Hat, is bare of scenic
interest; but the town itself is full of life and motion, bustle, business,
and improvement. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas;
the houses are large and good; the shops excellent. Many of them have
a display of goods in their windows, such as may be seen in thriving
county towns in l^:ngl.and; and there are some which would do no
discredit to the metropolis itself. There is a good stone prison here; and
there are, besides, a handsome church, a court-house, public offices,
many commodious private residences, and a government observatory
for noting and recording the magnetic variations. In the College of
Upper Canada, which is, one of the public establishments of the city, a
sound education in every department of polite learning can be had, at
a very moderate expense: the annual charge for the instruction of
each pupil, not exceeding nine pounds sterling. It has pretty good
endowments in the way of land, and is a valuable and useful institu-
tion.

The first stone of a new college had been laid but a few days before,
by the Governor General. It will be a handsome, spacious edifice,'
approached by a long avenue, which is already planted and made
available as a public walk. The town is well adapted for wholesome
exercise at all seasons, for the footways in the thoroughfares which
lie beyond the principal street, are planked like floors, and kept in
very good and clean repair.

It is a matter of deep regret that political differences should have
run high in this place, and led to most discreditable and disgraceful
results. It is not long since guns were distharged from a window in
this town at the successful candidiites in an election, and the coach-
man of one of them was actually shot in the body, though not danger-
ously wounded. But one man was killed on the same occasion; and
from the very window whence he received his death, the ver^^^ flag
which shielded his murderer (not only in the commission of his
crime, but from its consequences), vvas displayed again on the
occasion of the public ceremony performed by the Governor General,
to which I have just adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow, there
is but one which could be so employed: I need not say that flag was
orange.

The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston is noon. By eight o'clock
next morning, the traveller is at the end of his journey, which is

perforn

Coburg

flour fo

fewer t

Coburg

The 1

a very

market-

Kingsto

half not

commoc

neighbo

There

excellen

shoemal

stonecul

advance

necdlewi

been the

for the

Insurrec

stays; so

lining of

would, w

any man

in those

appropri

this offer

face, thoi

there wa

sharply f

There

bold posi

the town

imagine,

small na'

building,

We left

in the mo

river. Th

especially

among th

and const

their fluct

among fch<

small thai

variety oi

forms whi

"Inrlf

American Notes

165

ewer than one thousand and eighty barrels on hn'^
Coburg and Kingston. ^ fe"'-/ oarreis on board, between

The latter place, which is now the seat of crov<-rnm^nf ir. r j •
a very poor town, rendered still cooilr if Ihl Canada, is

sirs- " •--fsr.r;Kr,r„7r:s:g;; z

Insurrection: sometimes dressing as a rW and car^fnt th ■ f "
stays; sometimes attiring herself at a hm/ ^Z '=*'^'^ "8 '^em in her
lining of her hat. In thf S'c^aractJr she' iwlyfr^ Je\" 'a\t

Jl^otiSon^rd^^^^^^^^^^^

StergSii^rfjiTvigSr/ <^~ -is^oSst-er:

small that they are mere dimples on its hm^r] hoc^^v,. Vv,.-! :-?:.!°

S whfrh'^rt' ^^^ *^^. "'""^berless comSinatio'ns ^T be^S
torms which the trees growing on them present: all form a pk ture

L< ',!

i66

American Noter

fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure.

i\*^vx.^^*^"'°°" ^® ^^°* ^°^*^ so'^^ raP^cls where the river boiled
and bubbled strangely, and where the force and headlong violence of
the current were tremendous. Atseveno'ciOCkwereache(' Dickenson's
l^andmg, whence travellers proceed for two or three hours by stage-
^vS?" 1.*^® navigation of the rive, being rendered so dangerous and
difficult m the mterval. by rapids, that steamboats do not make the
passage. The number and length of tnose portages, over which the
roads are bad, and the travelling slow, render the way between the
towns of Montreal and Kingston, somewhat tedious.

Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of country at a little
distance from the river-side, whence the uright warning lights on the
dangerous parts of he St Lawrence shone vividly. The night was
dark and raw. and the way dreary enou-h. It was neariy ten o'clock
when we reached the wh-^rf where the next steamboat lay; and went
on board, and to bed.

She lay there all right, and started as soon as it M^as day The
morning was ushered m by a violent tli understorm. and was very wet
but gradually improved and brightened up. Going on deck after
breakfast, I was amazed to see floating down with the stream a most
gigantic raft, with somcthirty or forty wooden houses upon it, and at
least as many flagmasts. so that it looked like a nautical street. I saw
many of^these rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the timber
or lumber, ' as it is called 'n America, which is brought down the St'
-Lawrence, is floated down in this manner. When the raft reaches its
place of destination, it is broken up; the materials are sold; and the
boatmen return for more.

At eight we landed again, and travelled by a stage-coach for four
hours through a pleasant .ad well-cultivated country, perfectlv
French m every respect: in the appearance of the cottages; the air
language, and dress of the peasantry; the sign-boards on the shops
and taverns: and the Virgin's shrines, and crosses, by the wayside
Nearly every common labourer and boy, though he had no shoes to
his feet wore round his waist a sash of some bright colour: generallv
red: and the women, who were working in the fields and gardens, and
doing all kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all, great fiat straw hats
with most capacious brims. There were Catholic Priests and Sisters of
Charity m the village streets; and images of the Saviour at the comers
ot cross-roads, and in other public places.

At noon we went on board another steamboat, and reached the
village of Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, by three o'clock There
we left the river, and went on by land.

Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. Lawrence
and is backed by some bold heights, about which there are charming
rides and drives. The streets are generally narrow and irregular, as in
most French towns of any age; but in the more modern parts of the

— 'j "r-^ """" "/^"^ "'"'^ °'"-y- ■^"^>' uispiay a great variety of very-
good shops; and both in the town and suburbs there are many

exceller
their be
Then
with tw
in front
tower, \
wiseacre
immedii
Kingsto
is a plai
road it i
ing by t
a day's 1

The s-
is to saj
Quebec j
in Mont:
interest ,

The i
America
air; its ]
splendid
unique a

It is a
places, o
recall. A]
associatii
interest,
and his 1
where he
defended
alive, by
among tl:
and wort
both bra''

The cil
charities,
Governm
lies. The
mountain
with mile
veins alo]
chimney \
St. Lawn
ships belo
like spide:
decks dwi
all this, frj

American Notes

167

St^^rso^^^^^^^ ^-^^ ^-ys are re.ar.able for

iTeacr^ o? lit ^i^^^^'k* ^""^ ^^"^^^^able appearancefand which the
Tr^ZTfJ *it^ ^.''^ ^^""^ consequently determined to pull down
immediately The Government House is very superior to that at

s a ?la"k 'road no^tT 'l '1^' f ^ ^"' ^^^*^^^" -^ ^^ ^^^ -^
ioad it IS too l^fh. ^°«*P^*J;r-fi^« or six miles long, and a famous
roaa It IS too. All the rides in the vicinity were made doublv interest-

TLJ'^" ^7'''"? °"' °^ ^P"^^' ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ «« rapid. thatTtrbut
a day 3 leap from barren win , to the blooming youth of summer

The steamboats to Quebec perform the journey in the S? that
n ^r^^y'^^^y ^^^^^ Montreal at six in the evening, and f rriVe at
guebec at six next morning. We made this excursion during oTr stay

intfrLfanJ ^a'ity.^^^^^'^' ^ ^^^^^^^^^^' ^^ ^^ ^^^^-^ ^^^tl

The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of

America: its giddy heights; its citadel suspended, as it weT in the

air; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways and the

t^^^i:^:^-^'^ ^"-* "p- '^^ ^y^ ^^ --y turZ isi^o^^:

recall. Apart from the realities of this most picturesque city, there are

fn w^f Th '^r*'""^ ^^°^* ^* ^^^^^ ^^"^'^ "^^k^ a dessert rkh [n
interest. The dangerous precipice along whose rocky front. Wolfe

where'^hp'r Jrir^J^r^''' "i^^"^ *^ ^^^^^' *^« ^^^^^ ^^ Abraham.
H / !^ ^ K f.'''^'^ ^'^ "'^'^^^^ ^°""d; the fortress so chivalrously
aUve bv tL^r'?"^' ^."^ \^^f Idler's grave, dug for him whHe yit
ahv^e. by the bursting of a shell; are not the least among them or
among the gal ant incidents of history. That is a noble MonumenUoo
and worthy of two great nations, ^vhich perpetuates the memory of
both brave generals, and on which their names are jointly writterT

rh.Hfil^ Vl '"^ P"^^/^ institutions and in Catholic churches and
chanties, but it is mamly m the prospect from the site of the Old
Government House, and from the Citadel, that its surpassing beauty
lies. Ihe exquisite expanse of country, rich in field and forest

vp?n.^ Of Canadian villages, glancing in long white streaks, like
veins along the landscape; the motley crowd of gables, roofs and
chimney tops m the old hilly town immediately at hand; the beat'itiful
bt. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and tl, tiny
ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant riggim^ looks
like spiders' webs against the light. M-hile casks nnd harr.i! .;: ^hig
lu^h^^T'^'^^^ft^'' toys and busy mariners become so many puppets;
an this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress and looked at from

i68

American Notes

\U'i

the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most
enchantmg pictures that the eye can rest upon.

In the spring of the year, vast numbers of emigrants who have
newly arrived from England or from Ireland, pass between Quebec
and Montreal on their way to the backwoods and new settlements of
Canada. If it be an entertaining lounge (as I very often found it) to
take a morning stroll upon the quay at Montreal, and see them
grouped in hundreds on the public wharfs about their chests and boxes
It IS matter of deep interest to be their fellow-passenger on one of
these steamboats, and mingling with the concourse, see and hear them
unobserved.

The vessel in which we returned from Quebec to Montreal was
crowded with them, and at night they spread their beds between
decks (those who had beds, at least), and slept so close and thick
about our cabin door, that the passage to and fro was quite blocked
up. I hey were nearly all English; from Gloucestershire the greater
part; and had had a long winter-passage out; but it was wonderful to
see how clean the children had been kept, and how untiring in their
love and self-denial all the poor parents were.

Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all things it is very
much harder for the poor to be virtuous than it is for the rich; and the
good that IS m them, shines the brighter for it. In many a noble mansion
lives a man, the best of husbands and of fathers, whose private worth
in both cap: cities is justly lauded to the skies. But bring him here
upon this crowded deck. Strip from his fair young wife her silken
dress and jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early wrinkles on her
brow, pincn ner pale chf;ek with care and much privation, array her
faded form in coarsely patched attire, let there be nothing but his
love to set her forth or deck her out, and you shall put it to the proof
indeed. So change his station in the world, that he shall see in those
young things wno climb about his knee: not records of his wealth and
name: but little wrestlers with him for his daily bread; so many
poachers on his scanty meal; so many units to divide his every sum of
comfcrt, and farther to reduce its small amount. In lieu of the
endearments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap upon him all
its pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice,
and querulous endurance: let its prattle be, not of engaging infant
fancies, but of cold, and thirst, and hunger: and if his fatherly affection
outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender; careful of his
children's lives, and mindful always of their joys and sorrows; then
send him back to Parliament, and Pulpit, and to Quarter Sessions,
and when he hears fine talk of the depravity of those who live from
hand to mouth, and labour hard to do it, let him speak up, as one
who knows, and tell those holders forth that they, by parallel with
such a class, should be High Angels in their daily lives, and lay but
humble siege to Heaven at last.

Which of us shall say what he v/ould be, if such realities, with small
relief or change all through his days, were his 1 Looking round upon

American Notes

169

these people: far from home, houseless, indigent, wandering, weary
with travel and hard living: and seeing how patiently they nursed
and tended their young children: how they consulted ever their wants
first, then half supplied their own; what gentle ministers of hope and
faith the women were; how the men profited by their example; and
how very, very seldom even a moment's petulance or harsh complaint
broke out among them: I felt a stronger love and honour of my kind
come glowing on my heart, and wished to God there had been many
Atheists in the better part of human nature there, to read this simple
lesson in the book of Life.

We left Montreal for New York again, on the thirtieth of May;
crossing to La Prairie, on the opposite shore of the St. Lawrence, in a
steamboat; we then took the railroad to St. John's, which is on the
brink of Lake Champlain. Our last greeting in Canada was from the
English officers in the pleasant barracks at that place (a class of
gentlemen who had made every hour of our visit memorable by their
hospitality and friendship); and with "Rule Britannia" sounding in
our ears, soon left it far behind.

But Canada has held, and always will retain, a foremost place in
my remembrance. Few Englishmen are prepared to find it what it is.
Advancing quietly; old differences settling down, and being fast
forgotten; public feeling and private enterprise alike in a sound and
wholesome state; nothing of flush or fever in its system, but health
and vigour throbbing in its steady pulse: it is full of hope and promise.

To me who had been accustomed to think of it as something left

behind in the strides of advancing society, as something neglected
and forgotten, slumbering and wasting in its sleep — the demand for
labour and the rates of wages; the busy quays of Montreal; the vessels
taking in their cargoes, and discharging them; the amount of shipping
in the different ports; the commerce, roads, and public works, all
made to last; the respectability and character of the public journals;
and the amount of rational comfort and happiness which honest
industry may earn: were very great surprises. The steamboats on the
lakes, in their conveniences, cleanliness, and safety; in the gentle-
manly character and bearing of their captains; and in the politeness
and perfect comfort of their social regulations; are unsurpassed even
by the famous Scotch vessels, deservedly so much esteemed at home.
The inns are usually bad; because the custom of boarding at hotels is
not so general here as in the States, and the British officers, who form
a large portion of the society of every town, live chiefly at the
regimental messes: but in every other respect, the traveller in Canada
will find as good provision for his comfort as in any place I know.

There is one American boat — the vessel which carried us on Lake
Champlain, from St. John's to Whitehall — which I praise very
highly, but no more than it deserves, when I say that it is superior
even to that in which we went from Queenston to Toronto, or to that
in which we travelled from the latter place to Kingston, or I have no

324*

1 '1

isff 1

!!• ^

170

American Notes

! Uf

canprf Jh?^ r ^? ^"^ ''*^^' '" ^^^ ^°^^^- This steamboat, which is
called the Burlington is a perfectly exquisite achievement of neat
ness elegance, and order. The decks ar2 drawing-rooms the cabins
are boudoirs, choicely furnished and adorned with prinV pictures
and musical instruments; every nock and corner in^tl^e ie^sd S

F.lfl ^h"""'''^ l^ ^'^""^"^ "°"^^"^* ^"d beautiful confr vance
Captain Sherman, her commander, to whose ingenuity and excellent
taste these results are solely attributable, has bravely and worthiL
distmguished himself on more than one trying ocSsion nTlil^
among them, in having the moral courage t^cafr^SS" troops at
a time (during the Canadian rebellion) when no^oXr convevanr.
was open to them. He and his vessel are held in uni^erSal Sect
both by his own countrymen and ours; and no man ever en oyed the
fhT thy^e^S^emli^' ^^ ""'' '^'^^^ ^' -^^-' -" -^ worJrb'etfe?
By means of this floating palace we were soon in the United
States again, and called that evening at Burlington; a prettv town
where we lay an hour or so. We reached Whitehall, where we were to
disembark, at six next morning; and might have done so eTrlfer bu?
that these steamboats lie by for some hours in the night n con
sequence of the lake becoming very narrow at that Sart of til
journey and difficult of navigation in the dark, its width is so

After breakfasting at Whitehall, we took the stage-coach lor
Albany: a large and busy town, where we arrived between five an h
six o'clock that afternoon; after a very hot day's joumev for we ^re
now m the height of summer againf At seven le staried for New
Jr^ H T ^?u'^ ^ ^''^* ^°'**^ ^^^' steamboat, which was so

o?T?hl7 l^f ''"^!!;' ^^-^^ *^" "PP^^ ^«^k ^^« like the box Sbby
of a theatre between the pieces, and the lower one like Tottenham
Court Road on a Saturday night. But we slept soundly notwitS^
standing, and soon after five o'clock next morning reached New

f^f^r"^ ^f ^ only that day and night, to recruit after our late
fatigues, we started off c ^xe more upon our last journey in Amerka
We haa yet five days to spare before embarking for England and I
had a great desire to see "the Shaker Village," which S Spied bv I
religious sect from whom it takes its name peopled by a

To this end. we went up the North River again, as far as the town
of Hudson, and there hired an extra to carry us to Lebanon fh?,^.^
miles d stant: and of course another and a different LeCo^^^^^^^
that VL lage where I slept on the night of the Prairie trip

The country through which the road meandered, was rich and
beautiful; the weather very fine; and for many mileL Te Kaatsk ll
mountains, where Rip Van Winkle and the^ ghostly Dutchmen

g!rdVtL""Fike s°^-!e"— ^^'^^ •^•"^'^ ^'^^"^ '^"' towered t'h^
o-ue aistan.v, like stateiy ciuuas. At one point, as we ascended a

American Notes

171

steep hill, athwart whose base a railroad, yet constructing, took its
course, we came upon an Irish colony. With means at hand of
building decent cabins, it was wonderful to see how clumsy, rough,
and wretched, its hovels were. The best were poor protection from
the weather; the worst let in the wind and rain through wide breaches
in the roofs of sodden grass, and in the walls of mud; some had
neither door nor window; some had nearly fallen down, and were
imperfectly propped up by stakes and poles, all were ruinous and
filthy Hideously ugly old women and very buxom young ones, pigs,
dogs men, children, babies, pots, kettles, dunghills, vile refuse, rank
straw, and standing water, all wallowing together in an inseparable
heap, 'composed the furniture of every dark and dirty hat.

Between nine and ten o'clock at night, we arrived at Lebanon:
which is renowned for its warm baths, and for a great hotel, well
adapted, I have no dout'. to the gregarious taste of those seekers
after health or pleasure who repair here, but inexpressibly comfort-
less to me. We were shown into an immense apartment, lighted by
two dim candles, called the drawing-room: from which there was a
descent by a flight of steps, to another vast desert, called the dining-
room- our bed-chambers were among certain long rows of little white-
washed cells, which opened from either side of a dreary passage;
and were so like rooms in a prison that I half expected to be locked
up when I went to bed. and listened involuntarily for the turning of
tfe key on the outside. There need be baths somewhere in the
neighbourhood, for the other washing arrangements were on as
limited a scale as I ever saw. even in America: indeed, these bed-
rooms were so very bare of even such common luxuries as chairs, that
I should say they were not provided with enough of anything, but
that I bethink myself of our having been most bountifully bitten all

The house is very pleasantly situated, however, and we had a
good breaKfast. That done, we went to visit our place of destination,
which was some two miles off, and the way to which was soon
indicated by a finger-post, whereon was painted, "To the Shaker

Village." ,^, , ^ ^ ,

As we rode along, we passed a party of Shakers, who were at work
upon the road; who wore the broadest of all broad-brimmed hats;
and were in all visible respects such very wooden men. that I felt
about as much sympathy for them, and as much interest in them, as
if they had been so many figure-heads of ships. Presently we came
to the beginning of the village, and alighting at the door of a house
where the Shaker manufactisres are sold, and which is the head-
quarters of the elders, requested psrmission to see the Shaker worship.
Pending the conveyance of this request to some person in author-
ity we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were
hanging on grim pegs, and the thnc was grimly told by a grim clock
wh^cli uttered everv tick with a kind of struggle, as if it broke the
grim silence reluctantly, and under protest. Ranged against tne wall

' W^ m

i-i

i I rm

172

American Notes

iZZl i '}T''' ^^ ^ '°^"^^^ ^ newspaper whefein the bodv of
rir I'V^'' ,r' P^^^"'^'' -«*y Sh ngtuvVin TrS

wop it;^^ f tuT<l1,^L^r— c<^^ r^-^ ' -pp-™-

a spacious summer-house. As there was no getting int^this n ace «nrl
nothmg vvas to be done but walk up and down, and look S ?t and the
other buildings in the village (which were chiefly of wood painted a
dark red like English barns, and composed of many stories il^

£"lnH /r*°"n^' ^ ^^"^ "°*^^^"g *° communcaTe to the reader
beyond the scanty results I gleaned the while our purchases were

These people are called Shakers from their peculiar form of adora
tK)n which consists of a dance, performed by the r.en anTwomen of
all ages, who arrange themselves for thnf T^,„-r.^. • •

parties the men first'divestinFt^'mtlves of tSTaV^anrSS?
which they gravely hang against the wall before they bel and
loll bled Th '°""^ '''''' shirt-sleeves, as though they t?e going
to be bled. They accompany themselves with a droning humSinf
noise, and dance until they are quite exhausted nlWn.l^? ^^
vancing and retiring in a preWerLslorTbH S Th^^^^^^^^^^
to be unspeakably absurd: and if I may judge from a print of +hi.
bv tZf^ 1^''^ ^ ""^^^ ^" "^y possession; ^andwh^ch I am"nformed
IVnSlZ^t^:^^::''' ^^^ ^^^P^^' ^^ P-^ectly accuratenfmTst
They are governed by a woman, and her rule is understood to hP
absolute, though she has the assistance of a councilof elders She
lives. It IS said m strict seclusion, in certain rooms above ?he chanel
and is never shown to profane eves If <?hP af aii%to i ^^^ cnapel.
who presided over the s?ore, it i^^gr " tth?r tf toTep trt S

. ^ ns ana rev^nac^ ui tae settlement are thrown into

American Notes

173

a common stock, which is managed by the elders. As they have made
converts among people who were well to do in the w nld, and are
frugal and thrifty, it is understood that this fund prospers the more
especially as they have made large purchases of land. Nor is this at
Lebanon the only Shaker settlement: there arc, I think, at least,
three others.

They are good farmers, and all their produce is eagerly purchased
and highly esteemed. "Shaker seeds," "Shaker herbs," and "Shaker
distilled waters," are commonly announced for sale in the shops of
towns and cities. They are good breeders of cattle, and are kind and
merciful to the brute creation. Consequently, Shaker beasts seldom
fail to find a ready market.

They eat and drink together, after the Spartan model, at a great
public table. There is no union of the sexes, and every Shaker, male
and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. Rumour hue been busy
upon this theme, >.>u I here again I must refer to the lady of the store,
and say, that if many of the sister Shakers resemble her, 1 treat all
such slander as bearing on its face the strongest marks of wild
improbability. But that they take as proselytes, persons so young
that they cannot know their own minds, and cannot possess much
strength of resolution in this or any other respect, I can assert from
my own observation of the extreme juvenility of certain youthful
Shakers whom I saw at work among the party on the road.

They are said to be good drivers of bargains, but to be honest and
just in their transactions, and even in horse-dealing to resist those
thievish tendencies which would seem, for some undiscovered
reason, to be almost inseparable from that branch of traffic. In all
matters they hold their own course quietly, live in their gloomy,
silent commonwealth, and show little desire to interfere with other
people.

This is well enough, but nevertheless I cannot, I cc j^ess, incline
towards the Shakers; view them with much favour, or extend
towards them any very lenient construction. I so abhor, and from
my soul detest that bad spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may
be entertained, which would strip life of its healthful graces, rob
youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from maturity and age their
pleasant ornaments, and make existence but a narrow path towards
the grave: that odious spirit which, if it could have had full scope and
sway upon the earth, must have blasted and made barren the imagin-
ations of the greatest men, and left them, in their power of raising
up enduring images before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no
better than the beasts that, in these very broad-brimmed hats and
very sombre coats— in stiff-necked, solemn-visaged piety, in short,
no matter what its garb, whether it have cropped hair as in a Shaker
village, or long nails as in a Hindoo temple — I recognise the worst
among the enemies of Heaven and Earth, who turn the water at the
marriage feasts of this poor world, not into wine, but gall. And if
there must be people vowed to crush the harmless fancies and the

! u1

I III

174

American Notes

I'll!

love of innocent delights and gaieties, which are a part of human
nature: as much a part of it as any other love or hope that is our
common portion; let them, for me, stand openly revealed among
the ribald and licentious; the very idiots know that they are not
on the Immortal rodd, and will despise them, and avoid them
iviadily.

Leaving the Shaker village with a hearty dislike of the old Shakers,
and a hearty pity for the young ones: tempered by the strong
probability of their running away as they grow older anc' wiser,
which they not uncommonly do: we returned to Lebanon, ^r d so to
Hudson, by the way we had come upon the previous day. There,
we took the steamboat down the North River towards New York'
but stopped, some four hours' journey short of it, at West Pointi
where we remained that night, and all next day, and next night
too. ^

In this beautiful place: the fairest among the fair and lovely
Highlands of the North River: shut in by deep green heights and
rumed forts, and looking down upon the distant town of Newburgh
along a glittering path of sunl'.t water, with here and there a skiff,'
whose white sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws of
wmd come down upon her from the gullies in the hills hemmed in,
besides, all round with memories of Washington, and events of the
revolutionary war is the Military School of America.

It could not stand on more appropriate ground, and any ground
more beautiful can hardly be. The course of education is severe, but
well devised, and manly. Through June, July, and August,' the
young men encamp upon the spacious plain whereon the college
stands; and al\ the year their military exercises are performed there
daily. The term of study at this institution, which the State requires
from all cadets, is four years; but, v liether it be from the rigid
nature of the discipline, or the national impatience of restraint, or
both causes combined, not more than half Lhe number T\ho bef^in
their studies here, ever remain to finish them. "

The number of cadv^ts being about equal to that of the members of

Congress, one is sent here from eve'-y Congressional district:

member influencing the selection.

its

w Commissions in the service are

distributed on the same principle. The dwellings of the various
Professors are beautifully situated: and there is a most excellent
hotel for strangers, though it has the two drawbacks of being a total
abstinence house (wines and spirits being forbidden to the students)
and of serving the public meals at rather uncomfortable hours to
wit, breakfast at seven, dinner at one, and supper at sunset.

The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the very dawn
and greenness of summer —it was then the beginning of June —were
exquisite indeed. Leaving it upon the sixth, and returning to New
York, to embark for England on the succeeding day, I was glad to
thinly that among the last memorable beauties which had "lided '^ast
us, and softened in the bright perspective, were those whos^e pictures.

American Notes

175

traced by no common hand, are fresh in most men's minds; not
eai?ily to grow old, or fade beneath the dust of Time: the Kaatskill
Mountains, Sleepy Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PASSAGE HOME

I NEVER had so much interest before, and very likely I shall never
have so much interest again, in the state of the wind, as on the long
looked-for morning of Tuesday the Seventh of June. Some nautical
authority had told me a day or two previous, "anything with west in
it, will do;" so when I darted out of bed at daylight, and throwing up
the window, was saluted by a lively breeze from the north-west which
had sprung up in the night, it came upon me so freshly, rustling with
so many happy associations, that I conceived upon the spot a special
regard +or all airs blowing from that quarter of the con^pass, which I
shall cherish, I dare say, until my own wind has breathed its last frail
puff, and withdrawn itself for ever from the mortal calendar.

The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of this favourable
weather, and the ship which yrjsterday had been in such a crowded
dock that she might have retired from trade for good and all, for any
chance she seemed to have of going to sea, was now full sixteen miles
away. A gallant sight she was, when we, fast gaining on her in a steam-
boat, saw her in the distance riding at anchor: her tall masts pointing
up in graceful lines against the sky, and every rope and spar ex-
pressed in delicate and thread-like outline: gallant, too, when, we
being all aboard, the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus ' ' Cheerily
men, oh cheerily !" and she followed proudly in the towing steamboat's
wake: but bravest and most gallant of all, when the tow-rope being
cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts, and spreading her
white wings she soared away upon her free and solitary course.

In the after cabin we were only fifteen passengers in all, and the
greater part were from Canada, where some of us had known each
other. The night was rough and squally, so were the next two days,
but they flew by quickly, and we were soon as cheerful and snug a
party, with an honest, manly-hearted captain at our head, as ever
came to the resolution of being mutually agreeable, on land or water.

We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, dined at three, and
took our tea at half-past seven. We had abundance of amusements,
and dinner was not the least among them : firstly, for its own sake;
secondly, because of its extraordinary length: its duration, inclusive
of all the long pauses between the courses, being seldom less than two

By way of beguiling the tediousness of these banquets, a select a?oQ-

176

American Notes

ciation was formed at the lower end of the table, below the mast to
whose distmguished president modesty forbids me to make any
further allusion, which, being a very hilarious and jovial institution
was (prejudice apart) in high favour with the rest of the communitv'
and particularly with a black steward, who lived for three weeks in a
broad grm. at the marvellous humour of these incorporated worthies
Ihen. we had chess for those who played it. whist, cribbage. books*
backgammon, and shovelboard. In all weathers, fair or foul calm o^
wmdy. we were every one on deck, walking up and down in pairs
^'iJ? '"".x^^,, °f *^' eaning over the side, or chatting in a lazy group to-
gether We had no lack of music, for one pla3-ed the accordion? another
the viohn. and another (who usually began at six o'clock a.m.) the kev-
bugle: tb^ combined effect of which instruments, when they all plaved
different, tunes in diiferent parts of the ship, at the same time, and
within hearing of each other, as they sometimes did (everybody being
intensely satisfied with his own performance), was sublimely hideous
When all of these means of entertainment failed, a sail would
heave m sight: looming, perhaps, the very spirit of a ship, in the
misty distance, or passing us so close that through our glasses we could
see the people on her decks, and easily make out her name, an d whither
she was bound. For hours together we could watch the dolphins and
porpoises as they rolled and leaped and dived around the vessel-
or those small creatures ever on the wing, the Mother Carey's
chickens, which had borne us company from New York bay and
for a whole fortnight fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some days
we had a dead calm, or very light winds, during which the crew
amused themselves with fishing, and hooked an unlucky dolphin who
expired, m all his rainbow colours, on the deck: an event of'«nch
importance in our barren calendar, that afterwards we dated from
the dolphin, and made the day on which he died, an era.

Besides ail this, when we were five or six days out, there began to be
much talk of icebergs, of whicli wandering islands an unusual number
had been seen by the vessels that had come into New York a day or
two before we left that port, and of whose dangerous neighbourhood
we were warned by the ' udden coldness of the weather and the
sinking of the mercury in tho barometer. While these tokens lasted

%?°"^ .!'■?"* "' ' ^^^"' ^"^^ "^^^y ^^smal tales were whispered
alter dark, of ships th^ t had struck upon the ice and gone down in tb-
nighc; but tie wind obliging us to hold a southward course, wt saw
none of them., uid the weather soon grew bright and warm again.

Ihe obser ,at ; 1 ever^ day at noon, and the subsequent working of
the vessel s cpv,: .. war,, as may be supposed, a feature iu -.ur lix^es of
paraniount m portance; nor were there wanting (as there never are)
sagacious doubtei-, t. the captain's calculations, who. so soon as his
back was turned, would, in the absence of compasses, measure ^;>e
chart with bits of string, ^nd ends of pocket- h.. ndkerchiefs, and its
ot snuffers, and clcai iy prove him to be wrong bv an odd th .sand
miles or so. It was very ed.fying to see these unbelievers snak. their

heads an

not that

trusted t

Indeed, t

whom yc

quite pa]

tains eve

plate; an(

sails han^

and say. ^

they shre

It ever

wina won

shown bj

long a^ o.

respected

lievers as

' ard thrc

was in pre

we should

ship, a Sa

carried it

Sanguine (

Western (

he suppose

of sailing ^

life with J

affect desf

These w

vtas still ai

a hundred

know indi-i

deck wher*

and very o

and with v

what errar

were. The i

had charge

them had 1

and some h

they were 1

the passage

food, and ii

covered nej

secret close

whatever bi

in the after-

The who

American Notes i^^

nnf f w'\?'''T' ^"^ ^^^^ *^^"^ ^°^^ fo^th Strongly upon navigation

trusted the rL^"""- ^^y,'^^^ ^^""* ^*' ^"* thf t^hey aSs m° si
inni!? !^ P*''''' ''' ''^^"^ weather, or when the wind waradte?.^
Indeed, the mercury itself is not so variable as this class oTpasse™
whom you will see. when the ship is going noblv thmn^h fht \ '
quite pale with admiration. swea?ing that the cantlfn £.V T^ '

Srnd^^°""' r' ^^^^ ^-t-|attb^n>£^^^^^^^^^
plate and who. next morning, when the breeze has lulled and all fh^

nnh^""^ >f "^ "* ?^ ^^^" ^^' '''^^' their despondei^^ heads aia^

wi^=.^-i^r^.^^^

longa^o. ihe hrst mate, who whis ,ed for O- 7Aalr^„ol„ ^ f

respected for his perseverance, and was r^ga^ded even LTS Z^

ship, a Sanguine One. and a Despondent Onf The l^?Jr T T"^

„, l"?P°^ ? Cunard' steam-packet was now: a id what he thought

afiectdes^onden^rfSt^^pfa^Lrd'qu'etud''/ *°° "'^^ """^^-^ *°

v..^sSu:X^l!JreSL^^etr^^:rr^^^^^

a hundred passengers: a iSle worW of nowrt! h ^ ^^'''S'' "^"'^

ar. 1 -lu 1^^ °°' ^^ became curious to know their histnriP^

what"'r?ands t^T'*""™' '"7 ''^'^ '^°'"' °"* *° Imerlca at d on

ih<. whole system of shippmg and conveying these unfortunate

178

American Notes

persons, is one that stands in need of thorough revision. If any class
deserve to be protected and assisted by the Government, it is that
class who are banished from their native land in search of the bare
means of subsistence. All that could be done for these poor people
by the great compassion and humanity of the captain and officers
was done, but they require much more. The law is bound, at least
upon the English side, to see that too many of them are not put on
board one ship: and that their accommodations are decent: not
demoralising and profligate. It is bound, too, in common humanity, to
declare that no man shall be taken on board without his stock of pro-
visions being previously inspected by sonie proper officer, and pro-
nounced moderately suffxient for his support upon the voyage. It
is bound to provide, or to require that there be provided, a medical
attendant; whereas in these ships there are none, though sickness of
adults, and deaths of children, on the passage, are matters of the very
commonest occurrence. Above all it is the duty of any Government,
be it monarchy or republic, to interpose and put an end to that system
by which a firm of traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the
whole 'twcen-decks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched
people as they can lay liold of, on any terms they can get, without the
smallest reference to the conveniences of the steerage, the number of
berths, the slightest separation of the sexes, or anything but their
own immediate profit. I'^or is even this the worst of the vicious system:
for, certain crimping agents of these houses, who have a percentage on
all the passengers they inveigle, are constantly travelling about those
districts where poverty and discontent are rife, and tempting the
credulous into more misery, by holding out monstrous inducements
to emigration which can never be realised.

The history of every family we had on board was pretty much the
same. After hoarding up, and borrowing, and begging, and selling
everything to pay the passage, they had gone out to New York,
expecting to find its streets paved with gold; and had found them
paved with very hard and very real stones. Enterprise was dull;
labourers were not wanted; jobs of work were to be got, but the pay-
ment was not. They were coming back, even poorer than they went.
One of them was carrying an open letter from a young English artisan,
who had been in New York a fortnight, to a friend near Manchester,
whom he strongly urged to follow him. One of the officers brought it
tomeasacuri.^itv. "Thisisthe country, Jem," said the writer. "Hike
America. There :" ' .10 despotism here; that's the great thing. Employ-
ment of all sorts is going a-begging, and wages are capital. You have
only to choose a trade, J tin, and be it. I haven't made choice of one
yet, but I shall soon. At present I haven't quite made up my mind
whether to be a carpenter — or a tailor."

There was yet another kind ol passenger, and but one more, who,
in the calm and the iight winds, was a constant theme of conversation
and observation among us. This was an tuglisli sailor, a smart,
thorough-built, English man-of-war's-man from his hat to his shoes.

who wa

absence

himself 1

that bei

monev, 1

"He'd b(

Accordii

than he

crew, an

like a ca1

first at tf

everywh

sober gri

my own]

At len

earnest, i

slashing 1

of the spl

a furious

sense of j

how I lov

rushing c

about hei

mistress j

being nov

by day, £

homewan

cheerful 1

twenty-se

before us,

morning,

that ever

Dim sp

more chee

it seems t(

separable

shining or

extent of '.

veiling it i

the moon

of melancl

to comfort

having a f j

Heaven, t;

and this ol

tranquil ni

The win

still in the

American Notes

179

who was serving in the American navy, and having got leave of
absence was on h,s way home to see his friends. When he presented
himself to take and pay for his passage, it had been suggested to him
that being an able seaman he might as well work it and save the
monev but this piece of advice he very indignantly rejected: saying
He d be damned but for once he'd go aboard ship, as a gentlemln^'
Accordingly, they took his money, but he no sooner came aboard,
than he stowed his kit in the forecastle, arranged to mess with the
crew, and the very first time the hands were turned up. went aloft
like a cat, before anybody. And all through the passage there he was
first at the braces, outermost on the yards, perpetually lending a hand
everywhere, but always with a sober dignity in his manne?. and a
sober grin on his face, which plainly said. "I do it as a gentleman For
my own pleasure, mind you!"

At length and at last, the promised wind came up in right good
earnest, and away we went before it, with very stitch of canvas set
slashing through the water nobly. There was a grandeur in the motion
of the splendid ship, as overshadowed by her mass of sails, she rode at
a furious pace upon the waves, which filled one with an indescribable
sense of pride and exultation. As she plunged into a foaming vallev
how I loved to see the green waves, bordered deep with white conie
rushing on astern, to buoy her upward at their pleasure and curl
about her as she stooped again, but always own her for their hautrhtv
mistress still! On on we flew, with changing lights upon the water
being now in the blessed region of fleecy skies; a bright sun lighting us
by day, and a bright moon by night; the vane pointing directly
homeward, alike the truthful index to the favouring wind and to our
cheerful hearts; until at sunrise, one fair Monday morning— the
twenty-seventh of June. I shall not easily forget the day— there lav
before us. old Cape Clear. God bless it. showing, in the mist of early
morning, like a cloud: the brightest and most welcome cloud to us
that ever hid the face of Heaven's fallen sister— Home

Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the sunrise a
more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of human interest which
it seems to want at sea. There, as elsewhere, the return of day is in-
separable from some sense of renewed hope and gladness; but the light
shining on the dreary waste of water, and showing it in all its vast
extent of loneliness, presents a solemn spectacle, which even night
veiling It m darkness and uncertainty, does not surpass. The rising of
the moon IS more in keeping with the sohtary ocean; and has an air
of melancholy grandeur, which in its soft and gentle influence seems
to comfort while it saddens. I recollect when I was a very youiig child
having a fancy that the reflection of the moon in water was a path to
Heaven, trodden by the spirits of good people on their way to God-
and this old feeling often came over me again, when I watched it on a
tranquil night at sea.

i he wind was very light on this same Monday morning, but it was
still m the right quaiter, and so, by slow degrees, we left Cape Clear

Bf-

n ^ 1

i8o

American Notes

behind, and sailed along within sight of the coast of Ireland. And how
merry we all were, and how loyal to the George Washington, and how
full of mutual congratulations, and how venturesome in predictmg the
exact hour at which tve should arrive at Liverpool, may be easily
imagined and readily understood. Also, how heartily we drank the
captain's health that day at dinner; and how restless we became
about packing up: and how two or three of the most sangume spirits
rejected the idea of going to bed at all that night as something it was
not worth while to do, so near the shore, but went nevertheless, and
slept soundly; and how to be so near our journey's end. was like a
pleasant dream, from which one feared to wake.

The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on we went once
more before it gallantly: descrying now and then an English ship
going homeward under shortened sail, while we, with every inch of
canvas crowded on, dashed gaily past, and left her far behind. To-
wards evening, the weather turned hazy, with a drizzling rain; and
soon became so thick, that we sailed, as it were, in a cloud. Still we
swept onward like a phantom ship, and many an eager eye glanced up
to where the Look-out on the mast kept watch for Holyhead.

At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at the same moment
there shone out from the haze and mist ahead, a gleaming light,
which presently was gone, and soon returned, and soon was gone
again. Whenever it came back, the eyes of all on board, brightened and
sparkled like itself: and there we all stood, watching this revolving
light upon the rock at Holyhead, and praising it for its brightness
and its friendly warning, and lauding it, in short, above all other
signal lights that ever were displayed, until it once more glimmered
faintly in the distance, far behind us. . r ■

Then, it was time to fire a gun, for a pilot; and almost before its
smoke had cleared away, a little boat with a light at her mast-head
came bearing down upon us, through the darkness, swiftly. And
presently, our sails being backed, she ran alongside; and the hoarse
pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-coats and shawls to the very bridge
of his weather-ploughed-up nose, stood bodily among us on the deck.
And I think if that pilot had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an
indefinite period on no security, we should have engaged to lend it to
him, among us. before his boat had dropped astern, or (which is the
same thing) before every scrap of news in the paper he brought with
him had become the common property of all on board .

We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out pretty early
next morning. By six o'clock we clustered on the deck, prepared
to go ashore; and' looked upon the spires, and roofs, and smoke, of
Liverpool. By eight we all sat down in one of its Hotels, to eat and
drink together for the last time. And by nine we had shaken hands
all round, and broken up our social company for ever.

The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rattled through it,
like a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the fields (so suiall thy
looked !), the hedge-rows, and the trees; the pretty cottages, the beds

of floweri
known ol
in the she
the windi
tell, or pe

The uphc
system. I
proof and
The firs
cattle, wh(
in their tr
Institutior
which it is
howS' (ever
guilty heac

The secc
and sellers
end, own, i
deny the h(
as never w;
experience
at this or a
or foreign,
tion of thei
torture sla-'
sailed by an
the Freedoi
cruel; and >
America, is
despot than

The third
of all that d(
brook an eqi
tolerate a m
toonear;"w]
as a disgrace
rights can oi

It has bee
have been n
republic of A

American Notes jCj

tell, or pen of mine d"cribe ^* *"'"'"' '* •*'"' °° '""g^ "==>"

CHAPTER XVII

SLAVERY

The upholders of slavery in America n( th. t :■

which it is fraugMdaSers which h'^'^' the dangers to society with
hows^ .ever tardy in thefr comfn^ ^^^""^^ "^^'^^"^ ^^^^ ^^y be, or
guilty head, as irtheS:;^Tfud|mTnt'" '^ '"'^^" ^" ^^" "^^ ^^^
and'sdirof'sU^^^^^^^^ users, buyers

end. own. bre-d use bnv .n A n A^ ^^^^'^^ ^^^P*^^ has a bloody
deny the W^ors ofthe sy'^te^'r^^^^^^ 'f ^^^^^ -^° ^-^^ed!

as never was brouc^ht to bear on J^".! ^.h t''''^ ^ ""^'^ °* evidence

experience of everj day contXt^-^^^ '^ '^ ^"^ ^'^ '^^'''^ ^^"^

at this or any othTr moment^r.m/ immense amount; who would

or foreign, provided Th^HLffV''''f''^ America in a war. civil
tion of thd^rilht to p^^^^^^^^^ ^°^" ^"^ ^"d object the ^sser-

torture slaves. unque^tS^^edbv^"?' ^""^ *° ^^^P ^"^ ^°^k and
sailed by any humanTowerw>.o^ ^^ ^u""^"" authority, and unas-
the Freedom toTppr£Theirk?nd ^i^T^^ °^ ^^^^d°"^' ^^^n
cruel; and of whom everv man on b^^^ '^'^^^'' °^^^^^^^««' ^^d

America, is a more e7ac7inT^J 1 '''^'' ^'"°""^' ^^ ^-epublican
despot tlmnthrShphSaroLri^^^^^ I'f''''^^"'^ ^ ^^''^^ responsible
The third, and not theSt nli^f '" his angry robe of scarlet,
of all that delicate gentilitvu^irh!^.^ ^"^"^"tial. is composed
brook an eqrar^tto class w^^^ ^ ^"P^'^or. and cl^nnot

tolerate a man above me^a^^^^^ "I will not

toonear;"whosepride ?n'^ InnH? t.^^ ^^°'^' "°"^ "^^s* approach
as a disgrace S be minilte^.H^'^'K ^° ""^^^y ^^^itade is shunned
rights cL only hTve'Telr ~,rnC^^^^ ^^ose inalienable

halVriT/r.f 1".^^^^^^^^ in the un^'lling efforts wh..H

republic of inT;rica(:tmnrcauL'^^^^^^^^^ ^'^f" ^^"^^°°^ ^""tl*
d ^btrange cause for history to treat of!), sufficient

'(*•■

l82

American Notes

regard has not been had to the existence of the first class of persons;
and it has been contended that they are hardly used, in being con-
founded with the second. This is, no doubt, the case; noble instances
of pecuniary and personal sacrifice have already had their growth
among them; and it is much to be regretted that the gulf between
them and the advocates of emancipation should have been widened
and deepened by any means: the rather, as there are, beyond dispute,
among these slave-owners, many kind masters who are tender in the
exercise of their unnatural power. Still, it is to be feared that this
injustice is inseparable from the state of things with which humanity
and truth are called upon to deal. Slavery is not a whit the more
endurable because some hearts are to be found which can partially
resist its hardening influences; nor can the indignant tide of honest
wrath stand still, because in its onward course it overwhelms a few
who are comparatively innocent, among a host of guilty.

The ground most commonly taken by these better men among the
advocates of slavery, is this: "It is a bad system; and for myself I
would willingly get rid of it. if I could; most willingly. But it is not
so bad, as you in England take it to be. You are deceived by the
representations of the emancipationists. The greater part of my slaves
are much attached to me. You will say that I do not allow them to
be severely treated; but I will put it to you whether you believe that
it can be a general practice to treat them inhumanly, when it would
impair their value, and would be obviously against the interests of
their masters."

Is it the interest of any man to steal, to game, to waste his health
and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear hinself, indulge
hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder? No. All these are roads
to ruin. And why, then, do men tread them? Because such inclinations
are among the vicious qualities of mankind. Blot out, ye friends of
slavery, from the catalogue of human passions, brutal lust, cruelty,
and the abuse of irresponsible power (of all earthly temptations the
most difficult to be resisted), and when ye have done so, and not
before, we will inquire whether it be the interest of a master to lash
and maim the slaves, over whose lives aijd limbs he has an absolute

control !

But again: this class, together with that last one I have named, the
miserable aristocracy spawned of a false repubhc, lift up their voices
and exclaim "Public opirion is all-sufficient to prevent such cruelty
as you denounce." PuDlic ^pinion! Why, pubhc opinion in the slave
States is slavery, is it not? Public opinion, in the slave States, has
delivered the slaves over, to the gentle mercies of their masters.
Public opinion has made the laws, an J, denied the slaves legislative
protection. Publir opi.uon has knotted the lash, heated the brand-
ing-iron, loaded the rifle, and shielded the murderer. Public opinion
threatens the abolitionist with death, if he venture to the South; and
drags him with a rope about his middle, in broad unblushing noon,
through the first city in the East. l:^ubiic opinion has, within a few

years, burn<

public opini

able Judge

derers, that

being so, mt

made. Publii

and set the

influence, an

Public opi

ance over th

public opinic

their twelve

States, with

and forty-t\\

down the mo

for whose tas

protestations

Public opii

pressed by H

Washington.

Carolina, "I ]

house, and a

respect prevei

tion which ha

district of Co

South Carolin

chance shall 1

felon's death.

South Carolin;

can catch him,

of all the gove

we will HANG h

Public opini
ington, in that
liberty, any jt
passing down i
black man's pj
this man a run;
man of law wh
papers, warnin
to pay the jail
owner, it may £

IS SOLD TO REC

^gain, and agai
adviser, messen
into his case is i
liave served for
«o process, for i

American Notes

years, burned a slave aliv^ nf ^ d ^ • ^3

public opinion has to this dav m^nT,f ''^'" **"" "^ °' St. Louis; and
able Judge who eharged the^r"?;" tann "H !?'' """'='' *"••'' «^t™-
derers, that their most horrid deed waf an'ac?nf^''K,*° '"^ ^'' ""'^■
being so, must not be punished bvth^l, .1 "^Pu^hc opinion, and

■is:op'in^i:^,tLt-it^^^^^ ""^ " ■"^''' ^"
;=-nrtre',-^^^^^

their twelve States one hundred mLl °Tf'- They send from
States, with a free populatfon "eariv H. M ^'"1"= ^^^^ '""rteen free
and forty-two. Before whom do tw, S' '■'=*"™ >"■* '^ hundred

down the most humbly Tn whom do th '^T'''^"^''' candidates bow
tor whose tastes do thw cater Semo,?-,''"'," *'''=,'"°^"°"dly, and
protestations? The slavLwnis a1 "ays ^^'<'"°""y '" t^eir servile

pre^sL'^b^lti^o™' membe&t"t°hr^°" °' *^ '-■= S-'". - ex-
Washington. ■■! have aTSt resDect?-'« "'Representatives at
Carolina, "I have a greaf respect for t^e .h''- '=''''"■■ 1"°*'' North
house, and a great resnect fS L- "'"'"■ ''= ^n ofTicer of the

respect prevcnfs me f roTrusWng to^th^eTahr"^' , ".""''"S ""' «>at
■"?.": "^? •;- i-t been prest?fd fofthfat,?."i':^","A!!i^* Peti.

t'Siared'b:r,a^ !'?'i'i«--t ':: -ya

district of Columbia, to Dieros " "t x, ^ "- ^"'^

South Carolina/'ignorant fnfiiria'i^rl I'^IT'' *^^ abolitionists/' says
chance shall throw Tny of ?hem into n'^\"^"i ^' ^^^^ ^'^' ^^at^f
felon's death "—"Let nn al i^- ° °"^ ^^"*^s, he may expect a

South CaroHna," criel a'^hfrd'^^irCa^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^-^- of

can catch him, we will try him ^ndr^^f lul ' colleague; "and if we

of all the governments SeartinncrdTnlt?"^^^ ^'l^ interference
we will HANG him. " ' including the Federal government,

Public opinion has made this law t+ u j ,
jngton, in that city vvhich takes its n. ml f^' tu^Y^"^ *^^* ^^ Wash-
liberty, any justice of thrp^ace m^ . h T ^>l^?^^
passing down the street and tosThL^f "^'^^ ^^^^^'' ^"^ "^g^o
back man's part is necessary SeitTicf.^.^^'^^ «" «^«

this man a runaway: " and locks him nn P k1^'' • ^. "^^o^"^ *« think
man of law when this is done to^dv-^'^ ii ""^^ ""'""P^^""' ^^"
papers, warning his owner to ;nm. o f f ^ ^^^ "^^^^ ^^ the news-
to pay the jail fees But slpDoL^h^ claim him, or he will be sold
owner, it m4 naturally LSme^dthnV'if ^'"^ ^^^"^' ^"^ ^^^ "O

^S SOLD TO RECOMPENSE hTjIil^H ?hi. tlT' ^V^^^^^^' ^^^ «^

again, and again. He has no means o^nr. ^!^^ f^^e again, and
adviser, messenger or asei«f L?. ? proving his freedom; has no
into his case is rde^^rqu^r^iS^^^^^^^ ^f '" "° ---tigation'
We served for years, and bo,f.ht h" "^^^^^^^^ '"" "'^^' ^^° "^^^

no process, for no crime, and on no preteth/ edm^^^^^^^ ^

I PI

( !

* s

i84

American Notes

pay the jail fees. This seems incredible, even of America, but it is the
law.

Public opinion is deferred to, in such cases as the following: which
is headed in the newspapers: —

"Interesting Law-Case.

"An interesting case is now on trial in the Supreme Court, arising
out of the following facts. A gentleman residing in Maryland had
allowed an aged pair of his slaves, substantial though not legal
freedom for several years. While thus living, a daughter was born to
them, who grew up in the same liberty, until she m irried a free negro,
and went with him to reside in Pennsylvania. They had several chil-
dren, and lived unmolested until the original owner died, when his
heir attempted to regain them; but the magistrate before whom they
were brought, decided that he had no jurisdiction in the ca.se. The
owner seized the woman and her children in the night, and carried them
to Maryland."

"Cash for negroes, "cash for negroes," "cash for negroes," is the
heading of advertisements in great capitals down the long columns
of the crowded journals. Woodcuts of a runaway negro with manacled
hands, crouching beneath a bluff pursuer in top boots, who, having
caught him, gra.spshim by the throat, agreeably diversify the pleasant
text. The leading article protests against "that abominable and
hellish doctrine of abolition, which is repugnant alike to every law
of God and nature." The delicate mamma, who smiles her acquies-
cence in this sprij^htly writing as she reads the paper in her cool
piazza, quiets her youngest child who clings about her skirts, by
promising the boy "a whip to beat the little niggers with." — But the
negroes, little and big, are protected by public opinion.

Let us try this public opinion by another test, which is important
in three points of view: first, as showing how desperately timid of the
public opinion slave-owners are, in their delicate descriptions of
fugitive slaves in widely circulated newspapers; secondly, as showing
how perfectly contented the slaves are» and how very seldom they
run away; thirdly, as exhibiting their entir*^ freedom from scar,
or blemish, or any mark of cruel infliction, as their pictures are
drawn, not by lying abolitionists, but by their own truthful
masters.

The following are a few specimens of the advertisements in the
public papers. It is only four years since the oldest among them
appeared; and others of the same nature continue to be published
every day, in shoals.

"Ran away, Negress Caroline. Had on a collar with one prong
turned down."

"Ran away, a black woman, Betsy. Had an iron bar on her right

leg."

"Ran away, the negro Manuel. Much marked with irons."

American Notes

185

ne^ away, the negress Fanny, had on an iron band about her

"Wo,, •' """^'"6 a^ ring and chain on the left Ipw "

Ran away, a negro bov named TnrT.*»« c; .;!, L ^'

he left me." ^ "^"^^^ J '^"^es. Said boy was ironed when

marU.of ..sH.No'ln'd'L'i'rronstSert'^^'''' ''^"- "" ^^^=-'

she wntTff^'i'b^r^fherwUraZ: '"° ^"''l'''' ^ '^^ "ay. before
1 tried to mkketT letter M" "■°"' °" *'"' '*" ^''"^ °' '^<='- '^ce.

"Ran away, a negro man named Henry his left ev,. o„t .
iron, a dark on and under his left arm/an'd micrsell^r^^rSTh:

old! H^^'JZred°o'nTh^,^;!;,f ^. ^ "^°™ '<="-• »'-P«5'. 40 years

Committed to jail, a m sro man. Has no toes on the left foot -
exce^prtSge%"nT? """^" "^""'^ ^-l^^'- Has".:It"X toes

an;iJaLTv:?al^Tots^rhts^l'Jra?;\r^^^^^

thefeft"^'Lrw''ee';rfl,°e?ho°uld:rand^er^ '"^^T- 'J^^ "^^ =''°* '"
the left hand." shoulder and elbow, which has paralysed

in hfs'baSZfgSm" • " "''"^' '™°"- "^ »- "-n ^"ot badly.

his tetLtS e\ch'^:rm'S:de^?a"kn"f^^ f »' -''--"le scar across
goodness of God." " ^ ''"''*• '°™^ '° ta't much of the

"Twenty-five dollars reward for my man Isaac H„ h=.<.
W "Xi'- """ "^ ^ ^'""^ ^"^ °- orhl:?a^k":,t bTa"h°o?

eye, atooSnyS Sssta " fhettT' 'I^-^ t '■"="' ^^ -- "-
and forehead." m>ssmg, the letter A is branded on her cheek

andteflTg:^b:rnS"e/?v\dS'r"t^'^^^^ ''-'^•- »- *!>-">

^^"o:j^Ll\^-htiFSF~^^^

n^ht cheek, and We:'.^to"t^-Cnrrn^rwifh^^^^^^^^^^^^

"Ran away, a negro man named Ned Thrp<- nf hi. «
drawn into the palm of his hand bv . r.^H.^l^t?! ^.^""^^^^ '-?
bis neck, nearly half round, done by a kli'lfe/' " ^^"' "" '"^ ""^^^ ^*

1 ;

r,, ,,.,,,

5U -^^v^N^

iMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0

I.I

2.5

1 20

1.8

1.25 1.4

III 1-6

III

6" —

% >

Photographic

Sciences
Corporation

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.Y. MS80

(716) S72-4S03

i86

American Notes

Was committed to jail, a negro man. Says his name is Tosiah.
His back very much scarred by the whip; and branded on the thieh
and hips m thrte or four places, thus (JM). The rim oi his right ear
has been bit or cl t o€ . ' '

"Fifty dollars reward, for my fellow Edward . He has a scar on the
corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under his arm. and the letter
E on his arm."

"Ran away, negro boy EUie. Has a scar on one of his arms from
the bite of a dog."

"Ran away, from the plantation of James Surgette, the following
negroes: Randal, has one ear cropped; Bob, has lost one eye- Ken-
tucky Tom. has one jaw broken."

"Ran away. Anthon^r. One of his ears cut off. and his left hand cut
with an axe. '

"Fifty dollars reward for the negro Jim Blak'j. Has a piece cut out
of each ear, and the middle finger of the left hand cut off to the second
joint.

"Ran away, a negro woman named Maria. Has a scar on one side
of her cheek, by a cut. Some scars on her back."

"Ran away, the Mulatto wench Mary, Has a cut on the left arm,
a scar on the left shoulder, and two upper teeth missing. ' '

I should say. perhaps, in explanation of this latter piece of descrip-
tion, that among the other blessings which public opinion secures to
the negroes, is the common practice ci violently punching out their
teeth. To make them wear iron collars by day and night, and to
worry them with dogs, are practices almost too ordinary to deserve
mention.

"Ran away, my man Fountain. Has holes in his ears, a scar on the
right side of his forehead, has been shot in the hind parts of his lees
and IS marked on the back with the whip."

"Two hundred and fifty dollars reward for my negro man Jim He
IS much marked with shot in his right thigh. The shot entered on the
outside, halfway between the hip and knee joints."

•'Brought to jail, John. Left ear crept."

"Taken up, a negro man. Is very much scarred about the face and
body, and has the left ear bit off . " ,

"Ran away, a black girl, named Mary. Has a scar on her cheek
and the end of one of her toes cut off . "

"Ran away, my Mulatto woman, Judy. She has had her right arm
broke." °

"Ran away, my negro man, Levi. His left hand has been burnt
and I think the end of his forefinger is off. "

"Ran away, a negro man, named Washington. Has lost a part of
his middle finger, and the end of his little finger."

"Twenty-five dollars reward for my man John. The tip of his nose
IS bit off."

"Twenty-five dollars reward for the negro slave, Sally. Walks as
/AoM^A crippled in the back."

American Notes

187

;;Ran away, Joe Dennis. Has a small notch in one of his ears "
Ran away, negro boy, Jack. Has a small crop out of his left ear."

of tfe^ro'/each 0^''"'"' '^'"^' '"°^- "" ^ ^"^" ^^^ ^^ -*
While upon the subject of ears. I may observe that a distinguished
abolitionist in New York once received a negro's ear. which hS been
cut off dose to the head, in a general post letter. It was fomarded by
l^t^^^^^^ md.;pendent gentleman who had caused it trbeamp^^

I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms, and broken less
and gashed flesh, and missing teeth, and lacerated backs, and bSs
^n h?'.^"?^ ^'^^^' of red-hot irons innumerable: but as iky readers
mil be sufficiently sickened and repelled already, I will turn to an-
other branch of the subject, tuiiiioan

These advertisements, of which a similar collection might be made
for eyeiy year, and month, and week, and day; and which are cToUy
read m families as thmgs of course, and as a part of the current newl
and small-talk; will serve to show how very much the slaves pmfit by
puWic opinion, and how tender it is in their behalf. But it may be
worth while to inquire how the slave-owners, and the class of society
to which great numbers of them belong, defer to public opinion S
their conduct, not to their slaves but to each other; howThey aJe
accustomed to restrain their passions; what their bearing is amo^g

^I'^r^:^^: H ^f 1 "' '^"y- ^'' ^^''' °' S^^tl^' ^^^ther their S
customs be brutal sangumary. and violent, or bear the impress of
civilisation and refinement. xmpresb 01

That we may have no partial evidence from abolitionists in this
inquiry, either. I will once more turn to their own newspapers, and I
will confine myself, this time, to a selection- from paragraphs which
appeared from day to day. during my visit to Americl. Ld wh ch
refer to occurrences happenmg while I was there. The italics in these
extracts, as m the foregoing, are my own

hJl^^^ ""T^ "^'1 "°i t^"^ °''o"''' '* ^i" ^^ ^^^n- in territory actually
belon; ,g to legalised Slave ^tates, though most, and those the verV
worst among them, did, as ti eir counterparts constantly do but the
position of tne scenes of action in reference to places immediately at
hand, where slavery is the law; and the strong resemblance between
that class of outrages and the rest; lead to the just presumption that
the character of the parties concerned was foimed in slave districts,
and brutalised by slave customs. =«-^i^i»,

"Horrible Tragedy.

thl H'on'rhfr?^ l^'^'^'^P^^ Telegraph, Wisconsin, we learn that
the Hon. Charles C. P. Amdt. Member of the Council for Brown
county w^ shot dead on the floor of the Council chamber, by Tames R
Vmyard. Member fron. Grant county. The affair grew out of a nominal

1 ll

riii-i

American Notes

i88

—L^'bfM/ AmdtTv'^- ^'- ^- S- ^-k- was nominated and
wiJ? ? i^L^ . ^*- ^^^^ nomination was opposed bv Vinvard
who wanted the appomtment to vest in his own brother In the course
of debate the deceased made some statements which Vinvard
pronounced alse. and made use of violent and insulth^?langTaJe
deahng largely m personalities, to which Mr. A. made no repi v^Af L;
to" ^ttcTS f • ^ ^*!PP^^up to Vinyard. and r^quSfed h S
to retract which he refused to do, repeating the offensive words

"The Wisconsin Tragedy.

r.i'If ""^^f indignation runs high in the territory of Wisconsin in
relation to the murder of C. C. P. Arndt, in the Legislative HauS the
Territory. Meetings have been held in different counties of V^ consfn
denouncing A. practice of secretly bearing arms intheuluSe

TaTes R t^^'^'^^f^' "^' ^^"^ ^^^" *^^ ^^^^"^^ of thfex^flstn of

M. A '^! ^1, *^' ^^'^ expulsion by those who saw Vinvard kill

^^' .^n" 1 .'S *^' P'"'"^"^ °* ^^^ ^^^^ f^*h^^' who was on a visftTo s^e
his son httle dreammg that he was to witness his murder /wS^
Dunn has dtscharged Vinyard on bail The Mraer's Fre? Press' spSs
in terms of merited rebuke at the outrage upon the feeW^ !5 ?il
people of Wisconsin. Vinyard was withif arn^^s length of M^^^ Arndt
when he took such deadly aim at him. that he never spokfviWrd

c"hot\?k^ilrhr''''^^^^ ^° "^^^' ^^^^ ^^^y wounderh^ra

"Murder.
"By a letter in a St. Louis paper of the 14th, we notice a terriblf^
outrage at Burlington. Iowa. A Mr. Bridgman having had difl^uttv
with a citizen of the place. Mr. Ross; a brother-in4aw of the iSter
provided himself with one of Colt's revolving pistols mi Mr ^Z
the street, and discharged the contents of five ojKebar^eTat fun ea2
shot takvng effect. Mr. B.. though horribly wounded ^d dvin/
returned the fire, and killed RosJ on the spot." ^ ^'

"Terrible Death of Robert Potter.

A "S^TJ'H® '^f i^° Gazette.' of the 12th inst.. we learn the friehtful
death of Colonel Robert Potter. ... He was beset in h^ house bv an
enemy, named Rose. He sprang from his couch, seized ht gun, and!

American Notes

189

in his night-clothes, rushed from the house. For about two hundred
yards his speed seemed to defy his pursuers; but, gpftina pnfan^^lpH
m a thicket, he was captured. Rose told him that he intended to acta
generous part, and give him a chance for his life. He then told Potter
he might run. and he should not be interrupted till he reached a cer-
tain distance. Potter started at the word of command, and before a
gun was fired he had reached the lake. Kis first impulse was to jump
in the water and dive for it. which he did. Rose was close behind him
and formed his men on the bank ready to shoot him as he rose In a
few seconds he came up to breathe; and scarce had his head reached
the surface of the water when it was completely riddled with the shot
of their guns, and he sunk, to rise no more !"

"Murder in Arkansas.
"We understand that a severe rencontre came off & few days since in
the Seneca Nation, between Mr. Loose, the sub-agent of the mixed
band of the Senecas. Quapaw, and Shawnees, and Mr. James Gillespie
of the mercantile ' im of Thomas G. Allison and Co., of Maysville'
Benton, County Ark. in which the latter was slain with a bowie-knife'
Some difficulty had for some time existed between the parties It is
said that Major Gillespie brought on the attack with a cane. A severe
conflict ensued, during which two pistols were fired by Gillespie and
one by Loose. Loose then stabbed Gillespie with one of those never-
failmg weapons, a bowie-knife. The death of Major G. is much
regretted, as he was a liberal-minded and energetic man. Since the
above was in type, we have learned that Major Allison has stated to
some of our citizens in town that Mr. Loose gave the first blow. We
forbear to give any particulars, as the matter will be the subject of
judicial investigation."

"Foul Deed.

"The steamer Thames, just from Missouri river, brought us a hand-
bill offering a reward of 500 dollars, for the person who assassinated
Lilbum W. Baggs, late Governor of this State, at Independence on
the night of the 6th inst Governor Baggs. it is stated in a written
memorandum, was not dead, but mortally wounded.

"Since the above was written, we received a note from the clerk of
the Thames, giving the f. )llowing particulars. Gov. Baggs was shot
by some villain on Friday, 6th inst., in the evening, while sittmg in a
room in his own house in Independence. His son, a boy, hearing a
report, ran into the room, and found the Governor sitting in his chair
with his jaw fallen down, and his head leaning back; on discovering
the injury done to his father, he gave the alarm. Foot tracks were
found m the garden below the window, and a pistol picked up sup-
posed to have been overloaded, and thrown from the hand of the
scoundrel who fired it. Tliree buck shots of a heavy load, took effect-

IQO

American Notes

one going through his mouth, one into the brain, and another
probably in or near the brain; all going into the back part of the neck
and head. The Govemox was still alive on the morning of the 7th;
but no hopes for his recovery by his friends, and but slight hopes
from his physicians.

"A man was suspected, and the Sheriff most probably has posses-
sion of him by this time.

"The pistol was one of a pair stolen some days previous from a
baker in Independence, and the legal authorities have the descrip-
tion of the other." ^

"Rencontre.

"An unfortunate affair took place on Friday evening in Chatres
Street, in which one of our most respectable citizens received a danger-
ous wound, from a poignard, in the abdome;i. From the Bee (New
Orleans) of yesterday, we learn the following particulars. It appears
that an article was published in the !• rench side of the paper on Mon-
day last, containing some strictures on the Artillery Battalion for
firing their guns on Sunday morning, in answer to those from the
Ontario and Woodbury, and thereby much alarm was caused to the
families of those persons who were out all night preserving the peace
of the city. Major C. Gaily, Commander of the battalion, resenting
this, called at the office and demanded the author's name; that of
Mr. P. Arpin was given to him. who was absent at the time. Some
angry words then passed with one of the proprietors, and a challenge
followed; the friends of both parties tried to arrange the affair, but
failed to do so. On Friday evening, about seven o'clock. Major Gaily
met Mr. P. Arpin in Chatres Street, and accosted him. 'Are vou
Mr. Arpin?' ^

'' 'Yes, sir,'

" 'Then I have to tell you that you are a ' (applving an

appropriate epithet).

" 'I shall remind you of your words, sir.'

.'.' .'"^"^ ^ ^^^^ ^^^'^ ^ would break my cane on your shoulders.'
'' 'I know it. but I have not yet received the blow.'
"At these words, Major Gaily, having ^ cane in his hands, struck
Mr. Arpin across the face, and the latter drew a poignard from his
pocket and stabbed Major Gaily in the abdomen.

"Fears are entertained that the wound will be ir ortal. We under-
stand that Mr. Arpin has given security for his appearance at the
Criminal Court to answer the charge."

"On the 27th ult.
Mississippi, between

'Affray in Mississippi.

m an affray near Carthage, Leake county,

James Cottingham and John Wilbum, the

latter was shot by the former, and so horribly wounded, that there

American Notes

191

was^no hope of his recovery. On the 2nd instant, there was an affray
at ^arthage between A. C. Sharkey and George Goff. in which the
latter was shot, and thought mortally wounded. Sharkey delivered
himrcU up to the authorities, but changed his mind and escaped!''

"Personal Encounter.
"An encounter took place in Sparta, a few days since, between the
barkeeper of an hotel, and a man named Bury. It appears that Burv
had beconie somewhat noisy, and that the barkeeper, determined to
preserve order, had threatened to shoot Bury, whereupon Bury drew a
pistol and shot the barkeeper down. He was not dead at the last
accounts, but slight hopes were entertained of his recovery."

"Duel.
"The clerk of the steamboat Tribune informs us that another duel
was fought on Tuesday last, by Mr. Robbins, a bank officer in Vicks-
burg, and Mr. Fall, the editor of the Vicksburg Sentinel. According
to the arrangement, the parties had six pistols each, which, after the
word Fire! they were to discharge as fast as they pleased. Fall fired
two pistols without effect. Mr. Robbins' first shot took effect in Fall's
thigh, who fell, and was unable to continue the combat."

"Affray in Clarke County.

"An unfortimate affray occurred in Clarke County (Mo.), near
Waterloo, on Tuesday the 19th ult., which originated in settling the
partnership concerns of Messrs. M'Kane and M'/ Ulster who had been
engaged m the business of distilling, and resulted in the death of the
latter who was shot down by Mr. M'Kane. because of his attempting
to take possession of seven barrels of whiskey, the property of
M Kane, which had been knocked off to M'AUister at a sheriff's sale
at one dollar per barrel. M'Kane immediately fled and at the latest
dates had not been taken.

"This unfortunate affray caused considerable excitement in the
neighbourhood, as both the parties were men with large families
depending upon them and stood well in the community."

I will quote but one more paragraph, which, by reason of its
monstrous absurdity, may be a relief to these atrocious deeds.

"Affair of Honour.

"^^ ?*^y® ^"^* ^^^^^ *^^ particulars of a meeting which took place
on bix Mile Island, on Tuesday, between two young bloods of our
city: Samuel Thurston, aged fifteen, and William Hine, aged thirteen
years. Thev wptp nftPTiri*>/i K,r ,,«„«« «^^4.i _ii ^i..

' ^^^^ j'j'^^r*, a.x.i.Kx YYiiiictm nme, agea mtrteen

Ihey were attended by young gentlemen of the same age.

192

American Notes

The weapons used on the occasion, were a couple of Dickson's best
rifles; the distan'^e, thirty yards. They took one fire, without any
damage being sustained by either party, except the ball of Thurston's
gun passing through the crown of Mine's hat. Through the intercession
of the Board of Honour, the challenge was withdrawn, and the differ-
ence amicably adjusted."

If the reader will picture to himself the kind of Board of Honour
which amicably adjusted the difference betVveen these two little
boys, who in any other part of the world would have been amicably
adjusted on two porter's backs and soundly flogged with birchen
rods, he will be possessed, no doubt, with as strong a sense of its
ludicrous character, as that which sets me laughing whenever its
image rises up before me.

Now, I appeal to every human mind, imbued with the commonest
of common sense, and the commonest of common hunanity; to all
dispassionate, reasoning creatures, of any shade of opinion; and ask,
with these revolting evidences of the state of society which exists in
and about the slave districts of America before them, can they have
a doubt of the real condition of the slave, or can they for a moment
make a compromise between the institution or any of its flagrant, fearful
features, and their own just consciences? Will they say of any tale of
cruelty and horror, however aggravated in degree, that it is improb-
able, when they can turn to the public prints, and, running, read
such signs as these, laid before them by the men who rule the slaves:
in their own acts and under their own hands?

Do we not know that the worst deformity and ugliness of slavery are
at once the cause and the effect of the reckless license taken by these
freeborn outlaws? Do we not know that the man who has been born
and bred among its wrongs; who has seen in his childhood husbands
obliged at the word of command to flog their wives; wome- inde-
cently compelled to hold up their own garments that men might lay
the heavier stripes upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal
overseers in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field
of toil, under the very lash itself; who has read in youth, and seen his
virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, and
their disfigured persons, which could not be published elsewhere, of so
much stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts: — do we not know
that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal
savage? Do we not know that as he is a coward in his domestic life,
stalking among his shrinking men and women slaves armed with his
heavy whip, so he will be a coward out of doors, and carrying
cowards' weapons hidden in his breast, will shoot men down and
stab them when he quarrels? And if our reason did not teach us this
and much beyond; if we were such idiots as to close our eyes to that
fine mode of training which rears up such men; should we not know
that they who among their equals stab and pistol in the legislative
halls, and in the counting-house, and on the market-place, and in all

American Notes

>n's best
out any
urston's
ircession
e differ-

Honour
vo little
micably
birchen
se of its
ever its

imonest
y; to all
ind ask,
3xists in
ey have
moment
t, fearful
y tale of
improb-
ig, read
B slaves:

very are
by these
sen born
usbands
V , inde-
ight lay
y brutal
the field
seen his
ten, and
ire, of so
Dt know
a brutal
stic life,
with his
carrying
•wn and
1 us this
i to that
Dt know
^islative
ad in all

193

the elsewhere peaceful pursuits of life, must be to their dependants,
even though they were free servants, so many merciless and unrelent-
ing tyrants.?

What ! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of Ireland,
and mince the matter when these American taskmasters are in
question? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those who ham-
string cattle: and spare the lights of Freedom upon earth who notch
the ears of men and women, cut pleasant posies in the shrinking flesh,
learn to write with pens of red-hot iron on the human face, rack their
poetic fancies for liveries of mutilation which i heir slaves shall wear
for life and carry to the grave, breaking living limbs as did the soldiery
who mocked and slew the Saviour of the world, and set defenceless
creatures up for targets ! Shall we whimper over legends of the tor-
tures practised on each other by the Pagan Indians, and smile upon
the cruelties of Christian men ! Shall we, so long as these things last,
exult above the scattered remnants of that race, and triumph in the
white enjoyment of their possessions? Rather, for me, restore the
forest and the Indian village; in lieu of stars and stripes, let some
poor feather flutter in the breeze; replace the streets and squares by
wigwams; and though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors
fill the air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave.

On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes, and in respect
of which our national character is changing fast» let the plain Truth be
spoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat about the bush by hinting
at the Spaniard and the fierce Italian. When knives are drawn by
Englishmen in conflict let it be said and known: "We owe this change
to Republican Slavery. These are the weapons of Freedom. With
sharp points and edges such as these. Liberty in America hews and;
hacks her slaves; or, failing that pursuit, her sons devote them to a
better use, and turn them on each other.' '

CHAPTER XVIII

CONCLUDING REMARKS

There are many passages in this book, where I have been at some
pains to resist the temptation of troubling my readers with my own
deductions and conclusions: preferring that they should judge for
themselves, from such premises as I have laid before them. My only
object in the outset, was, to carry them with me faithfully whereso-
ever I went: and that task I have discharged.

But I may be pardoned, if on such a theme as the general character
of the American people, and the general character of their social
system, as presented to a stranger's eyes, I desire to express my own
opinions in a few words, before I bring these volumes to a close.

325

^ ' !

Ij ; ■ t\

194

American Notes

They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable, and affec-
tionate. Cultivation and refinement seem but to enhance their warmth
of heart and ardent enthusiasm; and it is the possession of these latter
qualities in a most remarkable degree, which renders an educated
American one of the most endearing and most generous of friends. I
never was so won upon, as by this class; never yielded up my full
confidence and esteem so readily and pleasurably, as to them; never
can make again, in half a year, so many friends for whom I seem to
entertain the regard of half a life.

These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to the whole
people. That they are, however, sadly sapped and blighted in
their growth among the mass; and that there are influences at work
which endanger them still more, and give but little present pronise
of their healthy restoration; is a truth that ought to be told.

It is an essential part of every national character to pique itself
mightily upon its faults, and to deduce tokens of its virtue or its
wisdom from their very exaggeration. One great blemish in the
popular mind of America, and the prolific parent of an innumerable
brood of evils, is Universal Distrust. Yet the American citizen plumes
himself upon this spirit, even when he is sufficiently dispassionate
to perceive the ruin it works; and will often adduce it, in spite of his
own reason, as an instance of the great sagacity and acuteness of
the people, and their superior shrewdness and independence.

"You carry," says the stranger, "this jealousy and distrust into
every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy men from your
legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the
suffrage, who, in their very act, disgrace your Institutions and your
people's choice. It has rendered you so fickle, and so given to change
that your inconstancy has passed into a proverb; for you no sooner
set up an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down, and dash it
into fragments: and this, because directly you reward a benefactor,
or a public servant, you distrust him, merely because he is rewarded;
and immediately apply yourself to find out, either that you have been
too bountiful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in his deserts.
Any man who attains a high place among you, from the President
downwards, may date his downfall f rom^that moment; for any printed
lie that any notorious villain pens, although it militate directly
against the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once to your
distrust, and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way of trust-
fulness and confidence, however fairly won and well deserved; but
you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if they be laden with un-
worthy doubts and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, or likely
toelevate the character of the govemorsor the governed, among you?"

The answer is invariably the same: "There's freedom of opinion
here, you know. Every man thinks for himself, and we are not to be
easily overreached. That's how our people come to be suspicious."

Another prominent feature is the love of "smart" dealing: which
gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defal-

American Notes

id affec-
warmth
!se latter
educated
riends. I
my full
n; never
seem to

le whole
;hted in
at work
pro)nise

ue itself
le or its
1 in the
merable
L plumes
ssionate
te of his
eness of

ust into
Dm your
for the
nd your
> change
sooner
dash it
lefactor,
warded;
ive been
deserts,
resident
printed
directly
to your
of trust-
eed; but
vith un-
>r likely
igyou?"
opinion
ot to be
ous."
;: which
a defal-

195

cation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head
up with the best, who well deserves a halter; though it has not been
without a retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a
few years to impair the public credit, and to crippl.' the public
resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected in a
century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a
successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or h's observance of the
golden rule, "Do as you would be done by," but are considered with
reference to their smartness. I recollect, on both occasions of our pa- -
sing that ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remarking on the bad
effects such gross deceits must have whf n they exploded, in generating
a want of confidence abroad, and diboouraging foreign investment:
but I was given to understand that this was a very smart scheme by
which a deal of money had been made: and that its smartest feature
was, that they forgot these things abroad, in a very short time, and
speculated again, as freely as ever. The following dialogue I have held
a hundred times: "Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance that such
a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a large property by the most
infamous and odious means, and notwithstanding all the crimes of
which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by your
Citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not?" "Yes, sir." "A convicted
liar?" "Yes, sir." "He has been kicked, and cuffed, and caned?"
"Yes, sir." "And he is utterly dishonourable, debased, and profligate?"
"Yes, sir." "In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit?" "Well,
«ir, he is a smai t man."

In like manner, all kinds of deficient and impolitic usages are
referred to the national love of trade; though, oddly enough, it
would be a weighty charge against a foreigner that he regarded the
Americans as a tradint' r»- ,oi The love of trade is assigned as a

■•tom, so very prevalent in country
! hotels, having no fireside of their
• morning until late at night, but
' trade is a reason why the litera-
'er unprotected: "For we are a
trading people, and don't care iox ^.^etry:" though we do, by the way,
profess to be very proud of our poets: while heal; 'if ul amusements]
cheerful means of recreation, and wholesome fancies, must fade betoie
the stem utilitarian joys of trade.

These three characteristics are strongly presented at every turn,
full in the stranger's view. But. the foul growth of America has a
more tangled mot than this; and it strikes its fibres, deep in its
licentious Press.

Schools may be erected. East, West, North, and South; pupils be
taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands;
colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be
diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the
land with giant strides: but -vhile the newspaper press of America is
in, or near, its present abject state, high moral improvement in that

reason for that comfc
towns, of married pers
own, and seldom meeti.
at the hasty public mea
ture of America is to re-.^-

mmmmmmnKm

196

American Notes

hi!

country is hopeless. Year by year, it muj»t and will go back; yeur by
year, the tone ot public feeling must 8i» < lower down; year by year,
the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all
decent men; and year by year, the memory of the Great Fathers of the
Revolution must be outraged more and more, in the bad life of their
degenerate chilr!. »

Among (.he herd of journals which are published in the States, there
are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and credil .
Fron'4 personal intercourse with accompiished gentlemen connected
with publications of this class, I have derived both pleasure and
profit. But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion; and
the influence of the good, is powerless to counteract the moral poison
of the bad,

Among the gentiy of America; among the well-informed and
moderate: in the learned professions; at the bar and on the bench:
there is, as there can bo, but one opinion, in reference to the vicious
character of these infamous journals. It is dometimei contended—
I will not say str&ngely, for it is natural to seek excu 'js for such a
disgraco -that their influence is not so great as a visitor would sup-
pose. I must be pardoned for saying that there is no wan ^nt for this
plea, and that every fact and circumstance tends directly to the
opposite conclusion.

When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character,
can climb to any pubUc distinction, no matter what, in America,
without first grovelling down upon the earth, and benuing the knee
before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe
from its attacks; when any social confidence is leit unbroken by it,
or any tie of -'ociai decency and honour is held in the least regard;
when any man in that free country has freedom of opinion, and pre-
sumes to think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble
reference to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base
dishonesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart; when those
who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the
nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set their
heeh upon, and crush it openly, in the sight of all men: then, I will
believe that its influence is lessening, apd men are returning to their
manly senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in every hous ?, and
its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a president to
a postman; while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is
the standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their read-
ing in a newspaper, or they will not read at aU; so long must its odium
be upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works, be
plainly vi'i)le in the Republic.

To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to
the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe; to those who are
accustomed to anything else in print and paper; it would be impossible,
without an amount of extract for wliich I have neither space nor in-
clination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in

Aiuciican Notes

197

Americft. Bat if any man desire confirnia<'> , i'my statement on
thi!» head, let him repair to any place in Via -My of London, wher«
scattered numbers of these publications aie to \e found; and there,
let him form his own opinion.*

I*, would be welJ, there can be rio doubt, for the American people
as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal somewhat more.
It would be well, if there were greater encouragement to lighti ^ss of
heart and gaiety, and a wider cultivation of what is »>eautiful, without
being eminently and directly useful. But here, I think the general
remonstrance, "we are new country," which is so often advanced as
an excuse for defects which are quite unjustifiable, as l>eing, of right,
CMily the slow growth of an old one, may be very reasonably urged:
and I yet hope to hear of there being some other national amusement
in the United States, besides newspaper politics.

Thny certainly are not a humorous pc^ople, and *heir temperament
always impressed me as being of a dull and gloomy character. In
shrewdness of remark, and a certaiii cast-iron quaintness, the Yan-
kees, -^r people of New England, unquestionably take the lead; as they
do in most other evidences of intelligence. But in travelling about,
out of the large cities — as I have re»r ..r'<ed in former parts of these
volumes — I was quite oppressed b} '.ic prevailing seriousness and
melancholy air of business: which was so general and unvarying, that
at every new town I came to, I seemed to meet the very same people
whom I had left behind me, at the last. Such defects as are perceptible
in the national manners, seem, to me, to be referable, in a great
degree, to this en se: which has generated a dull, sullen persistence
in coeirse usages, and rejected the graces of life as undeserving of
attention. There is no doubt that Washington, who was always
most scrupulous and exact on points of ceremony, perceived the
tendency towards this mistake, even in his time, and did his utmost
to correct it.

I cannot hold with other writeiS on these subjects that the pre-
valence of various forms of dissent in America, is in any way attri-
butable to the non-existence there of an established church: indeed,
I think the temper of the people, if it admitted of such an Institution
being founded amongst them, would lead them to desert it, as a
matter of course, merely because it was established. But, supposing
it to exist, I doubt its probable efficacy in summoning the wandering
sheep to one great fold, simply because of the immense amount of
dissent which prevails at home; and because I do not find in America
any one form of religion with which we in Europe, or even in England,
are unacquainted. Dissenters resort thither in great numbers, as other
people do, simply because it is a land of resort, and great settlements

*NOTE TO TUE Original Edition. — '3r let him refer to c^a able, an J pfcrtertly
truthful article, in The Foreign Quarterly Review, published in the present nioiith
of October, to which my attention has been attracted, since these sheets have been
passing through the press. He will find some specimens there, by no mean.-, remark-
able to any man wiio has been in America, but sufficiently striking to one who has
not.

< !il

VfM\i

198

American Notes

■

of them are founded, because ground can be purchased, and towns and
villages reared, where there were none of the human creation before.
But even the Shakers emigrated from England; our country is not
unknown to Mr. Joseph Smith, the apostle of Mormonism, or to his
benighted disciples; I have beheld religious scenes myself in some of
our populous towns which can hardly be surpassed by an American
camp-meeting; and I am not aware that any instance of superstitious
imposture on the one hand, and superstitious credulity on the other,
has had its origin in the United States, which we cannot more than
parallel by the precedents of Mrs. Southcote, Mary Tofts the rabbit-
breeder, or even Mr. Thorn of Canterbury: which latter case arose,
some time after the dark ages had passed away.

The Republican Institutions of America undoubtedly lead the
people to assert their self-respect and their equality; but a traveller is
bound to bear those Institutions in his mind, and not hastily to resent
the near approach of a class of strangers, who, at home, would keep
aloof. This characteristic, when it was tinctured with no foolish pride,
and stopped short of no honest service, never offended me; and I very
seldom, if ever, experienced its rude or unbecoming display. Once or
twice it was comically developed, as in the following case; but this was
an amusing incident), and not the rule, or near it.

I wanted a pair of boots at a certain town, for I had none to travel
in, but those with the memorable cork soles, which were much too
hot for the fiery decks of a steamboat. I therefore sent a message to
an artist in boots, importing, with my compliments, that I should be
happy to see him, if he would do me the polite favour t*^ call. He very
kindly returned for answer, that he would "look round" at six o'clock
that evening.

I was lying on the sofa, with a book and a wine-glass, at about that
time, when the door opened, and a gentleman in a stiff cravat, within
a year or two on either side of thirty, entered, in his hat and gloves;
walked up to the loo:dng-glass; arranged his hair; took off his gloves;
slowly produced a measure from the uttermost depths of his coat-
pocket and requested me, in a languid tone, to "unfix" my straps. I
complied, but looked with some curiosity at his hat, which was still
upon his head. It might have been that, or it might have been the
heat — but he took it off. Then, he sat himself down on a chair oppo-
site to me; rested an arm on each knee; and, leaning forward very
much, took from the ground, by a great effort, the specimen of metro-
politan workmanship which I had just pulled off: whistling, pleas-
antly, as he did so. He turned it over and over; surveyed it with a
contempt no language can express; and inquired if I wished him to
fix me a boot like that? I courteously replied, that provided the boots
were large enough, I would leave the rest to him; that if convenient
and practicable, 1 should not object to their bearing some resemblance
to the model then before him; but that I would be entirely guided by,
and would beg to lea', c the whole subject to, his judgment and dis-
cretion. "You an't partickler, about this scoop in the heel, I suppose

)wns and
n before.
:y is not
or to his
sonie of
Linerican
Tstitious
lie other,
ore than
e rabbit-
se arose,

lead the
iveller is
to resent
uld keep
sh pride,
id I very
. Once or
; this was

to travel
nuch too
3ssage to
hould be
He very
X o'clock

)out that
,t, within
d gloves;
is gloves;
his coat-
straps. I
was still
been the
lir oppo-
ard very
3f metro-
g, pleas-
it with a
d him to
the boots
nvenient
jmblance
iided by,

1 ,i:^

ixiiu. uis-

'. suppose

American Notes

199

then?" says he: "we don't foller that, here." I repeated my last
observation. He looked at himself in the glass again; went closer to
It to dash a grain or two of dust out of the corner of his eye- and
settled his cravat. All this tine, my leg and foot were in the air
"Nearly ready, sir ?" I inquired. "Well, pretty nigh," he said; "keep
steady. I kept as steady as I could, both in foot and face; and having
by this time got the dust out, and found his pencil-case, he measured
me. and made the necessary notes. When he had finished, he fell into
his old attitude, and taking up the boot again, mused for some time.
And this." he said, at last, "is an English boot, is it? This is a London
boot, eh?" "That, sir." I replied, "is a London boot." He mused over
it again, after the manner of Hamlet with Yorick's skull; nodded his
head, as who should say. "I pity the Institi *ions that led to the pro-
duction of this boot!"; rose; put up his pencil, notes, and paper-
glancing at himself in the glass, all the time— put on his hat- drew
on his gloves very slowly; and finally walked out. When he had been
gone about a minute, the door reopened, and his hat and his head
reappeared. He looked round the room, and at the boot again, which
was still lying on the floor; appeared thoughtful for a minute- and
then said "Well, good artemoon." "Good afternoon, sir," said I: and
that was the end of the interview.

There is but one other head on which I wish to offer a remark; and
that has reference to the public health. In so vast a country, where
there are thousands of millions of acres of land yet unsettled and
uncleared, and on every rood of which, vegetable decomposition is
annually taking place; where there are so many great rivers, and such
opposite varieties of climate; there cannot fail to be a great amount
of sickness at certain seasons. But I may venture to sa5^ after con-
versing with many members of the medical profession in America,
that I am not singular in the opinion that much of the disease which
does prevail, might be avoided, if a few common precautions were
observed. Greater means of personal cleanliness, are indispensable
to this end; the custom of hastily swallowing large quantities of
animal food, three times a-day. and rushing back to sedentary pur-
suits after each meal, must be changed; the gentler sex must go more
wisely clad, and take more healthful exercise; and in the latter clause,
the males must be included also. Above all, in public institutions, and
throughout the whole of every town and city, the system of ventila-
tion, and drainage, and removal of impurities requires to be
thoroughly revised. There is no local Legislature in America which
may not study Mr. Chadwick's excellent Report upon the Sanitary
Condition of our Labouring Classes, with immense advantage.

I HAVE now arrived at the close of this book. I have little reason to
believe, from certain warnings I have had since I returned to England,
that it will be tenderly or favourably received by the American
i"-'i'-, a,iia a3 i nave vviiLLcii iiic iruxn m relation to the mass of
those who form their judgments and express their opinions, it will

it]

1
\

1 ;

, ft

lii

200 American Notes

be seen that I have no desire to court, by any adventitious means,
the popular applause.

It is enough for me, to know that what I have set down in these
pages, cannot cost me a single friend on the other side of the Atlantic,
who is, in anything, deserving of the name. For the rest, I put my
trust, implicitly, in the spirit in which they have been conceived and
penned; and I can bide my time.

I have made no reference to my reception, nor have I suffered it
to influence me in what I have written; for, in either case, I should
have offered but a sorry acknowledgment, compared with that I bear
within my breast, towards those partial readers of my former books,
across the Water, who met me with an open hand, and not with one
that closed upon an iron muzzle.

^ii t

THE END

POSTSCRIPT

^niL'^^l?^::'Ytrb;ZZn^r:^^''' *^ ^Sthof Apnl. ,868.
of the United States of Amer^aT^ac 'ZTS*^*^""^ 2* *« ^'^
among others: ■America, i mac . the followmg observations

ssi:'m%tnToS;'h:;^b^tre^tS^^^^^

ever and wheresoever to exnress mv w7h = !, "'^'^''sion, whatso-
second reception in ^rk^i^^^StoVj^XS^t^l-^Z^^' ,7

rh^ir^^n-rthe^raSht"^:?! i''^°' '""^^^^^^^^^^^^
side,-changes morarchaLes Xskal'l!^^^^^^^ '"' °" «"^^

land subdued and peopled chM»S in 'tS ^ i" *'' ^'"°'""' «*
changes in the growth o?' oSdtie 1^^^^°'/%'' °'^ "*'^^-
changes in the graces and ameni?[es of Ufe ^^ "-j' °' 'p^™8"'"°°.
out whose advancement no advancement ran fLt i ^"*- ■"'*■
Nor am I. beheve me so aSosantT, tl T ^^^ '^"^ "nywhere.

twentyyearstherehav;bLt3angesnmeT?thaflH'"/"t.""'^
to learn and no extreme impresS to S-r'r-^t *"^ , ° "^^
first. And this brings me to a tToininn ^..^"Tt , ''™ ' ^^ '^«''«

landed in the United^ra^eflast'rvlX^'^tservlT^'stri" sir '
though sometimes tempted to brpak if v,, 4. • ^ ^ ^*^^*^^ silence,
will, with your good kave take von nV n m reference to which I

Its mformation to be not strictly acLrate w,fh ri? l''^^'''"''^^

ever read m my present state of existence. tCs the Xonr Lh ^^
severance with which I Havp fnr ^r^r^L Z ZT ' vigour and per-

i:-JJ'.™p-^.'-yo^XTa"'t':Car7o^^^^^^^^^^^

^o^..^^y,uK:ii. sucn testimony to the gigantic chanapc ir^■^^^•~" '" T^
as I have hinted at to-nigh';. Also, fo^ecord l^af XlveVrhav"^

ilu
lis

202 Postscript

been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been
received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper,
hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the
privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here
and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and so
long as my descendants have any legal right in my books,' I shall
cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two
books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do
and cause to be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because
I regard it as an act of plain justice and honour."

I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay
upon them, and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness.
So long as this book shall last, I hope that they will form a part of it!
and will be fairly read as inseparable from my experiences and im-
pressions of America.

May, 1868.

Ch.\rles Dickens.

MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK

CHARLES DICKENS: Rorn 1812— Died 1870

Editor's V^te

Nothing needs to he added to the account given in the
following Life of Dickens, of how, in 1840, Dickens
started Master Humphrey's Clock ; and how — although
a regular weekly timekeeper — he stopped it in 1841.
There does not appear to he any discovery of originals
except of those characters which appear also in the
Pickwick Papers. Sam Weller's name was suggested
hy that of Sam Vale, an actor who, in a farce called
The Boarding House, took the part of a comic servant,
and who was given to what are now known as Sam-
Weller-isms — e.g., " 'most musical, most mollancholy !*
— as the cricket said when he heard the tea-kettle." The
identification of Tony Weller is disputed. This edition
is printed from the one carefully corrected by the author

in 1867-8.

si '"

imi^ ;!

' .?

P*!'k

f: -fin

■i»i w .ilWii mm t u mm

MASTER
HUMPHREY'S CLOCK

CHARLES DICKENS

IlLUSTRATED BY

H. K. BROWNE (PHIZ) A.
GEORGE CATTERMOLE

LONDON:
HAZELL, WATSON & VINEY, LTD.

i-i!

MAS

MAJ

The rea(
true, my
but if I s
should s]
and rega
connecte
residena
possible
set, that

I amn
kind are
my grea
life; — wl
matters
with me,
a time h

I live
bygone <
ladies, 1(
courtyai
that fail
that the
down. I
the echo
they we
rustling
to recog

Those
would d<
pie dwe]
hold it ii
by clun:
closets' i
ing pass

n i

[i i

MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK

> (

MASTER HUMPHREY. FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE
IN THE CHIMNEY-CORNER

The reader must not expect to know where I live. At present, it is
true, my abode may be a question of little or no import to anybody;
but if I should carry my readers with me, as I hope to do, and there
should spring up between them and me feelings of homely aftection
and regard attaching something of interest to matters ever so slightly
connected with my fortunes or my speculations, even my place of
residence might one day ha 'e a kind of charm for them. Bearing this
possible contingency in mind, I wish them to understand, in the out-
set, that they must never expect to know it.

I am not a churlish old man. Friendless I can never be, for all man-
kind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member of
my great family. But for many years I have led a lonely, solitary
life; — what wound I sought to heal, what sorrow to forget, originally,
matters not now; it is sufficient that retirement has become a habit
with me. and that I am unwilling to break the spell which for so long
a time has shed its quiet influence upon m^/ home and heart.

I live in a venerable suburb of London, in an old house which in
bygone days was a famous resort for many roysterers and peerless
ladies, long since departed. It is a silent, shady place, with a paved
courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe
that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and
that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and
down. I am the more confirmed in this belief, because, of late years,
the echoes that attend my walks have been less loud and marked than
they were wont to be; and it is pleasanter to imagine in them the-
rustling of silk brocade, and the light step of some lovely girl, than
to recognise in their altered note the failing tread of an old man.

Those who like to read of brilliant rooms and gorgeous furniture
would derive but little pleasure from a minute description of roy sim-
ple dwelling. It is dear to me for the same reason that they would
hold it in slight regard. Its worm-eaten doors, and low ceilings crossed
by clumsy beams; its walls of wainscot, dark stairs, and ^.^ing
closets; its small chambers, communicating with each other by wind-
ing passages or narrow steps; iia many nooks, scarce larger than its

209

! 11
i 1

210 Master Humphrey's Clock

basks in his long sleep and the "Jhtrr'v'", '" ""^ ''°'"<= ">« one
undisturbed. I haveTpleasu-e tZ ^i'^' *"' ''"''' '"<"" =«<="■■« and
many butterflies have ^prun. J the fi;«^°" ^ 'T T'"'^ ''"^' "ow
^Whl'^Tr';:^ """ -"er'o/thcs''e"'om wair '"'" "«" ^"" ^-

nc,^ht"ur?w" e?uri:u^^oTnS^wh:f *■ ^'"rr y-- "«<>• fe
why I lived so much abne As tTme we„Tn'„' ""'' *h™« I '^"me. and
unsatisfied on these ports' Ih^r^Z^^u °"'/"<l they still remained
extending for half a mi"e round a^d in'o^ r' °'^ P°P"'" '<'™'^"t.
Various rumours were drSed ?o " "pLjuXri Z" '"" ""''•
mfidel, a con urcr, a kidnapper of children a r»f„„^' '^ 'P^'' ='"

I^was the C^ect o^. suspicffi^^^^^^^^^^ ~

coStTlrc/rne^d^ra?^^^^^^^^^^ but. on the

to relent. I found my footstepTno TonV.r , ^^l!'* "'^P' ^^^X began
been before, and obLrved that ?i^^ ^""^^^f ^^ ^^^^ ^ad often
retreated, but would stlnd and I'Z T^"" ^"? '*^*^^"^" '^^ I^ng^r
I took tnis for a good omen amf w.if ^""^ T ^ P^'^^ ^^eir doors.
By degrees I begf n to mTe'fnenr^r^ patiently for better times,
chough they werl iust shv of fnl.l ^"^ong these humble folks: and
and L pass on In a ittUe t £. fh^' """"J"^ ^'^^ *^""^ "^^^ ^^Y^
would makeTpoTnt of ctminTin fh? Z^''"' ^ *^^^ *^"« ^^^^^ted
usual hour, and^rd or courtesl to m!^" kmT ^"^ ^^"^°^« ^^ the
within my reach and ran Iwavnn?^!' ^^^^^J^"' too. came timidly

heads and'^bade them be ?oodl^?L2oo^^^ ^ ?^"^^ ^^^^^

more familiar. From excUan^inl ml^f ^ 1'"^^ P^^P^^ ^0°" g^ew
neighbours. I graraUy l^caTe^^^^^^^ "^^J^^^-" ^''^ "^^ «' ^^'^

^nT^;s!si^b?h4SS-r^^^^^^

pi; e. to acknowledge no other nam^Vh.nW^ 7 ^^""^^ *" *bis
detractors. I was Ugly HumDhrev Whi t K^^^'P^^^y- ^'^^ "^Y
into friends. I was ^Sr SphrV and O^^^^^^^
length I settled down into plai Ser Humnhr.t ^^rP^'^^' ^""^
stood to be the title most Die- l^t^ Humphrey, which was under-

matter of course has ?tLoSe?LtsoZ.^.^'' ^"^u'° completely a
my morning walk in my S^oirtva^dT^T "^^^"J ^"^ *^^^»g
has a profound respeS for me andt^^d n^^^^^ ""^ barber-who

honours for the world4iow!ng forth on ihl' Ll"" '"f ' ^^"^^" "^>

touchingthestateof''M^?;rS^uS.v^Hr.,?^^^^^^^

1 -~ -_. .^.v.i, »"« v-uiiiiiiumcai-

Master Humphrey's Clock 211

I am a mis-shapen, deformed old man ^ pam— that

and It was summer weather —I am snr^ of fho^ s^«-"er m a garcien,

IP.

ii n

1.1 . 1

^-f-.--

212 Master Humphrey's Clock

Well, well,— all these sorrows are past. My glancing at them mav
not be Without its use, for it may help in some meilre to expTaln

^^L ^""^^S^^ "Z^ ^^^ ^"" ^"^^^^^ t« the inanimatHwects thS
peopl.e my chamber, and how I have come to look upon tSm rather
in the hght of old and constant friends, than as mere chTirs a«d
tables which a little money could replac^ at will ^

compalionabt'o^^^^ ^" **'"'" ^' "^^ Clock,-my old. cheerful,
companionable Clock. Ixow can I ever convey to others an idea of f hi

comfort and consolation that this old Clock h'Ls been for yea^^^^^^^^

It IS associated with my earliest recollections. It sto^ upon The
staircase at home (I call it home still mechanically), nigh siXvears
ago. I iike It for that; but it is not on that account nofbecauL^'tS
tST^r^^'^'^'V''. ^^;"g^«''^kencase curiously and ricWy carved
that I pnze It as I do. I incline to it as if it were alive and could
undertstand and give me back the love I bear it

And what other thing chat has not life could cheer me as it does?
what other thing that has not life (I will not say how few things that
have) could have proved the same patient, true. untTrinrfriendP

I'^Ts cS^Lt^oiL't' V^^-^^"^ ^^^"^^^ ^^^-"^« feelingri Sy
f.llltuff'-^^^^ ""^'^'"^ "'y ^yes from my book and looking
gratefully towards it. the face reddened by the glow of the shS
wl'nH^^! f emed to relax from its staid expression and to regard mf
kiad^yl how often in the summer twilight, when my thoughts have
r^ltnl''^".^ !? ^ "?^^a"^holy past, have its regularwh^perings
recalled them to the calm and peaceful present ! how often in t& dead
txanquiUity of night has its bell broken the oppressive si>nce and

r^ts i7e r/rtcL^^^ ---'^ ^^^"^ mVK^o7ovrer

arclLd'JnnV?.^'""^.'''''""^''^'"/'^'^^^ ^^*^'^^^ *^^ fi^^side and a low
arched door leading to my bedroom Its fame is diffused so exten-
sively throng} out th3 neighbourhood, that I have ofien the Satis-
faction of hearing the publican, or the baker, and sometimes even
the paxish,clerk, petitioning my housekeeper of whom I shall Z Z
much to say by and by) to inform him the ixact time by Mast;r
Humphrey's c ock. My barber, to whom I have reTerred woufd

rarac?i^r:d"l\m\" '^" T' """^ ''' ^^^^^ ''' ^^^ clSio'r t
ff no+ 3" '1^™ ^^^Py *° ^^y' another, inseparably connecting

oth^i^^li^ari'sh^aCrar ^^^ -^-^^-^^- -'ththose-of

anci'^Jn'^fhi^f ^^""^ i""' ^ ^°"^ ^'"^^ ^^*^°"t ^"y friend or acquaint-
and se\s^^ TIT, °^ f ^ wanderings by night and day, at all hours

ana seasons, in citv strppfQ and nnif+ rr^- ■«- ^- -^ ^ -

,. a.uj ^uiGi. couiiny piii cs, 1 Came to i^e

Master Humphrey's Clock 213

familiar with certain faces, and to take it to heart as quite a heavy
disappointment if they failed to present themselves each at its
accustomed spot. But these were the only friends I knew, and bevond
them I had none. ^

It happened, however, when I had gone on thus for a long time,
that I formed an acquaintance with a deaf gentleman, which ripened
into intimacy and close companionship. To this hour. I am ignorant
of his name. It is his humour to conceal it, or he has a reason and
purpose for so doing. In either case, I feel that he has a right to require
a return of the trust he has reposed; and as he has never sought to
discover my secret, I have never sought to penetrate his. There may
have been something in this tacit confidence in each other flattering
and pleasant to us both, and it may have imparted in the beginnin'^
an additional zest, perhaps, to our friendship. Be this as it may we
have grown to be like brothers, and still I only know him as the deaf
gentleman.

I have said that retirement has become a habit with me. When I
add, that the deaf gentleman and I have two friends, I communicate
nothing which is inconsistent with that declaration. I spend many
hours of every day in solitude and study, have no friends or change
of friends but these, only see them at stated periods, and am supposed
to be of a retired spirit by the very nature and obj ect of our association

We are men of secluded habits, with something of a cloud upon our
oarly fortunes, whose enthusiasm, nevertheless, has not cooled with
age, whose spirit of romance is not yet quenched, who are content to
ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than ever
waken again to its harsh reahties. We are alchemists who would
extract the essence of perpetual youth from diist and ashes, tempt
coy Truth in many light and airy forms from the bottom of her well
and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in the com-
monest and least-regarded matter that passes through our crucible.
Spirits of past times, creatures of imagination, and people of to-day
are alike the objects of our seeking, and, unlike the objects of search
with most philosophers, we can insure their coming at our command

The deaf gentleman and I first began to beguile our days with
these fancies, and our nights in communicating them to each other.
We are now four. But in my room there are six old chairs, and we
have decided that the two empty seats shaii always be placed at our
table when we meet, to remind us that we may yet increase onr
company by that number, if we should find two men to our mind.
When one among us dies, his chair will always be set in its usual
place, but never occupied again; and I have caused my will to be '■
drawn out. that when we are all dead the house shall be shut up, and
the vacant chairs still left in tl, - accustomed places. It is pleasant
to think that even then our shades may. perhaps, assemble together
as of yore we did, and join in ghostly converse.

— .-5 • • J rrvv^., o-o tiic viut,n. BLiiikcu Lcii, wc meeu xiL tiie

second stroke of two, I am alone.

\ \

Ir?

214 Master Humphrey's Clock

And now shall I tell how that my old servant, besides giving us
note of time, and ticking cheerful encouragement of our proceedings,
lends its name to our society, which for its punctuality and my love
is christened "Master Humphrey's Clock"? Now shall I tell how that
in the bottom of the old dark closet, where the steady pendulum
throbs and beats with healthy action, though the pulse of him who
made it stood still long ago, and never moved again, there are piles
of dusty papers constantly placed there by our hands, that we may
link our enjoyment with my old friend, and draw means to beguile
time from the heart of time itself? Shall I, or can I, tell with what a
secret pride I open this repository when we meet at night, and still
find new store of pleasure in my dear old Clock?

Friend and companion of my solitude ! mine is not a selfish love;
I would not keep your merits to myself, but disperse something of
pleasant association with your image through the whole wide world;
I would have men couple with your name cheerful and healthy
thoughts; I would have them believe that you keep true and honest
time; and how it would gladden me to know that they recognised
some hearty English work in Master Humphrey's clock !

THE CLOCK-CASE

It is my irtention constantly to address my readers from the
chimney-corner, and I would fain hope that such accounts as I shall
give them of our histories and proceedings, our quiet speculations or
more busy adventures, will never be unwelcome. Lest, however, I
should grow prolix in the outset by lingering too long upon our little
association, confounding the enthusiasm with which I regard this
chief happiness of my life with that minor degree of interest which
those to whom I address myself may be supposed to feel for it, I have
deemed it expedient to break off as they have seen.

But, still clinging to my old friend, ard naturally desirous that all
its merits should be known, I am tempted to open (somewhat
irregularly and against our laws, I must admit) the clock-case. The
first roll of paper on which I lay my hand is in +' e writing of the deaf
gentleman. I shall have to speak of him in my next paper; and how
can I better approach that welcome task then by prefacing it with a
production of his own pen, consigned to the safe keeping of my
honest Clock by his own hand?
The manuscript runs thus:

INTRODUCTION TO THE GIANT CHRONICLES

Once upon a time, that is to say, in this our time, — the exact year,
month, and day are of no matter, — there dwelt in the city of London
a substantial citizen, who united in his sinD^Ie nersnn thp dif^nitif^ -'^f
wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-councilman, and member of

[iving us
;eedings,
my love
low that
mdulum
lim who
are piles
we may
1 beguile
I what a
and still

sh love;
thing of
e world;
healthy
i honest
;ognised

•om the
s I shall
tions or
vever, I
ur little
ird this
t which
, I have

that all
newhat
,se. The
:he deaf
nd how
t with a
of my

st year,
London

Master Humphrey's Clock 215

the worshipful C^^mpany of Patten-makers; who had superadded to
these extraordinaiy distinctions the important post and title of
Sheriff, and who at length, and to crown all, stood next in rotation
for the high and honourable office of Lord Mayor.

He was a very substantial citizen indeed. His face was like the full
moon in a fog, with two little holes punched out for his eyes, a very
ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash to serve for a mouth.
The girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered in his tailor's
shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed like a heavy snorer,
and his voice in speaking came tnickly forth, as if it were oppressed
and stifled by feather-beds. He trod the ground like an elephant, and
eat and drank like — like nothing but an alderman, as he was.

This worthy citizen had risen to his great eminence froin small
beginnings. He had once been a very lean, weazen little boy, never
dreaming of carrying such a weight of flesh upon his bones or of
money in his pockets, and glad enough to take his dinner at a baker's
door, and his tea at a pump. But he had long ago forgotten all this,
as it was proper that a wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-
councilman, member of the worshipful Company of Patten-makers,
past sheriff, and, above all, a Lord Mayor that was to be, should; and
he never forgot it more completely in all his life than on the eighth
of November in the year of his election to the great golden civic chair,
which was the day before his grand dinner at Guildhall.

It happened that as he sat that evening all alone in his counting-
house, looking over the bill of fare for next day, and checking off the
fat capons in fifties, and the turtle-soup by the hundred quarts, for
his private amusement, — it happened that as he sat alone occupied
in these pleasant calculations, a strange man came in and asked him
how he did, adamg, "If I am half as much changed as you, sir, you
have no recollection of me, I am sure."

The strange man was not over and above well dressed, and was
very far from being fat or rich-looking in any sense of the word, yet
he spoke with a kind of modest confidence, and assumed an easy,
gentlemanly sort of an air, to which nobody but a rich man can law-
fully presume. Besides this, he interrupted the good citizen just as
he had reckoned three hundred and seventy-two fat capons, and was
carrying them over to the next column; and as if that were not aggra-
vation enough, the learned recorder for the city of London had only
ten minutes previously gone out at that very same door, and had
turned round and said, "Good night, my lord." Yes, he had said,
"my lord"; — he, a man of birth and education, of che Honourable
Society of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law, — he who had an
uncle in the House of Commons, and an aunt almost but not quite
in the House of 3!.ords (for she had married a feeble peer, and made
him vote as she liked), — he, this man, this learned recorder, had said,
"my lord." "I'll not wait till to-morrow to give you your title, my
Lord Mavor." savs he. with a bow and a smile! "■^'■qu are Lord Mavo?
de facto, if not dejure. Good night, my lord."

I 1

fjlj-.

21 6 Master Humphrey's Clock

The Lord Mayor elect thought of this, and turning to the stranger,
and sternly bidding him "go out of his private counting-house,"
brought forward the three hundred and seventy-two fat capons, and
went on with his account.

"Do you remember," said the other, stepping forward, — "do you
remember little Joe Toddyhigh?"

The port wine fled for a moment from the fruiterer's nose as he
muttered, "Joe Toddyhigh ! What about Joe Toddyhigh?"

"/ am Joe Toddyhigh," cried the visitor. "Look at me, look hard
at me, — harder, harder. You know me now? You know little Joe
again? What a happiness to us both, to meet the very night before
your grandeur! O! give me your hand. Jack,— both hands,— both,
for the sake of old times."

"You pinch me, sir. You're a-hurting of me," said the Lord Mayor
elect pettishly. "Don't, — suppose anybody should come, — Mr. Toddy-
high, sir."

"Mr. Toddyhigh!" repeated the other ruefully.

"O, don't bother," said the Lord Mayor elect, scratching his head.
"Dear me ! Why, I thought you was dead. What a fellow you are !"

Indeed, it was a pretty state of things, and worthy the tone of
vexation and disappointment in which the Lord Mayor spoke. Joe
Toddyhigh had befen a poor boy with him at Hull, and had often-
times divided his last penny and parted his last crust to relieve his
wants; for though Joe was a destitute child in those times, he was as
faithful and affectionate in his friendship as ever man of might could
be. They parted one day to seek their fortunes in different directions.
Joe went to sea, and the now wealthy citizen begged his way to
London. They separated with many tears, like foolish fellows as they
were, and agreed to remain fast friends, and if they lived, soon to
communicate again.

When he was an errand-boy, and even in the early days of his
apprenticeship, the citizen had many a time trudged to the Post-
office to ask if there were any letter from poor little Joe, and had
gone home again with tears in his eyes, when he found no news of his
only friend. The world is a wide place, and it was a long time before
the letter came; when it did, the writer was forgotten. It turned from
white to yellow from lying in the Post-ofhce with nobody to claim it,
and in course of time was torn up with five hundred others, and sold
lor waste-paper. And now at last, and when it might least have been
expected, here was this Joe Toddyhigh turning up and claiming
acquaintance with a great public character, who on the morrow
would be cracking jokes with the Prime Minister of England, and
who had only, at any time during the next twelve months, to say the
word, and he could shut up Temple Bar, and make it no thorough-
fare for the king himself !

"I am sure I don't know what to say, Mr. Toddyhigh," said the
Lord Mayor elect; "I really don't. It's very inconvenient^ I'd sooner
have given twenty pound, — it's very inconvenient, really."

Master Humphrey's Clock 217

A thought had come into his mind, that perhaps his old friend
might say somethmg passionate which would give him an excuse for
bemg angry himself. No such thing. Joe looked at him steadily, but
very mildly, and did not open his lips.

, '?^f?^^^ ^ ^^^" P^y y°" ^^^* ^ ow« yo"." said the Lord Mayor
elect, fidgeting in his chair. "You lent me— I think it was a shilling
or some small coin— when we parted company, and that of course I
shall pay with good interest. I can pay my way with any man. and
always have done. If you look into the Mansion House the day after
to-morrow,— some time after dusk.— and ask for my private clerk
you'll find he has a draft for you. I haven't got time to say anyth'n
more just now. unless."— he hesitated, for. coupled with a strong
desire to ghtter for once in all his glory in the eyes of his former com-
panion, was a distrust of his appearance, which might be more shabby
than he could tell by that feeble light.— "unless you'd like to come
to the dmner to-morrow. I don't mind your having this ticket if you
like to take it. A great many people would give their ears for it. I can
tell you."

His old friend took the card without speaking a word, and instantly
departed. Hissunburnt face and grey hair werepresent to thecitizen's
mmd for a loment; but by the time he reached three hundred and
eighty-one fat capons, he had quite forgotten him.

Joe Toddyhigh had nev r been in the capital of Europe before
and he wandered up and down the streets that night amaied at the
number of churches and other public buildings, the splendour of the
shops, the riches that were heaped up on every side, the glare of light
m which they were displayed, and the concourse of people who
hurried to and fro. indifferent, apparently, to all the wonders that
surrounded them. But in all the long streets and broad squares there
were none but strangers; it was quite a relief to turn down a by-way
and hear his own footsteps on the pavement. He went home to his
mn, thought that London was a dreary, desolate place, and x'elt dis-
posed to doubt the existence of one true-hearted man in the whole
worshipful Company of Patten-makeis. Finally, he went to bed, and
dreamed that he and the Lord Mayor elect were boys again.

He went next day to the dinner; and when in a burst of light and
music, and in the midst of splendid decorations and surrounded by
brilliant company, his former friend appeared at the head of the
Hall, and was hailed with shouts and cheering, he cheered and
shouted with the best, and for the moment could have cri( The
next moment he cursed his weakness in behalf of a man so changed
and selfish, and quite hated a jolly-looking old gentleman opposite
for declaring himself in the pride of his heart a Patten-maker.

As the banquet proceeded, he took more and more to heart the
rich citizen's unkindness; and that, not from any envy, but because

1^^ !!^* ?i^* ^ ^^^.^^ ^^^ ^*^*^ ^"^ fortune could all the better afford
to iccogiiisc uii old friend, even if he werxi poor and obscure. The
more he thought of this, the more lonely and sad he felt. When the

l?\

2l8

Master Humphrey's Clock

I I

company dispersed and adjourned to the ball-room, he paced the
hall and passages alone, ruminating in a very melancholy condition
upon the disappointment he had experienced.

It chanced, while he was lounging about in this moody state, that
he stumbled upon a flight of stairs, dark, steep, and narrow, which
he ascended without any thought about the matter, and so came into
a little music-gallery, empty and deserted. From this elevated post,
which commanded the whole hall, he amused himself in looking down
upon the attendants who were clearing away the fragments of the
feast very lazily, and drinking out of all the bottles and glasses with
most commendable perseverance.

His attention gradually relaxed, and he feU fast asleep.

When he awoke, he thought there must be something the matter
with his eyes; but, rubbing them a little, he soon found that the
moonlight was really streaming through the east window, that the
lamps were all extinguished, and that he was alone. He listened, but
no distant murmur in the echoing passages, not even the shutting
of a door, broke the deep silence; he groped his way down the stairs,
and found that the door at the bottom was locked on the other side.
He began now to comprehend that he must have slept a long time,
that he had been overlooked, and was shut up there for the night.

His first sensatioA, perhaps, was not altogether a comfortable one,
for it was a dark, chilly, earthy-smelling place, and something too
large, for a man so situated, to feel at home in. However, when the
momentary consternation of his surprise was over, he made light of
the accident, and resolved to feel his way up the stairs again, and
make himself as comfortable as he could in the gallery until morning.
As he turned to execute this purpose, he heard the clocks strike
three.

Any such invasion of a dead stillness as the striking of distant
clocks, causes it to appear the more intense and insupportable when
the sound has ceased. He listened with strained attention in the hope
that some clock, lagging behind its fellows, had yet to strike, — look-
ing all the time into the profound darkness before him, until it seemed
to weave itself into a black tissue, patterned with a hundred reflec-
tions of his own eyes. But the bells had all pealed out their warning
for that once, and the gust of wind that moaned through the place
seemed cold anc heavy with their iron breath.

The time and circumstances were favourable to reflection. He tried
to keep his thoughts to the current, unpleasant though it \»ras, in
which they had moved all day, and to think with what a romantic
feeling he had looked forward to shaking his old friend by the hand
before he died, and what a wide and cruel difference there was be-
tween the meeting they had had, and that which he had so often and
so long anticipated. Still, he was disordered by waking to such sudden
loneliness, and could not prevent his mind from running upon odd
tales of neonle of undoubted courao^e. who, beincf shut ud b^'' nisfht
in vaults or churches, or other dismal places, had scaled great heights

I, i

'■/■

^^ Of id Jficmc^

H'l

i,Jl

Master Humphrey's Clock

221

to get out, and fled from silence as they had never done froioi danger.
This brought to his mind the moonlight through the window, and
bethinking himself of it, he groped his way back up the crooked stairs
— but very stealthily, as though he were fearful of being overheard.
He was very much astonished when he approached the gallery
again, to see a light in the building: still more so, on advancing hastily
and looking round, to observe no visible Sv^arce from which it could
proceed. But how much greater yet was his astonishment at the
Spectacle which this light revealed.

The statues of the twoi giants, Gog and Magog, each above fourteen
feet in height, those which* succeeded to still older and more bar-
barous figures, after the Great Fire of London, and which stand in
the Guildhall to this day, were endowed with life and motioou These
guardian genii of the City had quitted their pedestals, and reclined
in easy attitudes in the great stained-glass window. Between them
was an ancient cask, which seemed to be full of wine; for the younger
Giant, clapping his huge hand upon it, and throwing up his mighty
leg, burst into an exulting laugh, which reverberated through the
hall like thunder.

Joe Toddyhigh instinctively stooped down, and, more dead than
alive, felt his hair stand on end, his knees knock together, and a cold
damp break out upon hisforehead. But even at that minute curiosity
prevailed over every other feeling, and somewhat reassured by the
good-humour of the Giants and their apparent unconsciousness of
his presence, he crouched in a corner of the gallery, in as small a space
as he could, and, peeping between the rails, observed them closely.

It was then that the elder Giant, who had a flowing grey beard;
raised his thoughtful eyes to his companion's face, and in a grave and
solemn voice addressed him thus:

FIRST NIGHT OF THE GIANT CHRONICLES

"Magog, does boisterous mirth beseem the Giant Warder of this
ancient city? Is this becoming demeanour for a watchful spirit over
whose bodiless head so many years have rolled, so many changes
swept like empty air— in whose impalpable nostrils the scent of blood
and crime, pestilence, cruelty, and horror, has been famu.ar as breath
to mortals — in whose sight Time has gathered in the harvest of cen-
turies, and garnered so many crops of human pride, affections, hopes^
and sorrows? Bethink you of our compact. The night wanes; feasting,
revelry, and music have encroached upon our usual hours of solitude
and morning will be here apace. T^re we are stricken mute again, be-
think you of our compact."

Pronouncing these latter woras with more of impatience than
quite accorded with his apparent age and gravity, the Giant raised
a long pole (which he still bears in his hand) and tapped his brother
Giant rather smartly on the head; indeed, the blow was so smartly
administered, that the latter quickly withdrew his lips from the cask.

i;-.

I r

222

Master Humphrey's Clock

to which they had been applied, and, catching up his shield and
halberd, assumed an attitude of defence. His irritation was but
momentary, for he laid these weapons aside as hastily as he had
assumed them, and said as he did so:

•]You know, Gog, old friend, that when we animate these shapes
which the Londbners of old assigned (and not unworthily) to the
guardian genii of their city, we are susceptible of some of the sensa-
tions which belong to human kind. Thus when I taste wine, I feel
blows; when I relish the one, I disrelish the other. Therefore, Gog, the
more especially as your arm is none of the lightest, keep your good
staff by your side, else we may chance to differ. Peace be between us !"

"Amen I" said the other, leaning his staff in the window-corner.
"Why did you laugh just now?"

"To think," replied the Giant Magog, laying his hand upon the
cask, "of him who owned this wine, and kept it in a cellar hoarded
from the light of day, for thirty years,— 'till it should be fit to drink,'
quoth he. He was twoscore and ten vears old when he buried it be-
neath his house, and yet never thouf,nt that he might be scarcely
'fit to drink' when the wine became so. I wonder it never occurred to
him to make himself unfit to be eaten. There is very little of him left
by this time."

^The night is wkning," said Gog mournfully.

"I know it," replied his companion, "and I see you are impatient.
But look. Through the eastern window — placed opposite to us, that
the first beams of the rising sun may every morning gild our giant
faces— the moon-rays fall upon the pavement in a stream of light
that to my fancy sinks through the cold stone and gushes into the old
crypt below. The night is scarcely past its noon, and our great charge
is sleeping heavily."

They ceased to speak, and looked upward at the moon. The sight
of their large, black, rolling eyes filled Joe Toddyhigh with such
horror that he could scarcely draw his breath. Still they took no note
of him, and appeared to believe themselves quite alone.

" Our compact," said Magog after a pause, "is, if I understand it,
that, instead of watching here in silence through the dreary nights,
we entertain each other with stories of our past experience; with tales
of the past, the present, and the future; with legends of London and
her sturdy citizens from the old simple times. That every night at
midnight, when St. Paul's bell tolls out one, and we may move and
speak, we thus discourse, nor leave such themes till the first gray
gleam of day shall strike us dumb. Is that our bargain, brother?"

"Yes," said the Giant Gog, "that is the league between us who
guard this city, by day in spirit, and by night in body also; and never
on ancient holidays have its conduits run wine more merrily than we
will pour forth our legendary lore. We are old chroniclers from this
time hence. The crumbled wall encircle us once more, the postern-
gates are closed, the drawbridge is up. and pent in its narrow den
beneath, the water foams and "struggles with the sunken starlings.

Master Humphrey's Clock

223

Jerkins and quarter-staves are in the streets again, the nichtlv watch
ts set. the rebel, sad and lonely in his Tower dung^n "r^es to 3!^^^

f hp Inncf^ flaring fiercely down upon the dreaming city, and vexinK

the hungry dogs that scent them in ';he air anrl tear the ^mnnri ^

neath with dismal howlings. The axe. the'bl^k. tL rLl^n th^;

dark chambers give signs of recent use. The Thames floaiinVD^t

"elm S ithtT'"' "",t"f ""'^"^^ ^^"^^ ^ burst of musclnTa
stream of light, bears suddenly to the Palace wall the last red stain

brought on the tide from Traitor's Gate. But your pardon brother
The night wears, and I am talking idly." P«iraon. Drother.

Ihe other Giant appeared to be entirely of this opinion for durini?
the foregoing rhapsody of his fellow-sentinel he had been'scratch"nf
his head with an air of comical uneasiness, or rather San air that
would have been very comical if he had been a dwarf or an ordinarv
sized man He winked too. and though it could not be doubted for a
moment that he winked to himself, still he certarnly cocked^l^e^^^^

waTthTanTrt '"' ^T^ ^^^^ *^^' ^'^^-^ wL conceal d No"
was this all for he gaped; and when he gaped. Joe was horriblv re-
minded of the popular prejudice on the subject of giants and of the!r
fabled power of smelling out Englishmen, however^loseiy conceLe^
His alarm was such that he nearly swooned, and it waLome little
time before his power of sight or hearing was restore! 4S he re!
covered he found that the elder Giant vvas pressing the younger to
commence the Chronicles, and that the latter was IndLCrfng to
excuse hiniself. on the ground that the night was fa- spent and i?
would be better to wait until the next. Well assured by this that
he was certainly about to begin directly, the listener coHected Ms

t^ttl^tenT^^^^^^^^ ^"' '''''^'''' ^'^'' ^^^°^ expreS^!jS

In the sixteenth century and in the reien of Oucen Elizahpth nf

^onous memory (albeit her golden days are^sadlyrSwUhbl^^^^^

malter'slaLhter'^e' ^"''°" ^ "^"'^ ^-^S ■p^entice who loved S
masters daughter. There were no doubt within the walls a great

nTmrw^a^Si^/h^ilarm^'""'"'-- '"' ' ^'^''^ "' ^'^ "-• -' ^^
This Hugh was apprenticed to an honest Bowyer who dwelt in the

wL au te aT^nf 'n^nr' '^^^^f '" P°^^^^^ ^^-^ wealurRumou?
uas quite as infallible in those days as at the present time but it

happened then as now to be sometimes right by accident It stumbled
Z7 l^!^*l"*^' '^^"" ^' ^^^^ ^^'^ «1^ Bowyer a mint of monr hIs
r- k!u^^^.^^^" ^ profitable one in the time of King Henry the
Eighth, who encouraged English archery to the utmost and he Md
been prudent and discreet. Thus it came to pass that Mistress AUce
t^::^^^!' :!i!^J^^^ ?eiress i^ an his weaSy ward'

224 Master Humphrey's Clock

If h« could have gained the heart of pretty Mistress Alice by knock-
ing this conviction into stubborn people's heads, Hugh would have
hii.d no cause to fear. But though the Bowyer's daughter smiled in
secret to hear of his doughty deeds for her sake, and though her little
waiting-woman reported all her smiles (and many more) to Hugh, and
though he was &t a vast expense in kisses and small coin to recom-
pense her fidelity, he made no progress in his love. He durst not whis-
per it to Mistress Alice save on sure encouragement, and that she
never gave him. A glance of her dark eye as she sat at the door on a
summer's evening aifter prayer-time, while he and the neighbouring
'prentices exercised themselves in the street with blunted sword and
buckler, would fire Hugh's blood so that none could stand before him;
but then she gbnced at others quite as kindly as on him, and where
was the use of cracking crowns if Mistress Alice smiled upon the
cracked as well as on the cracker.?

Still Hugh went on, and loved her more and more. He thought of
her all day, and dreamed of her all night long. He treasured up her
every word and gesture, and had a palpitation of the heart whenever
he heard her footstep on the stairs or her voice in an adjoining room.
To him, the old Bowyer's house was haunted by an angel; there was
enchantment in the air and space in which she moved. It would have
been no miracle to Hugh if flowers had sprung from the rush-strewn
floors beneath the tread of lovely Mistress Alice.

Never did 'prentice long to distinguish himself in the eyes of his
lady-love so ardently as Hugh. Sometimes he pictured to himself the
house taking fire by night, end he, when all drew back in fear, rushing
through flame and smoke, and bearing her from the ruins in his arms.
At other times he thought of a rising of fierce rebels, an attack upon
the city, a strong assault upon the Bowyer's house in particular, and
he falling on the threshold pierced with numberless wounds in defence
of Mistress Alice. If he could only enact some prodigy of valour, do
some wonderful deed, and let her know that she had inspired it,
he thought he could die contented.

Sometimes the Bowyer and his daughter would go out to supper
with a worthy citizen at the fashionable hour of six o'clock, and on
such occasions Hugh, wearing his blue /prentice cloak as gallantly as
'prentice might, would attend with a lantern and his trusty club to
escort them home. These were the brightest moments of his life. To
hold the light while Mistress Alice picked her steps, to touch her hand
as he helped her over broken ways, to have her leaning on his
arm, — it sometimes even came to that, — this was happiness indeed !

When the nights were fair, Hugh followed in the rear, his eyes
riveted on the graceful figure of the Bowyer's daughter as she and the
old man moved on before him. So they threaded the narrow winding
streets of the city, now passing beneath the overhanging gables of old
wooden houses whence creaking signs projected into the street, and
now emerging from some dark and frowning gateway into the clear
moonlight. At such times, or when the shouts 01 straggling brawlers

y knock-
uld have
imiled in
her little
ugh, and

recom-
lot whis-
that she
loor on a
ibauring
^ord and
fore him;
id where
ipon the

ought of
d up her
whenever
[ig room,
here was
uld have
ti-strewn

es of his
nself the
, rushing
lis arms.
,ck upon
liar, and

1 defence
ilour, do
pired it,

) Slipper
, and on
iantly as
' club to
I life. To
ler hand
J on his

indeed !
his eyes

and the
winding
es of old
eet, and
:he clear
orawleis

I i n

==_ -^TTbTI^ '*

i I

326

Wmii

Master Humphrey's Clock 227

met her ear, the Bowyer's daughter would look timidly back at Hugh,
beseeching him to draw nearer; and then how he grasped his club and
longed to do battle with a dozen rufflers, for the love of Mistress
Alice !

The old Bowyer was in the habit of lending money on interest to
the gallants of the Court, and thus it happened that many a richly-
dressed gentleman dismounted at his door. More waving plumes and
gallant steeds, indeed, were seen at the Bowyer's house, and more
embroidered silks and velvets sparkled in his dark shop and darker
private closet, than at any merchant's in the city. In those times
no less than in the present it would seem that the richest-looking
cavaliers often wanted money the most.

Of these glittering clients there was one who always came alone.
He was nobly mounted, and, having no attendant, gave his horse in
charge to Hugh while he and the Bowyer were closeted within. Once
as he sprung into the saddle Mistress Alice was seated at an upper
window, and before she could withdraw he had doffed his jewelled
cap and kissed his hand. Hugh watched him caracoling down the
street, and burnt with indignation. But how much deeper was the
glow that reddened in his cheeks when, raising his eyes to the case-
ment, he saw that Alice watched the stranger too !

He came again and often, each time arrayed more gaily than before,
and still the little casement showed him Mistress Alice. At length
one heavy day, she fled from home. It had cost her a hard struggle,
for all her old father's gifts were strewn about her chamber as if she
had parted from them one by one, and knew that the time must come
when these tokens of his love would wring her heart, — yet she was
gone.

She left a letter commending her poor father to the care of Hugh,
and wishing he might be happier than ever he could have been with
her, for he deserved the love of a better and a purer heart than she
had to bestow. The old man's forgiveness (she said) she had no power
to ask, but she prayed God to bless him, — and so ended with a blot
upon the paper where her tears had fallen.

At first the old man's wrath was kindled, and he carried his wrong
to the Queen's throne itself; but there was no redress he learnt at
Court, for his daughter had been conveyed abroad. This afterwards
appeared to be the truth, as there came from France, after an inter-
val of several years, a letter in her hand. It was written in trembling
characters, and almost illegible. Little could be made out save that
she often thought of home and her old dear pleasant room, — and that
she had dreamt her father was dead and had not blessed her, — and
that her heart was breaking.

The poor old Bowyer lingered on, never suffering Hugh to quit his
sight, for he knew now that he had loved his daughter, and that was
the only link that bound him to earth. It broke at length and he died,
bequeathing his old prentice his trade and all his wealth, and solemnly
charging him with his last breath to revenge his child if ever he who

'{ <M

' }< 'i

&11

!
}

t| II

Hi^

228 Master Humphrey's Clock

had worked her misery crossed his path in Hfe again.

From the time of Alice's flight, the tilting-ground, the fields, the
fencing-school, the summer-evening sports, knew Hugh no more.
His spirit was dead within him. He rose to great eminence and repute
among the citizens, but was seldom seen to smile, and never mingled
in their revelries or rejoicings. Brave, humane, and generous, he was
beloved by all. He was pitied too by those who knew his story, and
these were so many that when he walked along the streets alone at
dusk, even the rude common people doffed their caps and mingled a
rough air of sympathy with their respect.

One night in May — it was her birthnight, and twenty years since
she had left her home — Hugh Graham sat in the room she had hal-
lowed in his boyish days. He was now a grey-haired man, though still
in the prime of life. Old thoughts had borne him company for many
hours, and the chamber had gradually grown quite dark, when he was
roused by a low knocking at the outer door.

He hastened down, and opening it saw by the light of a lamp which
he had seized upon the way, a female figure crouching in the portal.
It hurried swiftly past him and glided up the stairs. He looked for
pursuers. There were none in sight. No, not one.

He was inclined to think it a vision of his own brain, when sud-
denly a vague suspicion of the truth flashed upon his mind. He barred
the door, and hastened wildly back. Yes, there she was, — there, in the
chamber he had quitted, — there in her old innocent happy home, so
changed txiat none but he could trace one gleam of what she had
been, — there upon her knees, — with her hands clasped in agony and
shame before her burning face.

"My God, my God!" she cried, "now strike me dead! Though I
have brought death and shame and sorrow on this roof, O, let me die
at home in mercy !"

There was no tear upon her face then, but she trembled and glanced
round the chamber. Everything v/as in its old place. Her bed looked
as if she had risen from it but that morning. The sight of these fam-
iliar objects, marking the dear remembrance in which she had been
held, and the blight she had brought upon herself, was more than the
woman's better nature that had carried her there could bear. She
wept and fell upon the ground.

A rumour was spread about, in a few days' time, that the Bowyer's
cruel daughter had come home, and that Master Graham had given
her lodging in his house. It was rumoured too that he had resigned her
fortune, in order that she might bestow it in acts of charity, and that
he had vowed to guard her in her solitude, but that they were never
to see each other more. These rumours greatly incensed all virtuous
wives and daughters in the ward, especially when they appeared to
receive corroboration from the circumstance of Master Graham taking
up his abode in another tenement hard by. The estimation in which he
was held, however, forbade any questioning on the subject; and as
the Bowyer's house was close shut up, and nobot' y came forth when

t,}

ields, the
no more,
nd repute
r mingled
IS, he was
tory, and
5 alone at
ningled a

sars since
; had hal-
ough still
for many
en he was

mp which
lie portal,
ooked for

^hen sud-
de barred
3re, in the
home, so
she had
,gony and

rhough I
let me die

d glanced
ed looked
lese fam-
had been
; than the
bear. She

Bowyer's
lad given
signed her
, and that
ere never
[ virtuous
peared to
im taking
I which he
;t; and as
)rth when

Master Humphrey's Clock 229

public shows and festivities were n progress, or to flaunt in the public
walks, or to buy new fashions at the mercer's booths, all the well-
conducted females agreed among themselves that there could be no
woman there.

These reports had scarcely died away when the wonder of every good
citizen, male and female, was utterly absorbed and swallowed up by a
Royal Proclamation, in which her Majesty, strongly censuring the
practice of wearing long Spanish rapiers of preposterous length (as
being a^ bullying and swaggering custom, tending to bloodshed and
public disorder), commanded that on a particular day therein named
certain grave citizens should repair to the city gates, and there, in
public break all rapiers worn or carried by persons claiming admis-
sion, that exceeded, though it were only by a quarter of an inch three
standard feet in length.

Royal Proclamations usually take their course, let the public
wonder never so much. On the appointed day two citizens of high
repute took up their stations at each of the gates, attended by a party
of the city guard, the main body to enforce the Queen's will, and take
custody of all such rebels (if any) as might have the temerity to dis-
pute it: and a few to bear the standard measures and instrume its for
reducing all unlawful sword-blades to the prescribed dime sions
In pursuance of these arrangements. Master Graham and another
were posted at Lud Gate, on the hill before St. Paul's.

A pretty numerous company were gathered together at this -.pot-
ior, besides the officers in attendance to enforce the proclamation'
there was a motley crowd of lookers-on of various degrees who raised
from time to time such shouts and cries as the circumstances called
lorth. A spruce young courtier was the first who approached: he un-
sheathed a weapon of burnished steel that shone and glistened in the
sun, and handed it with the newest air to the officer, who, finding it
exactly three feet long, returned it with a bow. Thereupon the gallant
raised his hat and crying "God save the Queen !" passed on amidst the
plaudits of the mob. Then came another— a better courtier still— who
wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to
the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a
sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and
a half beyond her Maj esty 's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout
and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armourers
or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which would ensue
But they were disappointed; for the old campaigner, coolly unbuck^
hng his sword and bidding his servant carry it home again, passed
through unarmed, to the great indignacion of all the beholders They
relieved themselves in some degree by hooting a tall blustering fellow
with a prodigious weapon, who stopped short on coming in sight of the
preparations, and after a little consideration turned back again But
- .. .....^ no rcxpiex xiuu uccn oroKen, aitnough it was h; h noon

and all cavaliers of any quality or appearance were taking their way
towards Samt Paul's churchyard. ^

230 Master Humphrey's Clock

During these proceedings, Master Graham had stood apart, strictly
confining himself to the duty imposed upon him, and taking little
heed of anything beyond. He stepped forward now as a richly-dressed
gentleman on foot, followed by a single attendant, was seen advancing
up the hill.

As this person drew nearer, the crowd stopped their clamour, and
bent forward with eager looks. Master Graham standing alone in
the gateway, and the stranger coming slowly towards him, they
"seemed, as it were, set face to face. The nobleman (for he looked one)
had a haughty and disdainful air, which bespoke the slight esti-
mation in which he held the citizen. The citizen, on the other hand,
preserved the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned
down or daunted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that
of worth and manhood. It was perhaps some consciousness on the
part of each, of these feelings in the other, that infused a more stern
expression into their regards as they came closer together.

"Your rapier, worthy sir!"

At the instant that he pronounced these words Graham started,
and falling back some paces, laid his hand upon the dagger in his
belt.

"You are the man whose horse I used to hold before the Bowyer's
door? You are that man? Speak!"

"Out, you 'prentice hound!" said the other.

"You are he! I know you well now!" cried Graham. "Let no man
step between us two, or I shall be his murderer." With that he drew
his dagger, and rushed in upon him.

The stranger had drawn his weapon from the scabbard ready for
the scrutiny, before a word was spoken. He made a thrust at his
assailant, but the dagger which Graham clutched in his left hand being
the dirk in use at that time for parrying such blows, promptly
turned the point aside. They closed. The dagger fell ttling on the
ground, and Graham, wrestling his adversary's sword from his grasp,
plunged it through his heart. As he drew it out it snapped in two,
leaving a fragment in the dead man's body.

All this passed so swiftly that the bystanders looked on without an
effort to interfere; but the man was no sooner down than an uproar
broke forth which rent the air. The attendant rushing through the
gate proclaimed that his master, a nobleman, had been set upon and
slain by a citizen; the word spread quickly from mouth to mouth;
Saint Paul's Cathedral, and every book-shop, ordinary, and smoking-
house in the churchyard poured out its stream of cavaliers and their
followers, who mingling together in a dense tumultuous body,
struggled, sword in hand, towards the spot.

With equal impetuosity, and stimulating each other by loud cries
and shouts, the citizens and common people took up the quarrel on
their side and encircling Master Graham a hundred deet^^ forced
him from the gate. In vain he waved the broken sword above his
head, crying that he would die on London's threshold for their

Master Humphrey's Clock 231

sacred homes. They bore him on, and ever keeping him in the midst,
so that no man could attack him, fought their way into che city.

The clash of swords and roar of voices, the dust and heat and
pressure, the trampling under foot of men, the distracted looks and
shrieks of women at the windows above as they recognised their
relatives or lovers in the crowd, the rapid tolling of alarm-bells, the
furious rage and passion of the scene, were fearful. Those who, being
on the outskirts of each crowd, could use their weapons with effect,
fought desperately, while those behind, maddened with baffled rage,
struck at each other over the heads of those before them, and crushed
their own fellows. Wherever the broken sword was seen above the
people's heads, towards that spot the cavaliers made a new rush.
Every one of these charges was marked by sudden gaps in the throng
where men were trodden down, but as fast as they were made, the
tide swept over them, and still the multitude pressed on again, a
confused mass of swords, clubs, staves, broken plumes, fragments of
rich cloaks and doublets, and angry bleeding faces, all mixed up
together in inextricable disorder.

The design of the people was to force Master Graham to take refuge
in his dwelling, and to defend it until the authorities could interfere,
or they could gain time for parley. But either from ignorance or in the
confusion of the moment they stopped at his old house, which was
closely shut. Some time was lost in beating the doors open and passing
him to the front. About a score of the boldest of the other party
threw themselves into the torrent while this was being done, and
reaching the door at the same moment with himself cut him off from
his defenders.

"I will never turn in such a righteous cause, so help me Heaven!"
cried Graham, in a voice that at last made itself heard, and con-
fronting them as he spoke. "Least of all will I turn upon this thresh-
old which owes its desolation to such men as ye. I give no quarter, and
I will have none! Strike!"

For a moment they stood at bay. At that moment a shot from an
unseen hand, apparently fired by some person who had gained
access to one of the opposite houses, struck Graham in the brain, and
he fell dead. A low wail was heard in the air, — many people in the
concourse cried that they had seen a spirit glide across the little
casement window of the Bowyer's house

A dead silence succeeded. After a short time some of the flushed
and heated throng laid dcwn their arms and softly carried the body
within doors. Others fell off or slunk away in knots of two or three,
others whispered together in groups, and before a numerous guard
which then rode up could muster in the street, it was nearly empty.

Those who carried Master Graham to the bed up-stairs were
shocked to see a woman lying beneath the window with her hands
clasped together. After trying to recover her in vain, they laid her
near the citizen, who still retained, tightly grasped in his right hand,
the first and last sword that was broken that day at Lud Gate.

nv 1

1 1]

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14 V

II '

r^l

232 Master Humphrey's Clock

The Giant uttered these concluding words with sudden precipita-
tion; and on the instant the strange light which had filled the hall
faded away. Joe Toddyhigh glanced involuntarily at the eastern
window, and saw the first pale gleam of morning. He turned his head
again towards the Other window in which the Giants had been seated.
It was empty. The cask of wine was gone, and he could dimly make
out that the two great figures stood mute and motionless upon their

pedestals. .

After rubbing his eyes and wondering for full half an hour, durmg
which time he observed morning come creeping on apace, he yielded
to the drowsiness which overpowered him and fell int freshing

slumber. When he awoke it was broad day; the buildxng „ ^pen,
and workmen were busily engaged in removing the vestiges of last

night's feast. . ^t. • /

Stealing gently down the little stairs, and assummg the air of
some early lounger who had dropped in from the street, he walked
up to the foot of each pedestal in turn, and attentively examined the
figure it supported. There could be no doubt about the features of
either; he recollected the exact expression they had worn at different
passages of their conversation, and recognised in every line and
lineament the Giants of the night. Assured that it was no vision, but
that he had heard and seen with his own proper senses, he walked
forth, determining at all hazards to conceal himself in the Guildhall
again that evening. He further resolved to sleep all day, so that he
might be very wakeful and vigilant, and above all that he might take
notice of the figures at the precise moment of their becoming
animated and subsiding into their old state, which he greatly
reproached himself for not having done already.

CORRESPONDENCE

TO MASTER HUMPHREY

Sir, — Before you proceed any further in your account of your
friends and what you say ard do when you meet together, excuse me
if I proffer my claim to be elected to one of the vacant chairs in that
old room of yours. Don't reject me without full consideration; for if
you do, you will be sorry for it afterwards — you will, upon my 1^^,.

I enclose my card, sir, in this letter. I never was ashamed of my
name, and I never shall be. I am considered a devilish gentlemanly
fellow, and I act up to the character. If you want a reference, ask
any of the men of our club. Ask any fellow who goes there to write
his letters, what sort of conversation mine is. Ask him if he thinks I
have the sort of voice that will suit your deaf friend and make him
hear, if he can hear anything at all. Ask the servants what they
think of me. There's not a rascal among 'em, sir, but will tremble to

S^ ^iSAa/i^m^2a ^ilow.

326*

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hear my
that hou

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consider
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cunning
have al\\
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life — dor

I am a
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a great
himself;
periods i
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gentlems
he is of a

Mastei
both as i

Master Humphrey's Clock

235

hear my name. That reminds me — don't you say too much about
that housekeeper of yours; it's a low subject, damned low.

I tell you what, sir. If you vote me into one of those empty chairs,
you'll have among you a man with a fund of gentlemanly information
that'll rather astonish you. I can let you into a fe\/ anecdr tes about
some fine women of title, that are quite high life, sir — the tiptop sort
of thing. I know the name of every man who has been out on an
affair of honour within the last five-and-twenty years; I know the
private particulars of every cross and squabble that has taken place
upon the turf, at the gaming-table, or elsewhere, during the whole of
that time. I have been called the gentlemanly chronicle. You may
consider yourself a lucky dog; upon my soul, you may congratulate
yourself, though I say so.

It's an uncommon good notion that of yours, not letting anybody
know where you live. I have tried it, but there has always been an
anxiety respecting me, which has found me out. Your deaf friend is a
cunning fellow to keep his name so close. I have tried that too, but
have always failed. I shall be proud to make his acquaintance — tell
him so, with my compliments.

You must have been a queer fellow when you were a child, con-
founded queer. It's odd, all that about the picture in your first
paper — prosy, but told in a devilish gentlemanly sort of way. In
places like that I could come in with great effect with a touch of
life — don't you feel that?

I am anxiously waiting for your next paper to know whether your
friends live upon the premises, and at your expense, which I take it
for granted is the case. If I am right in this impression, I know a
charming fellow (an excellent companion and most delightful
company) who will be proud to join you. Some years ago he seconded
a great many prize-fighters, and once fought an amateur match
himself; since then he has driven several mails, broken at different
periods all the lamps on the right-hand side of Oxford-street, and
six times carried away every bell-handle in Bloomsbury-square,
besides turning off the gas in various thoroughfares. In point of
gentlemanliness he is unrivalled, and I should say that next to myself
he is of all men the best suited to your purpose.

Expecting your reply,
* I am,

Etc, etc.

Master Humphrey informs this gentleman that this application,
both as it concerns himself and his friend, is rejected.

■•".,iii

I'i i I

n I

\ li

f 'I

236

Master Humphrey's Clock

MASTER HUMPHREY. FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE
IN THE CHIMNEY-CORNER

My old companion tells me it is midnight. The fire glows brightly
cracklmg with a sharp and cheerful sound, as if it loved to burn The
merry cricket on the hearth (my constant visitor), this ruddy blaze
my clock, and I, seem to share the world among us. and to be the
only thmgs awake. The wind, high and boisterous but now has died
away and hoarsely mutters in its sleep. I love all times and seasons
each m its turn, and am apt. perhaps, to think the present one the
best; but past or coming I always love this peaceful time of night
when long-buneJ thoughts, favoured by the gloom and silence steai
from their graves, and haunt the scenes of faded happiness and hope
The popular faith in ghosts has a remarkable affinity with the
whole current of our thoughts at such an hour as this, and seems to be
their necessary and natural consequence. For who can wonder that
man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wander-
ing through those places which they once dearly affected when he
himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they is for
ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering
the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed
his heart of old? It is thus that at this quiet hour I haunt the house
where I was born, the rooms I used to tread, the scenes of my infancy
my boyhood, and my youth; it is thus that I prowl around my
buried treasure (though not of gold or silver), and mourn my loss- it
IS thus that I revisit the ashes of extinguished fires, and take my
silent stand at old bedsides. If my spirit should ever glide back to
this chamber when my body is mingled with the dust, it will but
follow the course it often took in the old man's lifetime, and add but
one more change to the subjects of its contemplation.

In all my idle speculations I am greatly assisted by various legends
connected with my venerable house, which are current in the
neighbourhood, and are so numerous that there is scarce a cupboard
or corner that has not some dismal story ox its own When I first
entertained thoughts of becoming its tenant, I was assured that it
was haunted froni roof to cellar, and I believe that the bad opinion
m which my neighbours once held me. had its rise in my not being
torn to pieces, or at least distracted with terror, on the night I took
possession; m either of which cases I should doubtless have arrived
by a short cut at the very summit of popularity.

But traditions and rumours all taken into account, who so ahpf.
^lurZ^^ .'^Ti^ and chimes with my every thought, as my dear
deaf friend.? and how often have I cause to bless the day that brought

Master Humphrey's Clock

237

us two together I Of all days in the year I rejoice to think that it
should have been Christmas Day, with which from childhood we
associate somethmg friendly, hearty, and sincere
• I had walked out to cheer myself with the happiness of others, and
m the httle tokens of festivity and rejoicing, of which the streets
and housej present so many upon that day. had lost some hours
Now I stopped to look at a merry party hurrying through the snow
on foot to their place of meeting, and now turned back to see a
whole coachful of children safely deposited at the welcome house At
one time, 1 admired how carefully the working man carried the baby
m Its gaudy hat and feathers, and how his wife, trudging patiently
on behmd. forgot even her care of her gay clothes, in exchanging
greetings with the child as it crowed and laughed over the father's
shoulder; at another. I pleased myself with some passing scene of
gallantry or courtship, and was glad to believe that for a season half
the world of poverty was gay.

As the day closed in. I still rambled through the streets, feeling a
companionship in the bright fires that cast their warm reflection on
the windows as I passed, and losing all sense of my own loneliness in
imagining the sociality and kind-fellowship that everywhere ^ e-
vailed. At length I happened to stop before a Tavern, and. encoun-
tering a Bill of Fare in the window, it all at once brought it into my
head to wonder what kind of people dined alone in Taverns upon
Christmas Day. ^

Solitary men are accustomed, I suppose, unconsciously to look
upon solitude as their own peculiar property. I had sat alone in my
room on many, many anniversaries of this great holiday, and had
never regarded it but as one of universal assemblage and rejoicing
1 had excepted, and with an aching heart, a crowd of prisoners and
beggars; but these were not the men for whom the Tavern doors were
open. Had they any customers, or was it a mere form?— a form no
doubt. '

Trying to feel quite sure of this, I walked away; but before I had
gone niany paces. I stopped and looked back. There was a provoking
air of business in the lamp above the door which I could not over-
come. I began to be afraid there might be many customers— young
men. perhaps, struggling with the world, utter strangers in this great
place whose friends lived at a long distance off. and whose nfeans
were too slender to enable them to make the journey. The supposition
gave rise to so many distressing little pictures, that, in preference to
carrying them home with me, I determined to encounter the realities
So I turned and walked in.

I was at once glad and sorry to find that there was only one person
in the dinmg-room; glad to know that there wer- not more, and sorry
that he should be there by himself. He did not look so old as I but

like me he Viras a.Hvnnrp.r1 in lifo oriH ^'^ 1--J-- ' '' ••

1 hough I made more noise in entering and seating myself than was
quue necessary, with the view of attracting his attention and saluting

I !

H-

238

Master Humphrey's Clock

::4

'■■i

I'l

him in the good old form of that time of year, he did not raise his
head, but sat with it resting on his hand, musing over his half-
finished meal,

I called for something which would give me an excuse for remaining
in the room (I had dined early, as my housekeeper was engaged at
night to partake of some friend's good cheer), and sat where I could
observe without intruding on him. After a time he looked up. He was
aware that somebody had entered, but could see very little of me,
as I sat in thf^ shade and he in the light. He was sad and thoug'ttful,
and I forbore i,o trouble him by speaking.

Let me believe it was something better than curiosity which
riveted my attention and impelled me strongly towards this gentle-
man. I never saw so patient and kind a face. He should have been
surrounded by friends, and yet here he sat dejected and alone when
all men had their friends about them. As often as he roused himsel
from his reverie he would fall into it again, and it was plain tha
whatever were the subject of his thoughts, they were of a melan-
choly kind, and would not be controlled.

He was not used to solitude. I was sure of that; for I know by
myself that if he had been, his manner would have been different,
and he would have taken some slight interest in the arrival of
another. I could not fail to mark that he had no appetite; that he
tried to eat in vain; that time after time the plate was pushed away,
and he relapsed into his former posture.

His mind was wandering among old Christmas days, I thought.
Many of them sprung up together, not with a long gap between
each, but in unbroken succession like days of the week. It was a great
change to find himself for the first time (I quite settled that it was
the first) in an empty silent room with no soul to care for. I could
not help following him in imagination through crowds of pleasant
faces, and then coming back to that dull place with its bough of
mistletoe sickening in the gas, and sprigs of holly parched up already
by a Simoom of roast and boiled. The very waiter had gone home;
and his representative, a poor, lean, hungry man, was keeping
Christmas in his jacket.

I grew still more interested in my friend. Hiis dinner done, a
decanter of wine was placed before him. It remained untouched for
a long time, but at length with a quivering hand he filled a glass
and raised it to his lips. Some tender wish to which he had been
accustomed to give utterance on that day, or some beloved name
that he had been ' od to pledge, trembled upon them at the momeiit.
He put it down ,ry hastily — took it up once more — again put it
down — pressed his hand upon his face — yes — and tears stole down
his cheeks, I am certain.

Withou pausing to consider whether I did right or wrong, I
stepped at oss the room, and sitting down beside him laid my hand
srentlv on nis arm.

"My friend," I said, "forgive me if I beseech you to take comfort

Master Humphrey's Clock

239

and consolation from the lips of an Oid man. I will not preach to
you what I have not practised, indeed. Whatever be your grief, be
of a good heart — bo of a good heart, pray I"

"I see that you speak earnestly," he replied, "and kindly I am
very sure, but "

I nodded my head to shov/ that I understood what he wc did say;
for I had already gathered, from a certain fixed expression in his
face, and from the attention with which he watched me while I
spoke, that his sense of hearing was destroyed. "There should be a
freemasonry between us," said I, pointing from himself to me to
explain my meaning; "if not in our gray hairs, at least in our mis-
fortunes. You see that I am but a poor crippk '

I never felt so happy under my affliction sine- the trying moment
of my first becoming conscious of it, as when j ; took my hand in
his with a smile that has lighted my path in life from that day. and
we sat down side by side.

This was the beginning of my friendship with the deaf gentleman;
and when was ever the slight and easy service of a kind word in
season repaid by such attachment and devotion as he has shown
to me!

He produced a little set of tablets and a pencil to facilitate our
conversation, on that our first acquaintance; and I well remember
how awkward and constrained I was in writing down my share of the
dialogue, and how easily he guessed my meaning before I had written
half of what I had to say. He told me in a faltering voice that he
had not been accustomed to be alone on that day — that it had always
been a little festival with him; and seeing that I glanced at his dress
in the expectation that he wore mourning, he added hastily that it
was not that; if it had been he thought he could have borne it better.
From that time to the present we have never touched upon this
theme. Upon every return of the same day we have been together;
and although we make it our annual custom to drink to each oth-r
hand in hand after dinner, and to recall with affectionate garrulity
every circumstance of our first meeting, we always avoid this one
as if by mutual consent.

Meantime we have gone on strengthening in our friendship and
regard, and forming an attachment which, I trust and believe, will
only be interrupted b/ death, to be renewed in another existence. I
scarcely know how we communicate as we Co; but he has long since
ceased to be deaf to me. He is frequemly my companion in my
walks, and even in crowded streets replies to my slightest look or
gesture, as though he could read my thoughts. From the vast
number of objects which pass in rapid succession before our eyes, we
frequently select the same for some particular notice or remark; and
when one of these little coincidences occurs. I cannot describe the
pleasure which animates my friend, or the beaming countenance ho
vvili preserve for half-an-hour afterwards at least.
He is a great thinker from living so much within himself, and.

i 1

mi-

240 Master Humphrey's Clock

having a lively imagination, has a facility of conceiving and enlarging
upon odd ideas, which renders him invaluable to our little body, and
greatly astonishes our two friends. His powers in this respect are
touch assisted by a large pipe, which he assures us one 3 belonged to
ft German Student. Be this as it may, it has undoubtedly a verj'
ancient and mysterious appearance, and is of such capacity that it
takes three hours and a half to smoke it out. I have reason to believe
that my barber, who is the chief authority of a knot of gossips, who
congregate every evening at a small tobacconist's hard by, has related
anecdotes of this pipe and the grim figures that are carved upon its
bowl, at • hich all the smokers in the neighbourhood have stood
aghast; and I know that my houseke'jper, while she holds it in high
veneration, has a superstitious feeling connected with it which
would render her exceedingly unwilling to be left alone in its com-
pany after dark.

Whatever sorrow my dear friend has known, and whatever grief
may linger in some secret corner of his heart, he is now a cheerful,
placid, happy creature. Misfortune can never have fallen upon such
a man but for some good purpose; and when I see its traces in his
gentle nature and his earnest feeling, I am thr less disposed to
murmur at such trials as I may have undergone myself. With regard
to the pipe, I have a theory of my own; I cannot help thinking that
it is in some manner connected with the event that brought us
together; for I remember that it was a long time before he even talked
about it; that when he did, he grew reserved and melancholy; and
that it was a long time yet before ^-^ wrought it forth. I have no
curiosity, however, upon thip ubje . * n I know that it promotes
his tranquillity and comfort, - eed no other inducement to

regard it with my utmost favc r.

Such is the deaf gentleman. 1 c^.i call up his figure now, clad in
sober gray, and seated in the chimney-corner. At he puffs out the
smoke from his favourite pipe, he casts a look on me brimful of
cordiality and friendship, and says all manner of kind and genial
things in a cheerful smile; then he raises his eyes to my clock, which
is just about to strike, and, glancing^ from it to me and back again,
seems to divide his heart between us. For myself, it is not too much
to say that I would gladly part with one of my poor limbs, could he
but hear the old clock's voice.

Of our two friends, the first has been all his life one of that easy,
wayward, truant class whom the world is accustomed to designate
as nobody's enemies but their own. Bred to a profession for which
he never qualified himself, and reared in the expectation of a fortune
he has never inherited, he has undergone every vicissitude of which
such an existence is capable. He and his younger brother, both
orphans from their childhood, were educated by a wealthy relative,
who taught them to expect an equal division of hir, property; but
tfin indfslfint to court, and too honest to flatter, the ^Ider iraduallv
pst ground in the affections of a capricious old man, and the younger,

•^

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Master Humphrey's Clock 243

who did not fail to improve his opportunity, now triumphs in the
possession of enormous wealth. His triumph is to hoard it in solitary
wretchedness, and probably to feel with the expenditure of every
shilling a greater pang than the loss of his whole inheritance ever
cost his brother.

Jack Redburn— he was Jack Redburn at the first little school he
went to, where every other child was mastered and surnamed, and
he has been Jack Redburn all his life, or he would perhaps have
been a richer man by this time — has been an inmate of my house
these eight years past. He is my librarian, secretary, steward, and
first minister; director of all my affairs, and inspector-general of my
household. He is something of a musician, something of an author,
something of an actor, something of a painter, very much of a
carpenter, and an extraordinary gardener, having had all his life a
wonderful aptitude for learning everything that was of no use to
him. He is remarkably fond of children, and is the best and kindest
nurse in sickness that ever drew the breath of life. He has mixed
with every grade of society, and known the utmost distress; but
there never was a less selfish, a more tender-hearted, a more enthusi-
astic, or a more guileless man; and I dare say, if few have done less
good, fewer still have done less harm in the world than he. By what
chance Nature forms such whimsical jumbles I don't know; but I do
know that she sends them among us very often, and that the king
of the whole race is Jack Redburn.

I should be puzzled to say how old he is. His health is none of the
best, and he wears a quantity of iron-gray hair, which shades his face
and gives it rather a worn appearance; but we consider him quite a
young fellow notwithstanding; and if a youthful spirit, surviving the
roughest contact with the world, confers upon its possessor any title
to be considered young, then he is a mere child. The only interrup-
tions to his careless cheerfulness are on a wet Sunday, when he is apt
to be unusually religious and solemn, and sometimes of an evening,
when he has been blowing a very slow tune on the flute. On these
last-named occasions he is apt to incline towards the mysterious or
the terrible. As a specimen of his powers in this mood, I refer my
readers to the extract from the clock-case which follows this paper:
he brought it to me not long ago at midnight, and informed me that
the main incident had been suggested by a dream of the night before.

His apartments are two cheerful rooms looking towards the
garden, and one of his great delights is to arrange and rearrange the
furniture in these chambers, and put it in every possible variety of
position. During the whole time he has been here, I do not think he
has slept for two nights running with the head of his bed in the same
place; and every time he moves it, is to be the last. My housekeeper
was at first well-nigh distracted by these frequent changes; but she
has become quite reconciled to them by degrees, and has so fallen in

upon the next final alteidtion. Whatever his arrangements are, how-

! ra

K ' i>

|-i4?i

I:! .'

244 Master Humphrey's Clock

ever, they are always a pattern of neatness; and every one of the
manifo^ 1 articles connected with his manifold occupations is to be
found in its own particular place. Until within the last two or three
years he was subject to an occasional fit (which usually came upon
him in very fine weather), under the influence of which he would
dress himself with peculiar care, and, going out under pretence of
taking a walk, disappeared for several days together. At length, after
the interval between each outbreak of this disorder had gradually
grown longer and longer, it wholly disappeared; and now he seldom
stirs abroad, except to stroll out a little way on a summer's evening.
Whether he yet mistrusts his own constancy in this respect, and is
therefore afraid to wear a coat, I know not; but we seldom see him
in any other upper garment than an old spectral-looking dressing-
gown, with very disproportionate pockets, full of a miscellaneous
collection of odd matters, which he picks up wherever he can lav
hig hands upon them.

Everything that is a favourite with our friend is a favourite with
us; and thus it happens that the fourth among us is Mr. Owen Miles,
a most worthy gentleman, who had treated Jack with great kindness
before my deaf friend and I encountered him by an accident, to which
I may refer on some future occasion. Mr. Miles was once a very rich
merchant; but receiving a severe shock in the death of his wife, he
retired from business, and devoted himself to a quiet, unostentatious
life. He is an excellent man, of thoroughly sterling character: not of
quick apprehension, and not .vithout some amusing prejudices,
which I shall leave to their own development. He holds us all in pro-
found veneration; but Jack Redbum he esteems as a kind of pleasant
wonder, that he may venture to approach familiarly. He believes,
not only that no man ever lived who could do so many things as
Jack, but that no man ever lived who could do anything so well;
and he never calls my attention to any of his ingenious proceedings,'
but he whispers in my ear, nudging me at the same time with his
elbow: "If he had only made it his trade, sir— if he had only made
it his trade!" '

They are inseparable companions; one would almost suppose that,
although Mr. Miles never by any chance does anything in the way
of assistance. Jack could do nothing without him. Whether he is
reading, writing, painting, r irpentering, gardening, flute-playing, or
what not, there is Mr. Miles beside him, buttoned up to the chin in
his blue coat, and looking on with a face of incredulous delight, as
though he could not credit the testimony of his own senses, and
had a misgiving that no man could be so clever but in a dream.
These are my friends; I have now introduced myself and them.

Master Humphrey's Clock

245

THE CLOCK-CASE /

A CONFESSION FOUND IN A PRISON IN THE TIME OF CHARLES THE

SECOND

I HELD a lieutenant's commission in his Majesty's army and served
abroad in the campaigns of 1677 and 1678. The treaty of Nime^en
being concluded. I returned home, and retiring from theTervke
withdrew to a small estate lying a few miles east of Sndon wS
I had recently acquired in right of my wife ^"uon. wnicn

This is the last night I have to live, and I will set down the naked
truth without disguise. I was never a brave man and h^H .?«
been from my childhood of a secret, su^n. disCtful nat^r^'l
speak of myself as if I had passed from the world; for while I write

Tdo^l^^"" "" ^'^''"^' ^^^ °^^ """^^ ^^ ^^**- i- thrblack-book
Soon after my return to England, my only brother was seized
with mortal illness. This ckcumstance gave me slight or no pain for
since we had been men. we had associated but vfry Httfe togSher
He was open-hearted and generous, handomer than I more ac
comphshed and generally beloved. Those who sought my a^quai^t
ance abroad or at home, because they were friends oThisSom
attached themselves to me long, and would usually say in our S
conversation, that they were surprised to find ^two^rothers so
unlike m their manners and appearance. It was my hab?t to lead
them on to this avowal; for I knew what comparisons thev must

We had married two sisters. This additional tie between us as it
may appear to some, only estranged us the more. His wife iTe'w me
well. I never struggled with any secret jealousy or gall when shJx^s
present but that woman knew it as well as I did. I never raised mv
eyes at such times but I found hers fixed upon me- 1 never bent f h?r^
on the ground or looked another way but'i felTthat :S over o^^^^^^^
me always It was an mexpressible relief to me when we aurrSled
and a greater relief still when I heard abroad that she wS^deadii

whTtV° r °^^r -^^ ^°^^ ^*^^°^^ ^^d t^^rible foreshadowfng o
what has happened since must have hung over us then. I warSfaki
of her; she haunted me; her fixed and stiady look comes Mck uoon

rTn COM. '""^ *^' "'"^^ "' " ^^^^ ^''^^' ^^ -"ki mf bC
She died shortly after giving birth to a child— a boy. When mv
brother knew that all hope of his own recoverv w.« n/^V ^. ^iS
my wiie to his bedside, and ronfided this orphan;a"ci7ld of W
years old. to her protection. He bequeathed to him aU the property

" )

246

Master Humphrey's Clock

he had. and willed that, in case of his child's death, it should pass
to my wife, as the only acknowledgment he could make her for her
care and love. He exchanged a few brotherly words with me deplor-
ing our long separation; and being exhausted, fell into a slumber
from which he never awoke.

We had no children; and as there had been a strong affection
between the sisters, and my wife had almost supplied the place of a
mother to this boy. she loved him as if he had been her own The
child was ardently attached to her; but he was his mother's image
in face and spirit, and always mistrusted me.

I can scarcely fix the date when the feeling first canle upon me-
but I soon began to be uneasy when this child was by. I never roused
myself from some moody train of thought but I marked him looking
at me; not with mere childish wonder, but with something of the
purpose and meaning that I had so often noted in his mother It was
no effort of my fancy, founded on close resemblance of feature and
expression. I never could look the boy down. He feared me bvt
seemed by seme instinct to despise me while he did so- and 'even
when he drew back beneath my gaze—as he would when we were
alone, to get nearer to the door— he would keep his bright eyes upon

Perhaps I hide the truth from myself, but I do not think that
when this began. I meditated to do him any wrong. I may have
thought how serviceable his inheritance would be to us and mav
have wished him dead; but I believe I had no thought of compassing
his death. Neither did the idea come upon me at once, but by verv
slow degrees, presenting itself at first in dim shapes at a very great
distance, as men may think of an earthquake or the last day- then
drawing nearer and nearer, and losing something of its horror and
improbability; then coming to be part and parcel— nay nearly the
whole sum and substance— of my daily thoughts, and resolving
from thed "^A^^^^^"- °^ ""^^"^^ ^"^^ ^^^^^y- """^ °^ ^oing or abstaining

While this was going on witiiin me. I never could bear that the
child should see me looking at him, and yet I was under a fascination
which made it a kmd of business with me to contemplate his slight
and fragile figure and think how easily it might be done. Sometimes
1 would steal up-stairs and watch him as he slept; but usually I
hovered m the garden near the window of the room in which he
learnt his little tasks; and there, as he sat upon a low seat beside mv
wife, I would peer at him for hours together from behind a tree-
^l^^^^^^J.^^^^ t^e guilty wretch I was, at every rustling of a leaf and
still gliding back to look and start again.

Hard by our cottage, but quite out of sight, and (if there were any
wind astir) of hearing too, was a deep sheet of water. I spent days in
shapmg with my pocket-knife a rough model of a boat, which I
finiSi^evi at ^ast and diOpped in the child's way. Then 1 withdrew to
a secret place, which he must pass if he stole away alone to swim

Master Humphrey's Clock

247

this bauble, and lurked there for his coming. He came neither that
day nor the next, though I waited from noon till nightfall I was
sure that I had him in my net. for I had heard him prattling of the
^l' ?"/,i^^^w t^at in his infant pleasure he kept it by his side in
^u^.^J^^'' weariness or fatigue, but waited patiently, and on the
thu-d day he passed me, running joyously along, with his silken hair
streaming m the wind, and he singing— God have mercy upon me I
— smging a merry ballad.— who could hardly lisp the words

I stole down after him. creeping under certain shrubs which ctow
in that place, and none but devils know with what terror I a strong
full-grown man tracked the footsteps of that baby as he approached
the water s brink. I was close upon him. had sunk upon my knee and
raised my hand to thrust him in, when he saw my shadow in the
stream and turned him round.

His mother's ghost was looking from his eyes. The sun burst forth
from behind a cloud; it shone in the bright sky. the glistening earth
the clear water, the sparkling drops of rain upon the leave There
were eyes in everything. The whole great universe of light as there
to see the murder done. I know not what he said; he came of bold
and manly blood, and. child as he was. he did not crouch or fawn
upon me. I heard him cry that he would try to love me —net that
he did.— and then I saw him running back towards the house The
next I saw was my own sword naked in my hand, and he Ivine at
my feet stark dead.— dabbled here and there with blood, but other-
wise no different from what I had seen him in his sleep— in the
same attitude too. with his cheek resting upon his little hand

I took him m my arms and laid him— very gently now that he was
dead—m a thicket. My wife was from home that day. and would
not return until the next. Our bedroom window, the only sleeping-
room on that side of the house, was but a few feet from the ground
and I resolved to descend from it at night and bury him in the
garden. I had no thought that I had failed in my design, no thought
that the water would be dragged and nothing found, tliat the monev
must now lie waste, since I must encourage the idea that the child
was lost or stolen. AH my thoughts were bound up and knotted
together m the one absorbing necessity of hiding what I had done
How I felt when they came to tell me that the child was missing
when I ordered scouts in all directions, when I gasped and trembled
at every one s approach, no tongue can tell or mind of man conceive

Jh^H w? f^^ 1"^^^' ^^'^^ ^ P^^*^^ *^^ boughs and looked into
!^Lf ? *hyket. there was a glow-worm shining like the visible
^irit of God upon the murdered child. I glanced down into his
grave when I had placed him there, and still it gleamed upon his

SL? .\.^f ^^! J^^"*^ ^''^^'''^ ^P *° ^^^^en ^ supplication to the
stars that watched me at my work.

I had to meet my wife, and break the news, and swe her hnn^ that
me cniia would soon be found. All this I did.-with some appearance
1 suppose, of being sincere, for I was the object of no suspicion This

248 Master Humphrey's Clock

done, I sat at the bedroom window all day long, and watched the
spot where the dreadful secret lay.

It was in a piece of ground which had been dug up to be newly
turfed, and which I had chosen on that account, as the traces of my
spade were less likely to attract attention. The men who laid down
the grass must have thought me mad. I called to them continually
to expedite their work, ran out and worked beside them, trod down
the earth with my feet, and hurried them with frantic eagerness.
They had finished then: task before night, and then I thought myself
comparatively safe.

I slept, — not as men do who awake refreshed and cheerful, but I
did sleep, passing from vague and shadowy dreams of being hunted
down, to visions of the plot of grass, through which now a hand, and
now a foot, and now the head itself was starting out. At this point I
always woke and stole to the window, to make sure that it was not
really so. That done, I crept to bed again; and thus I spent the
night in fits and starts, getting up and lying down full twenty times,
and dreaming the same dream over and over again, — which was far
worse than lying awake, for every dream had a whole night's suffering
of its own. Once I thought the child was alive, and that I had never
tried to kill him. To wake from that dream was the most dreadful
agony of all.

The next day I sat at the window again, never once taking my
eyes from the place, which, although it was covered by the grass,
was as plain to me — its shape, its size, its depth, its jagged sides, and
all — as if it had u^en open to the light of day. When a servant walked
across it, I felt as if he must sink in; when he had passed, I looked
to see that his feet had not worn the edges. If a bird lighted there, I
was in terror lest by some tremendous interposition it should be
instrumental in the discovery; if a breath of air sighed across it, to
me it whispered murder. There was not a sight or a sound — how
ordinary, mean, or unimportant soever — but was fraught with fear.
And in this state of ceaseless watching I spent three days.

On the fourth there came to the gate one who had served with me
abroad, accompanied by a brother officer of his whom I had never
seen. I felt that I could not bear to be' out of sight of the place. It
was a summer evening, and I bade my people take a table and a
flask of wine into the garden. Then I sat down with my chair upon
the grave, and being assured that nobody could disturb it now
without my knowledge, tried to drink and talk.

They hoped that my wife was well, — that she was not obliged to
keep her chamber, — that they had not frightened her away. What
could I do but tell them with a faltering tongue about the child?
The officer whom I did not know was a down-looking man, and kept
his eyes upon the ground while I was speaking. Even that terrified
me. I could not divest myself of the idea that he saw something there

\x7Viir>li f>aiioorl V«im +^ ot-iot-vrkf.* •♦■l>rv *■■»•■.■. i-V^ T ^r,^~^A U^~ 1 2_Ji l£ I--.

supposed that— and stopped. "That the child has been murdered?"

Master Humphrey's Clock 249

said he, looking mildly at me: "O no! what could a man gain by
murdenng a poor child?" / could have told him what a man gained
by such a deed, no one better: but I held my peace and shivered
as with an ague.

Mistaking my emotion, they were endeavouring to cheer me with
the hope that the boy would certainly be found,— great cheer that
was for me !— when we heard a low deep howl, and presently there
sprung over the wall two great dogs, who, bounding into the garden,
repeated the baying sound we had heard before.

"Bloodhounds!" cried my visitors.

What need to tell me that ! I had never seen one of that kind in all
my life, but I knew what they were and for what purpose they had
come. I grasped the elbows of my chair, and neither spoke nor moved.

"They are of the genuine breed," said the man whom I had known
abroad, "and being out for exercise have no doubt escaped from
their keeper."

Both he and his friend turned to look at the dogs, who w h their
noses to the ground moved restlessly about, running to and fro,
and up and down, and across, and round in circles, careering about
like wild things, and all this time taking no notice of us, but ever
and again repeating the yell we had heard already, then dropping
their noses to the ground again and tracking earnestly here and there.
They now began to snufE the earth more eagerly than they had done
yet, and although they were still very restless, no longer beat about
in such wide circuits, but kept near to one spot, and constantly
diminished the distance between themselves and me.

At last they came up close to the great chair on which I sat, and
raising their frightful howl once more, tried to tear away the wooden
rails that kept them from the ground beneath. I saw how I looked,
in the faces of the two who were with me.

"They scent some prey," said they, both together.

"They scent no prey!" cried I.
^^ "In Heaven's name, move!" said the one I knew, very earnestly,
' or you will be torn to pieces."

"Let them tear me from limb to limb, I'll never leave this place!"
cried I. "Are dogs to hurry men to shameful deaths ! Hew them down,
cut them in pieces."

"There is some foul mystery here!" said the officer whom I did
not know, drawing his sword. "In King Charles's name, assist me
to secure this man."

They both set upon me and forced me away, though I fought
and bit and caught at them like a madman. After a struggle, they
got me quietly between them; and then, my God ! I saw the angry
dogs tearing at the earth and throwing it up into the air like water

What more have I to tell? That I fell upon my knees, and with
chattering teeth confessed the truth, and prayed Lo be forgiven.
That 1 had since denied, and now confess to it again. That I have
been tried for the crime, found guilty, and sentenced. That I have

i Hi

M|il|
il

250 Master Humphrey's Clock

not the courage to anticipate my doom, or to bear up manfully
agamst it. That I have no compassion, no consolation, no hope, no
friend. That my wife has happily lost for the time those faculties
which would enable her to know my misery or hers. That I am alone
m this stone dungeon with my evil spirit, and that I die to-morrow.

[Old Curiosity Shop begins here.]

ill

CORRESPONDENCE
Master Humphrey has been favoured with the following letter
written on strongly-scented paper, and sealed in light-blue wax with
the representation of two very plump doves interchanging beaks.
It does not commence with any of the usual forms of address, but
begins as is here set forth.

Bath, Wednesday night.

Heavens! into what an indiscretion do I sufiEer myself to be
betrayed I To address these faltering lines to a total stranger, and
that stranger one o^ a conflicting sex!— and yet I am precipitated
into the abyss, and have no power of self-snatchation (forgive me if
I com that phrase) from the yawning gulf before me.

Yes, I am writing to a man; but let me not think of that, for
madness is in the thought. You will understand my feelings? O yes,
I am sure you will; and you will respect them too. and not despise
them, — will you?

Let me be calm. That portrait,— smiling as once he smiled on me;
that cane,— dangling as I have seen it dangle from his hand I know
not how oft; those legs that have glided through my nightly dreams
and never stopped to speak; the perfectly gentlemanly, though false
original, — can I be mistaken? O no, no.

Let me be calmer yet; I would be calm as coffins. You have
published a letter from one whose likeness is engraved, but whose
name (and wherefore?) is suppressed. Shall / breathe that name! Is
it— but why ask when my heart tells riie too truly that it is !

I would not upbraid him with his treachery; I would not remind
him of those times when he plighted the most eloquent of vows, and
procured from me a small pecuniary accommodation; and yet I
would see him— see him did I say— Aim— alas ! such is woman's
nature. For as the poet beautifully says— but you will akeady have
anticipated the sentiment. Is it not sweet? O yes!

It was in this city (hallowed by the recollection) that I met him
first; and assuredly if mortal happiness be recorded anywhere, then
those rubbers with their three-and-sixpenny points are scored on
tablets of celestial brass. He always held an honour — generally two.
On that eventful night we stood at eight. He raised his eyes ^luminous
in their seductive sweetness) to my agitated face. "Can you?" said

Master Humphrey's Clock

every lineament of his exoressiw' rt^Z ^ ^!i*"' "Sam; and

"r«jst me?" I murmu^/X."':^,, totT"" "^^"^ *'"' ""''»

the S:^1-„ThXu7XwttiedTd\^ "''"*"• ^ ^^"^ " «'»
little did they Ruess the deJ^ m,l ^ **'' '"*P*'* *-^^ *'•""' ' How

He called nex^^ Si, g'on hS Ss Tdo n^?""^ "l*""* '"1"'^'
actually came in that Sosition to tt!: L S* "T *° ^^^ *»* he
down upon those Mnts^'rec^Vth^^^ ^.^T' '"'* *''''* ^e went
some ve^s in his w whfrh h- *^?,'«"'^t had retired. He brought

since found were MiK Js; Lwi::'a ^mI"^"-} ^",? ^ll'-^" ' l^'^^
also a pistol and a sword-stlck^e drew ttl fif^"^*^ laudanum;
former, and clicked the tri^..l^ „< ♦•, T , '****'^' ""corked the

he said, to coCer or to Ife He dw''„'^.''H- *'?;""'• «" ^^^ '=°™.
an avowal of n?y love and Lnfffh. •.'*!*• "* "^^^^ '■■°™ me
previous to parlJlXX'sJJh? rep'Tst''"'"' °"* "' " """"^ -"""-

forgive him both ^S'LTth^'S^'r^^^JedSTarhl S"" '5?
pay next week I Could I snnm i,i«. a: ^"cre that he promised to

inWence,.andwrth^'rarmorallTec?rw^^^^^^^^^

enchanter still weave hi<! qt^^iio o^^ ""jecti would the blandishing

all and turn away In coS I da'e not 'tr' f ""^^ ' V"^^* *^^^
the thought. ^oianessi l dare not trust my weakness with

hisl'odetf iif^^^^e'lco^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^1^--' ^- occupations.

You are a humkneTn^Sthm?^^ .T' "^f" ^'^ ^""^^^^ *^«"ghts
-all; but espedr^y Keet^^^^^ ^" ^^^ know

is departing the bellman rinlf ^"^^^er of his lodgings. The post
of love and^ho^ to '"^g^.-pray Heaven it be not the knell

Belinda.

Adtess^l:? tte'kTofficrxh'e *h^' P*° """^ ^ ^'^'^'^ "-".
delay, is ringing Sfu*iyin'^S:e^asSg:: ""'^"^ '""P^"^"* "^^

mu"„ot «re^t*?t'tS 'tS *netV''' ^"■»5»-i^ «<>»«. and that you
you don't ge?k ^* P°'*' '° '^°"'* be surprised when

(af::^^sp"ore&^Thra°dy:2oftetft,''*"^^ *" *"™* "'^
he publish^ her letter as ^ p1f^r^iL'a!r;Sl:rth' a^X^^* -

252

Master Humphrey's Clock

' s

III

MASTER HUMPHREY'S VISITOR

When I am in a thoughtful mood, I often succeed in diverting the
current of some mournful reflections, by conjuring up a number of
fanciful associations with the objects that surround me, and dwelling
upon the scenes and characters they suggest.

I have been led by this habit tc assign to every room in my
house and every old staring portrait on its walls a separate interest
of its own. Thus, I am persuaded that a stately dame, terrible to
behold in her rigid modesty, who hangs above the chimney-piece of
my bedroom, is che former lady of the mansion. In the courtyard
below is a stone face of surpassing ugliness, which I have somehow
— in a kind of jealousy, I am afraid — associated with her husband.
Above my study is a little room with ivy peeping through the
lattice, from which I bring their daughter, a lovely girl of eighteen
or nineteen years of age, and dutiful in all respects save one, that
one being her devoted attachment to a young gentleman on the
stairs, whose grandmother (degraded to a disused laundry in the
garden) piques herself upon an old family quarrel, and is the implac-
able enemy of their love. With such materials as these I work out
many a little drama, whose chief merit is, that I can bring it to a
happy end at will. I have so many of them on hand, that if on my
return home one of these evenings I were to find some bluff old
wight of two centuries ago comfortably seated in my easy chair,
and a lovelorn damsel vainly appealing to his heart, and leaning
her white arm upon my clock itself, I verily believe I should only
express my surprise that they had kept me waiting so long, and
never honoured me with a call before.

I was in such a mood as this, sitting in my garden yesterday
morning under the shade of a favourite tree, revelling in all the
bloom and brightness about me, and feeling every sense of hope and
enjoyment quickened by this most beautiful season of Spring, when
my meditations were interrupted by the unexpected appearance of
my barber at the end of the walk, who I immediately saw was
coming towards me with a hasty step that betokened something
remarkable.

My barber is at all times a very brisk, bustling, active little man,—
for he is, as it were, chubby all over, without being stout or unwieldy,
— but yesterday his alacrity was so v^^y uncommon that it quite
took me by surprise. For could I fail to observe when he came up to
me that his gray eyes were twinkling in a most extraordinary
manner, that his little red nose was in an unusual glow, that every
line in his round bright face was twisted and curved into an expres-

' it*

■> i

i- .t

me.

Master Humphrey'-. Clock

looked over his shoulder for that nurnnQA t^^ia ■ *^^^^®

"And who is it?" said I.
:WelII" said I. -bid theSemTclmete' '" *^ ''"*^"^^-

smiling ^vith uls^tk^l^to^odXSrTKe wr^r^' ""<*

be s^d': m^, sirdt:;:i''*^nr„otitir *° ^^<=^'- >>»• -p-y

insist upon it, really." withX^ewolVpXfcrSvJrr

256 Master Humphrey's Clock

had found their way into print. Mr. Pickwick shook his head, and for
a moment looked very indignant, but smihng again directly, added
that no doubt I was acquainted with Cervantes's introduction to
the second part of Don Quixote, and that it fully expressed his senti-
ments on the subject.

"But now," said Mr. Pickwick, "don't you wonder how I found
you out?"

"I shall never wonder, and, with your good leave, never know,"
said I, smiling in my turn. "It is enough for me that you give me
this gratification. I have not the least desire that you should tell me
by what means I have obtained it."

"You are very kind," returned Mr. Pickwick, shaking me by the
hand again; "you are so exactly what I expected! But for what
particular purpose do you think I have sought you, my dear sir?
Now what do you think I have come for?"

Mr. Pickwick put this question as though he were persuaded that
it was morally impossible that I could by any means divine the deep
purpose of his visit, and that it must be hidden from all human ken.
Therefore, although I was rejoiced to think that I had anticipated
his drift, I feigned to be quite ignorant of it, and after a brief con-
sideration shook my head despairingly.

"What should you say," said Mr. Pickwick, laying the forefinger
of his left hand upon my coat-sleeve, and looking at me with his
head thrown back, and a little on one side, — "what should you say
if I confessed that after reading your account of yourself and your
little society, I had come here, a humble candidate for one of those
empty chairs?"

"I should say," I returned, "that I know of only one circumstance
which could still further endear that little society to me, and that
would be the associating with it my old friend, — for you must let me
call you so, — my old friend, Mr. Pickwick."

As I made him this answer every feature of Mr. Pickwick's face
fused itself into one all-pervading expression of delight. After shaking
me heartily by both hands at once, he patted me gently on the back,
and then — I wAl understood why — coloured up to the eyes, and
hoped with great earnestness of manner that he had not hurt me.

If he had, I would have been content that he should have repeated
the ofEence a hundred times rather than suppose so; but as he had
not, I had no difficulty in changing the subject by making an inquiry
which had been upon my lips twenty times already.

"You have not told me," said I, "anything about Sam Weller."

"O! Sam," replied Mr. Pickwick, "is the same as ever. The same
true, faithful fellow that he ever was. What should I tell you about
Sam, my dear sir, except that he is more indispensable to my happi-
ness and comfort every day of my life?"

"And Mr. Weller senior?" said I.

"Old Mr. Weller," returned Mr. Pickwick, "is in no respect more
altered than Sam, unless it be that he is a little more opinionated

than he
spends a
so consti
permissic
(supposir
chairs), I

I very
free adm
settled, >
with as li
from our
that Mr. ]
charactei
consent c
him thai
sanction,
to introdi
hand) wil

To this
means all
formally i
think of c
him was
meeting,
ately on 1

Mr. Pic
small roll
many qu(
Redburn,
favour I c
him on thi
acquainta

"And t
Dear me !

I thoug!
towards i1
and as ms
sider it in
at the top
now surve
and now i
of the bac
dial to see
on one sit
intervals (
placent gr
was not c
article in t

Master Humphrey's Clock 257

than he was formerly, and perhaps at times more talkative. He
spends a good deal of his time now in our neighbourhood, and has
so constituted himself a part of my bodyguard, that when I ask
permission for Sam to have a seat in your kitchen on clock nights
(supposing your three friends think me worthy to fill one of the
chairs), I am afraid I must often include Mr. Weller Loo."

I very readily pledged myself to give both Sam and his father a
free admission to my house at all hours and seasons, and this point
settled, we fell into a lengthy conversation which was carried on
with as little reserve on both sides as if we had been intimate friends
from our youth, and which conveyed to me the comfortable assurance
that Mr. Pickwick's buoyancy of spirit, and indeed all his old cheerful
characteristics, were wholly unimpaired. As he had spoken of the
consent of my friends as being yet in abeyance, I repeatedly assured
him that his proposal was certain to receive their most joyful
sanction, and several times entreated that he would give me leave
to introduce him to Jack Redbum and Mr. Miles (who were near at
hand) without further ceremony.

To this proposal, however, Mr. Pickwick's delicacy would by no
means allow him to accede, for he urged that his eligibility must be
formally discussed, and that, until this had been done, he could not
think of obtruding himself further. The utmost I could obtain from
him was a promise that he would attend upon our next night of
meeting, that I might have the pleasure of presenting h* • immedi-
ately on his election.

Mr. Pickwick, having with many blushes placed in my hands a
small roll of paper, which he termed his "qualification," put a great
many questions to me touching my friends, and particularly lack
Redburn, whom he repeatedly termed "a fine fellow," and in whose
favour I could see he was strongly predisposed. When I had satisfied
him on these points, I took him up into my room, that he might make
acquaintance with the old chamber which is our place of meeting

"And this," said Mr. Pickwick, stopping short, "is the clock!
Dear me! And this is really the old clock!"

I thought he would never have come away from it. After advancing
towards it softly, and laying Ms hand upon it with as much respect
and as many smiling looks as if it were alive, he set himself to con-
sider it in every possible direction, now mounting on a chair to look
at the top, now going down upon his knees to examine the bottom,
now surveying the sides r Hh his spectacles almost touching the casei
and now trying to peep oetween it and tb' wall to get a slight view
of the back. Then he would retire a pace or two and look up at the
dial to see it go, and then draw near again and stand with his head
on one side to hear it tick: never failing to glance towards me at
intervals of a few seconds each, and nod his head with such com-
placent gratification as T am nnifp nnahlf> fr» Hcoot^So Wic. ^^.^;-„x:

was not confined to the clock either, but extended itself to every
article in the room; and really, when he had gone through them every

327

/ ;

r.
5-'

■ ;

258 Master Humphrey's Clock

one, and at last sat himself down in all the six chairs, one after
another, to try how they felt, I never saw such a picture of good-
humour and happiness as he presented, from the top of his shining
head down to the very last button of his gaiters.

I should have been well pleased, and should have had the utmost
enjoyment of his company, if he had remained with me all day, but
my favourite, striking the hour, reminded him that he must take
his leave. I could not forbear telling him once more how glad he had
made me, and we shook hands all the way down-stairs.

We had no sooner arrived in the Hall than my housekeeper, gliding
out of her little room (she had changed her gown and cap, I observed),
greeted Mr. Pickwick with her best smile and courtesy; and the
barber, feigning to be accidentally passing on his way out, made him
a vast number of bows. When the housekeeper courtesied, Mr. Pick-
wick bowed with the utmost politeness, and when he bowed, the
housekeeper courtesied again; between the housekeeper and the
barber, I should say that Mr. Pickwick faced about and bowed with
undiminished affability fifty times at least.

I saw him to the door; an omnibus was at the moment passing the
corner of the lane, which Mr. Pickwick hailed and ran after with
extracdinary nimbleness. When he had got about half-way, he
turned his head, and seeing that 1 was still looking after him, and
that I waved my hand, stopped, evidently irresolute whether to
come back and shake hands again, or to go on. The man behind the
omnibus shouted, and Mr. Pickwick ran a little way towards him:
then he looked round at me, and ran a little way back again. Then
there was another shout, and he turned round once more and ran
the other way. After several of these vibrations, the man settled the
question by taking Mr. Pickwick by the arm and putting him into
the carriage; but his last action was to let down the window and
wave his hat to me as it drove off.

I lost no time in opening the parcel he had left with me. The
following were its contents : —

MR. Pickwick's tale

A good many years have passed away since old John Podgers
lived in the town of Windsor, where he was born, and where, in
course of time, he came to be comfortably and snugly buried. You
may be sure that in the time of King James the First, Windsor was
a very quaint queer old town, and you may take it upon my authority
that John Podgers was a very quaint queer old fellow; consequently
he and Windsor fitted each other to a nicety, and seldom parted
company even for half a day.

John Podgers was broad, sturdy, Dutch-built, short, and a very
hard eater, as men of his figure often are. Being a hard sleeper like-
wise, he divided his time pretty equally between these two recrea-
tions, always falling asleep when he had done eating, and always

taking ar
which me
his life. I
tered up
never fail
many pe(
seen to 1
heard, h}
sight, an(
was upon
with the
man of si
it might
solid pari
This imp
shaking
motion t(
who, beii
set it afii
deal of gi
men.

Being
a great a;
and no ii
had no o
will read
appearan
truth is t
uneasy ii
appreher

You ki
old womi
through 1
men; stic
it, and c;
the great
much dis
home, kr
the scrap
played a
many we
that ven]
even the
have had
Gracious
most Grs
whereof s
graciousr

Master Humphrey's Clock

259

Dne after

of good-

s shining

e utmost
day, but
lust take
id he had

r, gliding
bserved),

and the
nade him
Mr. Pick-
wed, the

and the
wed with

ssing the
fter with
-way, he
him, and
lether to
;hind the
irds him:
lin. Then
and ran
jttled the
him into
dow and

me. The

Podgers
vhere, in
■ied. You
idsor was
luthority
iequently
[n parted

id a very
sper hke-
o recrea-
d always

taking another turn at the trencher when he had done sleeping, by
which means be grew more corpulent and more drowsy every day of
his life. Indeed it used to be currently reported that when he saun-
tered up and down the sunny side of the street before dinner (as he
never failed to do in fair weather), he enjoyed his soundest nap; but
many people held this to be a fiction, as he had several times been
seen to look after fat oxen on market-days, and had even been
heard, by persons of good credit and reputation, to chuckle at the
sight, and say to himself with great glee, "Live beef, live beef!" It
was upon this evidence that the wisest people in Windsor (beginning
with the local authorities, of course) held that John Podgers was a
man of strong, sound sense, not what is called smart, perhaps, and
it might be of a rather lazy and apoplectic turn, but still a man of
solid parts, and one who meant much more than he cared to show.
This impression was confirmed by a very dignified way he had of
shaking his head and imparting, at the same time, a pendulous
motion to his double chin; in short, he passed for one of those people
who, being plunged into the Thames, would make no vain efforts to
set it afire, but would straightway flop down to the bottom with a
deal of gravity, and be highly respected in consequence by all good
men.

Being well to do in the world, and a peaceful widower, — having
a great appetite, which, as he could afford to gratify it, was a luxury
and no inconvenience, and a power of going to sleep, which, as he
had no occasion to keep awake, was a most enviable faculty, — you
will readily suppose that John Podgers was a happy man. But
appearances are often deceptive when they least seem so, and the
truth is that, notwithstanding his extreme sleekness, he was rendered
uneasy in his mind and exceedingly uncomfortable by a constant
apprehension that beset him night and day.

You know very well that in those times there flourished divers evil
old women who, under the name of Witches, spread great disorder
through the land, and inflicted various dismal tortures upon Christian
men; sticking pins and needles into them when they least expected
it, and causing them to walk in the air with their feet upwards, to
the great terror of their wives and families, who were naturally very
much disconcerted when the master of the house unexpectedly came
home, knocking at the door with his heels and combing his hair on
the scraper. These were their commonest pranks, but they every day
played a hundred others, of which none were less objectionable, and
many were much more so, being improper besides; the result was
that vengeance was denounced against all old women, with whom
even the king himself had no sympathy (as he certainly ought to
have had), for with his own most Gracious hand he penned a most
Gracious consignment of them to everlasting wrath, and devised
most Gracious means for their confusion and slaus'h^'er in virtue
whereof scarcely a day passed but one witch at the least was most
graciously hanged, drowned, or roasted in some part of his dominions.

ii'. ill

^i !

i ,u

I
1

26o

Master Humphrey's Clock

still the press teemed with strange and terrible news from the North
or the South, or the East or the West, relative to witches and their
unhappy victims in some corner of the country, and the Public's
hair stood on end to that degree that it lifted its hat off its head, and
made its face pale with terror.

You may believe that the little town of Windsor did not escape
the general contagion. The inhabitants boiled a witch on the king's
birthday and sent a bottle of the broth to court, with a dutiful
address expressive of their loyalty. The king, being rather frightened
by the present, piously bestowed it upon the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, and returned an answer to the address, wherein he p -we them
golden rules for discovering witches, and laid great stress upon cer-
tain protecting charms, and especially hors* shoes. Immediately the
towns-people went to work nailing up horseshoes over every door,
and so many anxious parents apprentice ' their children to farriers
to keep them out of harm's way, that it became quite a genteel
trade, and flounshed exceedingly.

In the midst of all this bustle John Podgers ate and slept as usual,
but shook his head a great deal oftener than w. his custom, and was
observed to look at the oxen less, and at the old women more. He
had a little shelf pilt up in his sitting-room, whereon was displayed,
in a row which grew longer every week, all the witchcraft literature
of the time; he grew learned in charms and exorcisms, hinted at
certain questionable females on broomstick whom he had seen from
his chamber window, riding in the air at night, and was in constant
terror of being bewitched. At length, from perpetually dwelling upon
this one idea, which, being alone in his head, had all its own way, the
fear of witches became the single passion of his life. He, who up to
that time had never known what it was to dream, began to have
visions of witches whenever he fell asleep; waking, they were inces-
santly present to his imagination likewise; and, sleeping or waking,
he had not a moment's peace. He began to set witch-traps in the
highway, and was often seen lying in wait round the corner for hours
together, to watch their effect. These engines were of simple con-
struction, usually consisting of two straws disposed in the form of a
cross, or a piece of a Bible cover with a pinch of salt upon it; but they
were infallible, and if an old woman chanced to stumble over them
(as not unfrequently happened, the chosen spot being a broken and
stony place), John started from a doze, pounced out upon her, and
hung round her neck till assistance arrived, when she was immedi-
ately carried away and drowned. By dint of constantly inveigling old
ladies and disposing of them in this summary manner, he acquired
the reputation of a great public character; and as he received no harm
in these pursuits beyond a scratched face or so, he came, in the course
of time, to be considered witch-proof.

There was but one person who entertained the least doubt of John
Podgers's gifts, and that person was his own nephew, a wild, roving
young fellow of twenty who had been brought up in his uncle's house

he North

and their

Public's

lead, and

ot escape
he king's
a dutiful
rightened
f Canter-
^ve them
ipon cer-
ately the
ery door,

farriers

1 genteel

as usual,
, and was
nore. He
isplayed,
iterature
linted at
een from
constant
ing upon
way, the
ho up to

to have
;re inces-

waking,
3S in the
for hours
iple con-
brm of a
but they
rer them
)ken and
her, and
immedi-
gling old
acquired
no harm
le course

of John
I, roving
s's house

Master Humphrey's Clock

261

and lived there still, — that is to say, when he was at home, which
was not as often as it might have been. As he was an apt scholar, it
was he who read aloud every fresh piece of strange and terrible
intelligence that John Podgers bought; and this he always did of an
evening in the little porch in front of the house, round which the
neighbours would flock in crowds to hear the direful news, — for
people like to be frightened, and when they can be frightened for
nothing and at another man's expense, they like it all the better.

One fine midsummer evening, a group of persons were gathered in
this place, listening intently to Will Marks (that was the nephew's
name), as with his cap very much on one side, his arm coiled slyly
round the waist of a pretty girl who sat beside him, and his face
screwed into a comical expression intended t present extreme
gravity, he read — with Heaven knows how man^/ embellishments of
his own — a dismal account of a gentleman down in Northampton-
shire under the influence of witchcraft and taken forcible possession
of by the Devil, who was playing his very self with him. John
Podgers, in a high sugar-loaf hat and short cloak, filled the opposite
seat, and surveyed the auditory with a look of mingled pride and
horror very edifying to see; while the hearers, with their heads thrust
forward and their mouths open, listened and trembled, and hoped
there was a great deal more to come. Sometimes Will stopped for an
instant to look round upon his eager audience, and then, with a more
comical expression of face than before and a settling of himself
comfortably, which included a squeeze of the young lady before
mentioned, he launched into some new wonder surpassing all the
others.

The setting sun shed his last golden rays upon this little party,
who, absorbed in their present occupation, took no heed of the
approach of night, or the glory in which the day went down, when
the sound of a horse, approaching at a good round trot, invading the
silence of the hour, caused the reader to make a sudden stop, and
the listeners to raise their heads in wonder. Nor was their wonder
diminished when a horseman dashed up to the porch, and abruptly
checking his steed, inquired where one John Podgers dwelt.

"Here!" cried a dozen voices, while a dozen hands pointed out
sturdy John, still basking in the terrors of the pamphlet.

The rider, giving his bridle to one of those who surrounded him,
dismounted, and approached John, hat in hand, but with great
haste.

"Whence come ye?" said John.

"From Kingston, master."

"And wherefore?"

"On most pressing business."

"Of what nature?"

"Witchcraft."

Witchcraft ! Everybody looked aghast at the breathless messenger,
and the breathless messenger looked equally aghast at everybody —

I",

fcJUi

262 Master Humphrey's Clock

except Will Marks who, finding himself unobserved, not only
squeezed the young lady again, but kissed her twice. Surely he must
have been bewitched himself, or he never could have done it-and
the young lady too. or she never would have let him

vvH,}!^'* "^?J" ^7^^ Will, drowning the sound of his last kiss
which was rather a loud one. '

The messenger turned towards him. and with a frown repeated
the word more solemnly than before; then told his errand, which was
in brief, that the people of Kingston had been greatly terrified fo^
some nights past by hideous revels, held by witches beneath the
gibbet withm a mile of the town, and related and deposed to by
chance wayfarers who had passed within ear-shot of the spot; that
the sound of their voices m their wild orgies had been plainly heard
by many persons; that three old women laboured under strong sus-
picion, and that precedents had been consulted and solemn council
had and It was found that to identify the hags some single person
must watch apon the spot alone; that no single person ha^d the
courage to perform the task; and that he had been despatched express
to solicit John Podgers to undertake it that very night, as beFng a

Tho^y fpdls!"'''"''"; ^''"" ^ '^^''"'^ ^'^'' ^^^ ^^' P^°°^ ^g^i^^t
John received this communication with much composure, and
r^fj"" %^H X^^.t^^t ^t ^o^ld have afforded him inexpressfble
pleasure to do the Kingston people so slight a service, if it were no?
for his unfortunate propensity to fall asleep, which no man regretted
more than nimself upon the present occasion, but which quite settled
the question. Nevertheless he said, there ..as a gentleman present
(and here he looked very hard at a tall farrier), who. having been
engaged al his life m the manufacture of horseshoes, must be quite
invulnerable to the power of witches, and who, he had no d?ubt
from his own reputation for bravery and good-nature, would readilv
accept the commission The farrier politely thanked him for his good

Zf '°\r ^''^ 'i ."^TJ^ ^^^^^y' ^^ ^^ ^*"dy to deserve, but added
that, with regard to the present little matter, he couldn't think of it
on any account as his departing on suQh an errand would certainly
occasion the instant death of his wife, to whom, as they all knew he
was tenderly attached Now, so far from this circumstance being

fn fh^i^i^'K-f^^J'''^?' ^t^ suspected the reverse, as the farrier wai
in the habit of beating his lady rather more than tender husbands
usually do; all the married men present, however, applauded his
reso ution with great vehemence, and one and all declared that they
would stop at home and die if needful (which happily it was not) in
defence of their lawful partners. PP y ^«- was notj in

This burst of enthusiasm over, they began to look, as by one con-
sent, toward Will Marks, who. with his cap more on one side than
ever sat watching the proceedings with extraordinary unconcern,
ne fta,. never ^.een heaid openly to express his disbelief in witches,
but had often cut such jokes at their expense as left it to be inferred;

h if

not only
T he must
3 it — and

last kiss,

repeated
tiich was,
rifled for
eath the
5d to by
3ot; that
\y heard
ong sus-
1 council
e person
had the
I express
being a
\ against

ire, and
)ressible
vere not
Jgretted
3 settled
present
ng been
3e quite
doubt,
readily
lis good
t added
nk of it
jrtainly
lew, he
5 being
ier was
isbands
led his
at they
not) in

le con-
!e than
)ncern.
itches,
ferred;

Master Humphrey's Clock 263

nubliclv stating on several occasions that he considered a broomstick
^convenient charger, and one especially unsuited to the digmty
o? the female character, and indulging in other free remarks of the
^ame tendency to the great amusement of his wild companions.
^' a: ttySd at wfll they began to f /.^P- -^^^^^^^^^
themselves, and at length one man cried. Why don t you ask wiii

^ As this was what everybody had been thinking of, they all took
up the w^rd, and cried in concert. "Ah! why don't you ask Will?

"He don't care," said the famer.

"Not he." added another voice in the crowd.

"He dor^'t believe in it, you know," sneered a little man with a
yellow face and a taunting nose and chin, which he thrust out from
finHpr the arm of a long man before him.

"Besides.'^said a red-faced gentleman with a gruff voice, "he s a

''''"ThS's''the point!" said the farrier; and all the married men
murmured, ah! that was it. and they only wished they were single
Siei^elves; they would show him what spirit was. very soon.

xSe messenger looked towards Will Marks beseechingly.

"it win be a wet night, friend, and my grey nag is tired after
yesterday's work "

PbS •^^rure^wTlo^'.^nTatout him with a smile, "if nobody
else^uts inTbrtter claim to go' for the credit of the town I am your
man and I would be, if I had to go afoot. In five minutes I shall be
S "te sadSi:, unless'l am depriving any ^P^hy g™t eman he^
the honour of the adventure, which I wouldn t do for «ie woria.

Burhere arose a double difficulty, for not only did John Podgers
combat the^°solution with all the words he had. which were not
mSiv but the young lady combated it too with all the tears she had
Xch were ver^ man^ indeed. Will, however, being inflexible, paxned
^. ?inSe's oWtions with a joke, and coaxed the young lady into
a smSe fn thSort whispers. As it was plain that he set his mind
^!I^ff and would go Tohn Podgers offered him a few first-rate
Trms out of C^wn pocLt. whil he dutifully declined to accept;
and Se young lady gave him a kiss, which he also returned

"YouCwhat I rnre thing it is to be niamed." «aid Will, and
how careful and considerate all these husbands are. There s not a
ma^ among them but his heart is leaping to forestall me m this
Xnture and :J^t a strong sense of duty keeps him back, fhe hus-
bands hi this one little town are a pattern to the world and so must
the wives be to^^^ for that matter, or they could never boast half the

" wXnf f7r noTeply to this sarcasm, he snapped his fingers and
wiSdr^^So the. h^Le. and ^^ence^ntoj^^e ^^^^^^^^^^

S!^s^eS:^i:Si^s^s^^i^

F <J|

264

Master Humphrey's Clock

I J

with a good cloak hanging over his arm. a good sword girded bv his
^•Now • ?^i"i?!f ^°°^.^°"« caparisoned for the journey ^ '
Now said Will, leaping into the saddle at a bound ''uo anri
away. Upon your mettle, friend, and push on. Good nrght'" ^

He kissed his hand to the girl, nodded to his drowsy uncie waved
^n TT^P/^'i^^ rest-and off they flew pell-mell, as if alUhe 'wTtches
m England were m their horses' legs.^They were oufof slgM in 1

st h?deStr r:l' -'^ ^ go^Th'o^r^taTn'bS; s'^fd^ e^t
say he denied that: but he was rash, very rash and thei wa^ r.r. Tlu
ing what the end of it might be; what dVhe go for tha^wa" X'
he wanted to know? He wished the young fellow no harm but whv
did he go? Everybody echoed these"^ words, and shookTheS^hJads

rg-gi^rs^rb^s^^^^ ''-' ^^^^^^ j°^^ ^«^^- ^^o^'r^^"'^^^

h^ctS^r^^^^^^^^^^^

where sundry grave functionaries were assembled. anxSusW expect
mg the arrival of the renowned Podgers Thev w^e a lifX h?co
pointed to find a gay young man in h?s place; ^urheyp^^^^^^^^^
face upon the matter, and gave him full inst;uctions how he was to
conceal himself behind the gibbet, and watch and hS^n ^ +1^
witches, and how at a certain fime he was trburst forth and cu? and
slash among them vigorously, so that the suspected parties m^^hth.
found bleedmg in their beds next day. and tLrougWy SnS?nded
They gave him a great quantity of wholesome advice besMes and
which was more to the purpose with Will-a gooJsupper aIi the^
things being done, and midnight nearly come thers^Hed forJh fn
show him the spot where he was to ke Jp his drea?^ vS ^"^

The night was by this time dark and threatening There was a
rumbling of distant thunder, and a low sighing of wind aSonTtho
trees, which was very dismal. The potentlteslf tlTe tow^eDt so
uncomnionly close to Will that they trod u^^on his toe-. oT stum hi p^

and besides these annoyances, their teeth chattered so with fear thai
Af lf«f.^ ^^ ^S^O"?Panied by a dirge of castanets ' ^'

At last they made a halt at the opening of a lonely desolate sn^rp

"Yes," he replied. "What then?"

Informing him abruptly that it was the gibbet where he was to

Th i' *^" V^/^ ^""^ ^°°^ "^^^* ^^ ^" extremely friendly manner
and ran back as fast as their feet would carry them ^ "tanner.

ca^irdtt ^^l^^^^^^f^:^?}^^^ When he

and that nothing dangled from the top brt^mTSon Ss^wS

Master Humphrey's Clock

265

swung mournfully to and fro as they weie moved by the breeze.
After a careful survey of every quarter he determined to take his
station with his face towards tlie town; both because that would
place him with his back to the wind, and because, if any trick or
surprise were attempted, it would probably come from that direction
in the first instance. Having taken these precautions, he wrapped his
cloak about him so that it left the handle of his sword free, and ready
to his hand, and leaning against the gallows-tree with his cap net
quite so much on one side as it had been before, took up his position
for the night.

* SECOND CHAPTER OF MR. PICKWICK's TALE

We left Will Marks leaning under the gibbet with his face towards
the town, scanning the distance with a keen )ye, which sought to
pierce tlie darkness and catch the earliest glimpse of any person or
persons that might appro;ich towards him. But all was quiet, and,
save the howling of the wind as it swept across the heath in gusts,
and the creaking of the chains that dangled above his head, there
was no sound to break the sullen stillness of the night. After half an
hour or so this monotony became more disconcerting to Will than
the most furious uproar would have been, and he heartily wished for
some one antagonist with whom he might have a fair stand-up fight,
if it were only to warm himself.

Truth to tell, it was a bitter wind, and seemed to blow to the very
heart of a man whose blood, heated but now with rapid riding, was
the more sensitive to the chilling blast. Will was a daring fellow and
cared not a jot for hard knocks or sharp blades; but he could not
persuade himself to move or walk about, having just that vague
expectation of a sudden assault which made it a comfortable thing
to have something at his back, even though that something were a
gallows-tree. He had no great faith in the superstitions of the age,
still such of them as occurred to him did not serve to lighten the time,
or to render his situation the more endurable. He remembered how
witches were said to repair at that ghostly hour to churchyards and
gibbets, and such-like dismal spots, to pluck the bleeding mandrake
or scrape the flesh from dead men's bones, as choice ingredients for
their spells; how, stealing by night to lonely places they dug graves
with their finger-nails, or anointed themselves before ndmg in the
air with a delicate pomatum made of the fat of infants newly boiled.
These and many other fabled practices of a no less agreeable nature,
and ail having some reference to the circumstance-, in which he was
placed, passed and repassed in quick succession through the mind
of Will Marks, and adding a shadowy dread to that distrust ana
watchfulness which his situation inspired, rendered it, upon the
whole, sufficiently uncomfortable. As he had foreseen too. the ram

began to descena heavily, aua unving -.-^xv^xv, «.x1^. .,...-.. :~~

mist, obscured even those few objects which the darkness of the

327*

i 'd

266

Master Humphrey's Clock

1 '

I -i

i L

night had before imperfectly revealed.

*lx)ok!" shrieked a voice. "Great Heaven, it has fallen down, and
stands erect as if It lived!"

xArTwu^P^^^i""^*^ ?'°^® ^^""^ ^^"^; ^^^ vo^" • ^^^' almost at his ear
WiU threw off his cloak, drew his sword, .-n.: .iauing swiftly round
seized a woman by the wrist, who, recoi'i: . froi i him with a dreadful
shriek, fell strugglmg upon her knees. An* ., 'oman. clad, like her
whom he had grasped, in mourning g?nne . ^ stood rooted to the
spot on which they were, gazing upon his facf> with wild and glaring
eyes that quite appalled him. ^

"Say." cried Will, when they had con^ ;...cd each other thus for
some time, "what are ye?"

"Say what are you," returned the woman, "who trouble even this
obscene restmg-place of the dead, and strip the gibbet of its honoured
burden? Where is the body?"

He looked in wonder and affright from the woman who questioned
nim to the other whose arm he clutched.

"Where is the body?" repeated his questioner more firmly than
before. \ ou wear no livery which marks you for the hireling of the
government. You are no friend to us. or I should recognise you. for
the friends of such as we are few in number. What are you then and
wherefore are you here?"

"I am no foe to the distressed and helpless." said Will "Are /e
among that number? ye should be by your looks." "

"We are!" was the answer.

^^''^^-^tZM'^^.^.^fT,^ ^^^^ wailing and weeping here under cover of
the night?" said Will,

"It is," replied the woman sternly; and pointing, as she spoke,
towards her companion, "she mourns a husband, and I a brother
tven the bloody law that wreaks its vengeance on the dead does not
make that a crime, and if it did 'twould be alike to us who are past
its fear or favour." ^

Will glanced at the two females, and could barely discern that the
one whom he addressed was much the elder, and that the other was
young and of a slight figure. Both were {ieadly pale, their garments
wet and worn, their hair dishevelled and streaming in the wind
themselves bowed down with grief and misery; their whole appear-
ance most dejected, wretched, and forlorn. A sight so different from
any he had expected to encounter touched him to the quick and all
idea of anything but their pitiable condition vanished before it

I am a rough, blunt yeoman." said Will. "Why I came here is
told m a word; you have been overheard at a distance in the silence
ot \,he night, and I have undertaken a watch for hags or spirits I
can. e here expecting an adventure, and prepared to go through with
any .Jf there be aught that I can do to help or aid you, name it, and
on the taith of a man who can be secret and trusty, I will stand bv
you to the death." a ^ uy

"How comes this gibbet to be empty?" asked the elder female.

"I 8we£

But this ]

it is now;

night, sui

knowledg

whether y

the law li

removed

The wc

they conA

that they

little that

him that '.

not only

whither ii

a long ti

younger i

"You 1

"I hav

"And g

"Yes. J

length."

"FolloA

Will, \

second bi

so mu£!le(

offering a

way. Thi

silence a

suddenly

shelter, a

One of tl

the wom(

mounted

leaving tl

They n

Putney, j

they aligl

passed in

a small j

been hen

entered t

mask.

Will St
to foot. 1
of a firm ;
but SO SO]
one of th(

Master Humphrey's Clock

267

"I swear to you," replied Will, "that 1 know as little as yourself.
But this I know, that when I came here an hour ago or so, it was as
it is now; and if, as I gather from your question, it was not so last
night, sure I am that it has been secretly disturbed without the
knowledge of the folks in yonder town. Bethink you, therefore,
whether you have no friends in league with you or with him on whom
the law has d( ':o its worst, by whom these sad remains Lave been
removed for burial."

The women spoke together, and Will retired a pace or two while
they conversed apa-t. He could hear them sob and moan, and saw
that they wrung their hands in fruitless agony. He could make out
little that they said, but between whiles he gathered enough to assure
him that his suggestion was not very wide of the mark, and that they
not only suspected by whom the body had been removed, but also
whither it had been conveyed. When they had been in conversation
a long time, they turned towards him .jin.e more. This time the
younger female spoke.
"You have offered us your help?"
"I have."

"And given a pledge that you are still willing to redeem?"
"Yes. So far as I may, keeping all plots and conspiracies at arm's
length."
"Follow us, friend."

Will, whose self-possession was now quite restored, needed no
second bidding, but with his drawn sword in his hand, and his cloak
so mufaed over his left arm as to serve for a kind of shield without
offering any impediment to its free action, suffered them to lead the
way. Through mud and mire, and wind and rain, they walked in
silence a full mile. At length they turned into a dark lane, where,
suddenly starting out from beneath some trees where he had taken
shelter, a man appeared, having in his charge three saddled horses.
One of these (his own apparently), in obedience to a whisper from
the women, he consigned to Will, who, seeing that they mounted,
mounted also. Then, without a word spoken, they rode on together,
leaving the attendant behind.

They made no halt nor slackened their pace until they arrived near
Putney. At a large wooden house which stood apart from any other
they alighted, and giving their horses to one who was already waiting,
passed in by a side door, and so up some narrow creaking stairs into
a small panelled chamber, where Will was left alone. He had not
been here very long, when the door was softly opened, and there
entered to him a cavalier whose face was concealed beneath a black
mask.

Will stood upon his guard, and scrutinised this figure from head
to foot. The form was that of a man pretty far advanced in life, but
of a firm and stately carriage. His dress was of a rich and costly kind,
but so soiled and disordered that it was scarcely to be recognised for
one of those gorgeous suits which the expensive taste and fashion of

e 1 . u- I >.«

J t

' 1

268

Master Humphrey's Clock

If i^

the time prescribed for men of any rank or station. He was booted
and spurred, and bore about him even as many tokens of the state
of the roads as Will himself. All this he noted, while the eyes behind
the mask regarded him with equal attention. This survey over, the
cavalier broke silence.

"Thou'rt young ^nd bold, and wouidst be richer than thou art?"
"The two first I am," returned Will. "The last I have scarcely
thought of. But be it so. Say that I would be richer than I am: what
then?"

"The way lies before thee now," replied the Mask.
"Show it me."

"First let me inform thee, that thou wert brought here to-night
lest thou shouldst too soon have told thy tale to those who placed
thee on the watch."

"I thought as much when I followed," said Will, "But I am no
blab, not .1."

"Good,'* returned the Mask. "Now listen. He who was to have
executed the enterprise of burying that body, which, as thou hast
suspected, was taken down to-night, has left us in our need."

Will nodded, and thought within himself that if the Mask were to
attempt to play any tricks, the first eyelet-hole on the left-hand side
of his doublet, counting from the buttons up the front, would be a
very good place in which to pink him neatly.

"Thou art here, and the emergency is desperate. I propose his task
to thee. Convey the body (now cofl&ned in this house), by means
that I shall show, to the Church of St. Dunstan in London to-morrow
night, and thy service shall be richly paid Thou'rt about to ask whose
corpse it is. Seek not to know. I warn thee, seek not to know. Felons
hang in chains on every moor and heath. Believe, as others do, that
this was one, and ask no further. The murders of state policy, its
victims or avengers, had best r-main unknown to such as thee!"

"The mystery of this service," said Will, "bespeaks its danger.
What is the reward?"

"One hundred golden unities," replied the cavalier. "The danger
to one who cannot be recognised as the-friend of a fallen cause is not
great, but there is some hazard to be run. Decide between that and
the reward."

"What if I refuse?" said Will.

"Depart in peace, in God's name," returned the Mask in a melan-
choly tone, "and keep our secret, remembering that those who
brought thee here were crushed and stricken women, and that those
who bade thee go free could have bad thy life with one word, and
no man the wiser."

Men were readier to undertake desperate adventures in those
times than they are now. In this case the temptation was great, and
the punishment, even in case of detection, was not likely to be very
severe, as Will came of a loyal stock, and his uncle was in good repute,
and a passable tale to account for his possession of the body and his

ignoran*

Thee
the purj
should I
after th
journey'
that offi
tale thai
of t^e pi
succeed,
by anot!
ments tc
added h
the end,
the mar
Kingsto]
the pros
energies

Thefc
old Lon
containe
disguisec
horse's 1
that he
taking, I

It was
without
murder \
were all
like so n
lurked ir
wall, lyi]
their un(
crossing,
quarrel; >
low whis
scuffling
City and

The st
verted tl
spouts fr^
houses, s
to putrei
stench, t<
of its owr
stories t(
more like
these, gr

Master Humphrey's Clock 269

ignorance of the identity might be easily devised.

The cavalier explained that a covered cart had been prepared for
the purpose; that the time of departure could be arranged so that he
should reach London Bridge at dusk, and proceed through the City
after the day had closed in; that people would be ready at his
journey's end to place the cofl&n in a vault without a minute's delay;
that officious inquirers in the streets would be easily repelk i by the
tale that he was carrying for interment the corpse of one who ^ad died
of t^e plague; and in short showed him every reason why he should
succeed, and none why he should fail. After a time they were joined
by another gentleman, masked like the first, who added new argu-
ments to those which had been already urged; the wretched wife, too,
added her tears and prayers to their calmer representations; and in
the end. Will, moved by compassion and good-nature, by a love of
the marvellous, by a mischievous anticipation of the terrors of the
Kingston people when he should be missing next da-^r, and finally, by
the prospect of gain, took upon himself the task, aiid devoted all his
energies to its successful execution.

The following night, when i*, was quite dark, the hollow echoes of
old London Bridge responded to the rumbling of the cart which
contained the ghastly load, the object of Will Marks' care. Sufficiently
disguised to attract no attention by his garb. Will walked at the
horse's head, as unconcerned as a man could be who was sensible
that he had nov/ arrived at the most dangerous par: of his under-
taking, but full of boldness and confidence.

It was now eight o'clock. After nine, none could walk the streets
without danger of their lives, and even at this hour, robberies and
murder were of no uncommon occurrence. The shops upon the bridge
were all "losed; the low wooden arches thrown across the way were
like so many black pits, in every one of which ill-favoured fellows
lurked in knots of three or four; some standing upright against the
wall, lying in wait; others skulking in gateways, and thrusting out
their uncombed heads and scowling eyes: others crossing and re-
crossing, and constantly jostling both horse and man to provoke a
quarrel; others stealing away and summoning their companions in a
low whistle. Once, even in that short passage, there was the noise of
scuffling and the clash of swords behind him, but Will, who knew the
City and its ways, kept straight on and scarcely turned his head.

The streett; being unpaved, the rain of the night before had con-
verted them into a perfect quagmire, which the splashing water-
spouts from the gables, and the filth and offal cast from the different
houses, swelled in no small degree. These odious matters being left
to putrefy in the close and heavy air, emitted an insupportable
stench, to which every court and passage poured forth a contribution
of its own. Many parts, even of the main streets, with their projecting
stories tottering overhead and nearly shutting out the sky, were
more like huge chimneys than open ways. At the corners of some of
these, great bonfires were burning to prevent infection from the

i=: ■ I

A. . .2

■

if z

270 Master Humphrey's Clock

plague, of which it was rumoured that some citizens had lately died;
and few, who availing themselves of the light thus afforded paused
for a moment lo look around them, would have been disposed to
doubt the existencfe of the disease, or wonder at its dreadful visitations.

But it was not in such scenes as these, or even in the deep and
miry road, that Will Marks found the chief obstacles to his progress.
There were kites and ravens feeding in the streets (the only scavengers
the City kept), who, scenting what he carried, followed the cart or
fluttered on its top, and croaked their knowledge of its burden and
their ravenous appetite for prey. There were distant fires, where the
poor wood and plaster tenements wasted fiercely, and whither crowds
made their way, clamouring eagerly for plunder, beating down all
who came within their r^.ach, and yelling like devils let loose, There
were single-handed men flying from bands of ruffians, who pursued
them with naked weapons, and hunted them savagely; there were
drunken, desperate robbers issuing from thei^ dens and staggering
through the open streets where no man dared molest them; there
were vagabond servitors returning from the Bear Garden, where had
been good sport that day, dragging after them their torn and
bleecjfing dogs, or leaving them to die and rot upon the road. Nothing
was abroad but cruelty, violence, and disorder.

Many were the interruptions which Will Marks encountered from
these stragglers, and many the narrow escapes he made. Now some
stout bully would take his seat upon the cart, insisting to be driven
to his own home, and now two or three men would come down upon
him together, and demand that on peril of his life he showed them
what he had inside. Then a party of the city watch, upon their rounds,
would draw across the road, and not satisfied with his tale, question
him closely, and revenge themselves by a little cuffing and hustling
for maltreatment sustained at other hands that night. All these
assailants had to be rebutted, some by fair words, some by foul, and
some by blows. But Will Marks was not the man to be stopped or
turned back now he had penetrated so far, and thcugh he got on
slowly, still he made his way down ^Flei -street and reached the
church at last.

As he had been forewarned, all vos in readiness. Directly he
stopped, the coffin was removed bv l^^ir men, who appeared so
suddenly that they seemed ,0 have slartea from the earth. A fifth
mounted the cart, and scarcely allowing Will time to snatch from it
a little bundle containing su ii <-,'' his ov 1 clothes as he had thrown
off on assuming his disguise, dr • briiUly away. Will never saw cart
or man again.

He followed the body into the cbiivch. and it was well he lost no
time in doing so, for the door was immediately closed. There was no
light in the building save that which . jre from a couple of 'Orches
borne by two men in cloaks, who sti^ud upon the brink of a vault.
Each supported a female figure, and all observed a profound silence.

By this dim and solemn glare, which made Will fer' is though

(,1

Master Humphrey's Clock 371

light itself were dead, and its tomb the dreary arches that frowned
above, they placed the cofhn in the vault, with uncovered heads, and
closed it up. One oi the torch-bearers then turned to Will, and
stretched forth his hand, in which was a purse of gold. Something
told him directly that those were the same eyes which he had seen
beneath the mask.

"Take it," said the cavaliev in a low voice, "and be happy. Though
these have been hasty obsequies, and no priest has blessed the work,
there will not be the less peace with thee thereafter, for having laid
his bones beside those of his little children. Keep thy own counsel,
for thy sake no less than ours, and God be with the?!"

"The blessing of a widowed mother on thy head, good friend!"
cried the younger lady ihroufh her tears; "th. blessing of ouo who
has now no hope or rest but iu this grave!"

Will stood with the pu* ^e in his hard, and involui '•arily made a
gesture as though he would r< turn it, for though a thouglitless fellow,
he was of a frank and generous na/f-iio. But the two gentlemen,
extinguishing their torches, cautioned him to be gone, as their
common safety would be endangered by a longer delay; and at the
same time their retreating footsteps sounded through the church.
He turned, therefore, towards the point at which he had entered,
and seeing by a faint gleam in the distance that the door was again
partially open, groped his way towards it and so passed into the
street.

Meantime the local authorities of Kingston had kept watch and
ward all the previous night, fancying every now and ther. that dismal
shrieks were borne towards them on the wind, and frequently winking
to ea^i other, and drawing closer to the fire as they drank the health
of the lonely sentinel, upon whom a clerical gentleman present was
especially severe b^ reason of his levity and youthful folly. Two or
three of the gravest in company, wno were of a theological turn,
propounded to him the question, whether such a character was not
but poorly armed for single combat with the Devil, and whether he
himself would not have been a stronger opponent; but the clerical
gentle nan, sharply reproving them for their presumption in dis-
cussing such » iestions, clearly showed that a fitter champion than
^Vill covlC. carcely have beer selected, not only for that being a
child of h cti an, he was the less likely to be alarmed by the appearance
of hi« own father, but because Satan himself would be at his ease in
such company, and would not scruple to kick up his heels to an
extent wiikh it was quite certain he would ne\'er v nture before
clerical eyes, under whose influence (as was notorious) he became
quite a tame and milk-and-water character.

But when next morning arrived, and with it no Will Marks, and

V ex J, strong party repairing to the spot, as a strong party ventured

i uo in broad day, found Will gone and the gibbet empty, matters

^.ew serious indeed. The day passing away and no news arriving, and

th -fight going on also without any intelligenre. the thing grew more

t, H

Master Humphrey's Clock

m- ^

272

tremendous still; in short, the neighbourhood worked itself up to
such a comfortable pitch of mystery and horror, that it is a great
question whether the general feeling was not one of excessive dis-
appointment, when; on the second morning, Will Marks returned.

However this may be, back Will came in a very cool and collected
state, and appearing not to trouble himself much about anybody
except old John Podgers, who, having been sent for, was sitting in
the Town Hall crying slowly, and dozing between whiles. Having
embraced his uncle and assured him of Ms safety. Will mounted on a
table and told his story to the crowd.

And surely they would have been the most unreasonable crowd
that ever assembled together, if they had been in the least respect
disappointed with the tale he told them; for besides describing the
Witches' Dance to the minutest motion of their legs, and performing
it in character on the table, with the assistance of a broomstick, he
related how they had carried off the body in a copper caldron, and so
bewitched him, that he lost his senses until he found himself lying
under a hedge at least ten miles off, whence he had straightway
returned as they then beheld. The story gained such universal
applause that it soon afterwards brought down express from London
the great witch-finder of the age, the Heaven-born Hopkins, who
havmg examined Will closely on several points, pronounced it the
most extraordinary and the best accredited witch-story ever kno^
under w^ich title it was published at the Three Bibles on London
Brid^ small quarto, with a view of the caldron from an original

draw id a portrait of the clerical gentleman as he sat by the fire.

O. point Will was particularly careful: and that was to

describe lor the witches he had seen, three impossible old females
whose likenesses never were or will be. Thus he saved the lives of the
suspected parties, and of all other old women who were dragged
before him to be identified.

This circumstance occasioned John Podgers much grief and sorrow,
until happening one day to cast his eyes upon his housekeeper, and
observing her to be plainly afflicted with rheumatism, he procured
her to be burnt as an undoubted witch. For this service to the state
he was immediately knighted, and became from that time Sir Tohn
Podgers.

Will Marks never gained any clue to the mystery in which he had
been an actor, nor did any inscripti^- in the church, which he often
visited aftenvards, nor any of the Linj^xa inquiries that he dared to
make, yield him the least assistance, as he kept his own secret, he
was compelled to spend the gold discreetly .,nd sparingly. In the
course of time he married the young lady of whom I have already
told you, whose maiden name is not recorded, with whom he led a
prosperous and happy life. Years and years after this adventure, it
was his wont to tell her upon a stormy night that it was a great
coiiiiui I. lu i.ixn tw i.i:\us3. LUU3C uuiius, to w^nomsocver tiiey might have
once belonged, were not bleaching in the troubled air, but were

Master Humphrey's Clock 273

mouldering away with the dust of their own kith and kindred in a
quiet grave.

FURTHER PARTICULARS OF MASTER HUMPHREY'S VISITOR

Being very full of Mr. Pickwick's application, and highly pleased
with the compliment he had paid me, it will be readily supposed that
long before our next night of meeting I communicated it to my three
friends, who unanimously voted his admission into our body. We all
looked forward with some impatience to the occasion which would
enroll him among us, but I am greatly mistaken if Jack Redbum
and myself were not by many degrees the most impatient of the
party.

At length the night came, and a few minutes after ten Mr.
Pickwick's knock was heard at the street-door. He was shown into a
lower room, and I directly took my crooked stick and went to ac-
company him up-stairs, in order that he might be presented with all
honour and formality.

"Mr. Pickwick," said I, on entering the room, "I am rejoiced to
see you, — rejoiced to believe that this is but the opening of a long
series of visits to this house, and but the beginning of a close and
lasting friendship."

That gentleman made a suitable reply with a cordiality and frank-
ness peculiarly his own, and glanced with a smile towards two persons
behind the door, whom I had not at first observed, and whom I
immediately recognised as Mr. Samuel Weller and his father.

It was a warm evening, but the elder Mr. Weller was attired,
notwithstanding, in a most capacious greatcoat, and his chin en-
veloped in a large speckled shawl, such as is usually worn by stage
coachmen on active service. He looked very rosy and very stout,
especially about the legs, which appeared to have been compressed
into his top-boots with some difficulty. His broad-brimmed hat he
held under his left arm, and with the forefinger of his right hand he
touched his forehead a great manj' times in acknowledgment of my
presence.

"I am very glad to see you in such good health, Mr. Weller," said I.

"Why, thankee, sir," returned Mr. Weller, "the axle an't broke
yet. We keeps up a steady pace, — not too sewere, but vith a moder-
ate degree o' friction, — and the consekens is that ve're still a runnin'
and comes in to the time reg'lar. — My son Samivel, sir, as you may
have read on in history," added Mr. Weller, introducing his first-
bom.

I received Sam very graciously, but before he could say a word his
father struck in again.

"Samivel Veller, sir," said the old gentleman, "has conferred ui)on
me the ancient title c' grandfather vich had long laid dormouse, and
wos s'posed to be nearly hex-tinct in our family. Sammy, relate a
anecdote c' \nn o' them boys, — ^that 'ere little anecdote about young
Tony sayin' as he vould smoke a pipe unbeknown to his mother."

274 Master Humphrey's Clock

"Be quiet, can't you?" said Sam; "I never see such a old magpie
— ^never! °*^

«/J-^^*K^« "^^Py^? the blessedest boy." said Mr. Weller, heedless
of this rebuff, the blessedest boy as ever / see in my days! of all the
charmm est infants as ever I heerd tell on. includin' them as was
kiyered over by the robm-rcdbreasts arter they'd committed sooicide
with blackberries, there never wos any like that 'ere little Tonv
He s alvays a playin vith a quart pot. that boy isi To see him a
settin down on the doorstep pretending to drink out of it. and
fetching a long breath artervards. and smoking a bit of firevood
and sayin Now I'm grandfather. '-to see him a doin' that at
two year old is better than any play as wos ever wrote. 'Now I'm
grandfather! He vouldn't take a pint pot if you wos to make him

%andfTther''l''" ^^ ^^*^ ^'^ '^"^''*' ^""^ ^^^"^ ^® ^^^^' '^"""^ ^'^

Mr. Weller was so overpowered by this picture that he straightway
fell into a most alarming fit of coughing, which must certainly have
been attended with somefatal result but for the dexterity and prompti-
tude of Sam. who, taking a firm grasp of the shawl just under his
father s chin, shook him to and fro with great violence, at the same
time administering some smart blows between his shoulders By this
curious mode of treatment Mr. Weller was finally recovered but
"^'^.^^.Tf 7 crimson face, and in a state of great exhaustion.

He 11 do now. Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, who had been in some
alarm himself.

-v""^? ^\^^I-" ^"^^ ^^^' looking reproachfully at his parent.
Yes. ^e will do one o' these days.— he'll do for his-self and then
he 11 wish he hadn t. Did anybody ever see sich a inconsiderate old
me,— laughing into conwulsions afore company, and stampin' on the
floor as If he d brought his own carpet vith him and wos under a
wager to punch the pattern out in a given time? He'll begin again in a
minute. There— he's a goin' off— I said he would!"

In fact. Mr. Weller. whose mind was still running upon his pre-
cocious grandson, was seen to shake his head from side to side, while
a laugh, working hke an earthquake, below the surface, produced
various extraordinary appearances in his face, chest, and shoulders,
—the more alarming because unaccompanied by any noise whatever,
ihese emotions, however, gradually subsided, and after three or
lour short relapses he wiped his eyes with the cuff of his coat, and
looked about him with tolerable composure.

"Afore the governor vith-draws," said Mr. Weller. "there is a pint,
respecting vich Sammy has a qvestion to ask. Vile that qvestion is a
perwadm this here conwersation. p'raps the gen'lmen vill permit me
tore-tire. *^

"Wot are you goin' away for?" demanded Sam, seizing his father
by the coat-tail. ^

TuJ ^xV^iT^^ ?f^ f'? ^ uudootiful boy as you, Samivel." returned
Mr. Weller. Didn t you make a solemn promise, amountin' almost

H i

!i M

> 1

if.

h' ■

I
I*

Master Humphrey's Clock

277

You hear she's a

to a speeches o' wow, that you'd put that 'ere qvestion on my
account?"

"Well, I'm agreeable to do it," said Sam, "but not if you go cuttin'
away like that, as the bull turned round and mildly observed to the
drover ven they wos a goadin' him into the butcher's door. The fact
is, sir," said Sam, addressing me, "that he wants to know some-
thin' respectin' that 'ere lady as is housekeeper here."
"Ay. What is that?"
"Vy, sir," said Sam, grinning still more, "he wishes to know vether

she "

"In short," interposed old Mr. Weller decisively, a perspiration
breaking out upon his forehead, "vether that 'ere old creetur is or is
not a widder."

Mr. Pickwick laughed heartily, and so did I, as I replied decisively,
that "my housekeeper was a spinster."

"There 1" cried Sam, "now you're satisfied,
spinster."

"A wot?" said his father, with deep scorn.
"A spinster," replied Sam.

Mr. Weller looked very hard at his son for a minute or two, and
then said,

"Never mind vether she makes jokes or not, that's no matter.
Wot I say is, is that 'ere female a widder, or is she not?"

"Wot do you mean by her making jokes?" demanded Sam, quite
aghast at the obscurity of his parent's speech.

"Never you mind, Samivel," returned Mr. Weller gravely; "puns
may be wery good things or they may be wery bad 'uns, and a female
may be none the better or she may be none the vurse for making of
'em; that's got nothin' to do vith widders."

"Vy now," said Sam, looking round, "would anybody believe as a
man at his time o' life could be running his head agin spinsters and
punsters being the same thing?"

"There an't a straw's difference between 'em," said Mr. Weller.
"Your father didn't drive a coach for so many years, not to be ekal
to his own langvidge as far as that goes, Sammy."

Avoiding the question of etymology, upon which the old gentle-
man's mind was quite made up, he was several times assured that the
housekeeper had never been married. He expressed great satisfaction
on hearing this, and apologised for the question, remarking that he
had been greatly terrified by a widow not long before, and that his
natural timidity was increased in consequence.

"It wos on the rail," said Mr. Weller, with strong emphasis; "I wos
a goin' down to Birmingham by the rail, and I wos locked up in a close
carriage vith a living widder. Alone ve wos; the widder and me wos
alone; and I believe it wos only because ve wos alone and there wos no
clergyman in the conwayance, that that 'ere widder didn't marry me

iiiore vC rCttCXicu the hiili-Wuy statluix. \eii x tuiliiC iiOw Siiu ucga,ii a,

n 4>i

screaming as ve wos a goin' under them tunnels in the dark, — ^how

278

Master Humphrey's Clock

she kept on a faintin' and ketchin' hold o' me.— and how I tried to
bust open the door as was tight-locked and perwented all escape —
Ah! It was a awful thing, most awful!"

Mr. Weller was so very much overcome by this retrospect that he
was unable, until he had wiped his brow several times, to return any
reply to the question whether he approved of railway communication,
notwithstanding that it would appear from the answer which he
ultimately gave, that he entertained strong opinions on the subject.

"I con-sider," said Mr. Weller, "that the rail is unconstitootional
and an inwaser o' priwileges, and I should wery much like to know
what that 'ere old Carter as once siood up for our liberties and wun
'em too, — I should like to know wot he vould say, if he wos alive now,
to Englishmen being locked up vith widders, or vith anybody again
their wills. Wot a old Carter vould have said, a old Coachman may
say, and I as-sert that in that pint o' view alone, the rail is an inwaser.
As to the comfort, vere's the comfort o' sittin' in a harm-cheer
lookin' at brick walls or heaps o' mud, never coi in' to a public-house,
never seein' a glass o' ale, never goin' through o pike, never meetin' a
change o' no kind (horses or othervise), but ah ays comin' to a place,
ven you come to one at a^, the wery pictur o' the last, vith the same
p'leesemen standin' about, the same blessed old bell a ringin', the
same unfort'nate people standin' behind the bars, a waitin' to be let
in; and everythin' the same except the name, vich is wrote up in the
same sized letters as the last name, and vith the same colours. As to
the honour and dignity o' travellin', vere can that be vithout a
coachman; and wot's the rail to sich coachm< u and guards as is some-
times forced to go by it, but a outrage and a insult? As to the pace,
wot sort o' pace do you think I, Tony Veller, could have kept a coach
gom' at. for five hundred thousand pound a mile, paid in adwance
afore the coach was on the road? And as to the ingein, — a nasty,
weezin', creakin', gaspin', pufhn', bustin' monster, alvays out o'
breath. >vith a shiny green-and-gold back, like a unpleasant beetle in
that 'ere gas magnifier. — as to the ingein as is alvays a pourin' out
red-hot coals at night, and black smoke in the day, the sensiblest
thmg it does, in my opinion, is, ven there's somethin' in the vay,
and it sets up that 'ere frightful scream vich seems to say, 'Now
here's two hundred and forty passengers in the wery greatest
extremity o' danger, and here's their two hundred and forty screams
in vun!' "

By this time I began to fear that my friends would be rendered
impatient by my protracted absence. I therefore begged Mr. Pick-
wick to accompany me up-stairs, and left the two Mr. Wellers in the
care of the housekeeper, laying strict injunctions upon her to treat
them with all possible hospitality.

Si
t

Master Humphrey's Clock

279

IV
THE CLOCK

As we were going up-stairs, Mr. Pickwick put on his spectacles, which
he had held in his hand hitherto; arranged his neckerchief, smoothed
down his waistcoat, and made many other Uttle preparations of that
kind which men are accustomed to be mindful of, when they are going
among strangers for the first time, and are anxious to impress them
pleasantly. Seeing that I smiled, he smiled too, and said that if it had
occurred to him before he left home, he would certainly have pre-
sented himself in pumps and silk stockings.

"I would, indeed, my dear sir," he said very seriously; "I would
have shown my respect for the society, by laying aside my gaiters."

"You may rest assured," said I, "that they would have regretted
your doing so very much, for they are quite attached to them."

"No, really!" cried Mr. Pickwick, with manifest pleasure. "Do you
think they care about my gaiters? Do you seriou ly think that they
identify me at all with my gaiters?"

"I am sure they do," I replied.

"Well, now." said Mr. PicKvvick. "that is one of the most charming
and agreeable circumstances that could possibly have occurred to
me!"

I should not have written down this short conversation, but that it
developed a slight point in Mr. Pickwick's character, with which 1
was not previously acquainted. He has a secret pride in his legs. The
manner in which he spoke, and the accompanying glance he bestowed
upon his tights, convince me that Mr. Pickwick regards his legs with
much innocent vanity.

"But here are our friends," said I, opening the door and taking his
arm in mine; "let them speak for themselves. — Gentlemen, I present
to you Mr. Pickwick."

Mr. Pickwick and I mu . nave been a good contrast just then. I.
leaning quietly on my crutch-stick, with something of a care-worn,
patient air; he, having hold of my arm, and bowing in every direction
with the most elastic politeness, and an expression of face whose
sprightly cheerfulness and good-humour knew no bounds. The
difference between us must have been more striking yet, as we
advanced towards the table, and the amiable gentleman, adapting his
jocund step to my poor tread, had his attention divided between
treating my infirmities with the utmost consideration, and affecting
to be wholly unconscious that I required any.

I made him personally known to each of my friends in turn. First,
to the deaf gentleman, whom he regarded with much interest, and
accosted with great frankness ar^d cordiality. He had evidently some

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Master Humphrey's Clock

vague Idea at the moment, that my friend being deaf must be dumb

^L 'h ""h u^^I *^^ ^^"^" °P^"^d hi« lips to express the pleasure it
aflForded him ^o know a gentleman of whom he had heard so much

^e^p^t^Ss r^lTef^^ ^^^'^^"^^^^ ^^^^--*^^' ^^^^ ^ wa^oSigT^o

P,-^'''T^^'",^7'*^.J^^^ Redburn was quite a treat to see Mr
Pickwick smiled, and shook hands, and looked at him through his
spectacles and under them, and over them, and nodded Ws head
approvmgly. and then nodded to me. as much as to say 'This is iust
the man; you were quite right"; and then turned to Jack and sa d a
few hearty words and then did and said everything over again w?th
unimpaired vivacity. As to Jack himself, he was quite as mucJ
delighted with Mr. Pickwick as Mr. Pickwick could pSy beTith
hmi. Two people never can have met together since the world began
who exchanged a warmer or more enthusiastic greeting ^ '

and fw ''Tt''^ ^"^ °.^'f ^^ *^^ difference between this encounter

wasclefrtlat'thMSr^'^' ^^.^'^'^^ ^^- Pickwick and Mr. Mi°es It
was clear that the latter gentleman viewed our new member as a kinH
of rival m the affections of Jack Redburn. and b^sTde? this he had

Z'btM'Vr -^i"*'^ '° "^^' ^" ''''''• that ahhough he had no
aoubt Mr. Pickwick was a very worthy man. still he did considerthat
some of his exploits were unbecoming a gektleman of his vear. «nH

o'Ss^'tirttt'^^''^^^^^^^^^^^^

opinions that the law never can by possibility do anything wrong-
he therefore looks upon Mr. Pickwick as one who has fust^^sXred
in purse and peace for a breach of his plighted faith to an unprotected
female and holds that he is called upon to regard hu^Tths^me
suspicion on that account. These causes led to a ratSr cold and
formal reception; which Mr. Pickwick acknowledged wYth the same
stateliness and intense politeness as was displayed on The other s^?e
Indeed, he assumed an air of such majestic defiance that I was fear "
fill he might break out into some solemn protest or declaradon and
Tht nie'c.^ n?'^ ^^°? i"*° ""'' ^^"^^ ^''^--' ^ moment's de°ay^
took his^seat Iff pfpt? ""^^ ^''^^""^^^ successful. The instant he
^«^il A ' [• ,P^^^^ick surveyed us all with a most benevolent
aspect, and was taken with a fit of smiling full five minutes lon-ffis
interest m our ceremonies was immense, f hey are not verrnumerous
or complicated, and a description of them may be comprLd S ve^
ariircontinu?tJ transactions have already Len. anS must nece^
sariiy continue to be, more or less anticipated by being oresentpH

Our first proceeding when we are assembled is to shake hands all

me'mberW fw '"'^ °'^^i,"^^^ ^^-^^^^ -^ pleasant looks R^^^^^
membering that we assemble not only for the promotion of our
happmess, but with the view of adding something T^he common
stock an air of languor or indifference in any member of our b^dv
would be regarded by the others as a kind of tre^sorWeLve never

Master Humphrey's Clock

perionned by Master Humpte^y hiSMiJ^reSr«?;h" ' "k*'?
may be permitted to assumi the histori^l s^le and fr^lJ f "''• ,1

^tra^^»y-'wtnTL-S."riBS^S'- =

he could improve them Wp nnrHr»« k;^ u- ^ ?' "® thmks

sideration of his gooTinYentFon^ Ld ^ presumption in con-

see_med. if possible, to exalt Jack in his good opinion ^ ' ^""^

MZterH,^m^hI;^"'^y,^' *^-^ "^P^^^S of the clock-case (of which
Master Humphrey has likewise the key), the taking frrvm if o„

papers as will furnish forth our evening^ enter?ai^mlnf «nH "^^""^

ing m the recess such new contributions a^ have be^^^^^

our last meeting. This is alwav<! Hoti^ «^rr i- Provided since

deafge„tlema/then'"fiI.'s%td!r;h?°SLpiplP^2t"ncr^^^
our seats round the table before mentioned M^SJ^rW ^^^\^^^^ ^ake

as president,_if we can be saidTo havrany p^^^^^^^ ^f ^^^

on the same social footing.-and our fS Jack ^s se^re^^^^^^^

prehmmaries being now concluded we fall intrT^n^ff ^^' ^"''

^o^staTsYnThrf^^^^^^^

mv> tion which usually pn?s it ^t Mr M^il^? i?'""^ °^^^" °^^
approval notwithstandhil tL deaf gentkmif H °°^' • °"u ^*^ ^^^^
that he can follow the wo'rds on the l^ZontZurH^r^^^^^ '^
hps as he pleases; and Master Humphrey himseW looklnfrT^H ""^t"
migl^ty gratification, and glancing Sp .Ll^^'i^^^l^SX rtS

att^act^lrall'r^^^^^^^^ -^. would have

motion of his head and forefinger afLT^^ I^- complacent

rected the air with imaginait^nctuatio^n li^ ^^-i *lu ^' ^"^ ^°^-
on his features at every SsrDa^sltl^'nHfi,"''^ I^^* "^^^^^^^
around to observe its Xrf flt^tt ^ ' ""^ *.^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ stole
eyes and hst^n^T^Ll^^t.^ *t s^l"^ Sr^LS :l'^^^ tf
changing expression with which be acted theS^gue to S^°eU, ^

Master Humphrey's Clock

282

agony that Ihe deaf gentleman should know what it was all about,
and his extraordinary anxiety to correct the reader when he hesitated
at a word in the manuscript, or substituted a wrong one, were alike
worthy of remark. And when at last, endeavouring to communicate
with the deaf gentleman by means of the finger alphabet, with which
he constructed such words as are unknown in any civilised or savage
language, he took up a slate and wrote in large text, one word in a
line, the question, "How — do— you — like — it?" — when he did this,
and handing it over the table awaited the reply, with a countenance
cnl^- brightened an improved by hi; great excitement, even Mr.
Miles relaxed, and could not forbear looking at him for the moment
with interest and favour.

"It has occurred to me," said the deaf gentleman, who had
watched Mr. Pickwick anr'. everybody else with silent satisfaction —
"it has occurred to me," said the deaf gentleman, taking his pipe
from his lips, "that now is our time for filling our only empty chair."

As our conversation had naturally turned upon the vacant seat, we
lent a willing ear to this remark, and looked at our friend inquiringly.

"I feel sure," said he, "that Mr. Pickwick must be acquainted with
somebody who would be an acquisition to us; that he must know the
man we want. Pray let us not lose any time, but set this question at
rest. Is it so, Mr. Pickwick?"

The gentleman addressed was about to return a verba L reply, but
remembering our friend's infirmity, he substituted for this kind of
answer some fifty nods. Then taking up the slate and printing on
it a gigantic " Yes," he handed it across the table, and rubbing his
hands as he looked round upon our faces, protested that he and the
deaf gentleman quite understood each other, already.

"The person I have in my mind," said Mr. Pickwick, "and whom I
should not have presumed to mention to you until some time hence,
but for the opportunity you have given me, is a very strange old
man. His name is Bamber."

"Bamber!" said Jack. "I have certainly heard the name before."

"I have no doubt, then," returned Mr. Pickwick, "that you remem-
ber him in those adventures of mine (the Posthumous Papers of our
old club, I mean) , although he is only incidentally mentioned; and, if
I remember right, appears but once."

"That's it," said Jack. "Let me see. He is the person who has a
grave interest in old mouldy chambers and the Inns of Q)urt, and
who relates some anecdotes having reference to his favourite theme,
— and an odd ghost story, — is that the man?"

"The very same. Now," said Mr. Pickwick, lowering his voice to a
mysterious and confidential tone, "he is a very extraordinary and
remarkable person; living, and talking, and looking, like some strange
spirit, whose delight is to haunt old buildings; and absorbed in that
one subject which you have just mentioned, to an extent which is
quite wonderful. When I retired into private life, I sought him out,
and I do assure you that the more B»see of him, the more strongly I

Master Humphrey's Clock

with the strange and dreamy character

283

of his

8 )"

am impressed
mind."

"Where does he live?" I inquired.

"He lives," said Mr. Pickwick, " in one of those dull, lonely old
places with which his thoughts and stories are all connected-
quite alone, and often shut up close for several weeks together. In
this dusty solitude he broods upon the fancies ha has so long indulged
and when he goes into the world, or anybody from the world without
goes to see him, they are still present to his mind and stUl his
favourite topic. I may say, I believe, that he has brought himself to
entertain a regard for me, and an interest in my visits; feelings which
I am certain he would extend to Master Humphrey's Clock if he were
once tempted to join us. All I wish you to understand is, that he is a
strange secluded visionary, in the world but not of it; and as unlike
anybody here as he is unlike anybody elsewhere that I have ever met
or known."

Mr. Miles received this account of our proposed companion with
rather a wry faro, and after murmuring that perhaps he was a little
mad, inquired li he were rich,

"I never asked him," said Mr. Pickwick.

"You might know, sir, for all that," retorted Mr. Miles, sharply
^^ "Perhaps so, sii-," said Mr. Pickwick, no less sharply than the other,
''but I do not. Indeed," he added, relapsing into his usual mildness'
"I have no means of judging. He lives poorly, but that would seem to
be m keeping with his character. I never heard him allude to his cir-
cumstances, and never fell into the society of any man who had the
slightest acquaintance with them. I have really told you all I know
about him, and it rests with you to say whether you wish to know
more, or know quite enough already."

We were unanimously of opinion that we would seek to know more-
and as a sort of compromise with Mr. Miles (who, although he said
"Yes— O certainly — he should like to know more about the gentle-
man — he had no right to put himself in opposition to the general
wish," and so forth, shook his head doubtfully and hemmed several
times with peculiar gravity), it was arranged that Mr. Pickwick
should carry me with him on an evening visit to the subject of our
discussion, for which purpose an early appointment between that
gentleman and myself was immediately agreed upon; it being under-
stood that I was to act upon my own responsibility, and to invite
him to join us or not, as I might think proper. This solemn question
determined, we returned to the clock-case (where we have been fore-
stalled by the reader), and between its contents, and the conversation
they occasioned, the remainder of our time passed very quickly.

When we broke up, Mr. Pickwick took me aside to tell me that he
had spend a most charming and delightful evening. Having made
this communication with an air of the strictest secrecy, he took Jack
Redburn into another corner to tell him the same, and then retired
into another corner with the deaf gentleman and the slate, to repeat

Id t

284

Master Humphrey's Clock

the assurance. It was amusing to observe the contest in his mind
whether he should extend his confidence to Mr. Miles, or treat him
with dignified reserve. Half a dozen times he stepped up behind him
with a friendly air, and as often stepped back again without saying a
word; at last, when he was close at that gentleman's ear and upon the
very point of whispering something conciliating and agreeable, Mr.
Miles happened suddenly to turn his head, upon which Mr. Pickwick
skipped away, and said with some fierceness, "Good night, sir — I was
about to say good night, sii , — nothing more"; and so made a bow and
left him.
"Now, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, when he had got downstfdrs.
"All right, sir," replied Mr. Weller. " Hold hard, sir. Right arm
fust — now the left — now one strong conwulsion, and the great-
coat's on, sir."

Mr. Pickwick acted up these directions, and being further assisted
by Sam, who pulled at one side of the collar, and Mr. Weller, who
pulled hard at the other, was speedily enrobed. Mr. Weller, senior,
then produced a full-sized stable lantern, which he had carefully
deposited in a remote corner, on his arrival, and inquired whether
Mr. Pickwick would have "the lamps alight."
"I think not to-night," said Mr. Pickwick.

"Then if this here lady vill per-mit," rejoined Mr. Weller, "we'll
leave it here, ready for next journey. This here lantern, mum," said
Mr. Weller, handing it to the housekeeper, " vunce belonged to the
celebrated Bill Blinder as is now at grass, as all on us vill be in our
turns. Bill, mum, wos the hostler as had charge o' them two veil-
known piebald leaders that run in the Bristol fast coach, and vould
never go to no other tune but a sutherly vind and a cloudy sky,
which wos consekvently played incessant, by the guard, wenever
they wos on duty. He wos took wery bad one artemoon, arter
having been off his feed, and wery shaky on his legs for some veeks;
and he says to his mate, 'Matey,' he says, 'I think I'm a-goin' the
wrong side o' the post, and that my foot's wery near the bucket.
Don't say I an't,' he says, 'for I know I am, and don't let me be
interrupted,' he says, 'for I've saved a little money, and I'm a-goin'
into the stable to make my last vill and testy mint.' 'I'll take care as
nobody interrupts,' says his mate, 'but you on'y hold up your head,
and shake your ears a bit, and you're good for twenty years to come.'
Bill Blinder makes him no answer, but he goes avay into the stable,
and there he soon artervards lays himself down a'tween the two
piebalds, and dies, — previously a writin' outside the corn-chest,
'This is the last vill and testymint of Villi im Blinder.' They wos
nat'rally wery much amazed at this, and arter looking among the
litter, and up in the loft, and vere not, they opens the corn-chest, and
finds that he'd been and chalked his vill inside the lid; so the lid was
obligated to be took off the hinges, and sent up to Doctor Commons
to be proved, and under that 'ere wery instrument this here lantern
was passed to Tony Veller; vich circumstarnce, mum, gives it a wally

Master Humphrey's Clock

285

in my eyes, and makes me rekvest, if you vili be so kind, as to take
partickler care on it."

The housekeeper graciously promised to keep the object of Mr.
Weller's regard in the safest possible custody, and Mr. Pickwick,
with a laughing face, took his leave. The bodyguard followed, side
by side; old Mr. Weller buttoned and wrapped up from his boots to
his chin; and Sam with his hands in his pockets and his hat half off
his head, remonstrating with his father, as he went, on his extreme
loquacity.

1 was not a little surprised, on turning to go up-stairs, to encounter
the barber in the passage at that late hour; for his attendance is
usually confined to some half -hour in the morning. But Jack Redburn,
who finds out (by instinct, I think) everything that happens in the
house, informed me with great glee, that a society in imitation of our
own had been that night formed in the kitchen, under the title of
"Mr. Weller's Watch," of which the barber was a member; and that
he could pledge himself to find means of making me acquainted with
the whole of its future proceedings, which I begged him, both on my
own account and that of my readers, by no means to neglect doing.
[Old Curiosity Shop is continued here, completing No. IV. ]

MR. WELLER'S WATCH

It seems that the housekeeper and the l 70 Mr. Wellers were no
sooner left together on the occasion of their first becoming acquainted
than the housekeeper called to her assistance Mr. Slithers the barber,
who had been lurking in the kitchen in expectation of her summons;
and with many smiles and much sweetness introduced him as one
who would assist her in the responsible office of entertaining her
distinguished visitors.

"Indeed," said she, "without Mr. Shthers I should have been
placed in quite an awkward situation."

"There is no call for any hock'erdness, mum," said Mr. Weller
with the utmost politeness; "no call wotsumever. A lady," added the
old gentleman, looking about him with the air of one who establishes
an incontrovertible position,— "a lady can't be hock'erd. Natur' has
otherwise purwided."

The housekeeper inclined her head and smiled yet more sweetly.
The barber, who had been fluttering about Mr. Weller and Sam in a
state of great anxiety to improve their acquaintance, rubbed his
hands and cried, "Hear, hear! Very true, sir"; whereupon Sam
turned about and steadily regarded him for some seconds in silence.

"I never knew," said Sam, fixing his eyes in a ruminative manner

286

Master Humphrey's Clock

upon the blushing barber,- "1 never knew but vun o' your trade,
but he wos worth a dozen, and wos indeed dewoted to his callin'!"

"Was he in the easy shaving way, sir," inquired Mr. Slithers, "or
in the cutting and curhng line?"

"Both," replied Sam; "easy shavin' was his natur', and cuttin'
and curlin' was his pride and glory. His whole delight wos in his
trade. He spent all his money in bears, and run in debt for 'em besides,
and there they wos a growling avay down in the front cellar all day
long, and ineffectooaliy gnashing their teeth, vile the grease o' their
relations and friends wos being re-tailed in gallipots in the shop above,
and the first-floor winder wos ornamented vith their heads; not to
speak o' the dreadful aggrawation it must have been to 'em to see a
man alvays a walkin' up and down the pavement outside, vith the
portrait of a bear in his last agonies, and underneath in large letters,
'Another fine animal wos slaughtered yesterday at Jinkinson'sl'
Hows'ever, there they wos, and there Jinkinson wos, till he wos took
wery ill with some inn'ard disorder, lost the use of his legs, and wos
confined to his bed, vere he laid a wery long time, but sich wos his
pride in his profession, even then, that wenever he wos worse than
usual the doctor used to go down-stairs and say, 'Jinkinson's wery
low this mornin'; we must give the bears a stir'; and as sure as ever
they stirred 'em up a bit and made 'em roar, Jinkinson opens his
eyes if he wos ever so bad, calls out, 'There's the bears 1' and rewives
agin."

"Astonishing!" cried the barber.

"Not a bit," said Sam, "human natur' neat as imported. Vun day
the doctor happenin' to say, 'I shall look in as usual to-morrow mom-
m',' Jinkinson catches hold of his hand and says, 'Doctor,' he says,
will you grant me one favour?' 'I will, Jinkinson,' says the doctor!
'Then, doctor,' says Jinkinson, 'vill you come unshaved, and let me
shave you?' 'I will,' says the doctor. 'God bless you,' says Jinkuison.
Next day the doctor came, and arter he'd been shaved all skilful and
reg'lar, he says, 'Jinkinson,' he says, 'it's wery plain this does you
good. Now,' he says, 'I've got a coachman as has got a beard that
'ud warm your heart to work on, and though the footman,' he says
hasn't got much of a beard, still he's a.trying it on vith a pair o'
yiskers to that extent that razors is Christian charity. If they take
It in turns to mind the carriage when it's a waitin' below,' he says,
wot's to hinder you from operatin' on both of 'em ev'ry day as well
as upon me? you've got six children,' he says, 'wot's to hinder you
from shavm' all their heads and keepin' 'em shaved? you've got two
assistants in the shop down-stairs, wot's to hinder you from cuttin'
and curlin' them as often as you like? Do this," he says, 'and you're
a man agin.' Jinkinson squeedged the doctor's hand and begun that
wery day; he kept Lis tools upon the bed, and wenever he felt his-
self gettin' worse, he turned to at vun o' the children who wos a
runnm' about the house vith heads like clean Dutch cheeses, and
shaved him agin. Vun day the lawyer come to make his vill; all the

Master Humphrey's- Clock

287

time he wos a takin' it down, Jinkinson was secretly a clippin' avay
at his hair vith a large pair of scissors. ' Wot's that ere snippin' noise?'
says the lawyer every now and then; 'it's like a man bavin' his hair
cut.' I It ts wery like a man havin' his hair cut,' says poor Jinkinson,
hidm' the scissors, and lookin' quite innocent. By the time the lawyer
found it out, he was wery nearly bald. Jinkinson wos kept alive in
this vay for a long time, but at last vun day he has in all the children
vun arter another, shaves each on 'em wery clean, and gives him vim
kiss on the crown o' his head; then he has in the two assistants, and
arter cuttin' and curlin' of 'em in the first style of elegance, says he
should like to hear the woice o' the greasiest bear, vich rekvest is
imniediately complied with; then he says that he feels wery happy
in his mind and vishes to be left alone; and then he dies, previously
cuttm' his own hair and makin' one flat curl in the wery middle of
his forehead."

This anecdote produced an extraordinary effect, not only upon
Mr. Slithers, but upon the housekeeper also, who evinced so much
anxiety to please and be pleased, that Mr. Weller. with a manner
betokening some alarm, conveyed a whispered inquiry to his son
whether he had gone "too fur."

''Wot do you mean by too fur?" demanded Sam.
"In that 'ere little compliment respectin' the want of hock'erdness
in ladies, Sammy," replied his father.

"You don't think she's fallen in love with vou in consekens; o' that,
do you?" said Sam.

"More unlikelier things have come to pass, my boy," replied Mr.
Weller in a hoarse whisper; "I'm always afeerd of inadwertent capti-
wation, Sammy. If I know'd how to make myself ugly or unpleasant,
I'd do it, Samivel, rajrther than live in this here state of perpetival
terror!"

Mr. Weller had, at that time, no further opportunity of dwelling
upon the apprehensions which beset his mind, for the immediate
occasion of his fears proceeded to lead the way down-stairs, apologis-
ing as they went for conducting him into the kitchen, which apart-
ment, however, she was induced to proffer for his accommodation
in preference to her own little room, the rather as it afforded greater
facilities for smoking, and was immediately adjoining the ale-cellar.
The preparations which were alrsady made sufficiently proved that
these were not mere words of course, for on the deal table were a
sturdy ale- jug and glasses, flanked with clean pipes and a plentiful
supply of tobacco for the old gentleman and his son, while on a dresser
hard by was goodly store of cold meat and other eatables. At sight
of these arrangements Mr. Weller was at first distracted between his
love of joviality and his doubts whether they were not to be con-
sidered as so many evidences of captivation having already taken
place; but he soon yielded to his natural impulse, and took his seat
at the table with a very jolly countenance.

"As to imbibin' any o' this here flagrant veed, mum, in the pre-

288

Master Humphrey's Clock

sence of a lady," said Mr. Weller, taking up a pipe and laying it down
again, "it couldn't be. Samivel, total abstinence, H you please."

"But 1 like it of all things," said the housekeeper.

"No," rejoined Mr. Weller, shaking his head, — "no."

"Upon my word I do," said the housekeeper. "Mr. Slithers knows
I do."

Mr. Weller coughed, and notwithstanding the barber's confirma-
tion of the statement, said "No" again, but more feebly than before.
The housekeeper lighted a piece of paper, and insisted on applying
it to the bowl of the pipe with her own fair hands; Mr. Weller resisted;
the housekeeper cried that her fingers would be burnt; Mi. Weller
gave way. The pipe was ignited, Mr. Weller drew a long puff of smoke,
and detecting himself in the very act of smiling on the housekeeper,
put a sudden constraint upon his countenance and looked sternly at
the candles, with a determination not to captivate, himself, or en-
courage thoughts of captivation in others. From this iron frame oi
mind he was roused by the voice of his son.

"I don't think," said Sam, who was smoking with great composure
and enjoyment, "that if the lady wos agreeable it 'ud be wery far out
o' the vay for us four to make up a club of our own like the governors
does up-stairs, and let him," Sam pointed with the stem of his pipe
towards his parent, "be the president."

The housekeeper affably declared that it was the very thing she
had been thinking of. The barber said the same. Mr. Weller said no-
thing, but he laid down his pipe as if in a fit of inspiration, and per-
formed the following manoeuvres.

Unbuttoning the three lower buttons of his waistcoat and pausing
for a moment to enjoy the easy flow of breath consequent upon this
process, he laid violent hands upon his watch-chain, and slowly and
with extreme difficulty drew from his fob an immense double-cased
silver watch, wnich brought the lining of the pocket with it, and was
not to be disentangled but by great exertions and an amazing redness
of face. Having fairly got it out at last, he detached the outer case
and wound it up with a key of corresponding magnitude; then put
the case on again, and having applied the watch to his ear to ascer-
tain that it was still going, gave it some half-dczen hard knocks on
the table to improve its performance.

"Tljat," said Mr. Weller, laying it on the table with its face up-
wards, "is the title and emblem o' this here society. Sammy, reach
them two stools this vay for the wacant cheers. Ladies and gen'lmen,
Mr. Weller's Watch is vound up and now a-goin'. Order!"

By way of enforcing this proclamation, Mr. Weller, using the
watch after the manner of a president's hammer, and remarking with
great pride that nothing hurt it, and that falls and concussions of all
kinds materially enhanced the excellence of the works and assisted
the regulator, knocked the table a great many times, and declared
the association formally constituted.
"And don't let's have no grinnin' at the cheer, Samivel," said Mr

Master Humphrey's Clock

289

Weller to his son, "or I shall be committin' you to the cellar, and then
p'r'aps we may get into what the 'Merrikins call a fix, and the English
a qvestion o' privileges."

Having uttered this friendly caution, the President settled himself
in his chair with great dignity, and requested that Mr Sam^'cl would
relate an anecdote.

"I've told one," said Sam.

"Wery good, sir; tell another,' returned the chair,

"We wos a talking jist now, sir," said Sam, turning to Slithers,
"about barbers. Pursuing that 'ere fruitful theme, sir, I'll tell you in
a wery few words a romantic li^Me story about another barber as
p'r'aps you may never have heerd."

•' Samivel ! " said Mr. Weller, again bringing his watch and the table
into smart collision, "address your obserwations to the cheer, sir, and
not to priwate indiwiduals!"

"And if I might rise to order," said the barber in a soft voice, and
looking round him with a conciliatory smile as he leant over the table,
with the knuckles of his left hand resting upon it, — "if I might rise
to order, I would suggest that 'barbers' is not exactly the kind of
language which is agreeable and soothing to our feelings. You, sir,
will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is such a word in the
dictionary as hairdressers."

"Well, but suppose he wasn't a hairdresser," suggested Sam.

"Wy then, sir, be parliamentary and call him vun all the more,"
returaed his father. "In the same vay as ev'ry gen'lman in another
place is a honourable, ev'ry barber in this place is a hairdresser. Ven
you read the speeches in the papers, and see as vun gen'lman says of
another, 'the honourable m-" Tiber, if he vill allow me to call him so,'
you will understan ' " -it that means, ' if he vill allow me to keep

up that 'ere pleas.^ . 'wersal fiction.' "

It is a common t ■ r.-ned by history and experience, that

great men rise with -.ances in which they are placed. Mr.

Weller came out so i. capacity of chairman, that Sam was

for some time prevente(^ leaking by a grin of surprise, which

held his faculties enchained, and at last subside'I in a long whistle of
a single note. Nay, the old gentleman appeared even to have aston-
ished himself, and that to no small extent, as was demonstrated by
the vast amount of chuckling in which he indulged, after the utter-
ance of these lucid remarks.

"Here's the story," said Sam. "Vunce upon a time there wos a
young hairdresser as opened a wery smart little shop vith four wax
dummies in the winder, two gen'lmen and two ladies — the gen'lmen
vith blue dots for their beards, wery large viskers, oudacious heads
of hair, uncommon clear eyes, and nostrils of amazin' pinkness; the
ladies vith their heads o' one side, their right forefingers on their lips,
and their forms dewelooed beautiful, in vich last respect they had
the adwantage over the gen'lmen, as wasn't allowed but wery little
shoulder, and terminated rayther abrupt in fancy drapery. He had
328

■ M

Master Humphrey's Clock

290

also a many hair-brushes and tooth-brushes bottled up in th» winder
neat glass-cases on the counter, a f, jor-clothed cuttin'-room up-
^airs. and a weighin'-macheen in the shop, right opposite the aoor
But the great attraction and ornament wos the dummies, which this
here young hairdresser wos constantly a runnin' out in the road to
look at, and constantly a runnin' in again to touch up and polish- in
short, he wos so proud on 'em, that ven Sunday come, he wos always
wretched and mis'rable to think they wos behind the shutters and
looked anxiously for Monday on that account. Vun o' these dummies
wos a fav'nte vith him beyond the others; and ven any of his acquain-
tance asked him wy he didn't get married— as the young ladies he
know'd, m partickler, often did— he used to say, 'Never I I never vill
enter mto the bonds of vedlock,' he says, 'until I meet vith a young
ooman as realises my idea o' that 'ere fairest dummy vith the light
hair. Then, and not till then.' he says, 'I vill approach the altar ' All
the young ladies he kncw'd as had got dark hair told him this wos
wery sinful, and that he wos wurshippin' a idle; but them as wos at
all n-ar the same shaae as the dummy coloured up ./ery much, and
wos coserved to think him a very nice young man."

"Samivel," said Mr. Weller. gravely, "a member o' this associashun
bein one o' that 'ete tender sex which is now immedetly referred to
I have to rekvest that you vill make no reflections."

"I ain't a makin' any. am I?" inquired Sam.

"Order, sir!" rejoined Mr. Weller, vdth severe digrity. Then sink-
ing the chairman in the father, he added, in his usual tone of voice
Samivel, drive on ! "

Sam interchanged a smile with the housekeeper, and proceeded
"The young hairdresser hadn't been in the habit o' makin this
avowal above six months, ven he en-countered a young lady as wos
the wery picter o' the fairest dummy. 'Now,' he says, 'it's all up r
am a slave!' The young lady wos not only the picter o' the fairest
dummy, but she was wery romantic, as the young hairdresser was
too. and he says, 'O!' he says, 'here's a community o' feelin' here's
a flow o' soul ! ' 1- 3 says, 'here's a interchange o' sentiment ! ' The young
lady didn't say much, o' course, but she expressed herself agreeable
and shortly artevards vent to see him Vith a mutual friend, '^he hair-
dresser rushes out to meet her. but d'rectly she sees the dummies she
changes colour and falls a tremblin' wiolently. 'Look up, my love,'
says the hairdresser, 'behold your imige in my winder, but not cor-
recter than m my art!' 'My imige!' she says. 'Yourn!' replies the hair-
dresser. But whose imige is that?' she says, a pinting at vun o' the
gen'lmen. 'No vun's, my love,' he says, 'it is but a idea.' 'A idea'' she
cries: 'i. .s a portrait. I feel it is a portrait, and that 'ere noble face
must be in the millingtary!' 'Wot do I hear!' says he. a crumplin' his
curls. 'ViUiam Gibbs.' she says, quite firm, 'never renoo the subject
I respect you as a friend,' she says, 'but ray affections is set upon
that manly brow.' 'This,' says the hairdresser, 'is a reg'lar blight
and in it I perceive the hand of F?>te. Farevell!' Vith these vords he

Master Humphrey's C1gv\ 291

rushes into the shop, breaks the dummy' nrjse vith a blow of his
curlin'-irons, mel' i him down at the pp.) . Aire, and never smii^is
artervards."

"The young lady, Mr. Weller?" said tiie housekeeper.

"Why, ma'am," said Sam, "findin' that Fate had a spite agin her,
.md everybody she tome into contact vith, she never smiled neither,
but road a deal o' poetry and pined avay, — by rayther slow degrees,
for she ain't dead yet. It took a deal o' poetry to kill the ha. Jresser,
and some people .say arter all that it wos more the gin and water as
caused him to be run over; p'r'aps it was a little o' both, and came o'
mixing the two."

The barber declared that Mr. V/eller had related one of the most
interesting stories that had ever come within his knowledge, in which
opinion the housekeeper entirely concurred.

"Are you a married man, sir?" inquired Sam.

The barber replied that he had noi that honour.

"I s'pose "ou mean to be?" said Sam.

"Well," replied the barber, rubbing his hands smirkingly, "I
don't knov/, I don't think it's very likely."

"That's a bad sign," said Sam; "if you'd said you meant to be vun
o* these days, I should ha' looked .^v n you as bein' safe. You're in
a wery precarious state."

"I am not conscious of any danger, at all events," returned the
barber.

"No more wos I, sir," said the elder Mr. Weller, interposing; "those
vere my symptoms, exactly. I've been took that vay twice. Keep your
vether eye op>. ., my friend, or you're gone."

There was something so very solemn about this admonition, both
in its matter and manner, and also in the way in which Mr. Weller
still kept his eye fixed upon the unsuspecting victim, that nobody cared
to speak for some little time, and might not have cared to do so for
some time longer, if the housekeeper had not happened to sigh, which
called off the old gentleman's attention and gave rise to a gallant
inquiry whether "there wos anythin' wery piercin' in that 'ere little
heart?"

"Dear me, Mr. Weller!" said the housekeeper, laughing.

"No, but is there anything' as agitates it?" pursued the old
gentleman. "Has it always been obderrate, always opposed to the
happiness o' human creeturs? Eh? Has it?"

At this critical juncture for her blushes and confusion, the house-
keeper discovered that more ale was wanted, and hastily withdrew
into the cellar to draw the same, followed by the barber, who
insisted on carrying the candle. Having looked after her with a very
complacent expression of face, and after him with some disdain, Mr.
Weller caused his glance to travel slowly roand iue kitchon, until
at length it rested on his son.

"Sammy," said Mr. Weller, "I mistrust that barber."

"Wot for?" returned Sam; "wot's he got to do with you? You're a

292 Master Humphrey's Clock

nice man. you are. arter pretendin' all kinds o' terror to so a navin'
compliments and talkin' about hearts and piercers " ^ ^ ^

The imputation of gallantry appeared to afford Mr Weller thp

Sammy! e'h?" *'""' ^'~"' '"=^"^^ ""<» piercers.-wos I though,
"Wos you? of course you wos."
"She don't know no becter, Sammy, there ain't no harm in it —no

d.S'ih.tn"''' "'''\°"'>' * P--^'^^- She seemed pSdthCrh
d^dn t^she? O course, she wos pleased, it's nafral she should be we^^

••He"stctraUy wa";;..^'''"*™^" '^™' J°»'"8 » "^^ f-«>er's mirth.

oom""trck''''thf mn. r"?' ~">P°^"g h« features, "they're
comm Dack, — the little heart s a comine' bark Rnf mofi, +i:

wurds o' mine once more, and remembeT'em ven yo^r ^^'^5 he'
said 'em. Samivel. I mistrust that 'ere deceitful barber '' ^

[Old Curiosity Shop is continued to the end of the number.]

MASTER HUMPHREY. FROM HIS CLOCF-SIDE

IN THE CHIMNEY-CORNER

Two or three evenings after the institution of Mr. Weller's Watch T

\!^Zfu \^^^'^- ^l i^^^^'^ ^" *^^ g^^den. the voice of MrWeHer
himself at no great distance; and stopping once or twirl +^ n 1

Z?..''*'''^,^l^; '.'"""^ *^^* theT^rprocee^erfrom^t^
hou^sekeeper's little suting-room. which is at the back of the tose I
took no further notice of the circumstance at that time but it
formed the subject of a conversation between me anTmy fdend Tack
Redburn next mormng. when I found that 7. had not^een deceived
m my impression. Jack furnished me with the following pa^^^^^^^
and as he appeared to take extraordinary pleasure in relftW f h!^'
I have begged him in future to jot down Ly such d^mSt^^^^^^^
t^olcnn'hff '''^' n^ay please his humour, in order trtthLTa^^^
told m h s own way. I must confess that, as Mr. Pickwick IndhLrP
constantly together, I have been influenced, m mak nTthis reque^^^^
by a secret desire to know something of their proceedings ^ '
^^?h^y''T'''^ '"^ question, the housekeeper's room tas arranged
dre se"? T?e^^^^^^^^^^ T ^^^^.^^^^^keeper ferself was ve^ TmaSy
dressed^ The preparations, however, were not confined to mere

l'::rjf!^r.\'t';?:^l'. - _*- -- P-Pa-d for three per:^'^"^
'^'""^ "" Frv:Sux ves aua jams ana sweet cakes, which heralded

Master Humphrey's Clock 293

some uncommon occasion. Miss Benton (my housekeeper bears that

t^hTfrLTn '" ^ ''^\' f- ^'^' -'^Pectation. too, frequently goTng to
the front door and lookmg anxiously down the lane, and more than
once observing to the servant-girl that she expected company and
hoped no accident had happened to delay them ^°"^P^"y' ^nd

BentT^hnll'rrf/^.^^l^" ^* ^""^*^ allayed'her fears, and Miss
Benton hurrying into her own room and shutting herself up in
order that she might preserve that appearance of being taken by
surprise which is so essential to the polite reception of vSors
awaited theu: coming with a smiling countenance. '

Good ev nin', mum," said the older Mr. Weller, looking in at the
door after a prefatory tap. "I'm afeere^i we've come in ra/ther arter
the time, mum but the young colt being full o' wice, has been a
boltin and shym' and gettin' his leg over the traces to ich a exten?
that If he an't wery soon broke in, he'll wex me into a broken heart
and then he'll never be brought out no more except to learn ^s
^ w'fu'"??' *^^ ^'*^"' °^ ^'^ grandfather's tombstone "
nnfTiH? i '^ pathetic words, which were addressed to something
outside the door about two feet six from the ground. Mr Welle?
introduced a very small boy firmly set upon\ couple of verj

Be.'id^. hf '""^^ ^°°^"^ as if nothing could ever knock him dow^
Besides haying a very round face strongly resembling Mr. Weller's
and a stout htte body of exactly his build, this young gentleman
standmg with his little legs very wide apart, as if the top-boots we?e
familiar to them, actually winked upon the housekeeLr with Ss
infant eye. in imitation of his grandfather ^

d^iiJi^^-ll^."^^"^^*^ boy, mum," said Mr. Weller, bursting with
delight there's a immoral Tony. Wos there ever a little chap o' four

As little affected by this observation as by the former aooeal to }ii<!
feelings Master Weller elevated in the air^ smalTmSelTa coach
whip which he carried in his hand, and addressing the housekeeper
Tt which f y^-JiPi"i.^q"i^ed if she was "goinl down the road' '
at which happy adaptation of a lesson he had been taught from
infancy. Mr. Weller could restrain his feelings no longe?. but gav^
him twopence on the spot. ^ ^

arter W^^nH/?>f^^^ '*' "^^K ^^'^ ^'' ^^"^^' "^^i^ here is a boy
arter his grandfather's own heart, and beats out all the boys as ever

wos or will be. Though at the same time, mum." added Mr Weller

trying to look gravely down upon his favourite, "it was wery wrong on

on him to force poor grandfather to lift him cross-legged over every

Se together/' ^^^^^-^^d-forty on 'em all in a row. and wery

Here Mr. Weller. whos** f^piip^o xxr^r.^ ,v - ■nc.-rr^-^^^-i "• ^

responsibility, and the importance of impressing him with mo^

■JLSII^Be'

1 H

:fca

v.i

294 Master Humphrey's Clock

truths burst into a lit of laughter, and suddenly checking himself
remarked in a severe tone that little boys as made their grand-
fathers put em over posts never went to heaven at any price

iiy this time the housekeeper had made tea. and little Tony

fl^^^^u I "Jf "" ^^^'^^ ^^'"' ^^^^ ^'^ «y^s nearly on a level with the
top of the table, was provided with various delicacies which yielded

.r.J'^/T^ K?f ^"?'^'l*- "^^^ housekeeper (who seemed rather
afraid of the child notwithstanding her caresses) then patted him on
the head, and declared that he was the finest boy she had ever seen

.i.i.^'fn' !u'^ ^^- ^^^^^^' "I d°^'* think you'!l see a many
sich. and that's the truth. But if my son Samivel vould give me my

vurd?^"™' ''''^^ dis-pense vith his-might I wenter to say the

;;What word. Mr. Weller?" said the housekeeper, blushing slightly,
fh. ^! .'' Tu"^' returned that gentleman, laying his hand upon
the garments of his grandson. "If m>- son Samivel. mum. vould only
dis-pense vith these here, you'd see sich a alteration in his appearance
as the imagination can't depicter."

"But what would you have the child wear instead, Mr. Weller?"
said the housekeeper.

old^^Inf'?f,^?n "^'r'"" ^^"^r^}'. "'""^' ^8^^" ^^d agen." returned the
?wil '^ u i° P^^^ide him at my own cost vith a suit o'
clothes as 'ud be the makm' on him. and form his mind in infancy for
those pursuits as I hope the family o' the Vellers vill alvays dewote

^a^dtth.V°- ^T;.°'y ^°^' *^" '^' ^^^y ^°* *^^^ clothes arias
grandfather says, father ought to let you vear "

.nH^iiif ^! "^^l^^^^^ ^i^d a little sprig weskut and little knee cords
and little top-boots and a little green coat with little bright buttons
and a httle welwet collar." replied Tony, with great readiLss and no

"That's the cos-toom. mum," said Mr. Weller. looking proudly at
Z h^r XgJP'^^^ "^^^^ ^^^^ ^ -^''' - ^^- - tha^and ?Ju'd^
^^?J^f'^^ *^^ housekeeper thought that in such a guise young Tony

Th^f i° ""^'^ l'^' *^" ^"^^^ ^* ^?^^^^°^ than anything else o^
that name, or perhaps she was disconcerted to find her previously-

fn "f or>f ^^^^^/^«t"^bedf as angels are not commonly represente^d
nothSg ° '^"^ waistcoats. She coughed doubtfullyf but aid

"One brother and no sister at all." replied Tony. "Sam his name
IS, and so's my father's. Do you know my father?"

O yes. I know him." said the housekeeper, graciously.
Is my father fond of you ? ' ' pursued Tony.
^I hope so." rejoined the smiling housekeeper,
fond" of you?""" ^^ ^ moment, and then said. "Is my grandfather

Master Humphrey's Clock 295

This would seem a very easy question to answer, but instead of
replying to it, the housekeeper smiled in great confusion, and said
that really children did ask such extraordinary questions that it
was the most difficult thing in the world to talk to them. Mr. Weller
took upon himself to reply that he was very fond of the lady; but
the housekeeper entreating that he would not put such things into
the child's head, Mr. Weller shook his own while she looked another
way, and seemed to be troubled with a misgiving that captivation
was in progress. It was, perhaps, on this account that he changed the
subject precipitately.

"It's wery wrong in little boys to make game o' their grand-
fathers, an't it, mum?" said Mr. Welkr, shaking his head waggishly,
until Tony looked at him, when he counterfeited the deepest dejection
and sorrow.

"O, very sad!" assented the housekeeper. "But I hope no little
boys do that?"

"There is vun young Turk, mum," said Mr. Weller, "as havin'
seen his grandfather a little overcome vith drink on the occasion of a
friend's birthday, goes a reelin' and staggerin' about the house, and
makin' believe that he's the old gen'lm'n."

"O, quite shocking!" cried the housekeeper.

"Yes, mum," said Mr. Weller; "and previously to so doin', this 'ere
young traitor that I'm a speakin' of, pinches his little nose to make it
red, and then he gives a hiccup and says, 'I'm all right,' he says;
'give us another song!' Ha, ha! 'Give us another song,' he says. Ha,
ha, ha!"

In his excessive delight, Mr. Weller was quite unmindful of his
moral responsibility, until little Tony kicked up his legs, and laughing
immoderately, cried, "That was me, that was"; whereupon the
grandfather, by a great effort, became extremely solemn.

"No, Tony, not you," said Mr. Weller. "I hope it wam't you.
Tony. It must ha' been that 'ere naughty little chap as comes some-
times out o' the empty watch-box round the corner.— that same
httle chap as wos found standin' on the table afore the lookin' -glass,
pretending to shave himself vith a oyster-knife."

''He didn't hurt himself, I hope?" observed the housekeeper.

"Not he, mum," said Mr. Weller proudly; "bless your heart, you
might trust that 'ere boy vith a steam-engine a'most, he's sich a
knowin' young"— but suddenly recollecting himself and observing
that Tony perfectly understood and appreciated the compliment, the

old gentleman groaned and observed that "it wos all wery shockin'

wery."

"O, he's a bud 'an," said Mr. Weller, "is that 'ere watch-box boy,
makm' sich a noise and litter in the back yard, he does, waterin'
wooden horses and feedin' of 'em vith grass, and perpetivally spillin'
his little brother out of a veelbarrow and frightenin' his mother out of

her vits ai" ■fhp \xrpr\r mnmart-i- xTrart oVt^'r. A-u-^rv^^C^i 4.-^ i— i

• J '••• •••'.■ fT-.sj. axiu; o Cipc^^tlXi fcu HiVilCiiSC IICV

Stock of happiness vith another play-fellow,— O, he's a bad u'n I He's

296 Master Humphrey's Clock

faXffn^nn'^iff/' K" ^""^ °? ^ ^^^^ °^ P^?''' spectacles as he got his
?..7^>, J^t^^'"-^'."'' ^"""^ ^^-^ "P a"d down the garden vith h s
s'cStl^^gro no"l " ^"'*'*"" "' '''"• P-k-ck.--but'Tony donVdo

"O no!" echoed Tony.

"He knows better, he does," said Mr. Weller. "He knows that if he
wos to come sich games as these nobody vouldn't love S and tha?
his grandfather m partickler couldn't abear the sight o^' h?m for
vich reasons Tony's alvays good " '

toiv^^lFwK ^^ho^d J«ny.- and his grandfather immediately
took him on his knee and kissed him, at the same fime with manv

orl'r%lr.f \''^'^P"'"*'"^ ^' *^^ ^^^^^'« ^^^^d witlTL thumb ^^
order that the housekeeper, otherwise deceived by the admirable

manner m which he (Mr. Weller) had sustained his ^arLter SLht
not suppose that any other young gentleman was referred io and
might clearly understand that the boy of the watch-box was but an
imagmary creation, and a fetch of Tony himself, invented for h^
improvement and reformation. ^venxea lor nis

Not confining himself to a mere verbal description of his erand-
son s abilities Mr. Weller. when tea was finished, invited h&
various gifts of pence and halfpence to smoke imaginary pipes drink
visionary beer from real pots, imitate his grfnd^hTwithTut
reserve and m particular to go through the dmnken scene wWch
threw the old gentleman into ectasies and filled the housekeeperw th
wonder. Nor was Mr. Weller's pride satisfied with even thL dispTay
for when he took his leave he carried the child, like some rare and
astomshmg curiosity, first to the barber's house and afterwards to
the tobacconist's, at each of which places he repeated hisTerform-
ances with the utmost etlect to applauding and Lighted audfencS

h m hnt'''P"'*r\°''l°."^ "^^"^^- W^"- ^-« laVseercari^^^^^^^
him home upon his shoulder, and it has been whispered abroad that
at that time the infant Tony was rather intoxicated

\pld Curiosity Shop is continued from here to the end without further break.]

I was musing the other evening upon the characters and incidents
with which I had been so long engaged; wondering how I could ever
have looked forward with pleasure to the completion of my tale and
reproaching myself for having done so. as if it were a kind of cruelty
to those compamons of my solitude whom I had now dismissed and
could never agam recall; when my clock struck ten. PunctuaUo the
hour my fnends appeared. "^tuai to tne

On our last night of meeting, we had finished the story which the
reader has just concluded. Our conversation took the same cu^ent as
the meditations which the entrance of mv friends had inf .rrupt^d -^ -d
Tne Uld Curiosity Shop was the staple of our discourse " ^ ""

WB <| I

Master Humphrey's Clock 297

I may confide to the reader now, that in connection with this little
history I had something upon my mind; something to communicate
which I had all along with difficulty repressed; something I had deemed
It. during the progress of the story, necessary to its interest to dis-

to dTsdose"^ '""'^ *^^^ '^"^^^ °''^''' ^ '^'^^^'^' ^""^"^^^ yetreluctant.
m J° ?''*'^^T^ anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in

This f.^'.^;r ? n'ir^' ''^"'^ "^y ^^P' ^^^"^ ^ ^^^« °P^"ed my heart.
JflniTZL^ the consciousness of having done some violence to
^U^f Jiffl. H •®' ^^'^ ""^ ""^^"^ ^ restraint which I should have had
great difficulty m overcoming, but for a timely remark from Mr

Jibft; tn°H Ti ' ""'T^ ^^ '°"^^^ P"P^^' ^^ ^ gentleman of business
"1 rn?,?H ? ^^^^ exactness and propriety in all his transactions.
1 could have wished." my fnend objected, "that we had been
made acquainted with the single gentleman's name. I don't like hS
withholding his name. It made me look upon him at first with sus!
picion. and caused me to doubt his moral character. I assure you I a^
fully satisfied by this time of his being a worthy creature; but in thS
Sness "^^^^^^y ^°"1^ notappear to have acted at all likeamanof

f>,3^ friends." said I. drawing to the table, at which they were by
this time seated in their usual chairs, "do you remember that th^
story bore another title besides that one we have so often heard of

Mr. Miles had his pocket-book out in an instant, and referring to an
entry therein^ rejoined. "Certainly. Personal AdventuresTf Master
Humphrey. Here it is. I made a note of it at the time "

I was about to resume what I had to tell them, when the same Mr

Miles again mterrupted me. observing that the narrative orfgTnafed

n a personal adventure of my own. and that was no doubt the reason

for Its being thus designated. reason

This led me to the point at once.

"You will one and all forgive me." I returned, "if for the ereater
convemence of the story, and for its better introduction, that Ven-
ture was fictitious. I had my share, indeed.-no light or trivi^ one ~
in the pages we have read, but it was not the share I feigned to have
at first. The younger brother, the single gentleman the namelels
actor m this little drama, stands before you now'' nameless

It was easy to see they had not expected this disclosure.
, ,/^\ . ^ pursued. "I can look back upon my part in it with a calm
half-smiling pity for myself as for some other man. sTt I am h^'
indeed; and now the chief sorrows of my life are yours " '

..H i!-^^/°* say what true gratffication I derived from the sympathy
and kindness with which this acknowledgement was recefvTd nor
how of ten It had nsen to my lips before; no? how difficult I had found
it-how impossible, when I came to those passages which touch^H m.
aSumPd''T'?';f ""^^'X^oncerned me-to sustain the character l"had
assumed. It is enough to say that I replaced in the clock-case the
328*

■

298

Master Humphrey's Clock

F i

:J'i !

record of so many triaLs.—sorrowfully. it is true, but with a softened
sorrow which was almost pleasure; and folt that in living through the
past again; and communicating to others the lesson it had helped to
teach me, I had been a happier man.

We lingered sq long over the leaves from which I had read, that as
I consigned them to their former resting-place, the hand of my trusty
clock pointed to twelve, and there came towards us upon the wind the
deep voice and distant bell of St. Paul's as it struck the hour of mid-
nignt.

"This." said I. returning with a manuscript X had taken at the

«T.^Tn K Ti*^^u''"'^'''^P?'^*°'^' "*^ ^« °P«"e^ to such music,
should be a tale where London's face by night is darkly seen, and
where some deed of such a time as this is dimly shadowed out. Which
of us here has seen the working of that great machine whose voice has
just now ceased?

Mr Pickwick had, of course, and so had Mr. Miles. Jack and mv
deaf friend were in the minority.

I had seen it but a few days before, and could not help telling them
of the fancy 1 had about it. f 5 •-

I paid my fee of twopence upon entering, to one of the monev-
changers who sit within the Temple; and falling, after a few turns up
and down, into the quiet train of thought which such a place awakens
paced the echoing stones like some old monk whose present world lay
all within Its walls As I looked afar up into the lofty dome. I could not

if/iir"^''""? "^^'tu T'^ ^'^ reflections whos genius reared that
mighty pile. when, the last small wedge of timber fixed, the last nail
driven into its home for many centuries, the clang of hammers, and
the hum of busy voices gone, and the Great Silence whole years of
noise had helped to make, reigning undisturbed around, he mused, as
,'i "^1^' "P°" ^^s w«rk. and lost himself amid its vast extent 1
could not quite determine whether the contemplation of it would im-
press him with a sense of greatness or of insignificance; but when I
remembered how long a time it had taken to erect, in how short a
space It might be traversed even to its remotest parts, for how brief
a term he or any of those who cared to bear his name, would live to
see it. or know of its existence. I imagined him far more melancholy
than proud, and looking with regret upon his labour done. With these
thoughts in my mind. I began to ascend, almost unconsciously, the
flight of steps leading to the several wonders of the building, and
found myself before a barrier where another money-taker sat who
demanded which among them I would choose to see. There were the
stone gallery, he said, and the whispering gallery, the geometrical
staircase the room of models, the clock-theW^beTng qu^S in my
way. I stopped him there, and chose that sight from all the rest

I groped my way into the Turret which it occupies, and saw before
fofHin. do^ T^^^' K^^* '^!™^^ *° ^^ ^ ^'^^^' °^d oaken press with
sleeping when 1 came upon him. and looked a drowsy fellow/ as though

Master Humphrey's Clock 299

his close companionship with Time had made him quite indifferent to
it), disclosed a complicated crowd of wheels and chains in iron and
brass.— great, sturdy, rattling engines,— suggestive of breaking a

finger put in here or there, and grinding the bone to powder, and

these were the Clock I Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no
other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle
second stroke, as though it would check old Time, and have him stay
his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its
business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and re-
morselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment.

I sat down opposite to it, and hearing its regular and never-chang-
ing voice, that one deep constant note, uppermost amongst all the
noise and clatter in the streets below, — marking that, let that tumult
rise or fall, go on or stop, — let it be night or noon, to-morrow or to-
day, this year or next,— it still performed its functions with the same
dull constancy, and regulated the progress of the life around, the
fancy came upon me that this was London's Heart, and that when it
should cease to beat, the City would be no more.

It is night. Calm and unmoved amidst the scenes that darkness
favours, the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth
and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the
direst hunger, all treading . »n each other and crowding together, are
gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering house-
tops, and you shall have within its space everything, with its opposite
extreme and contradiction, close bf>side. Where yonder feeble light is
shining, a man is but this moment dead. The taper at a few yards'
distance is seen by eyes that have this instant opened on the world.
There are two houses separated by an inch or two of wall. In one,
there are quiet minds at rest; in the other, a waking conscience that
one might think would trouble the very air. In that close corner
where the roofs shrink down and cower together as if to hide their
secrets from the handsome street hard by, there are such dark crimes,
such miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in whispers. In the
handsome street, there are folks asleep who have dwelt there all their
lives, and have no more knowledge of these things than if they had

never been, or were transacted at the remotest limits of the world,

who, if they were hinted at, would shake their heads, look wise, and
frown, and say they were impossible, and out of Nature, — as if all great
towns were not. Does not this Heart of London, that nothing moves,
nor stops, nor quickens, — that goes on the same let what will be donei
— does it not express the City's character well?

The day begins to break, and soon there is the hum and noise of
life. Those who have spent the night on doorsteps and cold stones
crawl off to beg; they who have slept in beds come forth to their occu-
pation, too, and business is astir. The fog of sleep rolls slowly off and
London shines awake. The streets are filled with carriaeres. and nfionle
gaily clad. The jails are full, too, to the throat, nor have the^vork-
houses or hospitals much room to spare. The courts of law are crowded.

f m

■ 300 Master Humphrey's Clock

Taverns have their regular frequenters by this time, and every mart
of traffic has its throng. Each of these places is a world, and has its
own inhabitants; each is distinct from, and almost unconscious of the
existence of any other. There are some few people well to do, who

remember to have heard it said, that numbers of men and women

thousands, they think it was — get up in London every day, unknow-
ing where to lay their heads at night; and that there are quarters of
the town where misery and famine always are. They don't believe it
quite, — there may be some truth in it, but it is exaggerated, of course.
So, each of these thousand worlds goes on, intent upon itself, until
night comes again,— first with its lights and pleasures, and its cheer-
ful streets; then with its guilt and darkness.

Heart of London, there is a moral in thy every stroke I as I look on
at thy indomitable working, which neither death, nor press of life, nor
gri^f, nor gladness out of doors will influence one jot, I seem to hear a
voice within thee which sinks into my heart, bidding me, as I elbow
my way among the crowd, have some thought for the meanest wretch
that passes, and. being a man, to turn away with scorn and pride
from none that bear the human shape.

I am by no means sure that I might not have been tempted to en-
large upon the subject, had not the papers that lay before me on the
table been a silent reproach for even this digression. I took them up
again when I had got thus far, and seriously prepared to read.

The handwriting was strange to me, for the manuscript had been
fairly copied. As it is against our rules, in such a case, to inquire into
the authorship until the reading is concluded, I could only glance at
the different faces round me, in search of some expression which should
betray the writer, Whoever he might be, he was prepared for this, and
gave no sign for my enlightenment.

I had the papers in my hand, when my deaf friend interposed with
a suggestion.

"It has occurred to me, ' ' he said, ' ' bearing in mind your sequel to the
tale we have finished, that if such of us as have anything to relate of
our own lives could interweave it with our contribution to the Clock,
it would be well to do so. This need be nb restraint upon us, either as
to time, or place, or incident, since any real passage of this kind may
be surrounded by fictitious circumstances, and represented by ficti-
tious characters. What if we make this an article of agreement among
ourselves?"

The proposition was cordially received, but the difficulty appeared
to be that here was a long story written before we had thought of it.

"Unless," said I, "it should have happened that the writer of this
tale — which is not impossible, for men are apt to do so when they
write — has actually mingled with it something of his own endurance
and experience."

i-.'jDoa_y ^purvc, udi, A Liiuugut X uctccLCu iii ouG quartcf that this
was really the case.

Master Humphrey's Clock 301

Jlu J ^'^'■! r"" assurance to the contrary," I added, therefore, "I
shall take it for granted that he has done so. and that even these

h^FH^?K''?"'^7'*x'" ?"'■ ""^"^ agreement. Everybody beiug mute, we
hold that understanding, if you please." ^ ^ & ulc. we

And here I was about to begin again, when Jack informed us softly
that during the progress of our last narrative. Mr. Weller's Watch had
adjourned its sitting from the kitchen, and regularly met outside our
door, where he had no doubt that august body would be found at the
present moment. As this was for the convenience of listening to our
stones he submitted that they might be suffered to come in. and
hear them more pleasantly.

To this we one and all yielded a ready assent, and the party being
discovered as Jack had supposed, and invited to walk in. entered
(though not without great confusion at having been detected) and
were accommodated with chairs at a little distance

laen. the lamp being trimmed, the fire well stirred and burning
brightly, the hearth clean swept, the curtains closely drawn the clock
wound up. we entered on our new story.

[This was Barnaby Rudge, continued in vol. xi' of this Edition.]

fozSj^fh^co'cSn^o?^!'^^^^^^^ °^ ^'^'''^ H«m/>A.^.. Clock. It

It is again midnight. My fire burns cheerfully; the room is filled
with my old friend's sober voice; and I am left to muse upon the storv
we have just now finished. ^

It makes me smile, at such a time a^ this, to think if there were anv
one to see me sitting in my easy-chair, my gray head hanging down,
my eyes bent thoughtfully upon the glowing embers, and my crutch-
emblem of my helplessness— lying upon the hearth at my feet, how
solitary I should seem. Yet though I am the sole tenant of this
chimney-corner, though I am childless and old. I have so sense of
lonehness at this hour; but am the centre of a silent group whose com-
pany I iove. ° ^

Thus, even age and weakness have their consolations. If I were a
younger man, if I were more active, more strongly bound and tied to
Me. tiles'^ visionary friends would shun me, or I should desire to flv
from them. Being what I am, I can court their society, and delight in
It; and pass whole hours in picturing to myself the shadows that per-
chance flock every night into this chamber, and in imagining with
pleasure what kind of interest they have in the frail, feeble mortal who
IS its sole inhabitant.
All the friends I have ever lost I find again among these visitors
l^^ 1 • ^"^^ *^^^^ ^P^"*^ hovering about me, feeling still some
earthly kindness for their old companion, and watching his decay
He 13 weaker, he declines apace, he draws nearer and nearer to us
and will soon be conscious of our existence." What is there to alarm
me in this ? It is encouragement and hope.
These thoughts have never crowded on me half so fast as they have

I i

302 Master Humphrey's Clock

done to-night. Faces I had long forgotten have become familiar to me
once again; traits I had endeavoured to recall for years have come
before me in an instant; nothing is changed but me; and even 1 can
be my former self at will.

Raising my eyes but now to the face of my old clock, I remember
quite involuntarily, the veneration, not unmixed with a sort of child-
ish awe, with which I used to sit and watch it as it ticked, un-
heeded in a dark staircase corner. I recollect looking more grave and
steady when I met its dusty face, as if, having that strange kind of
life within it, and being free from all excesses of vulgar appetite,
and warning all the house by night and day, it were a sage. How
often I have hstened to it as it told the beads of time, and wondered
at its constancy I How often watched it slowly pointing round the
dial, and, while I panted for the eagerly expected hour to come,
admired, despite myself, its steadiness of purpose and lofty fre edom
from all human strife, impatience, and desire.

I thought it cruel once. It was very hard of heart, to my mind, I
remember. It was an old servant even then; and I felt as though it
ought to show some sorrow; as though it wanted sympathy with us in
our distress, and were a dull, heartless, mercenary creature. Ah! how
soon I learnt to know that in its ceaseless going on, and in its being
checked or stayed by nothing, lay its greatest kindness, and the only
balm for grief and wounded peace of mind.

To-night, to-night, when this tranquillity and calm are on my
spirits, and memory presents so many shifting scenes before me, I
take my quiet stand at will by many a fire that has been long ex-
tinguished, and mingle with the cheerful group that cluster round it.
If I could be sorrowful in such a mood, I should grow sad to think
what a poor blot I was upon their youth and beauty once, and now
how few remain to put me to the blush; I should grow sad to think
that such among them as I sometimes meet with in my daily walks
are scarcely less infirm than I; that time brought us to a level; and that
all distinctions fade and vanish as we take our trembling steps to-
wards the grave.

But memory was given us for better purposes than this, and mine
is not a torment, but a source of pleasure. To muse upon the gaiety
and youth I have known suggests to me glad scenes of harmless
mirth that may be passing now. From contemplating them apart, I
soon become an actor in these little dramas, and humouring my
fancy, lose myself among the beings it invokes.

When my fire is bright and high, and a warm blush mantles in the
walls and ceiling of this ancient room; when my clock makes cheerful
music, like one of those chirping insects who delight in the warm
hearth, and are sometimes, by a good superstition, looked upon as
the harbingers of fortune and plenty to that household in whose
mercies they put their humble trust; when everything is in a ruddy

in its flashing light, other smiles and other voices congregate around

Master Humphrey's Clock 303

me. invading, with their pleasant harmony, the silence of the time.

For then a knot of youthful creatures gather round my fireside, and
the room re-echoes to their merry voices. My solitary chair no longer
holds its ample place before the fire, but is wheeled into a smaller
comer, to leave more room for the broad circle formed about the
cheerful hearth. I have sons, and daughters, and grandchildren, and
we are assembled on some occasion of rejoicing common to us all. It
is a birthday, perhaps, or perhaps it may be Christmas time; but be it
what It mr,y, there is rare holiday among us; we are full of glee.

In the chimney-corner, opposite myself, sits one who has grown old
beside me. She is changed, of course; much changed; and yet I
recognise the girl even in that gray hair and wrinkled brow. Glancing
from the laughing child who half hides in her ample skirts, and half
peeps out,— and from her to the little matron of twelve years old,
who sits so womanly and so demure at no great distance from me.— and'
from her again, to a fair girl in the full bloom of early womanhood,
the centre of the group, who has glanced more than once towards the
opening door, and by whom the children, whispering and tittering
among themselves, ivill leave a vacant chair, although she bids them
not,— I see her image thrice repeated, and feel how long it is before
one form and set of features wholly pass away, if ever, from among the
living. While I am dwelling upon this, and tracing out the gradual
change from infancy to youth, from youth to perfect growth, from
that to age. and thinking, with an old man's pride, that she is comely
yet, I feel a slight thin hand upon my arm, and, looking down, see
seated at my feet a crippled boy,— a gentle. ;jatient child,— whose

aspect I know well. He rests upon a Uttle crutch, — I know it too,

and leaning on it as he climbs my footstool, whispers, in my ear "I
am hardly one of these, dear grandfather, although I love them
dearly. They are very kind to me. but you will be kinder still, I
know."

I have my hand upon his neck, and stoop to kiss him, when my
clock strikes, my chair is in its old spot, and I am alone.

What if I be? What if this fireside be tenantless. savft for the
presence of one weak old man? From my house-top I can look upon
a hundred homes, in every one of which these social companions are
matters of reahty. In my daily walks I pass a thousand men whose
cares are all forgotten, whose labours are made light, whose dull
routine work from day to day is cheered and brightened by their
glimpses of domestic joy at home. Amid the struggles of this struggling
town what cheerful sacrifices are made; what toil endured with
readiness; what patience shown and fortitude displayed for the
mere sake of home and its affections ! Let me thank Heaven that I
can people my fireside with shadows such as these; with shadows of
bright objects that exist in crowds about me; and let m. -y, "I am
alone no more."

to-night. Recollections of the past and visions of the present come

304 Master Humphrey's Clock

to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever ff\^,on
alms appears, to add lus mite of peace and c^ urt to mv s^^k
and whenever the fire withm me shall fn-ni". ^iT f r i . ^ T

THE DEAF GENTLEMAN FROM HIS OWN APARTMENT

Our dear friend laid down his pen at the end of the foretrolno
paragraph, to take it up no more. I little thought ever to 3ov

k.l^^^i'^''^ If appear among us at his usual hour next momine we

opened nd LnTn^^' ^°°'- ""^ ""^"^^ ^^^"« S^^"' '' ^.TsTof tT^
Scl'f "i!; ^; ' IZ °"'' surprise, we saw him seated before the
ashes of his fire with a little table I was accustomed to set at his
elbow when I left him for the night at a short distance from him as
though he had pushed it away with the idea of rising LdretS ?o
his bed. His crutch and footstool lay at his feet as ufual and he wis
dressed in his chamber-gown, which he had put on beforelleft hTm

t^wIrlTheTr? 'V"^" '^"'' i" ""l' ^^^^^tom^d posture! with his flTe
towards the fire, and seemed absorbed in meditation —indeed at
first, we almost hoped he was, ^uiuduon, maeea, at

..if 1"^ "P *° ^'"'' T ^^"''^ ^'"^ de^d. I have often, very often

rcafiTatd "^So'^^f h"'^/ P'"'^'""^' ^"^ ' — sW llm look
u^T. u 1 • ^^a^quil- His face wore a serene, benign exoression

not'tLtt hT''''^H"^f ^''y strongly when we lasf shook hands'
not that he had ever had any other look. God knows- but ther- wS
somethmg m th s so very spiritual, so strangely and ndefinaWv

new evTto hi^ ^" ^''^ ""' ^'^^ ""^ ven^^rabTe. that it w^

new even to him. It came upon me all at once when on some slight
pretence he called me back upon the previous night to take me by the
hand agam, and once more say, "God bless you '' ^

if tnrl;Tr ^r^ "^'^^^ ^P '^^^^' ^"* ^^ h^d not n^oved towards
It. nor had he stirred, we all agreed, except, as I have said to push

r^^ ^.^s table which he could liave done^and no doubt did wfth a
very slight motion of his hand. He had relapsed for a mominTinto
^acV.TadX'd!' meditation, and, with a tho^tful LTrupon M^

I had long known it to be i s wish that whenever this event should
conie to pass we might be ah assembled in the house I tSore lost
no time in sending for Mr. Pickwick and for Mr. Ties, both of who^^
arrived before the messenger's return.

.m.V^ not my purpose to dilate upon the sorrow and affectionate
emotions of which I was at once the witness and the sharer But J
S^,f7:.°! the humbler mourners, that his faithful'Lfekeepef was
.-.rxjr h.«.«.-uxuiiun. tnar tne poor barber would not be comforted:

Master Humphrey's Clock

305

and that I shall respect the homely truth and warmth of heart of
Mr. Weller and his son to the last moment of my life.

"And the sweet old creetur, lir," said the elder Mr. Weller to me
in the afternoon, "has bolted. Him as had no wice, and was so free
from temper that a infant might ha' drove him, has been took at la«Jt
with that 'ere unawoidable fit o' staggers as we all must come to, and
gone ofif his feed for ever! I see him," said the old gentleman, with a
moisture in hiseye, whichcould not be mistaken, — "I see him gettin',
every jouniey. mere and more groggy; I says to Samivel. 'My boy!
the Grey's a-goin' at the knees; and now my predilictions is fatally
werified, and nim as I could never do enough to serv«? or show my
likin' for, is up the great imiwersal spout o' natur'."

I was not the less sensible of the old man's attachment because he
expressed it in his peculiar manner. Indeed, I can truly assert of
both him and his son, that notwithstanding the extraordinary
dialogues they held together, and the strange commentaries and
corrections with v hich each of them illustrated the other's speech, I
do not think it possible to exceed the sincerity of their regret; and
that I am sure their thoughtf ulness and anxiety in anticipating the
discharge of many little offices of sympathy would have done honour
to the most delicate-minded persons.

Our friend had frequently told us that his will would be found in a
box in the Clock-case, the key of which was in his writir lesk. As
he had told us also that he desired it to be opened immed ^cely after
his death, whenever that should happen, we met together that night
for the fulfilment of his request.

We found it where he had told us, wrapped in a sealed paper, and
with it a codicil of recent date, in which he named Mr. Miles and Mr.
Pickwick his executors, — as having no need of any greater benefit
from his estate than a generous token (which he bequeathed to them)
of his friendship and remembrance.

After pointing out the spot in which he wished his ashes to repose,
he gave to "his dear old friends," Jack Redbum and myself, his
house, his books, his furniture, — in short, all that his house con-
tained; and with this legacy more ample means of maintaining it in
its present state than we, with our habits and at our terms of life, c; 1
ever exhaust. Besides these gifts, he left to us, in trust, an annual
sum of no insignificant amount, to be distributed in charity among
his accustomed pensioners — they are a long list — and such other
claimants on his bount>' as might, from tit e to time, present them-
selves. And as true charity not only covers a multitude of sins, but
includes a multitude of virtues, such as forgiveness, liberal con-
struction, gentleness and mercy to the faults of otLvrs, and the
remembrance of our own imperfections and advantages, he bade us
not inquire too closely into the venial errors of the poor, but finding
that they were poor, first to relieve and then endeavour — at an
advantage— to reclaim them.

To the housekeeper he left an annuity, sufficient for her comfort-

■'I

ill

■

»■■ !■" ■"■" ! ^

I ^^^S

iff

, l.

[i 'i '^

306 Master Humphrey's Clock

able maintenance and support through life. For the barber who had
attended him many years, he made a similar provision. And I may
make two remarks in this particular place: first, that I think this
pair are very likely to club their means together and make a match of
It; and secondly, that I think my friend had this result in his mind
for I have heard him say. more than once, that he could not concur
with the generality of mankind in censuring equal marriages made in
later life, since there were many cases in which such unions could not
fail to be a wise and rational source of happiness to both parties

The elder Mr. Weller is so far from viewing this prospect with any
feelings of jealousy, that he appears to be very much relieved by its
contemplation; and his son, if I am not mistaken, participates in this
feelmg. We are all of opinion, however, that the old gentleman's
danger, even at its crisis, was very slight, and that he merely
laboured under one of those transitory weaknesses to which persons
of his temperament are now and then liable, and which becomes less
and less alarming at every return, until they wholly subside. I have
no doubt he will remain a jolly old widower for the rest of his life as
he has already inquired of me. with much gravity, whether a writ of
habeas corpus would enable him to settle his property upon Tony
beyond the possibility of recall; and has. in my presence, conjured
his son. with tears m his eyes, that in the event of his ever becoming
amorous again, he will put him in a strait-waistcoat until the fit is
past, and distinctly inform the lady that his property is "made over "
Although I have very little doubt that Sam would dutifully comply
with these injunctions in a case of extreme necessity, and that he
would do so with perfect composure and coolness, I do not apprehend
things will ever come to that pass, as the old gentleman seems
perfectly happy in the society of his son, his pretty daughter-in-law
and his grandchildren, and has solemnly announced his determina-
tion to take arter the old ' un in all respects"; from which I infer that
It IS his intention to regulate his conduct by the model of Mr Pick-
wick, who will certainly set him the example of a single hfe

I have diverged for a moment from the subject with which I set
out, for I know that my friend was interested in these little matters
and I have a j atural tendency to linger upon any topic that occupied
his thoughts or gave him pleasure and amusement. His remaining
wishes are very briefly told. He desired that we would make him the
frequent subject of our conversation; at the same time, that we
would never speak of him with an air of gloom or restraint but
frankly, and as one whom we still loved and hoped to meet agaiA He
trusted that the old house would wear no aspect of mourning but
that It would be lively and cheerful; and that we would not remove
or cover up his picture, which hangs in our dining-room, but make if
our companion as he had been. His own room, our place of meeting'
remains at his desire in its accustomed state; our seats are placed

about the table as of old: his pasv-rhair Kio «^«o1, u;„ J. ft- V.

r , . , , 1j .- . ' -• ' "*•• '-s^-^D-, ills V/IULtill, ills

footstool, hold their accustomed places, and the clock stands in its

Master Humphrey's Clock 307

familiar comer. We go into the chamber at stated times to see that
all is as it should be, and to take care that the light and air are not
shut out, for on that point he expressed a strong solicitude. But it was
his fancy that the apartment should not be inhabited; that it should
be religiously preserved in this condition, and that the voice of his
old companion should be heard no more.

My own history may be summed up in a very few words; and even
those I should have spared the reader but for my friend's allusion to
me some time since. I have no deeper sorrow than the loss of a
child, — an only daughter, who is living, and who fled from her
father's house but a few weeks before our friend and I first met. I had
never spoken of this even to him, because I have always loved her,
and I could not bear to tell him of her error until I could tell him also
of her sorrow and regret. Happily I was enabled to do so some time
ago. And it will not be long, with Heaven's leave, before she is
restored to me; before I find in her and her husband the support of
my declining years.

For my pipe, it is an old relic of home, a thing of no great worth, a
poor trifle, but sacred to me for her sake.

Thus, since the death of our venerable friend. Jack Redbum and I
have been the sole tenants of the old house; and, day by day, have
lounged together in his favourite walks. Mindful of his injunctions,
we have long been able to speak of him with ease and cheerfulness,
and to remember him as he would be remembered. From certain
allusions which Jack has dropped, to his having been deserted and
cast off in early life, I am inclined to believe that some passages of
his youth may possibly be shadowed out in the history of Mr. Chester
and his son, but seeing that he avoids the subject, I have not pursued
it.

My task is done. The chamber in which we have whiled away so
many hours, not, I hope, without some pleasure and some profit, is
deserted; our happy hour of meeting strikes no more; the chimney-
corner has grown cold; and Master Humphrey's Clock has stopped
for ever.

ii iili<

THE LIFE

CHARLES DICKENS

CHARLES DICKENS: Born i8i2-Died 1870

Editor's Note

"He's sick a harbitrary gent!" Thus, according to tradition,
was John Forster summed up by a cabman he patronised and
with whom he had some words about his fare. The phrase
would have delighted Dickens. It is a thumbnail portrait of
the man who wrote the famous Life of our author, and who.
as mentioned in the Editorial Note to Our Mutual Friend',
had the sweep of the arm and the domineering way of Mr,
Podsnap. John Forster was a heavyweight man of literature,
who combined keen business ability with— on the whole-^
good literary judgment. Dickens, needing such a man, appre-
ciated his qualities, and made him his confidant; and their
friendship found a lasting memorial in the Life of Dickens.
As Lockhart was to Sir Walter Scott, so, in many ways, was
Forster to Dickens ; although Forster' s work has hardly the
dramatic qualities and wide interest of Lockhart' s. Only these
two biographers could command the unique material used in
the Lives they wrote ; and both men succeed in bringing their
great subjects into the presence of the reader—without intruding
their own personalities, as many modern biographers do.
Lockhart and Forster also have the same faults : both were
guilty of tampering with correspondence in a way then general
but nowadays barred. Also, both' men were extremely reticent
about certain aspects in the domestic lives of their subjects :
a franker attitude would have avoided^ much misunderstanding
and suspicion-breeding mystery, but it must be said in their
excuse that they were hampered by consideration for people
then still living. Notwithstanding these faults, Lockhart's
Life of Scott and Forster' s Life of Dickens are with Boswell's
Johnson in the front rank of English biography. This abridg-
ment of Forster's work aims to preserve its intimate study
and the most essential of its illustrative materials in anecdote,

letters- etc*

(

CHARLES DICKENS
(Drawing from the Tortrait by Harry Fumiss)

THE LIFE

CHARLES DICKENS

JOHN FORSTER

t •

LONDON J
HAZELL, WATSON & VINEY, LTD.

II.

III.

IV.
V.

BOOK FIRST
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

1812-36. JET. 1-24

Earliest Years.
Hard Experiences in Boyhood.
School Days and Start in Life.
Newspaper Reporting and Writing.
First Book, and Origin of "Pickwick."

:- i

315

THE LIFE OF

CHARLES DICKENS

EARLIEST YEARS
I812-22

Charles Dickens, the most popular novelist of the century, and one
of the greatest liumorists that England has produced, was born at
Landport, in Portsea, on Friday, the seventh of February, 181 2.

His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay-office, was at
this time stationed in the Portsmouth Dockyard. He had made
acquaintance with the lady, Elizabeth Barrow, who became after-
wards his wife, through her elder brother, Thomas Barrow also
engaged on the establishment at Somerset House; and she bore him
m all a family 01 eight children, of whom two died in infancy The
eldest, Fanny (bom 1810), was followed by Charles (entered in the
baptismal register of Portsea as Charles John Huffham, though on the
very rare occasions when he subscribed that name he wrote Huff am)-
by another son, named Alfred, who died in childhood; by Letitia
(born 1816); by another daughter, Harriet, a\ ho died also in childhood-
by Frederick (born 1820); by Alfred Lamert (bom 1822); and bv
Augustus (born 1827).

Walter Scott tell us, in his fragment of autobiography, speaking
of the strange remedies applied to his lameness, that he remembered
lying on the floor in the parlour of his grandfather's farmhouse
swathed up in a sheepskin warm from the body of the sheep being
then not three years old. David Copperfield's memory goes beyond
this. He represents himself seeing so far back into the blank of his
infancy as to discem therein his mother and her servant, dwarfed to
his sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and himself going
unsteadily from the one to the other. He admits this may be fancy
though he believes the power of observation in numbers of very
young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy,
and thinks that the recollection of most of us can go farther back

into such times than vnc^rwr n-f ijc cni->-r>rAOQ "Rnf .«rU^4- i>« „jj _ -._

tamly not fancy. "If it should appear from anything I may set down
in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a

31/

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The Life of Charles Dickens

tri

man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay
cKvim to both of these characteristics." Applicable as it might be to
David Copperfield, this was unaffectedly true of Charles Dickens.

He has often told me that he remembered the small front garden
to the house at Portsea, from which he was taken away when he was
two years old, and where, watched by a nurse through a low kitchen
window almost level with the gravel walk, he trotted about with
something to eat, and his little elder sister with him. He was carried
from the garden one day to see the soldiers exercise; and I perfectly
recollect that, on our being at Portsmouth together while he was
writing Nickleby, he recognised the exact shape of the military parade
seen by him as a very infant, on the same spot, a quarter of a
century before.

When his father was again brought up by his duties to London
from Portsmouth, they went into lodgings in Norfolk Street, Middle-
sex Hospital; and it lived also in the child's memory that they had
come away from Portsea in the snow. Their home, shortly after, was
again changed, the elder Dickens being placed upon duty in Chatham
Dockyard; and the house where he lived in Chatham, which had a
plain-looking whitewashed plaster front and a small garden before
and behind, was in St. Mary's Place, otherwise called the Brook, and
next door to a Baptist meeting-house called Providence Chapel, of
which a Mr. Giles he presently mentioned vas minister. Charles at
this time was between four and five years old; and here he stayed till
he was nine. Here the most durable of his early impressions were
received; and the associations that were around him when he died
were those which at the outset of his life had affected him most
strongly.

The house called Gadshill Place stands on the strip of highest
ground in the main road between Rochester and Gravesend, Very
often had we travelled past it together, many years before it became
his home ; and never without some allusion to what he told me when first
I saw it in his company, that amid the recollections connected with his
childhood it held always a prominent place, for, upon first seeing it
as he came from Chatham with his fatl;er, and looking up at it with
much admiration, he had been promised that he might himself live
in it or in some such house when he came to be a man, if he would
only work hard enough. Which for a long time was his ambition. . . .

He was a very little and a very sickly boy. He was subject to
attacks of violent spasms which disabled him for any active exertion.
He was never a good little cricket-player; he was never a first-rate
hand at marbles, or peg-top, or prisoner's base; but he had great
pleasure in watching the other boys, officers' sons for the most part,
at these games, reading while they played; and he had always the
belief that this early sickness had brought to himself one inestimable
advantage, in the circumstances of his weak health having strongly
inclined him to reading. It will not appear, as my narrative moves
on, that he owed much to his parents, or was other than in his first

The Life of Charles Dickens

319

letter to Washington Irving he described himself to have been, a
very snmli and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy"; but he
has frequently been heard to say that his first desire for knowledge,
and his earliest passion for reading, were awakened by his mother,
fiom whom he learnt the rudiments, not only of English, but also, a
little later, of Latin. She taught him regularly every day for a long
time, and taught him, he was convinced, thoroughly well. I once put
to him a question in connection with this to which he replied in
almost exactly the words he placed five years later in the mouth of
David Copperfield; "I faintlyremember her teachingme the alphabet;
and when I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling
novelty of their shapes, the easy good nature of O and S always seem
to present themselves before me as they used to do."

One of the many passages in Copperfield which are literally true,
has its proper place here. "My father had left a small collection of
books m a little room upstairs to which I had access (for it adjoined
my own), and which nobody ?lse in our house ever troubled. From
that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey
Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Bias
and Robinson Crusoe came out, a glorious host, to keep me company.
They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that
place and time— they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the
Genii— and did me no harm; for, whatever harm was in some of them,
was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me
now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings
over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me
how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles
(which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite
characters in them. ... I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom
Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my
own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily
beheve. I h?,d a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and
travels— I forget what, now — that were on those shelves; and for
days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our
house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees the
perfect realisation of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy,
in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a
great price. . . . When I think of it, the picture always rises in my
mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and
I sitting on my bed reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbour-
hood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard,
had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these
books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen
Tom Pipes go climbing up the church steeple; I have watched Strap,
with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the
wic^et-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club
with Mr. Pickle in the parlour of our little village alehouse." Every
word of this personal recollection had been written down as fact,

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some years before it found its way into David Copperfield; the only
change in the fiction being his omission of the name of a cheap series
of novehsts then in course of pubUcation, by means of which his
f atht . had become happily the owner of so large a lump of literary
treasure in his small collection of books.

The usual result followed. The child took to writing himself; and
became famous in his childish circle, for having written a tragedy
called Misnar, the Sultan of India, founded (and very literally
founded, no doubt) on one of the Tales of the Genii. Nor was this his
only distinction. He told a story offhand so well, and sang small
comic songs so especially well, that he used to be elevated on chairs
and tables, both at home and abroad, for more effective display of
these talents; and when he first told me of this, at one of the Twelfth-
night parties on his eldest son's birthday, he said he never recalled it
that his own shrill little voice of childhood did not again tingle in his
ears, and he blushed to think what a horrible little nuisance he must
have been to many unoffending grown-up people who were called
upon to admire him.

His chief ally and encourager in such displays was a youth of some
ability, much older than himself, named James Lamert, stepson to
his mother's sister, and therefore a sort of cousin, who was his great
patron and friend in his childish days. Mary, the eldest daughter of
Charles Barrow, himself a lieutenant in the navy, had for her first
husband a commander in the navy called Allen, on whose death by
drowning at Rio Janeiro she had joined her sister, the navy pay-
clerk's wife, at Chatham; in which place she subsequently took for
her second husband Doctor Lamert, an army surgeon, whose son
James, even after he had been sent to Sandhurst for his education,
continued still to visit Chatham from time to time. He had a turn for
private theatricals; and as his father's quarters were in the ordnance
hospital there, a great rambling place otherwise at that time almost
uninhabited, he had plenty of room in which to get up his entertain-
ments. The staff-doctor himself played his part, and his portiait will
be found in Pickwick.

By Lamert, I have often heard him say, he was first taken to the
theatre at the very tenderest age. He could hardly, however, have
been younger than Charles Lamb, whose first experience was of
having seen Artaxevxes when six years old; and certainly not younger
than Walter Scott, who was only four when he saw As You Like It on
the Bath stage, and remembered having screamed out, "Ain't they
brother s?'' when scandalised by Orlando and Oliver beginning to
fight. But he was a;, any rate old enough to recollect how his young
heart leapt with terror as the wicked King Richard, struggling for
life against the virtuous Richmond, backed up and bumped against
the box in which he was; and subsequent visits to the same sanctuary,
as he tells us, revealed to him man"^'^ wondrous secrets, "nf which nnt
the least terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth hore an awful
resemblance to the thanes and other proper inhabitants of Scotland;

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The Life of Charles Dickens

321

and that the good King Duncan couldn't rest in his grave, but was
constantly coming out of it, and calling himself somebody else."

During the last two years of Charles's residence at Chatham, he was
sent to a school kept in Clover Lane by the young Baptist minister
already named, Mr. William Giles. I have the picture of him here
very strongly in my mind as a sensitive, thoughtful, feeble-bodied
little boy, with an amount of exper'ence as well as fancy unusual in
such a child, and with a dangerous kmd of wandering intelligence that
a teacher might turn to good or evil, happiness or misery, as he
directed it. Nor does the influence of Mr. Giles, such as it was, seem
to have been other than favourable. Charles had himself a not
ungrateful sense in after years that this first of his masters, in his
little-cared-for childhood, had pronounced him to be a boy of
capacity; and when, about half-way through the publication of
Pickwick, his old teacher sent a silver snuff-box with admiring in-
scription to "the inimitable Boz," it reminded him of praise far more
precious obtained by him at his first year's examination in the
Clover Lane academy, when his recitation of a piece out of the
Humorist'' s Miscellany about Doctor Bolus had received, unless his
youthful vanity bewildered him, a double encore. A habit, the only
bad one taught him by Mr. Giles, of taking for a time, in very
moderate quantities, the snuff called Irish Blackguard, was the
result of this gift from his old master ; but he abandoned it after
some few years, and it was never resumed.

It was in the boys' playing-ground near Clover Lane in which the
school stood that, according to one of his youthful memories, he had
been, in the hay-making time, delivered from the dungeons of
Seringapatam, an immense pile ("of haycock"), by his countrymen
the victorious British ("boy next door and his two cousins"), and
had been recognised with ecstasy by his affianced one ("Miss Green"),
who had come all the way from England ("second house in the
terrace"), to ransom and marry him. It was in this playing-field, too,
as he has himself recorded, he first heard in confidence from one
whose father was greatly connected, "being under Government," of
the existence of a terrible banditti called the radicals, whose principles
were that the prince regent wore stays; that nobody had a right to
any salary; and that the army and navy ought to be put down;
horrors at which he trembled in his bed, after supplicating that the
radicals might be speedily taken and hanged. Nor was it the least of
the disappointments in his visit of after life to the scenes of his
boyhood to have found this play-field swallowed up by a railway
station. It was gone, with its two beautiful trees of hawthorn; and
where the hedge, the turf and all the buttercups and daisies had been,
there was nothing but the stoniest of jolting roads.

He was not much over nine years old when his father was recalled
from Chatham to Somerset House, and he had to leave this good
master, and the old place endeared to him by recoMections that
clung to him afterwards all his life long. It was here he had made the

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acquaintance not only of the famous books that David Copperfield
specially names, . . , but also of the Tatler, The Spectator, The
Idler, the Citizen of the World, and Mrs. Inchbald's Collection of
Farces. These latter had been, as well, in the little library to which
access was open to him; and of all of them his earliest remembrance
was the having read them over and over at Chatham, not for the
first, the second, or the third time. They were a host of friends when
he had no single friend; and, in leaving the place, he has been often
heard to say he seemed to be leaving them too. and everything that
had given his ailing little life its picturesqueness or sunshine. It was
the birthplace of his fancy; and he hardly knew what store he had
set by its busy varieties of change and scene, until he saw the falling
cloud that was to hide its pictures from him for ever. The gay,
bright regiments always going and coming, the continual paradings
and firings, the successions of sham-sieges and sham-defences, the
plays got up by his cousin in the hospital, the navy pay-yacht in
which he had sailed to Sheerness with his father, and the ships
floating out in the Medway, with their far visions of sea — he was to
lose them all. He was never to watch the boys at their games any
more, or see them sham over again the sham-sieges and defences. He
was to be taken away to London inside the stage-coach Commodore;
and Kentish woods and fields, Cobham park and hall, Rochester
cathedral and castle, and all the wonderful romance together,
including a red-cheeked baby he had been wildly in love with, were to
vanish like a dream. "On the night before we came away," he told
me, "my good master came flitting in among the packing-cases to
give me Goldsmith's Bee as a keepsake. Which I kept for his sake, and
its own, a long time afterwards." A longer time afterwards he recol-
lected the stage-coach journey, and in one of his published papers
said that never had he forgotten, through all the intervening years,
the smell of the damp straw in which he was packed and forwarded,
like game, carriage paid. "There was no other inside passenger, and I
consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained
hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I expected to find

it."

The earliest impressions received*^ and retained by him in London
were of his father's money involvements; and how 4fst he heard
mentioned "the deed," representing in fact that crisis of his father's
affairs which is ascribed in fiction to Mr. Micawber's. He knew it in
later days to have been a composition with creditors; though at this
earlier date he was conscious of having confounded it with parch-
ments of a much more demoniacal description. One result from the
awful document soon showed itself in enforced retrenchment. The
family had to take up its abode in a house in Bayham Street, Camden
Town.

Bayham Street was about the poorest part of the London suburbs
then and the house was a mean small tenement; with a ■wretched
little back-garden abutting on a squalid court. Here was no place for

The Life of Charles Dickens

323

new acquaintances to hiiu: not a boy was near with whom he might
hope to become in any way familiar. A washerwoman Hved next door,
and a Bow Street officer lived over the way. Many, many times has he
spoken to me of this, and how he seemed at once to fall into a solitary
condition apart from all other boys of his own age, and to sink into a
neglected state at home which had always been quite unaccountable
to him. "As I thought," he said on one occasion very bitterly, "in
the little back garret in Bayham Street, of all I had lost in losing
Chatham, what would I have given, if I had had anything to give, to
have been sent back to any other school, to have been taught
something anywhere!" He was at another school already, not
knowing it. The self-education forced upon him was teaching, all
unconsciously as yet, what, for the future that awaited him, it most
behoved him to know.

That he took, froni the very beginning of this Bayham Street life,
his first impression of that struggling poverty which is nowhere more
vividly shown than in the commoner streets of the ordinary London
suburb, and which enriched his earliest writings with a freshness of
original humour and quite unstudied pathos that gave them much
of their sudden popularity, there cannot be a doubt "I certainly
understood it," he has often said to me, "quite as wel then as I do
now." But he was not conscious yet that he did so understand it, or of
the influence it was exerting on his life even then. It seems almost
too much to assert of a child, say at nine or ten years old, that his
observation of everything was as close and good, or that be had as
much intuitive understanding of the character and weaknesses of the
grown-up people around him, as when the same keen and wonderful
faculty had made him famous among men. But my experience of him
led me to put implicit faith in the assertion he unvaryingly himself
made, that he had never seen any cause to correct or change what
in his boyhood was his own secret impression of anybody, whom he
had, as a grown man, the opportunity of testing in later years.

How it came that, being what he was, he should now have fallen
into the misery and neglect of the time about to be described, was a
subject on which thoughts were frequently interchan,^ed between us;
and on one i)Ccasion he gave me a sketch of the character of his
father which, as I can here repeat it in the exact words employed by
him, will be til e best preface I can make to what I feel that I have no
alternative but to tell. "I know my father to be as kindhearted and
generous a man as ever lived in the world. Everything that I can
remember of his conduct to his wife, or children, or friends, in sick-
ness or affliction, is beyond ah praise. By me, as a sick child, he has
watched night and day, unweariedly and patiently, many nights and
days. He never undertook any business, charge or trust that he did
not zealously, conscientiously, punctually, honourably discharge,
Kis industry has ahvays been untiring. He was p'-^^ud of me, in his
way, and had a great admiration of the comic singing. But, in the
ease of his temper, and the straitness of his means, he appeared to

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have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to
have utterly put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him,
in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of
a morning, and. my own; and making myself useful in the work of the
little house; and looking after my younger brothers and sisters (we
were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as arose out of
our poor way of living." , t t x.

The cousin by marriage of whom I have spoken, James i^amert,
who had lately completed his education at Sandhurst, and was wait-
ing in hopes of a commission, lived now with the family m Bayham
Street and had not lost his taste for the stage, or his ingenuities m
connection with it. Taking pity on the solitary lad, he made and
painted a little theatre for him. It was the only fanciful reality of his
present life; but it could not supply what he missed most sorely, the
companionship of boys of his own age. with whom he might share in
the advantages of school, and contend for its prizes. His sister Fanny
was at about this time elected as a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music;
and he has told me what a stab to his heart it was, thinking of his
own disregarded condition, to see her go away to begin her education,
amid the tearful; good wishes of everybody in the house.

Nevertheless, as time went on, his own education still uncon-
sciously went on as well, under the sternest and most potent of
teachers; and, neglected and miserable as he was, he managed
gradually to transfer to London all the dreaminess and all the
romance with which he had invested Chatham. There were then at
the top of Bayham Street some almshouses, and were still when he
revisited it with me nearly twenty-seven years ago; and to go to this
spot, he told me, and look from it over the dust-heaps and dock-
leaves and fields (no longer there when we saw it together) at the
cupola of St. Paul's looming through the smokr was a treat that
served him for hours of vague reflection afterwaro^. To be taken out
for a walk into the real town, especially if it were anywhere about
Covent Garden or the Strand, perfectly entranced him with pleasure.
But most of all, he had a profound attraction of repulsion to St.
Giles's. If he could only induce v^homsoever took him out to take
him through Seven Dials, he was supremely happy. "Good Heaven !"
he would exclaim, "what wild visions of prodigies o! wickedness,
want, and beggary, arose in my mind out of that place!" He was all
this time, the reader will remember, still subject to continual attacks
of illness! and, by reason of them, a very small boy even for his age.

That part of his boyhood is now very near of which, when the days
of fame and prosperity came to him, he felt the weight upon his
memory as a painful burthen until he could lighten it by sharing it
with a friend; and an accident I will presently mention led him first
to reveal it. There is, however, an interval of some months still to be
described, of which, from conversations or letters that passed
between us, after or because of this confidence, and that already have
yielded fruit to these pages, I can supply some vague and desultory

The Life of Charles Dickens

325

11, and to
pon him,
; boots of
)rk of the
sters (we
>se out of

I Lamert,
was wait-

Bayham
nuities in
tiade and
lity of his
Drely, the
t share in
;er Fanny

of Music;
ing of his
ducation,

II uncon-
potent of

managed
d all the
e then at
I when he
go to this
md dock-
er) at the
creat that
taken out
ere about

I pleasure,
ion to St.
it to take
Heaven!"
ickedness,
^e was all
al attacks
JT his age.

II the days
upon his

sharing it
1 him first

still to be
at pas.sed
eady have

desultory

notices. The use thus made of them, it is due to myself to remark,
was contemplated then; for though, long before his death, I had ceased
to believe it likely that I should survive to write about him, he had
never withdrawn the wish at this early time strongly expressed, or
the confidences, not only then, but to the very eve of his death
reposed in me, that were to enable me to fulfil it. The fulfilment
indeed he had himself rendered more easy by partially uplifting the
veil in David Copperfield.

The visits made from Bayham Street were chiefly to two con-
nections of the family, his mother's elder brother and his godfather.
The latter, who was a rigger, and mast, oar and block maker, lived
at Limehouse in a substantial handsome sort of way, and was kind
to his godchild. It was alv/ays a great treat to him to go to Mr. Hufi-
ham's; and the London night-sights as he returned were a perpetual
joy and marvel. Here, too, the comic-singing accomplishment was
brought into play so greatly to the admiration of one of the god-
father's guests, an honest boat-builder, that he pronounced the little
lad to be a "progidy." The visits to the uncle, who was at this time
fellow-clerk with his father in Somerset House, were nearer home.
Mr. Thomas Barrow, the eldest of his mother's family, had broken his
leg in a fall; and, while laid up with this illness, his lodging was in
Gerrard Street, Soho, in the upper part of the house of a worthy
gentleman then recently deceased, a bookseller named Manson,
father to the partner in the celebrated firm of Christie and Mason,
whose widow at the time carried on the business. Attracted by the
look of the lad as he went upstairs, these good people lent him books
to amuse him; among them Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Holbein's
Dance of Death, and George Colman's Broad Grins. The latter seized
his fancy very much; and he was so impressed by its description of
Covent Garden, in the piece called the "Elder Brother," that he stole
down to the market by himself to compare it with the book. He
remembered, as he said in telling me this, snufiing up the flavour of
the faded cabbage-leaves as if it were the very breath of comic fiction.
Nor was he far wrong, as comic fiction then, and for some time after,
was. It was reserved for himself to give sweeter and fresher breath to
it. Many years were to pass first, but he was beginning already to
make the trial.

His uncle was shave d by a very odd old barber out of Dean Street,
Soho, who was never tired of reviewing the events of the last war,
and especially of detecting Napoleon's mistakes, and rearranging his
whole life for him on a plan of his own. The boy wrote a description
of this old barber, but never had courage to show it. At about the
same time, taking for his model the description of the canon's
housekeeper in Gil Bias, he sketched a deaf old woman who waited
on them in Bayham Street, and who made delicate hashes with
walnut ketchup. As little did he dare to show this, either; though he
thought it, himself, extremely clever.

In Bayham Street, meanwhile, affairs were going on badly; the

326

The Life of Charles Dickens

J I-

poor boy's visits to his uncle, while the latter was still kept a prisoner
bv his accident, were interrupted by another attack of fever; and
on his recovery the mysterious "deed" had again come uppermost.
His father's resources were so low, and all his expedients so thoroughly
exhausted, that trial was to be made whether his mother might not
come to the rescue. The time was arrived for her to exert herself
she said; and she "must do something." The godfather down at
Limehouse was reported to have an Indian connection. People in the
East Indies always sent their children home to be educated She
would set up a school. They woul.l all grow rich I " it And then,
thought the sick boy. "perhaps even I might go t .. 7^1 '

A house was soon found at number four. Gower SUce. iSorth, a
large brass plate on the door announced Mrs. Dickens s Establish-
ment; and the result I can give in the exact words of the then small
actor in the comedy, whose hopes it had raised so high. I left, at a
great many other doors, a great many circulars calling attention to
the merits of the establishment. Yet nobody ever came to school,
nor do I recollect that anybody ever proposed to come, or that the
least preparation was made to receive anybody. But I know that we
got on very badly with the butcher and baker; that very often we
had not too much for dinner; and that at last my father was
arrested " The interval between the sponging-house and the prison
was passed by the sorrowful lad in running errands and carrying
messages for the prisoner, delivered with swollen eyes and through
shinini tears; and the last words said to him by his^father before he
was finally carried to the Marshalsea. were to the effect that the sun
was set upon him for ever. "I really believed at the time." said
Dickens to me, "that they had broken my heart.; He took after-
wards ample revenge for this false alarm by makmg all the world
laugh Sit them in David Copperfield. -A^^f^r-.^-

The readers of Mr. :Micawber's history who remember David s first
visit to the Marshalsea prison, and how upon seeing the turnkey he
recalled the turnkey in the blanket in Roderick Random, will read with
curious interest what follows, written as a personal experience of
fact two or three years before the.fiction had even entered into his

*^"Mv*father was waiting for me in the lodge, and we went up to
his room (on the top story but one), and cried very much. And he
told me. I remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea. and to
observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year and sper -meteen
pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that
a shilling spent the other way would make him wretched. I see the
fire we sat before now; with two bricks inside the rusted grate, one on
each side, to prevent its burning too many coals. Some other debtor
shared the room with him. who came in by and by; and as the dinner
,..„. . ;«i«f_cforir rpna«t- T was sent up to 'Captain Porter m the ^^
room^oVerhead. with"M"r. Dickens's compliments, and 1 was his son,
and could he, Captain P., lend me a knife and fork?

The Life of Charles Dickens

327

"Captain Porter lent the knife and fork, with his compliments in
return. There was a very dirty lady in his little room; and two wan
girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought I should not
have liked to borrow Captain Porter's comb. The Captain himself
was m the last extremity of shabbiness; and if I could draw at all,
I would draw an accurate portrait of the old, old brown great-coat
he wore, with no other coat below it. His whiskers were large. I saw
his bed rolled up in a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots he
had, on a shelf; and I knew (God knows how) that the two girls with
the shock heads were Captain Porter's natural children, and that the
dirty lady was not married to Captain P. My timid, wondering station
on his threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes,
I dare say; but I came down again to the room below with all this as
surely in my knowledge, as the knife and fork were in my hand."

How there was something agreeable and gipsy-like in the dinner

after all, and how he took back the Captain's knife and fork early

in the afternoon, and how he went hom.e to comfort his mother with

an account of his visit, David Copperiield has also accurately told.

TLen, at home, came many miserable daily struggles that seemed to

last an immense time, yet did not perhaps cover many weeks.

Almost everything by degrees was sold or pawned, little Charles

being the principal agent in those sorrowful transactions. Such of

the books as had been brought from Chatham, Peregrine Pickle,

Roderick Random, Tom Jones, Humphrey Clinker, and all the rest'

went first. They were carried off from the little chiffonier, which his

father called the library, to a bookseller in the Hampstead Road, the

same that David Copperiield describes as in the City Road; and the

account of the sales, as they actually occurred and were told to me

long before David was born, was reproduced word for word in his

imaginary narrative. "The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a

little house behind it, used to get tipsy everj- night, and to be

violently scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I

went there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with

a cut in his forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses

over night (I am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink); and he,

with a shaking hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings in

one or other of the pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor,

while his wife, with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel,

never left off rating him. Sometimes he had lost his money, and then

he would ask me to call again; but his wife had always got some (had

taken his, I dare say, while he was drunk), and secretly completed

the bargain on the stairs, as we went down together."

The same pawnbroker's shop, too, which was so well known to
David, became not less familiar to Charles; and a good deal of notice
was here taken of him by the pawnbroker, or by his principal clerk
who officiated behind the counter, and who, while making' out the
duplicate, liked of all things to hear the lad conjugate a Latin verb,
and translate or decline his musa and dominus. Everything to this

, 1

328

The L'fe of Charles Dickens

accompaniment went gradually; until at last, even of the furniture
of Gower Street number four, there was nothing left except a few
chairs, a kitchen table and some beds. Then they encamped, as it
were, in the two parlours of the emptied house, and lived there night
and day.

All which is but the prelude to what remains to be described.

I* 1'

HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD
1822-4

The incidents to be told now would probab' - never have been known
to me, or indeed any of the occurrences ol ^as childhood and youth,
but for the accident of a question which I put to him one day in the
March or April of 1847.

I asked if he remembered ever having seen in his boyhood our
friend the elder Mr. Dilke, his father's acquaintance and contem-
porary, who had been a clerk in the same office in Somerset House
to which Mr. John Dickens belonged. Yes, he said, he recollected
seeing him at a house in Gerrard Street, whei his uncle Barrow
lodged during an illness, and Mr. Dilke had visited him. Never at
any other time. Upon which I told him that someone else had been
intended in the mention made to me, for that the reference implied
not merely his being met accidentally, but his having had some juvenile
employment in a warehouse near the Strand; at which place Mr.
Dilke, being with the elder Dickens one day, had noticed him, and
received, in return for the gift of a half-crown, a very low bow. He
was silent for several minutes; I felt that I had unintentionally
touched a painful place in his memory; and to Mr. Dilke I never spoke
of the subject again. It was not, however, then, but some weeks
later, that Dickens made further allusion to my thus having struck
unconsciously upon a time of which he never could lose the remem-
brance while he remembered anything, and the recollection of which,
at intervals, haunted him and made him miserable, even to that
hour.

Very shortly afterwards, I learnt in all their detail the incidents
that had been so painful to him, and what then was said to me or
written respecting them revealed the story of his boyhood. The idea
of David Copperfield, which was to take all the world into his con-
fidence, had not at this time occurred to him; but what it had so
startled me to know, his readers were afterwards told with only
such change or addition as for the time might sufficiently disguise
himself under cover of his hero. For, the poor little lad, with good

The Life of Charles Dickens

329

ability and a most sensitive nature, turned at the age of ten into a
"labouring hind" in the service of "Murdstone and Grinby." and
conscious already of what made it seem very strange to him that ho
could so easily have been thrown away at such an age, was indeed
himself. His was the secret agony of soul at findiig himself "com-
panion to Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes," and his the tears that
mingled with the water in which he and they rinsed and washed out
bottles. It had all been written, as fact, before he thought of any other
use for it; and it was not until several months later, when the fancy
of David Copperfield. itself suggested by what he had so written of
his early troubles, began to take shape in his mind, that he abandoned
his first intention of writing his own life. Those warehouse experiences
fell then so aptly into the subject he had chosen, that he could not
resist the temptation of immediately using them; and the manu-
script recording them, which was but the first portion of what he had
designed to write, was embodied in the substance of the eleventh
and earlier chapters of his novel. What already had been sent to me.
however, and proof-sheets of the novel interlined at the time, enable
me now to separate the fact from the fiction; and to supply to the
story of the author's childhood those passages, omitted from the
book, which, apart from their illustration of the growth of his charac-
ter, present to us a picture of tragical suffering, and of tender as well
as humorous fancy, unsurpassed in even the wonders of his published
writings.

The person indirectly responsible for the scenes to be described
was the young relative James Lamert, the cousin by his aunt's
marriage of whom I have made frequent mention, who got up the
plays at Chatham, and after passing at Sandhurst had been living
with the family in Bayham Street in the hope of obtaining a com-
mission in the army. This did not come until long afterwards, when,
in consideration of his father's services, he received it, and relin-
quished it then in favour of a younger brother; but he had mean-
while, before the family removed from Camden Town, ceased to live
with them. The husband of a sister of his (of the same name as him-
self, being indeed his cousin, George Lamert), a man of some pro-
perty, had recently embarked in an odd sort of commercial specula-
tion; and had taken him into his office, and his house, to assist in it.
I give now the fragment of the autobiography of Dickens.

"This speculation was a rivalry of ' Warren's Blacking, 30, Strand,*
—at that time very famous. One Jonathan Warren (the famous one
was Robert), living at 30, Hungerford Stairs, or Market, Strand (for
I forget which it was called then), claimed to have been the original
inventor or proprietor of the blacking recipe, and to have been
deposed and ill-used by his renowned relation. At last he put himself
in the way of selling his recipe, and his name, and his 30, Hungerford
Stairs, Strand (30, Strand, very large, and the intermediate direction
very small), for an annuity; and he set forth by his agents that a
liltle capital would make a great business of it. The r n of sojtis
329*

.11

I. : [

330

The Life of Charles Dickens

'&
1

property was found in George Lamert, the cousin and brother-in-
law of James. He bought this right and title, and went into the
blacking business and the blacking premises.

" — In an evil hour for me, as I often bitterly thought. Its chief
manager, James Lamert, the relative who had lived with us in
Bayhani Street, seeing how I was employed from day to day, and
knowing what our domestic circumstances then were, proposed that
I should go into the blacking warehouse, to be as useful as I could,
at a salary, I think, of six shillings a week. I am not clear whether it
was six or seven. I am inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on
this head, that it was six at first, and seven afterwards. At any rate,
the offer was accepted very willingly by my father and mother, and
on a Monday morning I went down to the blacking warehouse to
begin my business life.

"It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away
at such an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into
the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one
had compassion enough on me — a child of singular abilities: quick,
eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally — to suggest that
something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been,
to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take it, were tired
out. No one made any sign. My father and mother were quite satisfied.
They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of
age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge.

"The blacking warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side
of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old
house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with
rats. Its wainscotted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase, and
the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their
squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt
and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there
again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the
coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to
sit and work. My work was tc cover the pots of paste-blacking: first
with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie
them round with a string; and theij to clip the paper close and neat
all roimd, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an
apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had
attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed
label; and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys
were kept at similar duty downstairs on similar wages. One of them
came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday
morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot.
His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of using his name,
long afterwards, in Oliver Twist.

"Our relative had kindly arranged to teach me something in the
dinner-hour; from twelve to one, I think it was; every day. But an
arrangement so incompatible with counting-house business soon died

it.'

The Life of Charles Dickens

331

away, from no fault of his or mine; and for the same reason, my small
work-table, and my grosses of pots, my papers, string, scissors, paste-
pot and labels, by little and little, vanished out of the recess in the
countmg-house, and kept company with the other small work-tables
grosses of pots, papers, string, scissors and paste-pots downstairs It
wap not long before Bob Fagin and I, and another boy whose name
was Paul Green, but who was currently believed to have been
christened Poll (a belief which I transferred, long afterwards, again
to Mr. Sweedlepipe, in Martin Chuzzlewit), worked generally, 3ide by
side. Bob Fagin was an orphan, and lived with his brother-in-law
a waterman. Poll Green's father had the additional distinction of
bemg a fireman, and was employed at Drury Lane theatre- where
another relation of Poll's. I think his little sister, did imps' in the
pantomimes.

"No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into
this companionship; compared these everyday associates with those
of my happier childhood; and felt my early hopes of growing up to be
a learned and distinguished man crushed in my breast. The deep
remembrance of the sense T had of being utterly neglected and hope-
less; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it ^'a.s to my
young heart to believe that, day by day. what I had learned, and
thought, and delighted in. and raised my fancy and my emulation up
by. was passing away from me. never to be brought back any more;
cannot be written. My whole nature was so penetrated with the
grief and humiliation of such considerations, that even now. famous
and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a
dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolately
back to that time of my life.

'"'Ty mother and my brothers and sisters (excepting Fanny in the
Royal Academy of Music) were still encamped, with a young servant-
girl from Chatham Workhouse, in the two parlours in the emptied
house in Gower Street North. It was a long way to go and return with-
in the dinner-hour, and, usually, I either carried my dinner with me,
or went and bought it at some neighbouring shop. In the latter case!
it was commonly a saveloy and a penny loaf; sometimes, a four-
penny plate of beef from a cook's shop; sometimes, a plate of bread
and cheese, and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house
over the way; the Swan, if I remember right, or the Swan and some-
thing else that I have forgotten. Once, I remember tucking my own
bread (which I had brought from home in the morning) under my
arm, wrapped up in a piece of paper like a book, and going into the
best dining-room in Johnson's alamode beef-house in Clare Court,
Drury Lane, and magnificently ordering a small plate of alamode
beef to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little
apparition, coming in all alone, I don't .mow; but I can see him now,
staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to
look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish, now, that he hadn't taken
It."

f .

. i :A

it'

332 The Life of Charles Dickens

I lose here for a little while the fragment of direct narrative but I
perfectly recollect that he used to describe Saturday night as his creat
treat. It was a grand thing to walk home with six shillin-s in his
pocket and to look in at the shop windows, and think what 'it would
buy. Hunt s roasted corn, as a British and patriotic substitute for
coffee, was m great vogue just then; and the little fellow used to buv
It and roast it on the Sunday. There was a cheap periodical of
selected pieces called the Portfolio which he had also a great fancv for
taking h me with him. The new proposed "deed." mean vshile, had
failed to propitiate his father's creditors; all hope of arrangement
passed away; and the end was that his mother and her encampment in
Gower Street North broke up and went to live in the Marshalsea. I
am able at this point to resume his own account.

' 71^^ ^^yP^ *^^ house was sent back to the landlord, who was -rv
glad to get It; and I (small Cain that I was. except that I had i
done harm to anyone) was handed over as a lodger to a reduce^ d
lady, long known to our family, in Little College Street. Camuen
Town who took children m to board, and had once done so at
Brighton; and who. with a few alterations and embellishments un-
^^ciously began to sit for Mrs. Pipchin in Dombey. when she took

•■She had a little brother and sister under her care then; some-
body s natural children, who were very irregularly paid for- and a
widow s little son. The two boys and I slept in the same room. My own
exclusive breakfast, of a penny cottage loaf and a pennyworth of
milk, I provided for myself. I kept another small loaf, and a quarter
of a pound of cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard- to
make my supper on when I came back at night. They made a hole in
the six or seven shillings. I know well; and I was out at the blacking
warehouse all day, and had to support myself upon that money all
the week I suppose my lodging was paid for. by my father I cer-
tamly did not pay it myself; and I certainly had no other assistance
whatever (the making of my clothes. I think, excepted), from Monday
morning until Saturday night. No advice, no counsel, no encourage-
ment, no consolation, no support, from anyone that I can call to
mmd, so help me God.

in T^nflTt^^^^^.^S'^ ^ P^^'o^ ^" *^^ P"'°"- ^ ^^« at the academy
m Tenterden Street, Hanover Square, at nins o'clock in the morning
to fetch her; and we walked back there together at night

"I was so young and childish, and so little qualified—how roulH I
be otherwise -to undertake the whole charge of my own existence
that, in gom^ .0 Hungerford Stairs of a morning, I could not resist the
staJe pastry put out at half-price on trays at the confectioners' doors
in Tottenham Court Road; and I often spent in that the money I
should have kept for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner or
bougid a roll or a slice of pudding. There were two i-udding shops
between which I was divided, according tn mv finano^c o„^ .Z^^ :J^
court close to St. Martin's Church (at the back of the church)" which

The Life of Charles Dickens

333

is now removed altogether. Tb ; pudding at that shop was made with
currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear: two
penn'orth not being larger than a penn'orth of more ordinary pud-
ding. A good shop for the latter was in the Strand, somewhere near
where the Lowther Arcade is now. It was a stout, hfle pudding, heavy
and flabby; with great raisins in it, stuck in whole, 'c great distances
apart. It came up hot, at about Uv^on every day; and many and many
a day did I dine off it.

"We had half an hour, I think, f .>r tea. When I had money eno jgh,
I used to go to a coffee-shop, and have half a pint of coffee, and a
slice of bread and butter. When I had no money, I took a turn in
Covent Garden Market, and stared at t>e pineapples. The coffee-shops
to which I most resorted were, one ii Vlaiden Lane; one in a court
(non-existent now) close to Hungeri ♦•d Market; and one in St.
Martin's Lane, of which I only recollect that it stood near the church,
and that in the door there was an oval glass plate, with coffee-room
painted on it, addressed towards the street. If I ever find myself in a
very different kind of coffee-room now, but v/here there is such an
inscription on glass, and read it backward on the wrong side moor-
EEFFOC (as I often used to do then, in a dismal reverie), a shock goes
through my blood.

"I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally,
the scantiness of my resources and the difftculties of my life. I know
that if a shilling or so were given me by anyone, I spent it in a dinner
or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning to night, with common
men and boys, a sliabby child. I know that I tried, but ineffectually,
not to anticipate my money, and to make it last the week through by
putting it away in a drawer I had in the counting-house, wrapped
into six little parcels, each parcel containing the same amount, and
labelled with a different day. I know that I have lounged about the
streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for
the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was
taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.

"But I held some station at the blacking warehouse too. Besides
that my relative at the counting-house did what a man so occupied,
and dealing with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat me as one
upon a different footing from the rest, I never said, to man or boy,
how it was that I came to be there, or gave the least indication of
being sorry that I was there. 'J'hat I suffered in secret, and that I
suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but I. How much I suffered,
it is, as I have said already, utterly beyond my power to tell. No
man's imagination can overstep the reality. But I kept my own coun-
sel, and I did my work. I knew from the first that, if I could not do my
work as well as any of the rest, I could not hold myself above a slight
and contempt. I soon became at least as expeditious and as skilful
with my hands as either of the other boys. Though perfectly familiar
with them, my conduct and manners were different eiiougli from
theirs to place a space between us. They, and the men, always spoke

334

The Life of Charles Dickens

HI:

■

of me as 'the young gentleman.' A certain man (a soldier once)
named Thomas, who was the foreman, and another named Harry,
who was the carman and wore a red jacket, used to call me 'Charles'
sometimes, in speaking to me; but I think it was mostly when we were
very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain
them over our work with the results of some of the old readings,
which were fast perishing out of my mind. Poll Green uprose onre,
and rebelled against the 'young-gentleman ' usage; but Bob Fagin
settled him speedily.

"My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless,
and abandoned as such, altogether; though I am solemnly convinced
that 1 never, for one hour, was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than
miserably unhappy. I felt keenly, however, the being so cut off from
my parents, my brothers, and sisters; and. when my day's work was
done, going home to such a miserable blank; and that. I thought,
might be corrected. One Sunday night I remonstrated with my
father on this head, so pathetically and with so many tears, that his
kind nature gave way. He began to think that it was not quite right.
I do believe he had never thought so before, or thought about it. It was
the first remonstrance I had ever made about my lot, and perhaps it
opened up a little more than I intended. A back-attic was found for
me at the house of an insolvent court agent, who lived in Lant Street
in the Borough, where Bob Sawyer lodged many years afterwards.
A bed and bedding were sent over for me, and made up on the floor.
The little window had a pleasant prospect of a timber-yard; and
when I took possession of my nev: abode, I thought it was a
Paradise."

There is here another bl ^>k, -w > . It is, however, not difficult to
supply from letters and re . .die s of my own. What was to him
of course the great pleasure «-- .-j paradise of a lodging was its
bringing him again, though alter a fashion sorrv v^nough, within the
circle of home. From this time he used to breakfast "at home," in
other words in the Marshalsea; going to it as early as the gates were
open, and for the most part much earlier. They had no want of bodily
comforts there. His father's income, still going on, was amply suffi-
cient for that; and in every respect, indeed but elbow-room, I have
heard him say the family lived more comfortably in prison than they
had done for a long time oat of it. They were waited on still by the
maid-of-all-work from Bayham Street, the orphan girl of the
Chatham Workhouse, from whose sharp little worldly and also kindly
ways he took his first impression of the marchioness in the Old Curi-
osity Shop. She too had a lodging in the neighbourhood that she might
be early on the scene of her duties; and when Charles met her, as he
would do occasionally, in his lounging-place by London Bridge, he
would occupy the time before the gates opened by telling her quite
astonishing fictions about the wharves and the tower. "But I hope I
believed them myself," he would say. Besides breakfast, he had
supper also in the prison; and got to' his lodgino' , generally at nine

er once)
1 Harry,
Charles'
we were
ntertain
eadings,
>se onre,
b Fagin

lopeless,
>nvinced
'ise than
off from
'^ork was
:hought,
nth my
that his
te right,
t. It was
rhaps it
)und for
it Street
;rwards.
he floor,
xd; and
; was a

ficult to
I to him
was its
thin the
me," in
tes were
f bodily
ly suffi-

I have
an they
[ by the

of the
) kindly
Id Curi-
e might
r, as he
dgc, he
jr quite

hope I
he had
at nine

The Life of Charles Dickens

335

o'clock. The gatco closed always at ten.

I must not omit what he told me of the landlord of this little lodg-
ing. He was a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman. He was lame,
and had a quiet old wife; and he had a very innocent grown-up son,
who was lame, too. They were all very kind to the boy. He was taken
with one of his old attacks of spasm one night, and the whole three
of them were about his bed lintil morning. They were all dead when
he told me this, but in another form they live still very pleasantly as
the Garland family in the Old Curiosity Shop.

He had a similar illness one day in the warehouse, which I can
describe in his own words, "Bob Fagin was very good to me on the
occasion of a bad attack of my old disorder. I suffered such excrucia-
ting pain that time, that they made a temporary bed of straw in my
old recess in the counting-house, and I rolled about on the floor, and
Bob filled empty blacking-bottles with hot water, and applied relays
of them to my side, half the day. I got better, and quite easy towards
evening; but Bob (who was much bigger and older than I) did not
like the idea of my going home alone, and took me under his protec-
tion. I was too proud to let him know about the prison; and after
making several efforts to get rid of him, to all of which Bob Fagin
n his goodness was deaf, shook hands with him on the steps of a
house near Southwark Bridge on the Surrey side, making believe that
I lived there. As a finishing piece of reality in case of his looking back,
I knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked, when the woman opened
it, if that was Mr. Robert Fagin's house."

The Saturday nights continued, as before, to be precious to him.
"My usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge, and down that
turning in the Blackfriars Road which has Rowland Hill's chapel on
one side, and the likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot over a
shop door on the other. There are a good many little low-browed old
shops in that street, of a wretched kind; and some are unchanged
now. I looked into one a few weeks ago, where I used to buy boot-
laces on Saturday nights, and saw the corner where I once sat down
on a stool to have a pair of ready-made half -boots fitted on. I have
been seduced more than once, in that street on a Saturday night, by
a sho^;^'-van at a corner; and have gone in, with a very motley
assemblage, to see the Fat Pig, the Wild Indian, and the Little
Lady, There were two or three hat-manufactories there, then (I
think they are there still); and among the things which, encountered
anywhere, or under any circumstances, will instantly recall that time,
is the smell of hat-making."

His father's attempts to avoid going through the court having
failed, all needful ceremonies had to be undertaken to obtain the
benefit of the Insolvent Debtors' Act; and in one of these little Charles
had his part to play. One condition o." the statute was that the

Wftarinp' annnrpl pnrl -nfrGnnnl ma+'-*>rc rofoirior! %trafo. nn*- 4-^ ^^^^^j

twenty pounds sterling in value. "It was necessary, as a matter of
form, that the clothes I wore should be seen by the official appraiser.

iJi

«..;

336

The Life of Charles Dickens

V i.

I had a half-holiday to enable me to call upon him, at his own time
at a house somewhere beyond the Obelisk. I recollect his coming out
to look at me with his mouth full, and a strong smell of beer upon him
and saymg good-naturedly that 'that would do.' and 'it was all right.'
Certainly the hardest creditor would not have been disposed (even
if he had been legally entitled) to avail himself of my poor white hat
httle jacket, or corduroy trowsers. But I had a fat old silver watch in
my pocket, which had been given me by my grandmother before the
blackmg days, and I had entertained my doubts as I went along
whether that valuable possession might not bring me over the
twenty pounds. So I was greatly relieved, and made him a bow of
acknowledgment as I went out."

Still the want felt most by him was the companionship of ooys of
his own age. He had no such acquaintance. Sometimes, he remembered
to have played on the coal-barges at dinner-time with Poll Green and
Bob Fagm; but those were rare occasions. He generally strolled alone
about the back streets of the Adelphi; or explored the Adelphi
Arches. One of his favourite localities was a little public-house by
the water-side called the "Fox-under-the-HiU," approached by an
underground passage which we once missed in looking for it together-
and he had a vision which he has mentioned in Copperfield of sitting
eating something on a bench outside, one fine evening, and looking
at some coal-heavers dancing before the house. "I wonder what they
thought of me." says David. He had himself already said the same in
his fragment of autobiography.

Another characteristic little incident he made afterwards one of
David's experiences, but I am able to give it here without the
disguises that adapt it to the fiction. "I was such a little fellow with
my poor white hat. little jacket, and corduroy trowsers,' that
frequently, when I went into the bar of a strange public-house for a
glass of ale or porter to wash down the saveloy and the loaf I had
eaten m the street, they didn't like to give it me. I remember one
evening (I had been somewhere for my father, and was going back
to the Borough over Westminster Bridge), that I went into a public-
house m Parhameiit Street, which is still there though altered at the
corner of the short street leading into Cannon Row, and said to the
landlord behind the bar, 'What is your very best— the very best—
a.e, a glass?' For. the occasion was a festive one. for some reason-
I forget why. It may have been my birthday, or somebody else's
Twopence,' says he. 'Then,' says I, 'just draw me a glass of that if
you please, with a good head to it.' The landlord looked at me in
return, over the bar. from head to foot, with a strange smile on 'his
face; and instead of drawing the beer, looked round the screen and
said something to his wife, who came out from behind it, with her
work m her hand, and joined him in surveying me. Here we stand
all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire Terrace. The
ianaiora, m nis shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame-
bis wife, looking over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion'

wn time,
ming out
pon him,
dl right.'
ed (even
hite hat,
watch in
sfore the
nt along
)ver the
I bow of

• Doys of
embered
reen and
;d alone,
Adelphi
ouse by
d by an
ogether;
f sitting
looking
lat they
same in

J one of
out the
•w, with
:s, that
ise for a
if I had
Der, one
ig back

public-
i, at the
1 to the
{ best —
reason:
' else's,
that, if

me, in
> on his
en and
ith her

stand,
:e. The
-frame;
[fusion,

The Life of Charles Dickens

337

looking up at them from outside the partition. They asked me a good
many questions, as what my name was, how old I was, where I lived,
how I was employed, etc. To all of which, that I might commit no-
body, I invented appropriate answers. They served me with the ale,
though I suspect it was not the strongest on the premises; and the
landlord's wife, opening the little half-door and bending down, gave
me a kiss that was half-admiring and half-compassionate, but all
womanly and good, I am sure."

A later, and not less characteristic, occurrence of the true story of
this time found also a place, three or four years after it was written,
in his now famous fiction. It preceded but by a short term the dis-
charge, from the Marshalsea, of the elder Dickens; to whom a rather
considerable legacy from a relative had accrued not long before
("sonie hundreds," I understood), and had been paid into court
during his imprisonment. The scene to be described arose on the
occasion of a petition drawn up by him before he left, praying, not
for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, as David Copperfield
relates, but for the less dignified but more accessible boon of a
bounty to the prisoners to drink His Majesty's health on His Majesty's
forthcoming birthday.

' ' I mention the circumstance because it illustrates, to me, my early
interest in observing people. When I went to the Marshalsea of a
night, I was always delighted to hear from my mother what she knew
about the histories of the different debtors in the prison; and when I
heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them all
come in, one after another (though I knew the greater part of them
already, to speak to, and they me), that I got leave of absence on
purpose, and established myself in a corner, near the petition. It
was stretched out, I recollect, on a great ironing-board, under the
window, which in another part of the room made a bedstead at night.
The internal regulations of the place, for cleanliness and order, and
for the government of a common room in the ale-house, where hot
water and some means of cooking, and a good fire, were provided for
all who paid a very small subscription, were excellently administered
by a governing committee of debtors, of which my father was chair-
man for the time being. As many of the principal officers of this body
as could be got into the small room without filling it up supported
him, in front of the petition; and my old friend Captain Porter (who
had washed himself, to do honour to so solemn an occasion) stationed
himself close to it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its
contents. The door was then thrown open, and they began to come
in, in a long file; several waiting on the landing outside, while one
entered, affixed his signature, and went out. To everybody in succes-
sion Captain Porter said, 'Would you like to hear it read?' If he
weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Porter, in a

1„ ^1 :__ 1 • __ 1 r ■ , -r . . .

tit ill. vvvaV rr \j±

■iU Kjl iL. i iCiliCiiiUCl U. UCl lUill

luscious roll he gave to such words as 'Majesty — gracious Majesty

your gracious Majesty's unfortunate subjects — your Majesty's well-

* Ji

If!

3?k

; 5

\ . 1

It •

ft^

338

The Life of Charles Dickens

known munificence'— as if the words were something real in his
n uth, and delicious to taste: my poor father meanwhile listening
with a httle of an author's vanity, and contemplating (not severelyT
the spikes on the opposite wall. Whatever was comical in this scene
and whatever was pathetic, I sincerely believe I perceived in my
corner, whether I demonstrated or not, quite as well as I should
perceive it now. I made out my own little character and story for
every man who put his name to the sheet of paper. I might be able
to do that now. more truly: not more earnestly, or with a closer
interest. Their different peculiarities of dress, of face, of gait, of
manner, were written indelibly upon my memory. I would rather
have seen it than the best play ever played; and I thought about it
afterwards, over the pots of paste-blacking, often and often. When
I looked, with my mind's eye, into the Fleet Prison during Mr
Pickwick's incarceration, I wonder whether half a dozen men were
wanting from the Marshalsea crowd that came filing in again to the
sound of Captain Porter's voice ! "

When the family left the Marshalsea they all went to lodge with
the lady in Little College Street, a Mrs. Roylance, who has obtained
unexpected immortality as Mrs. Pipchin; and they afterwards
occupied a small house in Somers Town. But, before this time Charles
was present with some of them in Tenterden Street to see his sister
Fanny receive one of the prizes given to the pupils of the Royal
Academy of Music. "I could not bear to think of myself— beyona the
reach of all such honourable emulation and success. The tears ran
down my face. I felt as if my heart were rent. I prayed, when I went
to bed that night, to be lifted out of the humiliation and neglect in
which I was. I never had suffered so much before. There was no envy
in this." There was little need that he should say so. Extreme enjoy-
ment in witnessing the exercise of her talents, the utmost pride m
every success obtained by them, he manifested always to a degree
otherwise quite unusual with him; and on the day of her funeral
which we passed together, I had most affecting proof of his tender
and grateful memory of her in these childish days. A few more
sentences, certainly not less touching than any that have gone before
will bring the story of them to its close. They stand here exactly as
written by him. ^

"I am not sure that it was before this time, or after it, that the
blacking warehouse was removed to Chandos Street, Covent Garden
It IS no matter. Next to the shop at the corner of Bedford Street
in Chandos Street, are two rather old-fashioned houses and shops
adjoining one another. They were one then, or thrown into one for
the blacking business; and had been a butter shop. Opposite to them
was, and is, a public-house, where I got my ale, under these new
circumstances. The stones in the street may be smoothed by my small
feet going across to it at dinner-time, and back acain. THr PstabH«h-
ment was larger now, and we had one or two new boys. Bob Fagin
and I had attained to great dexterity in tying up the pots. I forget

The Life of Charles Dickens

339

how many we could do in five minutes. We worked, for the light's
sake, near the second window as you come from Bedford Street; and
we were so brisk at it, that the people used to stop and look in.
Sometimes there would be quite a little crowd there. I saw my
father coming in at the door one day when we were very busy, and
I wondered how he could bear it.

"Now, I generally had my dinner in the warehouse. Sometimes I
brought it from home, so I was better off. I see myself coming across
Russell Square from Somers Town, one morning, with some cold
hotch-potch in a small basin tied up in a handkerchief. I had the
same wanderings about the streets as I used to have, and was just
as solitary and self-dependent as before; but I had not the same
difficulty in merely living. I never, however, heard a word of being
taken away, or of being otherwise than quite provided for.

"At last, one day, my father and the relative so often mentioned
quarrelled; quarrelled by letter, for I took the letter from my father
to him which caused the explosion, but quarrelled very fiercely. It
was about me. It may have had some backward reference, in part,
for anything I know, to my employment at the window. All I am
certain of is that, soon after I had given him the letter, my cousin
(he was a sort of cousin, by marriage) told me he was very much
insulted about me; and that it was impossible to keep me, after that.
I cried very much, partly because it was so sudden, and partly
because in his anger he was violent about my father, though gentle
to me. Thomas, the old soldier, comforted me, and said he was sure
it was for the best. With a relief so strange that it was like oppression,
I went home.

"My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so
next day. She brought home a request for me to return next morning,
and a high character of me, which I am very sure I deserved. My
father said I should go back no more, and should go to school. I do
not write resentfully or angrily: for I know how all these things have
worked together to make me what I am: but I never afterwards
forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was
warm for my being sent back.

"From that hour until this at which I write, no word of that part
of my childhood which I have now gladly brought to a close, has
passed my lips to any human being. I have no idea how long it lasted;
whether for a year, or much more, or less. From that hour, until
this, my father and my mother have been stricken dumb upon it.
I have never heard the least allusion to it, however far off and
remote, from either of them. I have never, until I now impart it to
this paper, in any burst of confidence with anyone, my own wife not
excepted, raised the curtain I then dropped, thank God.

"Until old Hungerford Market was pulled down, until old Hunger-
ford Stairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the ground changed,
I never had the courage to go back to the place where my servitude
began. I never saw it. 7 could not endure to go near it. For many

I III
5 ; III

340

The Life of Charles Dickens

years, when I came near to Robert Warrens' in the Strand, I crossed
over to the opposite side of the way, to avoid a certain smell of the
cement they put upon the blacking-corks, which reminded me of what
I was once. It was a very long time before I liked to go up Chandos
Street. My old way home by the Borough made me cry, after my
eldest child rould speak.

"In my walks at night I have walked there often, since then, and
by degrees I have come to write this. It does not seem a tithe of
what I might have written, or of what I meant to write."

The substance of some after-talk explanatory of points in the
narrative, of which a note was made at the time, may be briefly
added. He could hardly have been more than twelve years old when
he left the place, and was still unusually small for his age; much
smaller, though two years older, than his own eldest son was at the
time of these confidences. His mother had been in the blacking
warehouse many times; his father not more than once or twice.
The rivalry of Robert Warren by Jonathan's representatives, the
cousins George and James, was carried to wonderful extremes in the
way of advertisement; and they were all very proud, he told me, of
the cat scratching the boot, which was their house's device. The poets
in the house's regular employ he remembered, too, and made his
first study from ohe of them for the poet of Mrs Jarley's waxwork.
The whole enterprise, however, had the usual end of such things.
The younger cousin tired of the concern; and a Mr. Wood, the pro-
prietor who took James's share and became George's partner, sold
it ultimately to Robert Warren. It continued to be his at the time
Dickens and myself last spoke of it together, and he had made an
excellent bargain of it.

r ? f
lift

liii

III

SCHOOL-DAYS AND START IN LIFE
1824-30

In what way those strange experiences of his boyhood affected him
afterwards, the narrative of his life must show: but there were
influences that made themselves felt even on his way to manhood.
What at once he brought out of the humiliation that had impressed
him so deeply, though scarcely as yet quite consciously, was a natural
dread of the hardships that might still be in store for him, sharpened
by what he had gone through; and this, though in its effect for the
present imperfectly understood, became by degrees a passiOx...te

circumstances were conspiring to make him. All that was involved in

The Life of Charles Dickens

,te

341

what he had suffered and sunk into could not have been known to
him at the time; but it was plain enough later, as we see; and in
conversation with me after the revelation was made, he used to find,
at extreme points in his life, the explanation of himself in those early-
trials. He had derived great good from them, but not without alloy.
The fixed and eager determination, the restless and resistless energy,
which opened to him opportunities of escape from many mean
environments, not by turning off from any path of duty, but by
resolutely rising to such excellence or distinction as might be attain-
able in it, brought with it some disadvantage among many noble
advantages. Of this he was himself av/2re, but not to the full extent.
What it was that in society made him often uneasy, shrinking, and
over-sensitive, he knew; but all the danger he ran in bearing down
and over-mastering the feeling, he did not know. A too great con-
fidence in himself, a sense that everything was possible to the will
that would make it so, laid occasionally upon him self-imposed
burdens greater than might be borne by anyone with sp 'cty. In that
direction there was in him, at such times, something . en hard and
aggressive; in his determinations a something that had almost the
tone of fierceness; something in his nature that made his resolves
insuperable, however hasty the opinions on which the^-- had been
formed. So rare were these manifestations, however, and so little did
they prejudice a character as entirely open and generous as it was at
all times ardent and impetuous, that only very infrequently, towards
the close of the middle term of a friendship which lasted without the
interruption of a day for more than three and thirty years, were they
ever unfavourably presented to me. But there they were; and v.'hen
I have seen strangely present, at such chance intervals, a stern and
even cold isolation of self-reliance side by side with a susceptivity
almost feminine and the most eager craving for sympathy, it has
seemed to me as though his habitual impulses for everything kind
and gentle had sunk, for the time, under a sudden hard and inexorable
sense of what Fate had dealt to him in those early years. On more
than one occasion indeed I had confirmation of this. "I must entreat
you," he wrote to me in June 1862, "to pause for an instant, and go
back to what you know of my childish days, and to ask yourself
whether it is natural that something of the character formed in me
then, and lost under happier circumstances, should have reappeared
in the last five years. The never-to-be-forgotten misery of that old
time bred a certain shrinking sensitiveness in a certain ill-clad, ill-fed
child, that I have found come back in the never-to-be-forgotten
misery of this later time."

One good there was, however, altogether without drawback, and
which claims simply to be mentioned before my narrative is resumed.
The story of his childish misery has itself sufficiently shown that he

never throuofhout it lost his

■nrooirvnc

gift of animal spirits, or

1113

native capacity for humorous enjoyment; and there were positive
gains to him from what he underwent which were also rich and last-

342

The Life of Charles Dickens

ing. To what in the outset of his difficulties and trials gave the
decisive bent to his genius. I have already made special reference;
and we are to observe, of what followed, that with the very poor and
unprosperous. out of whose sufferings and strugglings, and the
virtues as well as vices born of them, his not least splendid successes
were wrought, his childish experiences had made him actually one.
They were not his clients whose cause he pleaded with such pathos
and humour, and on whose side he got the laughter and tears of all
the world, but in some sort his very self. Nor was it a small part of
this manifest advantage that he should have obtained his experience
as a child and not as a man; that only the good part, the flower and
fruit of it, was plucked by him; and that nothing of the evil part,
none of the earth in which the seed was planted, remained to soil
him.

His next move in life can also be given in his own language.
"There was a school in the Hampstead Road kept by Mr. Jones, a
Welshman, to which my father dispatched me to ask for a card of
terms. The boys were at dinner, and Mr. Jones was carving for them,
with a pair of holland sleeves on, when I acquitted myself of this
commission. He came out, and gave me what I wanted; and hoped
I should become a, pupil. I did. At seven o'clock one morning, very
soon afterwards, I went as day scholar to Mr. Jones's establishment,
which was in Momington Place, and had its school-room sliced away
by the Birmingham Railway, when that change came about. The
school-room however was not threatened by directors or civil engin-
eers then, aii^ there was a board over the door graced with the words
Wellington House Academy."

At Wellington House Academy he remained nearly two years,
being a little over fourteen years of age when he quitted it. In his
minor writings, as well as in Copperfield, will be found general
allusions to it, and there is a paper among his pieces reprinted from
Household Words which purports specifically to describe it. To the
account therein given of himself when he went to the school, as
advanced enough, so safely had his memory retained its poor frag-
ments of early schooling, to be put into Virgil, as getting sundry
prizes, and as attaining to the eminent position of its first boy, one
of his two schoolfellows with whom I have had communication,
makes objection; but both admit that the general features of the
place are reproduced with wonderful accuracy, and more especially
m those points for which the school appears to have been much more
notable than for anything connected with the scholarship of its
pupils.

In the reprinted piece Dickens describes it as remarkable for white
mice. He says that red-polls, linnets, and even canaries, were kept by
the boys m desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange refuges for
birds; but that white mice were the favourite stock, and that the
Doys trained the mice much better than the master trained the boys.
He recalled in particular one white mouse who lived in the cover of

ill

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343

a Latm dictionary, ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered
muskets, turned wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance
on the stage as the Dog of Montargis, who might have achieved
greater things but for having had the misfortune to mistake his way
in a triumphal procession to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep
inkstand, and was dyed black and drowned.

Nevertheless, he mentions the school as one also of some celebrity
m Its neighbourhood, though nobody could have said why; and adds
that among the boys the master was supposed to know nothing, and
one of the ushers was supposed to know everything. "We are still
inclined to think the first named supposition perfectly correct We
went to look at the place only this last midsummer, and found that
the railway had cut it up, root and branch. A great trunk line had
a swallowed the playground, sliced away the school-room, and pared
I off the corner of the house. Which, thus curtailed of its proportions
presented itself in a green stage of stucco, profile-wise towards
the road, like a forlorn fiat-iron without a handle standing on
end." °

One who knew him in those early days, Mr. Owen P Thomas
thus writes to me (February 1871): "I had the honour of being
Mr. Dickens's schoolfellow for about two years (1824-6). both being
day-scholars at Mr. Jones's 'Classical and Commercial Academy '
I as then inscribed in front of the house. ... My recollection of
Dickens whilst at school is that of a healthy-looking boy, small but
well-built, with a more than usual flow of spirits, inducing to harmless
fun, seldom or ever I think to mischief, to which so many lads at
that age are prone. I cannot recall anything that then indicated he
would hereafter become a literary celebrity; but perhaps he was too
young then. He usually held his head more erect than lads ordinarily
do, and there was a general smartness about him. His week-day dress
of jacket and trousers, I can clearly remember, was what is called
pepper-and-salt; and instead of the frill that most boys cf his age
wore then, he had a turn-down collar, so that he looked less youthful
in consequence. He invented what we termed a ' lingo,' produced by
the addition of a few letters of the same sound to every word- and
It was our ambition, walking and talking thus along the street, to be
considered foreigners. As an alternate amusement, the present writer
well remembers extemporising tales of some sort, and reciting them
offhand, with Dickens and Danson or Tobin walking on either side
of him. ..."

To Mr. Thomas's letter the reader will thank me for adding one
not less interesting, with which Dr. Henry Danson has favoured me.
We have here, with the same fun and animal spirits, a little of the
proneness to mischief which his other schoolfellow says he was
free from; but the mischief is all of the harmless kind, and might
perhaps have been better described as but part of an irrepressible

vi\

'My impression is that I was a schoolfellow of Dickens for nearly

; S

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two years: he left before me, I think at about fifteen years of age.
Mr. Jones's school, called the Wellington Academy, was in the
Hampstead Road, at the north-east corner of Granby Street, The
school-home was afterwards removed for the London and North-
western Railway. It was considered at the time a very superior sort
of school, one of the best, indeed, in that part of London; but it was
most shamefully mismanaged, and the boys made but very little
progress. The proprietor, Mr. Jones, was a Welshman; a most
ignorant fellow, and a mere tyrant; whose chief employment was to
scourge the boys. Dickens has given a very lively account of this
place in his paper entitled 'Our School,' but it is very mythical in
many respects, and more especially in the compliment he pays in it
to himself. I do not remember that Dickens distinguished himself in
any way, or carried off any prizes. My belief is that he did not learn
Greek or Latin there, and you will remember there is no allusion to
the classics in any of his writings. He was a handsome, curly-headed
lad, full of animation and animal spirits, and probably was connected
with every mischievous prank in the school. I do not think he came
in for any of Mr. Jones's scourging propensity; in fact, together with
myself, he was only a day-pupil, and with these there was a whole-
some fear of tales being carried home to the parents. His personal
appearance at that time is vividly brought home to me in the
portrait of him taken a few years later by Mr. Lawrence. He resided
with his friends in a very small house in a street leading out of
Seymour Street, n(?rth of Mr. Judkin's chapel.

"Depend on it he was quite a self-made man, and his wonderful
knowledge and command of the English language must have been
acquured by long and patient study after lea ing his last school.

"I have no recollection of the boy you name. His chief associates
were, I think, Tobin. Mr. Thomas Bray, and myself. The first-named
was his chief ally, and his acquaintance with him appears to have
continued many years afterwards. At about that time penny and
Saturday magazines were published vveekly, and were greedily read
by us. We kept bees, white mice, and other living things clandestinely
in our desks; and the mechanical arts were a good deal cultivated,
in the shape of coach-building, and making pumps and boats, the
motive power of which was the white mice.

"I think at that time Dickens took to writing small tales, and we
had a sort of club for lending and circulating them. Dickens was also
very strong in using a sort of lingo, which made us quite unintelligible
to bystanders. We were very strong, too, in theatricals. We mounted
small theatres, and got up very gorgeous scenery to illustrate the
Miller and his Men and Cherry and Fair Star. I remember the present
Mr. Beverley, the scene-painter, assisted us in this. Dickens was
always a leader at these plays, which were occasionally presented
with much solemnity before an audience of boys, and in the presence
of the ushers. My brother, assisted by Dickens, got up the Miller
and his Men, in a very gorgeous form. Master Beverley constructed

The Life of Charles Dickens

345

the mill for us in such a way that it could tumble to pieces with the
assistance of crackers. At one representation the fireworks in the last
scene, ending with the destruction of the mill, were so very real that
the police interfered, and knocked violently at the doors. Dickens's
after-taste for theatricals might have had its origin in these small
affairs.

' ' I quite remember Dickens on one occasion heading us in Drum-
mond Street in pretending to be poor boys, and asking the passers-by
for charity — especially old ladies; one of whom told us she 'had no
money for beggar boys.' On these adventures, when the old ladies
were quite staggered by the impudence of the demand, Dickens
would explode with laughter and take to his heels.

' ' I met him one Sunday morning shortly after he left the school,
and we very piously attended the morning service at Seymour Street
chapel. I am sorry to say Master Dickens did not attend in the
slightest degree to the service, but incited me to laughter by declaring
his dinner was ready and the potatoes would be spoiled, and in fact
behaved in such a manner that it was lucky for us we were not
ejected from the chapel.

"I heard of him some time after from Tobin, whom 1 met carrying
a foaming pot of London particular in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I
then understood that Dickens was in the same or some neighbouring
office. . . ."

Dickens had not quitted school many months before his father had
made sufficient interest with an attorney of Gray's Inn, Mr. Edward
Blackmore, to obtain him regular employment in his office. In this
capacity of clerk, our only trustworthy glimpse of him we owe to
the last-named gentleman, who has described briefly, and I do not
doubt authentically, the services so rendered by him to the law. It
cannot be said that they were noteworthy, though it might be difficult
to find a more distinguished person who has borne the title, unless
we make exception for the very father of literature himself, whom
Chaucer, with amusing illustration of the way in which words change
their meanings, calls "that conceited clerke Homdre."

"I was well acquainted," writes Mr. Edward Blackmore of Aires-
ford, "with his parents, and, being then in practice in Gray's Inn,
they asked me if I could find employment for him. He was a bright,
clever-looking youth, and I took him as a clerk. He came to me in
May 1827, and left in November 1828; and I have now an account-
book which he used to keep of petty disbursements in the office, in
which he charged himself with the modest salary first of thirteen
shillings and sixpence, and afterwards of fifteen shillings a week.
Several incidents took place in the office of which he must have been
a keen observer, as I recognised some of them in his Pickwick and
Nickleby; and I am much mistaken if some of his characters had not
their ori"ir..^.lfi in 'oersons I well remember. His taste for theatricals
was much promoted by a feliow-clerk named Potter, since dead,
with whom he chiefly associated. They took every opportunity,

I f 11

( >s

346

The Life of Charles Dickens

then unknown to me. of going together to a minor theatre, where (I
afterwards heard) they not unfrequently engaged in parts. After he
left me I saw him at times in the lord chancellor's court, taking notes
of cases as a reporter. I then lost sight of him until his Pickwick
made its appearance." This letter indicates the position he held at
Mr. Blackmore's; and we have but to turn to the passage in Pickwick
which describes the several grades of attorney's clerk, to understand
It more clearly. He was very far below the articled clerk, who has
paid a premium and is attorney in perspective. He w£.s not so high as
the salaried clerk, with nearly the whole of his weekly thirty shillings
spent on his personal pleasures. He was not even on a level with the
middle-aged copying clerk, always needy and uniformly shabby. He
was simply among, however his own nature may have lifted him
above, the "office-lads in their first surtouts. who feel a befitting con-
tempt for boys at day-schools, club as they go home at night for
saveloys and porter, and think there's nothing like life." Thus far
not more or less, had he now reached. He was one of the office-lads'
and probably in his first surtout.

But. even thus, the process of education went on, defying what
seemed to interrupt it; and in the amount of his present equipment
for his needs of life, what he brought from the Wellington House
Academy can have borne but the smallest proportion to his acquire-
ment at Mr. Blackmore's. Yet to seek to identify, without help from
himself, any passages in his books with those boyish law-experiences
would be idle and hopeless enough. In the earliest of his writings'
and down to the very latest, he worked exhaustively the field which
is opened by an attorney's office to a student of life and manners- but
we have not now to deal with his numerous varieties of the genus
clerk drawn thus for the amusement of others, but with the acquisi-
tions which at present he was storing up for himself from the oppor-
tunities such offices opened to him. Nor would it be possible to have
better illustrative comment on all these years than is furnished by
his father's reply to a friend it was now hoped to interest on his
behalf, which more than once I have heard him whimsically but
good-humouredly imitate. "Pray. Mr. Dickens, where was your son
educated.?" "Why, indeed. Sir— haf ha!— he may be said to have
educated himself!" Of the two kinds of education which Gibbon says
that all men who rise above the common level receive: the first that
of his teachers, and the second, more personal and more important
his own- he had the advantage only of the last. It nevertheless
sufficed for him.

Very nearly another v,ighteen months were now to be spent mainly
m practical preparation for what he was, at this time, led finally to
choose as an employment from which a fair income was certain with
such talents as he possessed; his father already having taken to it
m these latter years, in aid of the family resources. In his father's
huuoc, which was at Hampstead through the first portion of the
Momington Street school-time, then in the house ont of Seymour

The Life of Charles Dickens

347

Street mentioned by Mr. Danson, and afterwards, upon the elder
Dickens going into the gallery as a reporter for the Morning Herald,
in Bentinck Street, Manchester Square, CharLj had continued to
live: and, influenced doubtless by the example before him, he took
sudden determination to qualify himself thoroughly for what his
father was lately become, a newspaper parliamentary reporter. He
set resolutely therefore to the study of shorthand; and, for the addi-
tional help of such general information about books as a fairly
educated youth might be expected to have, as well as to satisfy
some higher personal cravings, he became an assiduous attendant in
the British Museum reading-room. He would frequently refer to
these days as decidedly the usefullest to himself he had ever passed;
and judging from the results they must have been so. No man who
knew him in later years, and talked to him familiarly of books and
things, would have suspected his education in boyhood, almost
entirely self-acquired as it was, to have been so rambling or hap-
hazard as I have here described i<;. The secret consisted in this, thai
whatever for the lime he had to do, he lifted himself, there and then ,
to the level of, and at no time disregarded the rules that guided the
hero of his novel: "Whatever I have tr'^^d to do in life, I have tried
with all my heart to do well. What I iiaVv' devoted myself to, I have
devoted myself to complo^ely. Never t' put one hand to anything
on which I could throw ^ y whole self, aud never to affect deprecia-
tion of my work, whatever it w^as, I find now to have been my golden
rules."

Of the difficulties that beset his shorthand studies, as well as of
what first turned his mind to them, he has told also something in
Copperfield. He had heard that many men distinguished in variou'^.
pursuits had begun life by reporting the debates in parliamer-^ and
he was not deterred by a friend's w^arning that the mere mec^.aaical
accompl'«>>ment for excellence in it might take a 'ew y^ars to master
thoroughly: "a perfect and entire command of the m>sl' ry of short-
hand writing and reading being about equal in difficulty to the
mastery of six languages." Undaunted, he plunged into it. ^.elf-
teaching in this as in graver things; and, having bought Mr. Gurney's
half-guinea book, worked steadily his way through its distractions.
"The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a position
meant such a thing, and in such another position something else
entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles:
the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies'
legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place, not only
troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep.
When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and
had mastered the alphabet, there then appeared a procession of new
horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I
have ever known; who insistea, for instance, that a thing like the

\ rfl

"cgii

g ui .3. -cuuvvcL? iiicuiii. c;ipci;uiuuii, una lli'dX a p^n-ana-iuK

sky-rocket stood for 'disadvantageous.' When I had fixed these

'i^^-i

348

The Life of Charles Dickens

f "1

■ ^

wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else
out of It; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking
them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system- in short it
was almost heart-breaking."

What it was that made it not quite heart-breaking to the hero of
the fiction, its readers know; and something of the same kind was
now to enter into the actual experience of its writer. First let me sav
however, that after subduing to his wants in marvellously quick
time this unruly and unaccommodating servant of stenograpbv
what he most desired was still not open to him. "There never was
such a shorthand- writer," has been often said to me by Mr Beard
the friend he first made in that line when he entered the gallerv and
with whom to the close of his life he maintained the friendliest'inter-
course. But there was no opening for him in the gallery yet He hat
to pass nearly two years as a reporter for one of the ofnces in Doctors'
Commons, having made attempt even in the direction of the stac- to
escape such drudgery, before he became a sharer in parliamentary
toils and triumphs; and what sustained his young hero throutjh
something of the same sort of trial was also his own support He too
had his Dora, at apparently the same hopeless elevation- striven for
as the one only thing to be attained, and even more unattainable for
neither did he succeed nor happily did she die; but the one idol 'like
the other, supplying a motive to exertion for the time, and otherwise
opening out to the idolater, both in fact and fiction, a highly unsub-
stantial, happy, foolish time. I used to laugh and tell him I had no
belief m any but the book Dora, until the incident of a sudden re-
appearance of the real one in his life, nearly six years after Copperfield
was written, convinced me there had been a more actual foundation
for thos'^ chapters of his book than I was ready to suppose Still I
would hardly admit it; and, that the matter could possibly affect him
then persisted in a stout refusal to believe. His reply (1855) throws
a little light on this juvenile part of his career, and I therefore venture
to preserve it.

"I don't quite apprehend what you mean by my over-rating the

strength of the feeling of five-and-twenty years ago. If you mean of

my own feeling, and will only think what the desperate intensity of

my nature is. and that this began when I was Charley's age- that it

excluded every other idea froai my mind for four years, at a time of

life when four years are equal to four times four; and that I went at

It with a determination to overcome all the ditficulties, which fairly

lifted me up into that newspaper life, and floated me away over a

hundred mens heads: then you are wrong, because nothing can

exaggerate that. I have positively stood amazed at myself ever

since!— And so I suffered, and so worked, and so beat and hammered

away at the maddest romances that ever got .xto any boy's head

and stayed there, that to see the mere cause of it all, nowf loosens

my hold upon myself. Without for a moment sincerely believing th«t

it wouia nave been better if we had never got separated, I cannot

The Life of Charles Dickens

349

see the occasion of so much emotion as I should see anyone else No
one can imagme in the most distant degree what pain the recollection
gave me m Copperfield. And, just as I can never open that book as I
open any other book, I cannot see the face (even at four-and-forty)
or hear the voice, without going wandering away over the ashes of
a 1 tha. youth and hope in the wildest manner." More and more
p ainly seen, however, in the light of four-and-forty. the romance
glided visibly away, its work being fairly done; and. at the close of
the month following that in which this letter was written, during
"^ ?u. f i^^ ""^'"y quietly made a formal call with his wife at his
youthful Dora's house, and contemplated with a calm equanimity
in the hall, her stuffed favourite Jip, he began the Tction in which
there was a Flora to set against its predecessor's Dora, both derived
from the same original. The fancy had a comic humour in it he found
f !";^P?sf ble to resist, but it was kindly and pleasant to the last- and
If the later picture showed him plenty to laugh at in this retrospect
of his youth, there was nothing he thought of more tenderly than
tne earlier, a^. long as he was conscious of anything.

NEWSPAPER REPORTING AND WRITING

I 83 1-5

Dickens was nineteen years old when at last he entered the gallery
His father, with whom he still lived in Bentinck Street, had already
as we have seen, joined the gallery as a reporter for one of the
morning papers, and was now in the more comfortable circumstances
derived from the addition to his official pension which this praise-
worthy labour ensured; but his own engagement on the Chronicle
dates somewhat later. His first parliamentary service was given to
tlie i rue Sun, a journal which had on its editorial staff some dear
friends of mine, through whom I became myself a contributor to it
and afterwards, in common with all concerned, whether in its
writing, reporting, printing or publishing, a sharer in its difficulties
Ihe most formidable of ,hese arrived one day in a general strike of
the reporters; and I well remember noticing at this dread time on
tlie staircase of the magnificent mansion we were lodged in a young
man of my own age whose keen animation of look would have
arrested attention anywhere, and whose name, upon inquiry I then
lor the first time heard. It was coupled with the fact w.uch gave it
interest even then, that "young Dickens" had been spokesman for
the recalcitrant reporters, and conducted their case triumphantly.

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350

The Life of Charles Dickens

He was afterwards during two sessions engaged for the Mirror of
Parliament, which one of his uncles by the mother's side originated
and conducted; and finally, in his twenty-third year, he became a
reporter for the Morning Chronicle.

His attempt, to get upon the stage dates immediately before these
newspaper engagements. His Doctors' Commons reportership was a
hvmg so wearily uncertain, that a possibility of the other calling had
occurred to him in quite a businesslike way. He went to theatres
almost every night for a long time; studied and practised himself in
parts; was so much attracted by the "At Homes" of the elder
Mathews, that he resolved to make his first plunge in a similar
direction;^ and finally wrote to make offer of himself to Covent
Garden. "I wrote to Bartley, who was stage-manager, and told him
how young I was, and exactly what I thought I could do; and that I
believed I had a strong perception of character and oddity, and a
natural power of reproducing in my own person what I observed in
others. This was at the time when I was at Doctors' Commons as a
shorthand writer for the proctors. And I recollect I wrote the letter
from a little office I had there, where the answer came also. There
must have been something in my letter that struck the authorities,
for Bartley wrot^ to me almost immediately to say that they were
busy getting up the Hunchback (so they were), but that they would
communicate with me again, in a fortnight. Punctual to the time
another letter came, with an appointment to do anything of Mathews's
I pleased before him and Charles Kemble, on a certain day at the
theatre. My sister Fanny was in the secret, and was to go with me
to play the songs. I was laid up when the day came, with a terrible
bad cold and an inflammation of the face; the beginning, by the by
of that annoyance in one ear to which I am subject to this day. I
wrote to say so, and added that I would resume my application next
season. I made a great splash in the gallery soon afterwards- the
Chronicle o^emA to me; I had a ^distinction in the little world of the
newspaper, which made one like it; began to write; didn't want
money; had never thought of the stage but as a means of getting it-
gradually lef: off turning my thoughts that way, and never resumed
the idea. I never told you this, did I? See how near I may have been
to another sort of life." The letter in which he gave me this interesting
detail belongs to another place; but the anticipation of so much of it
here is required to complete his boyish history.

The beginning to write was a thing far more momentous to him
(though then he did not know it) than his "great splash" in the gallery
In the December number for 1833 of what then was called the Old
Monthly Magazine, his first published piece of writing had seen the
light. He has described himself dropping this paper ("Mr. Minns and
his cousin," as he afterwards entitled it, but which appeared in the
magazine as "A Dinner at Poplar Walk") stealthily one evenine at
twilififht. with fear and tremblin" * ' - - - - o

„ — 1. ._^..

uox in a aarK

i'-t

office up a dark court in Fleet Street; and he has told his agitation

The Life of Charles Dickens 351

'^^'fif i^/PP^^'^^lJ" ^".*^^ S^°^y °^ P""*- "On which occasion I
walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an
hour because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that they
could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there " He had
purchased the magazine at a shop in the Ltrand; and exactly two
years afterwards, in the younger member of a publishing firm who
had called at his chambers in Furnival's Inn. ::o which he had moved
^P^'l^fV ''^- ^^\S^^^^^, with the proposal that originated
fnH K ' t ^^^g^^sed the person he had bought that magazine from,
and whom before or since he had never seen.

This interval of two years more than comprised what remained of
his career m the gallery and the engagements connected with if but
that this occupation was of the utmost importance in its influence on
tiis lite, m the discipline of his powers as well as of his character there
can be no doubt whatever. "To the wholesome training of severe
newspaper-work, when I was a very young man. I constantly refer
my first successes, he said to the New York editors when he last took
leave of them. It opened to him a wide and varied range of experience
which his wonderful observation, exact as it was humorous, made
entirely his own. He saw the last of the old coaching days, and of the
old mns that were a part of them; but it will be long before the
readers of his hving page see the last of the life of either "There
never was." he once wrote to me (in 1845). "anybody connected
with newspapers who. in the same space of time, had so much
express and post-chaise experience as I. And wh *: gentlemen thev
were to serve, in such things, at the old Morning ^hroniclel Great or
small. It did not matter. I have had to charge for half a dozen break-
downs in half a dozen times as many miles. I have had to charge for
the damage of a great-coat from the drippings of a blazing wax-
candle, m writing through the smallest hours of the night in a swift-
flying carriage and pair. I have had to charge for all sorts of breakages
htty times m a journey without question, such being the ordinary
results of the pace which we went at. I have charged for broken hats
broken luggage, broken chaises, broken harness -everything but a
broken head, which is the only thing they would have grumbled to
pay for." ^

Something to the sp.me effect he said publicly twenty years later
on the occasion of his presiding, in May 1865, at the second annuai
dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund, when he condensed within the
compass of his speech a summary of the whole of his reporting life
I am not here.' he said, "advocating the case of a mere ordinary
client of whom I nave little or no k"owIedge. I hold a brief to-night
tor my brothers. I went into the gallery of the House of Comrnons as
a parliamentary reporter when I was a boy. and I left vc—I can
hardly believe the inexorable truth— nigh thirty years ago. I have
pursued the calling of a reporter under circumstances of which many
ot my brethren here can form no adequate conception. T havp o^+^n
transcribed for the printer, from mV shorthand notes, important

•f\i

352

The Life of Charles Dickens

ill

WW ;

public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was required, and a
mistake in which would have been to a young man severely com-
promising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark
lantexTi, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild country,
and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of
fifteen miles an hour. The very last time I was at Exeter, I strolled
into the castle-yard there to identify, for the amusement of a friend,
the spot on which I once 'took,' as we used to call it, an election
speech of Lord John Russell at the Devon contest, in the midst of a
lively fight maintained by all the vagabonds in that division of the
county, and under such a pelting rain, that I remember two good-
natured colleagues who chanced to be at leisure held a pocket-
handkerchief over my note-book, after the manner of a state canopy
in an ecclesiastical procession. I have worn my knees by writing on
them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of
Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a pre-
posterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled
together like so many sheep — kept in waiting, say, until the Woolsack
might want re-stuffing. Returning home from exciting political
meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily
believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle
known in this country. I have been, in my time, belated on miry by-
roads, towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a
wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and
have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-
forgotten compliments by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest
of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew. These trivial
things I mention as an assurance to you that I never have forgotten
the fascination of that old pursuit The pleasure that I used to feel
in the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has never faded out of my
breast. Whatever little cunning of hand or head I took to it, or
acquired in it, I have so retained that I fully believe I could resume it
to-morrow, very little the worse from long disuse. To this present
year of my life, when I sit in this hall, or where not, hearing a dull
speech (the phenomenon does occur), I sometimes beguile the tedium
of the moment by mentally following the speaker in the old, old way;
and sometimes, if you can believe me, I even find my hand going on
the tablecloth, taking an imaginary note of it all." The latter I have
known him do frequently. It was indeed a quite ordinary habit with
him.

Mr. James Grant, a writer who was himself in the gallery with
Dickens, and who states that among its eighty or ninety reporters he
occupied the very highest rank, not merely for accuracy in reporting,
but for marvellous quickness in transcribing, has lately also told us
that while there he was exceedingly reserved in his manners, and
that, though showing the usual courtesies to all he was concerned with
in his duties, the only personal intimacy he formed was with Mr.
Thomas Beard, then too reporting for the Morning Chfonicle. I have

td, and a
ely com-
»f a dark
country,
\ rate of
'. strolled
a friend,

election
idst of a
m of the
vo good-

pocket-
i canopy
riting on
louse of
n a pre-
huddled
Woolsack
political
lo verily

vehicle
niry by-
ion, in a
oys, and
1 never-
Droadest
3 trivial
)rgotten
i to feel
it of my
;o it, or
isume it
present
g a dull
: tedium
)ld way;
;oing on
r I have
bit with

Ty with
rters he
porting,
told us
srs, and
led with
ith Mr.
, I have

The Life of Charles Dickens 353

already mentioned the friendly and familiar relations maintained
with this gentleman to the close of his life; and. in confirmation of
Mr G, . nt s statement. I can further say that the only other associate
of these early reporting days to whom I ever heard him refer with

of^RWz'^?Y "^^l?^ l^^^ ^- ^^""^°* ^o^\in^, many years editor
inw ^^f ' ^^th whom he did not continue much personal
intercourse, but of whose character as well as talents he had formed

l^I^ W T""'"''-/^'' i' ^^^""^ anything to add to the notice of this
time which the reader's fancy may not easily supply. A letter has
been kept as written by him while engaged on one of his "expresses"-
but It IS less for its saying anything new. than for its confirming with
a pleasant vividness what has been said akeady, that its contents will
justify mention here.

Jr^^Z■^l^^' S^ ^ "Tuesday morning" in May 1835. from the Bush
Inn Bristol; the occasion that has taken him to the west, connected
with a reporting party, being Lord John Russell's Devonshire contest
above-named and his associate-chief being Mr. Beard, entrusted
with command for the Chronicle in this particular express. He expects
to forward the conclusion of Russell's dinner" by Cooper's com-
pany s coach leaving the Bush at half-past six neit morning; and

rJnnJ; o/lh^S'.K^^i^^ °" Thursday morning he will foi-waJd the
report of the Bath dmner, endorsing the parcel for immediate
delivery, with extra rewards for the porter. Beard is to go^ver to
Bath next morning. He is himself to come back by the mail from
Marlborough; he has no doubt, if Lord John makes a speech of any
ZtT7 .?^"yf f "«• .it can be done by the time Marlborough is
reached; and takmg into consideration the immense importance of
5o,Tf^ the addition of saddle-horses from thence, it is, beyond al
doubt, worth an effort . . I need not say." he continues. ''that i^
will be sharp work and will require two of us; for we shall both be up
the whole ^f the previous night, and shall have to sit up all night
agam to get it off in time." He adds that as soon as they have had a
httle sleep they will return to town as quickly as they cL; but thev
have. If the express succeeds, to stop at sundry places along the road
to pay money and notify satisfaction. And so. for himself and Beard
he IS his editor's very sincerely. ... ^eara.

The °ierition of his career in the gallery may close with the
comment that his observation while there had not led him to form
any high opinion of the House of Commons or its heroes; and that Tf
the Pickwickian sense which so often takes the place of common
sense m our legislature, he omitted no opportunity of declaring h^
contempt at every part of his life. ueciarmg ms

The other occupation had meanwhile not been lost sight of and

t^eMi::n^V ^° ^^'^ ^ ^^**^^- ^^"^^ *^^ fi^^t sketch appeared^n
the MontJdy Magazine, nine others have enlivened the pages of later

;;ri^^l°Ll^^^.^"!? ^^^^-^^. the last in February iS.f. and that
t"u^e of B'nr''^" '"^ ""^l preceumg August having tirst had the signa:
tureotBoz. . . . The magazine was owned as well as conducted at
330

354

The Life of Charles Dickens

11 !'

this time by a Mr. Holland, who had come back from * bolivar's South
American campaigns with the rank of captain, and had hoped to
make it a popular mouthpiece for his ardent liberalism. But this
hope, as well as his own health, quite failed; and he havl sorrowfully
to decline receiving any more of the sketches when they had to cease
as voluntary offerings. I do not think that eithe he ux the magazine
lived many weeks after an evening I passed with him in Doughty
Street, in 1837, when he spoke in a very touching way of the failure of
this and other enterprises of his life, and of the help that Dickens had
been to him.

Nothing being forthcoming from the Monthly, it was of course but
natural that the sketches too should cease to be forthcoming; and,
even before the above-named Fe^ ruary number appeared, a new
opening had been found for them. An evening oflE-shoot to the
Morning Chronicle had been lately in hand; and to a countryman of
Black's engaged in the preparations lor it, Mr. George Hogarth,
Dickens was communicating from h^ s rooms in Furnival's Inn, on the
evening of Tuesday the 20th of January, 1835, certain hopes and
fancies he had formed. This was at the beginning of his knowledge of
an accomplished and kindly man, with whose family his relations
were soon to become so intimate as to have an influence on all his
future career. Mr. Hogarth had asked him, as a favour to himself, to
write an original sketch for the first number of the enterprise, and in
writing back to say with what readiness he should comply, and how
anxiously he should desire to do his best for the person who had
made the request, he mentioned what had arisen in his mind. It had
occurred to him that he might not be unreasonably or improperly
trespassing farther on Mr. Hogarth if, trusting to his kindness to
refer the application to the proper quarter, he begged to ask whether
it was probable, if he commenced a regular series of articles under
some attractive title for the Evening Chronicle, its conductors would
think he had any claim to some additional remuneration (of course, of
no great amount) for doing so. In short, he wished to put it to the
proprietors — first, whether a continuation of some chapters of light
papers in the style of his street-sketches would be considered of use
to the new journal; and secondly, if so, whether they would not think
it fair and reasonable that, taking his share of the ordinary reporting
business of the Chronicle besides, he should receive something for the
papers beyond his ordinary salary as a reporter? The request was
thought fair, he began the sketches, and his salary was raised from
five to seven guineas a week.

They went on, with undiminished spirit and freshness, throughout
the year; and much as they were talked of outside as well as in the
world of newspapers, nothing in connection with them delighted the
writer half so much as the hearty praise of his own editor. Mr. Black
is one of the men who have passed without recognition out of a world
their labours largely benefited, but with those who knew hirn no xnan
was so popular, as well for his broad, kindly humour, as for his honest

The life of Charles Dickens 355

great-hearted enjoyment of whatever was excellent in others
Dickens to the last remembered, that it was most of all the cordial
help of this good old mirth-loving man, which had started him ioy-
fully on his career of letters. It was John Black that flung the
slipper after me, he would often say, "Dear old Black i mv first
hearty out-and-out appreciator," is an expression in one of his
letters written to me m the year he died.

FIRST BOOK, AND ORIGIN OF "picKWICK"

1836

The opening of 1836 found him collecting into two volumes the first
series of Sketches by Boz. of which he had sold the copvrieht for a
conditional payment of (I think) a hundred and fitftV pounds to a
young publisher named Macrone, whose acquaintance he had made
through Mr Amsworth a few weeks before. At this time also, we are
told m a letter before quoted, the editorship of the Monthly Magazine
having come into Mr. James Grant's hands, this gentleman, applying
to him through Its previous editor to know if he would again con-
tribute to It. learnt two things: the first that he was going to be
married, and the second that, having entered into an arrangement to
write a monthly serial, his duties in future would leave him small
spare time. Both pieces of news were soon confirmed. The Times of
26 March. 1836. gave notice that on the 31st would be published the
first shilhng number of the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
edited by Boz: and the same journal of a few days later announced
that on 2 April Mr. Charles Dickens had married Catherine the
eldest daughter of Mr. George Hogarth, whom already we have met
as his fellow-worker on the Chronicle. The honeymoon was passed in
the neighbourhood to which at all times of interest in his life he
turned with a strange recurring fondness; and while the young couple
are at the quiet little village of Chalk, on the road between Grivesend

Mr Pkkwfcr ^ ^''^''^^^ *^^ °"^" ""^ *^^ ever-memorable

A new publishing house had started recently, among other enter-
prises ingenious rather than important, a Library of Fiction; among

t,^ n^'^MY^^ T^^^J° ^""^'^^ ^^ '* ^^^ *^^ ^"te^ of the sketche!
m the Monthly: and. to the extent of one paper during the past vear

they had effected this through their editor Mr r\.J\^. wu;^.C-i'

a very ingenious and a very unfortunate man. "I was not'aw^^r^'

wrote the elder member of the firm to Dickens, thirteen years later

356

The Life of Charles Dickens

i! i;

in a letter to which reference was made^ in the preface to Pickwick in
one of his later editions, "that you were writing in the Chronicle, or
what your name was; but Whitehead, who was an old Monthly man.
recollected it, and got you to write 'The Tuggs's at Ramsgate.' "

And now comes another person on the scene. "In November 1835 "
continues Mr. Chapman, "we published a little book called the
Squib Annual, with plates by Seymour; and it was during my visit to
him, to see after them, that he said he should like to do a series of
cockney sporting-plates of a superior sort to those he had already
published. I said I thought they might do, if accompanied by letter-
press and published in monthly parts; and this being agreed to, we
wrote to the author of Three Courses and a Dessert and proposed it-
but receiving no answer, the scheme dropped for some months, tili
Seymour said he wished us to decide, as another job had offered
which would fully occupy his time; and it was on this we decided to
ask you to do it. Having opened already a connection with you for
our Library of Fiction, we naturally applied to you to do the Pickwick;
but I do not think we even mentioned our intention to Mr. Seymour,
and I am quite sure that from the beginning to the end nobody but
yourself had anything whatever to do with it. Our prospectus was out
at the end of February, and it had all been arranged before that
date."

The member of the firm who carried the application to him in
Furnival's Inn was not the writer of this letter, but Mr. Hall, who
had sold him two years before, not knowing that he was the pur-
chaser, the magazine in which his first effusion was printed; and he
has himself described what passed at the interview. "The idea
propounded to me was that the monthly something should be a
vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr. Seymour; and there
was a notion, either on the part of that admirable humorous artist,
or of my visitor, that a Nimrod Club, the members of which were
to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting themselves into
difficulties through their want of dexterity, would be the best means
of introducing these. I objected, on consideration, that although born
and partly bred in the country I was no great sportsman, except in
regard to all kinds of locomotion; tliat the idea was not novel, and
had already been much used; that it would be infinitely better for
the plates to arise naturally out of the text; and that I would like to
take my own way, with a freer range of English scenes and people,
and was afraid I should ultimately do so in any case, whatever
course I might prescribe to myself at starting. My views being

1 Not quoted in detail, on that or any other occasion; though referred to It
was, however, placed in my hands, for use if occasion should arise, when Dickens
went to America in 1867. The letter bears date 7 July, 1849, and was Mr. Chap-
man s answer to the question Dickens had asked him, whether the account of the
origin of Ptckwtck which he had given in the preface to the cheap edition in iS^y
was not strictly correct. "It is so correctly described." was Mr. Chanrnan'c «r,»«5^«
remark, "that I can throw but little additional light on it." The name"of"his hero
I may add, Dickens took from that of a celebrated coach-proprietor of Bath '

The Life of Charles Dickens

357

deferred to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number;
from the proof-sheets of which Mr. Seymour made his drawing of the
club and his happy portrait of its founder. I connected Mr. Pick.vick
with a club, because of the original suggestion; and I put in Mr.
Windle expressly for the use of Mr. Seymour."

Mr. Hall was dead when this statement was first made, in the
preface to the cheap edition in 1847; but Mr. Chapman clearly recol-
lected his partner's account of the interview, and confirmed every
part of it, in his letter of 1849, with one exception. In giving Mr.
Seymour credit for the figure by which all the habitable globe knows
Mr. Pickwick, and which certainly at the outset helped to make him
a reality, it had given the artist too much. The reader will hardly be
so startled as I was on coming to the closing line of Mr. Chapman's
confirmatory letter. "As this letter is to be historical, I may as well
claim what little belongs to me in the matter, and that is the figure
of Pickwick. Seymour's first sketch was of a long, thin man. The
present immortal one he made from my description of a friend of
mine at Richmond, a fat old beau who would wear, in spite of the
ladies' protests, drab tights and black gaiters. His name was John
Foster." ... "*

The first number had not yet appeared when his Sketches by Boz,
Illustrative of Every -day Life and Every-day People, came forth in two
duodecimos with some capital cuts by Cruikshank, and with a preface
in which he spoke of the nervousness he should have had in venturing
alone before the public, and of his delight in getting the help of
Cruikshank, who had frequently contributed to the success, though
his well-earned reputation rendered it impossible for him ever to have
shared the hazard, of similar undertakings. It very soon became
apparent that there was no hazard here. The Sketches were much
more talked about than the first two or three numbers of Pickwick,
and I remember still with what hearty praise the book was first
named to me by my dear friend Albany Fonblanque, as keen and
clear a judge as ever lived either of books or men. Richly did it merit
all the praise it had, and more, I will add, than he was ever disposed
to give to it himself. He decidedly underrated it. He gave, in sub-
sequent writings, so much more perfect form and fullness to every-
thing It contained, that he did not care to credit himself with the
marvel of having yet so early anticipated so much. But the first
sprightly runnings of his genius are undoubtedly here. Mr. Bumble
IS m the parish sketches, and Mr. Dawkins the dodger in the Old
Bailey scenes. There is laughter and fun to excess, never misapplied;
there are the minute points and shades of character, with all the
discrimination and nicety of detail afterwards so famous; there is
everywhere the most perfect ease and skill of handling. The observa-
tion shown throughout is nothing short of wonderful. Things are
painted literally as they are; and, whatever the picture, whether of
every-day vulgar, shabby ^.^nteel, or downright* low, with neither
the condescending air which is affectation, nor the too familiar one

358

The Life of Charles Dickens

which is slang. The book altogether is a perfectly unaffected, un-
pretentious, honest performance. Under its manly, sensible straight-
forward vein of talk there is running at the same time a natural flow
of sentiment never sentimental, of humour always easy and un-
forced, and of pathos for the most part dramatic or picturesque,
under which lay the germ of what his mature genius took afterwards
most delight in. Of course there are inequalities in it, and some things
that would have been better away: but it is a book that might have
stood its ground, even if it had stood alone, as containing usually
truthful observation of a sort of life between the middle class and the
low, which, having few attractions for bookish observers, was quite
unhackneyed ground. It had otherwise also the very special merit
of being in no respect bookish oi commonplace in its descriptions of
the old city with which its writer was so familiar. It was a picture of
everyday London at its best and worst, in its humours and enjoy-
ments as well as its sufferings and sins, pervaded everywhere not
only with the absolute reality of the things depicted, but also with that
subtle sense and mastery of feeling wliich gives to the reader's
sympathies invariably right direction, and awakens consideration,
tenderness and kindness precisely for those who most need such
help.

Between the first and the second numbers of Pickwick, the artist,
Mr. Seymour, died by his own hand; and the number came out with
three instead of four illustrations. Dickens had seen the unhappy
man only once, forty-eight hours before his death; when he went to
Furnival's Inn with an etching for the "stroller's-tale" in that
number, which, altered at Dickens's suggestion, he brought away
again for the few further touches that occupied him to a late hour of
the night before he destroyed himself. A notice attached to the
number informed the public of this latter fact. There was at first a
little difficulty in replacing him, and for a single number Mr. Buss
was interposed. But before the fourth number a choice had been
made, which as time went on was so thoroughly justified that, through
the greater part of the wonderful career which was then beginning,
the connection was kept up, and Mr. Hablot Browne's name is not
unworthily associated with the mt "erpieces of Dickens's genius.
An incident which I heard related by Mr. Thackeray at one of the
Royal Academy dinners belongs to this time. "I can remember when
Mr. Dickens was a very young man, and had commenced delighting
the world with some charming humorous works in covers which were
coloured light green and came out once a month, that this young
man wanted an artist to illustrate his writings; and I recollect walking
up to his chambers in Furnival's Inn, with two or three drawings in
my hand which, strange to say, he did not find suitable." Dickens
has himself described another change now made in the publication.
"We started with a number of twenty-four pages and four illustra-
tions. Mr. Sevmour's sudden and lamented death before the second
number was published brought about a quick decision upon a point

The Life of Charles Dickens 359

already in agitation; the number became one of thirty-two pages
wth only two illustrations, and remained so to the end."

The Session of 1836 terminated his connection with the gallery
and some fruits of his increased leisure showed themselves before the
close of the year. His eldest sister's musical attainments and connec-
tions had mtroduced him to many cultivators and professors of that
art; he was led to take much interest in Mr. Braham's enter-^rise at
the St. James's Theatre; and in aid of it he wrote a farce for Mr.
Harley, founded upon one of his sketches, and the story and songs for
an opera composed by his friend Mr. Hullah. Both the Strange
Gentleman, acted in September, and the Village Coquettes, produced
m December 1836, had a good success; and the last is memorable to
me for having brought me first into personal communication with
Dickens.

I]
II]

VIJ

VIII

XII

BOOK SECOND
FIRST FIVE YEARS OF FAME

1836-41. MT. 24-9

I. Writing the "Pickwick Papers."
II. Between "Pickwick" and "Nicklebv "

III. "Oliver Twist."

IV. "Nicholas Nickleby."

V. During and After "Nicklv.by."
VI. New Literary Project.
VII. "Old Curiosity Shop."
VIII. Devonshire Terrace and Broadstairs.
IX. "Barnaby Rudge."
X. In Edinburgh,
XI. In the Highlands.
XII. Again at Broadstairs.

fc"l

330^

361

h i>

'i'

, , 'i

1 i

WRITING THE " PICKWICK PAPERS

1837

The first letter I had from him was at the close of 1836 from Furni-
val's Inn, when he sent me the book of his opera of the Villaee
Coquettes, which ha1 been published by Mr. Bentley; and this was
followed, tv/o months later, by his collected Sketches, both first and
second series; which he desired me to receive "as a very small testi-
mony of the donor's regard and obligations, as well as of his desire to
cultivate and avail himself of a friendship which has been so pleas-
antly thrown m his way. ... In short, if you will receive them for
my sake and not for the"r own, you will greatly oblige me." I had met
him m the interval at the house of our common friend Mr. Ainsworth
and I remember vividly the impression then made upon me.

Very different was his face in those days from that which photo-
graphy has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youth-
fulness first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of ex-
pression which made you sure of the qualities within. The features
were very good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide
nostrils, eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over
with humour and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth stronglv
m.'^rked with sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and
symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it were extremely spirited
The hair so scant and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown
and most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of his last two
decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whiskers; but tnere was that in
the face as I first recollect it which no time could change and which
remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the
quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, energetic
outlook on each several feature, that seemed to tell so little of a stu-
dent or writer of books, and so much of a man of action and business
in the world. Light and motion flashed from every part of it. "It was
as if made of steel," was said of h. four or five years after the time to
which I am referring, by a most original and delicate observer the
late Mrs. Carlyle. "What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room;"
wrote Leigh Hunt to me. the morning after I made them known to
each other. "It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings " In
such sayings are expressed not alone the restless and resistless
vivacity and force of which I have spoken, but that also whirh loy
beneath them of steadiness and hard endurance. ... *

363

iiil

! !l

I!*;

'i^ i!

64 The Life of Charles Dickens

It was not until the fourth or fifth number of Pickwick (in the latter
Sam Weller made his first appearance) that its importance began to
be understood by "the trade," and on the eve of the issue of its sixth
number, 22 August, 1836, he had signed an agreement with Mr.
Bentley to undertake the editorship of a monthly magazine to be
started the following January, to which he was to supply a serial
story; and soon afterwards he had agreed with the same publisher to
write two other tales, the first at a specified early date; the expressed
remuneration in each case being certainly inadequate to the claims of
a writer of any marked popularity. Under these Bentley agreements
he was now writing, month by month, the first half of Oliver Twist,
and, under his Chapman and Hall agreement, the last half of Pickwick,
not even by a week in advance of the printer with either, when a
circumstance became xcnown to him of which he thus wrote to me.

"I heard half an hour ago, on authority which leaves me in no
doubt about the matter (from the binder of Pickwick in fact), that
Macrone intends publishing a new issue of my Sketches in monthly
parts of nearly the same size and in just the same form as the Pick-
wick Papers. I need not tell you that this is calculated to injure me
most seriously, or that I have a very natural and most decided
objection to being supposed to presume upon the success of the
Pickwick, and thus foist this old work upon the public in its new dress
for the mere purpose of putting money in my own pocket. Neither
need I say that the fact of my name being before the town, attached
to three publications at the same time, must prove seriously prejudi-
cial to my reputation. As you are acquainted with the circumstances
under which these copyrights were disposed of, and as I know I may
rely on your kind help, may I beg you to see Macrone, and to state in
the strongest and most emphatic manner my feeling on this point.
I wish him to be reminded of the sums he paid for those books; of the
sale he has ha d for them; of the extent to which he has already pushed
them; and of the very great profits he must necessarily have acquired
from them. I wish him also to be reminded that no intention of
publishing them in this form was in the remotest manner hinted to
me, by him or on his behalf, when he c '"ttained possession of the copy-
right. I then wish you to put it tc his feelings of common honesty and
fair-dealing whether after this communication he will persevere in
his intention." What else the Ic.trT contained need not be quoted,
but it strongly moved i.ie to do my b<^3t.

I found Mr. Macrone ir > xessible to all arguments of persuasion,
however. That he had br. ig'7.1: the book for a small sum at a time when
the smallest was not uniiri; • Lant to the writer, shortly before hh
marriage, and that he ha' ■ lace i; tade very considerable profits by it,
in no way disturbed his position ' hat he had a right to make as much
as he could of what was his, without regard to how it had become so.
There was nothing for it but to chr-^ge front, and, admitting it might
be a less evil to the unkc?:y author to repurchase tnaiT to let the
iiiorithiy issue proceed, to ask what fvather gain was looked for: but

The Life of Charles Dickens

365

so wide a mouth was opened at this that I would have no part in the
costly process of filling it. I told Dickens so. and strongly counselled
him to keep quiet for a time.

But the worry and vexation were too great with all the work he
had m hand, and I was hardly surprised next day to receive the letter
sent me; which yet should be prefaced with the remark that suspense
of any kmd was at all times intolerable to the writer. The interval
between the accomplishment of anything, and "its first motion "
Dickens never could endure, and he was too ready to make aiiv
sacrifice to abridge or end it. This did not belong to the strong side of
his character, and advantage was frequently taken of the fact "I
sent down just now to know whether you were at home (two o'clock)
as Chapman and Hall were with me, and, the case btin^ urgent I
wished to have the furth. r benefit of your kind advice and*assistance
Macrone and his friend (arcades ambo) waited on +hem this morning'
and after a long disc ission peremptorily refused t take one farthing
less than two thousand pounds. The friend repeated the statement
of figures which he made to you >\33terday, and put it to Hall whether
he could say fium his kr:owledge of such matters that the estimate of
probable profit was exorbitant. Hall, whose judgment may be relied
on in such matters, could not dispute the justice of the calculation
And so the matter stood. In this dilemma it occurred to them (mv
Pickwick men), whether, if the Sketches must appear in monthly
numbers, it would not be better for them to appear for their benefit
and mine conjointly, than for Macrone's sole use and behoof; whether
they, having all the Pickwick machinery in full operation, could not
obtain for them a much larger sale than Macrone . juld ever get" and
whether, even at this large price of two thousand pounds, we might
not. besides retaining the copyright, reasonably hope for a good
profit on the outlay. These suggestions having presented themselves
;:bey cane straight to me (having obtained a few hours' respite) and
proposed that we should purchase the copyrights between us for the
two thous' id pounds, and publish them in monthly parts. I need not
say that no other form of publication would repay the expenditure-
and they v ish me to explain by an address that they, who may be
fairly put forward as the parties, have been driven into that mode of
puWicati' 1. or the copyrigh. would have been lost. I considered the
mat . "n every possible way. I sent for you. but you were out I
th.^ught of" (what, need not be repeated, now that all is past and
gone) "and consented. Vvas I right? I think you will say yes " I
could not say no. though I was glad to have been ro party to a price
so exorbitant; which yet profited extremely little the person who
r-ceived it. He died in hardly more than tw . years; and if Dickens
had enjoyed the most liberal treatment at his hands, he could not
have exertf d himself more generously for the widow and children.

His new story was now beginning largely to share attention with
JUS Pickwick Papers, and it was delightful to see how real all its
people became to him. What I had most indeed to notice in him at

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the very outset of his career, was his indifference to any praise of his
performances on the merely literary side, compared with the higher
recognition of them as bits of actual life, with the meaning and pur-
pose on their part, and the responsibility on his. of realities rather
than creatures of fancy. The exception that might be drawn from
Pickwick is rather in seeming than substance. A first book has its
immunities, and the distinction of this from the rest of the writings
appears in what has been said of its origin. The plan of it was simply
to amuse. It was to string together whimsical sketches of the pencil
by entertaining sketches of the pen; and. at its beginning, where or
how It was to end as little known to himself as to any of its readers.
But genius is a master as well as a servant, and when the laughter and
fun were at their highest something graver made its appearance
He had to defend himself for this; and he said that, though the mere
oddity of a new acquaintance was apt to impress one at first, the
more serious qualities were discovered when we became friends with
the man. In other words, he might have said that the change was
become necessary for his own satisfaction. The book itself, in teach-
ing him what his power was, had made him more conscious of what
would be expected from its use; and this never afterwards quitted
him. In what he was to do hereafter, as in all he was doing now with
Ptckwtck still to finish and Oliver only beginning, it constantly
attenaed him. Nor could it well be otherwise, with all those fanciful
creations so real, to a nature in itself so practical and earnest and in
this spirit I had well understood the letter accompanying what had
be- published of Oliver since its commencement the preceding
T . jT .ry, which reached me the day after I visited him. Something
t '!. effect of what has just been said, I had remarked publicly of
tisc , ortion of the story sent to me; and his instant warm-hearted
acknowledgment, of which I permit myself to quote a line or two
showed me in what perfect agreement we were. "How can I thank
you? Can I do better than by saying that the sense of poor Oliver's
reality, which I know you have had from the first, has been the hicrhest
of all praise to me. None that has been lavished upon me have I felt
half so much as that appreciation of my intent and meaning You
know I have ever done so, for it was your feeling for me and mine
for you that first brought us together, and I hope will keep us so till
death do us part. Your notices make me grateful but very proud- so
have a care of them."

There was nothing written by him after this date which I did not
see before the world did, eit< ar in manuscript or proofs- and in
connection with the latter I si. .tly began to give him the help
which he publicly mentioned twenty yt -s later in dedicating his
collected writings to me. One of his letters reminds me when these
corrections began, and they were continued very nearly to the last
They lightened for him a labour of which he had more 'than enough
imposed upon him at this time by others, and they were never any-
thing but an enjoyment to me. "I have," he wrote, "so mnnv Bhe«<-°

The Life of Charles Dickens

367

of the Miscellany to correct before I can begin Oliver, that I fear I
shall not be able to leave home this morning. I therefore send your
revise of the Pickwick by Fred, who is on his way with it to the prin-
ters. You will see that my alterations are very slight, but I think for
the better." This was the fourteenth number of the Pickwick Papers.
Fred was his next younger brother, who lived with him at the time.

The number following this was the famous one in which the hero
finds himself in the Fleet, and another of his letters will show what
enjoyment the writing of it had given to himself. I had sent to ask
him where we were to meet for a proposed ride that day. "Here,"
was his reply. "I am slippered and jacketted, and, like that same
starling who is so very seldom quoted, can't get out. I am getting on,
thank Heaven, 'like a house o' fire,' and think the next Pickwick will
bang all the others. 1 shall expect you at one, and we will walk to the
stable together. If you know anybody at Saint Paul's, I wish you'd
send round and ask them not to ring the bell so. I can hardly hear my
own ideas as they come into my head, and say what they mean."

The exulting tone of confidence in what he had thus been writing
was indeed well justified. He had as yet done nothing so remarkable,
in blending humour with tragedy, as his picture of what the poor side
of a debtor's prison was in the days of which we have seen that he had
himself had bitter experience; and we have but to recall, as it rises
sharply to the memory, what is contained in this portion of a work
that was not only among his earliest but his least considered as to
plan, to understand what it was that not alone had given him his
fame so early, but which in itself held the germ of the future that
awaited him. Every point was a telling one, and the truthfulness of
the whole unerring. The dreadful restlessness of the place, undefined
yet unceasing, unsatisfying and terrible, was pictured throughout
with Defoe's minute reality; while points of character were handled
in that greater style which connects with the richest oddities of
humour an insight into principles of character universal as nature
itself. When he resolved that Sam Weller should be occupant of the
prison with ^JLr. Pickwick, he was perhaps thinking of his favourite
Smollett, and how, when Peregrine Pickle was inmate of the Fleet,
Hatchway and Pipes refused to leave him; but Fielding himself might
have envied his way of setting about it. . . .

Of what the reception of the book had been up to this time, and of
the popularity Dickens had won as its author, this also will be the
proper place to speak. For its kind, its extent, and the absence of
everything unreal or factitious in the causes that contributed to it,
it is unexampled in literature. Here was a series of sketches, without
the pretence to such interest as attends a well-constructed story; put
forth in a form apparently ephemeral as its purpose; having none
that seemed higher than to exhibit some studies of cockney manners
with help from a comic artist; and after four or five parts had appeared
without newspaper notice or puffing, and itself not subserving in the

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each part carried higher and higher, until people at this trme talked
of nothing else, tradesmen recommended their goods by usmg its
name, and its sale, outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous
books of the century, had reached to an almost fabulous number. Of
part one. the binder prepared four hundred; and of part fifteen, his
order was for more than forty thousand. Every class, the high equally
with the low. were atcracted to it. The charm of its gaiety and good
humour, its inexhaustible fun. its riotous overflow of animal spirits,
its brightness and keenness of observation, and, above all. the incom-
parable ease of its many varieties of enjoyment, fascmated everybody.
Judges on the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the
young and the old, those who were entering life and those who were
quitting it. alike found it to be irresistible. "An archdeacon, wrote
Mr. Carlyle afterAvards to me. "with his own venerab e lips, repeated
to me, the other night, a strange profane story: of a solemn clergyman
who had been administering ghostly consolation to a sick person;
having finished, satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room
he heard the sick person ejaculate: 'Well, thank God. Pickwick will be
out in ten days anyway!'— This is dreadful." • • • . , ^, „. ,.,
I do not. for reasons to be hereafter stated, think the Pickwick
Papers comparable to the later books; but, apart from the new vem
of humour it opened, its wonderful freshness and its unflagging
animal spirits, it has two characters that will probably contmue to
attract to it an unfading popularity. Its pre-eminent achievement is
of course Sam Weller; one of those people that take their place among
the supreme successes of fiction, as one that nobody ever saw but
everybody recognises, at once perfectly natural and intensely original.
Who is there that has ever thought him tedious? Who is so familiar
with him as not still to be finding something new in him? Who is so
amazed by his inexhaustible resources, or so amused by his inextin-
guishable laughter, as to doubt of his being as ordmary and perfect a
reality, nevertheless, as anything in the London streets? When indeed
the relish has been dulled that makes such humour natural and appre-
ciable, and not his native fun only, his ready and rich illustration, his
imperturbable self-possession, but his devotion to his master his
chivalry and his gallantry, are no longer discovered or believed no
longer to exist, in the ranks of life to which he belongs it will be
worse for all of us than for the fame of his creator. Nor. when faith is
lost in that possible combination of eccentricities and benevolences,
shrewdness and simplicity, good sense and folly aP that suggests the
ludicrous and nothing that suggests contempt for it, which form the
delightful oddity of Pickwick, will the mistake committed be one
rrerelv of critical misjudgment. But of this there is small fear
Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick are the Sancho and the Quixote of
Londoners, and as little likely to pass away as the old city itself .

Dickens was very fond of riding in these early years, and there was
no recreation he so much indulged, or with such profit to himself,
the intervals of his hatdest work. I was his cuiixpanion ottener vhan

talked
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here was

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;'tier than

The Life of Charles Dickens

369

I could well afford the time for, the distances being great and nothing
else to be done for the day; but when a note would unexpectedly
arrive while I knew him to be hunted hard by one of his printers,
telling me he had been sticking to work so closely that he must have
rest, and, by way of getting it, proposing we should start together
that morning at eleven o'clock for "a fifteen mile ride out, ditto in, and
a lunch on the road," with a wind up of six o'clock dinner in Doughty
Street, I could not resist the good fellowship. His notion of finding
rest from mental exertion in as much bodily exertion of equal severity
continued with him to the last; taking in the later years what I
always thought the too great strain of as many miles in walking as he
now took in the saddle, and too often indulging it at night: for,
though he was always passionately fond of walking, he observed as
yet a moderation in it, even accepting as sufficient my seven or eight
miles' companionship. "What a brilliant morning for a country walk!"
he would write, with not another word in his dispatch. Or, "Is it
possible that you can't, oughtn't, shouldn't, mustn't, won't be tempted,
this gorgeous day!" Or, "I start precisely— precisely mind— at half-
past one. Come, come, come, and walk in the green lane. You will
work the better for it all the week. Come! I shall expect you." Or,
"You don't feel dispop^d, do you, to mutfie yourself up, and start off
with me for a good brisk walk, over Hampstead Heath? I know a
good 'ouse there where we can have a red-hot chop for dinner, and a
glass of good wine": which led to our first experience of Jack Straw's
Castle, memorable for many happy meetings in coming years. But
the rides were most popular and frequent. "I think," he would write,
"Richmond and Twickenhi^m, thro' the park, out at Knightsbridge,
and over Barnes Common — would make a beautiful ride." Or, "Do
you know, I shouldn't object to an early chop at some village inn?"
Or, "Not knowing whether my head was off or on, it became so addled
with work, I have gone riding the old road, and should be trul>- de-
lighted to meet or be overtaken by you." Or, "V/here shall it be — oh
where — Hampstead, Greenwich, Windsor? where? ? ? ? ? ? while the
day is bright, not when it has dwindled away to nothing! For who
can be of any use whatsomdever such a day as this, excepting out of
doors?" Or it might be interrogatory summons to "A hard trot of
three hours?" or intimation as laconic "To be heard of at Eel Pie
House, Twickenham i" When first I knew him, I may add, his carriage
for his wife's use was a small chaise with a smaller pair of ponies, which
having a habit of making sudden rushes up by-streets in the day and
peremptory standstills in ditches by night, were changed in the fol-
lowing year for a more su ttable equipage.

To this mention of his habits while at work when our friendship
began, I have to add what will complete the relation already given,
in connection with his Sketches, of the uneasy sense accompanying
his labour that it was yielding insufiicient for himself while it enriched
others, which is a needful part of his story at this time. At Midsummer
X837, rcplyiiig to some inquiries, and sending his agreement witi^

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370

The Life of Charles Dickens

Mr. Bentley for the Miscellany under which he was writing Oliver, he
went on: "It is a very extraordinary fact (I forgot it on Sunday) that
I have NEVER had from him a copy of the agreement respecting the
novel, which I never saw before or since I signed it at his house one
morning long ago. Shall I ask him for a copy, or no? I have looked at
some memoranda I made at the time, and I fear he has my second
novel on the same terms, under the same agreement. This is a bad
look-out, but we must try and mend it. You will tell me you are very
surprised at my doing business in this way. So am I, for in most
matters of labour and application I am punctuality itself. The truth
is (though you do not need I should explain the matter to you, my
dear fellow) that, if I had allowed myself to be worried by these things,
I could never have done as much as I have. But I much fear, in my
desire to avoid present vexations, I have laid up a bitter store for the
future." The second novel, which he had promised in a complete form
for a very early date, and had already selected subject and title for,
was published four years later as Barnaby Rudge; but of the third he at
present knew nothing but that he was expected to begin it, if not in
the magazine, somewhere or other independently within a specified
time.

The first appeal made, in taking action upon his letter, had refer-
ence to the immediate pressure of the Barnaby novel; but it also
opened up the question of the great change of circumstances since
these various agreements had been precipitately signed by him, the
very different situation brought about by the extraordinary increase
in the popularity of his writings, and the advantage it would be, to
both Mr. Bentley and himself, to make more equitable adjustment of
their relations. Some misunderstandings followed, but were closed
by a compromise in September 1837; by which the third novel was
abandoned ^ on certain conditions, and Barnaby was undertaken to be
finished by November 1838. This involved a completion of the new
story during the progress of Oliver, whatever might be required to
follow on the close of Pickwick; and I doubted its wisdom. But it was
accepted for the time.

He had meanwhile taken his wife abroad for a ten days' summer
holiday, accompanied by the shrewd observant young artist Mr.
Hablot Browne, whose admirable illustrations to Pickwick had more
than supplied Mr. Seymour's loss; and I had a letter from him on their
landing at Calais on 2 July.

"We have arranged for a post-coach tc ^?ke us to Ghent, Brussels,
Antwerp, and a hundred other places, that i cannot recollect now and
couldn't spell if I did. We went this afternoon in a barouche to some
gardens where the people dance, and where they were footing it most
heartily— especially the women, who in their short petticoats and

1 I have a memorandum in Dickens's wrjlmg that £500 was to have been given
for it, and an additional £250 on its sale reaching 3000 copies: but he had no
ground of objection to the terms that accompanied its suirender, which were
favourable.

The Life of Charles Dickens 371

light caps look uncommonly agreeable. A gentleman in a blue sur-
tout and silken berlins accompanied us from the hotel, and acted as
curator. He even waltzed with a very smart lady (just to show us
condescendmgly. how it ought to be done), and waltzed elegantly'
too. We rang for slippers after we came back, and it turned out that
this gentleman was the Boots."

His later seaside holiday was passed at Brcadstairs. as were those
of many subsequent years, and the little watering-place has been
made memorable by his pleasant sketch of it. From his letters to my-
self a few Imes may be given of his first doings and impressions there.
Writmg on 3 September, he reports himself just risen from an
attack of illness. "I am much better, and hope to begin Pickwick No
18 to-morrow. You will imagine how queer I must have been when I
tell you that I have been compelled for four-and-twenty mortal hours
to abstain from porter or other malt liquor! ! ! I done it though—
really. ... I have discovered that the landlord of the Albion has
delicious hollands (but what is that to you, for you cannot sympa-
thise with my feelings), and that a cobbler who lives opposite to my
bedroom window is a Roman Catholic, and gives an hour and a half
to his devotions every morning behind his counter. I have walked
upon the sands at low-water from this place to Ramsgate, and sat
upon the same at high-ditto till I have been flayed with the cold. I
have seen ladies and gentlemn walking upon the earth in slippers of
buff, and pickling themselves in the sea in complete suits of the same
I have seen stout gentlemen looking at nothing through powerful
telescopes for hours, and, when at last they saw a cloud of smoke
fancying a steamer behind it. and going home comfortable and happy'
I have found out that our next neighbour has a wife and something
else under the same roof with the rest of his furniture— the wife deaf
and blind, and the something else given to drinking. And if you ever
get to txie end of this letter you will find out that I subscribe myself on
paper as on everything else (some atonement perhaps for its length
and absurdity)," etc.

In his next letter (from 12 High Street, Broadstairs, on the 7th)
there is allusion to one of the many piracies of Pickwick, which had
distinguished itself beyond the rest by a preface abusive of the
writer plundered. "I recollect this 'member of the dramatic-authors'-
society' bringing an action once against Chapman, who rented the
City Theatre, in which it was proved that he had undertaken to
write under special agreement seven melodramas for five pounds, to
enable him to do which a room had been hired in a gin-shop close by.
The defendant's plea was that the plaintiff was always drunk, and had
not fulfilled his contract. We"; if the Pickwick has been the means of
putting a few shillings in the vermin-eaten pockets of so miserable a
creature, and has saved him from a workhouse or a jail, let him
empty out his little pot of filth and welcome. I am quite content
to Jiave been the means of relieving him. Besides, he seems to have
suffered by agreements!" . . .

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The Life of Charles Dickens

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J I

BETWEEN "PICKWICK" AND "NICKLEBY"

1837 and 1838

One result of his more satisfactory relations with Mr. Bentley led to a
promise to edit for him a Life of the celebrated clown, Grimaldi.
The manuscript had been prepared from autobiographical notes b\' a
Mr. Egerton Wilk , and contained one or two stories told so ba( .y,
and so well worth better telling, that the hope of enlivening their
dullness at the cost of very little labour constituted a sort of attrac-
tion for him. Except the preface, he did not write a line of this bio-
graphy, such modifications or additions as he made having been dic-
tated by him to his father; whom I fo nd often in exalted enjoyment
of the office of amanuensis. He had also a most indifferent opinion of
the mass of material which Mr. Wilks had raked together, describing
it as "twaddle"; and his own mod st estimate of the book, on its
completion, may be guessed from the number of notes of admiration
(no less than thirty) which accompanied his written mention to me of
the sale with which it started in the first week of its publication.
"Seventeen hundred Grimaldis have already been sold, and the
demand increases daily! ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It was not to have all its own wav, however. A great many critical
faults were found; and one point in particular was urged against his
handling such a subject, that he could never himself even have seen
Grimaldi. To this last objection he was moved to reply, and had pre-
pared a letter for the Miscellany, "from editor to sub-editor," which
it was thought best to suppress, but of which the opening remark may
now be not unamusing. "1 understand that a gentleman unknown is
going about this town privately informing all ladies and gentlemen of
discontented natures that, on a comparison of dates and putting
together of many little circumstances Which occur to his great sagacity,
he has made the profound discovery that I can never have seen
Grimaldi, whose Life I have edited, and that the book must therefore
of necessity be bad. Now, sir, although I was brought up from remote
country parts in the d?rk ages of 18 19 and 1820 to behold the splen-
dour of Christmas pantomimes and the humour of Joe, in whose hon-
our I am informed I clapped my hands with great precocity, and
although I even saw him act in the remote times of 1823; yet, as I
had not then aspired to the dignity of a tail-coat, though forced by a
relentless parent into my first pair of boots, I am willing, with the
view of saving this honest gentleman further time and trouble, to
concede that I had not arrived at man's estate when Grimaldi left the
stage, and that my recollections of his acting are, to mv loss but

The Life of Cliaiies Dickens

373

shadowy and imperfect. Which confession I now make publicly, and
without mental qualification or reserve, to all whom it may concern.
But the deduction of this pleasant gentleman that therefore the
Grimaldi book must be bad, 1 must take leave to doubt. 1 don't think
that to edit a man's biography from his own notes it is essential you
should have known him, and I don't believe that Lord Braybrooke
had more than the very slightest acquaintance with Mr. Pepys, whose
memoirs he edited two centuries after he died."

Enormous meanwhile, and without objection audible on any side,
had been the succoss of the completed Pickwick, which we celebrated
by a dinner, with himself in the chair and Talfourd in the vice-chair,
everybody in hearty good humour with every other body; and a copy
of which I received from him on 1 1 December in the most luxurious of
Mayday's bindings, with a note worth preserving for its closing
allusion. The passage referred to in it was a comment, in delicately
chosen words, that Leigh Hunt had made on the inscription at the
grave in Kensal Green. "Chapman and Hall have just sent me, with a
copy of our deed, three 'extra-super' bound copies of Pickwick, as per
specimen enclosed. The first I forward to you, the second I have pre-
sented to our good friend Ainsworth, and the third Kate 'las retained
for herself." . . .

The "deed" mentioned was one executed in the previous month to
restore to him a third ownership in the book which had thus far en-
riched all concerned b"t himself. The original understanding respect-
ing it Mr. Edwin Chapman thus describes for me. "There was no agree-
ment about Pickwick except a verbal one. Each number was to con-
sist of a sheet and a half, for which we were to pay fifteen guineas;
and we paid him for the first two numbers at once, as he required the
money to go and get married with. We were also to pay more accord-
ing to the sale, and I think Pickwick altogether cost us three thousand
pounds." Adjustment to the sale would have cost four times as much,
and of the actual payments I have myself no note; but, as far ad my
memory serves, they are overstated by Mr. Chapman, My impression
is that, above and beyond the first sum due for each of the twenty
numbers (making no allowance for their extension after the first to
thirty-two pages), sn-' jssive cheques were given, as the work went
steadily on to the c .r.^rmous sale it reached, which brought up the
entire sum received to two thousand five hundred pounds. I had,
however, always pressed so strongly the importance to him of some
share in the copyright, that this at last was conceded in the deed
above-mentioned, though five years were to elapse before the right
should accrue; and it was only yielded as part consideration for a
further agreement entered into at the same date (19 November, 1837)
whereby Dickens engaged to "write a new work the title whereof
shall be determined by him, of a similar character and of the same
extent as the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club," the first
number of which was to be delivered on the fifteenth of the following
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The Life of Charles Dickens

cessive nineteen months; which was also to be the date of the payment
to him, by Messrs, Chapman and Hall, of twenty several sums of one
hundred and fifty pound* each for vve years' use of the copjrright,
the entire ownership in which was then to revert to Dickens. The
name of this new book, as all the world knows, was The Life
and Adventures of Nicholas Nicklehy; and between April 1838 and
October 1839 it was begun and finished accordingly.

All through the interval of these arrangements Oliver Twist had
been steadily continued. Month by month, for many months, it had
run its opening course with the close of Pickwick, as we shall see it
close with the opening of Nicklehy, and the expectations of those who
had built most confidently on the young novelist were more than
COP firmed. Here was the interest of a story simply but well constructed ;
and characters with the same impress of reality upon them, but more
carefully and skilfully drawn. Nothing could be meaner than the sub-
ject, the progress of a parish or workhouse boy, nothing less so than
its treatment. As each number appeared, his readers generally be-
came more and more conscious of v/hat already, as we have seen, had
revealed itself and even the riotous fun of Pickwick, that the purpose
was not solely to amuse; and, far more decisively than its predecessor,
the new story further showed what were the not least potent elements
in the still-increasing popularity that was gathering around the writer.
His qualities could be appreciated as well as felt in an almost equal
degree by all classes of his various readers. Thousands were attracted
to him, because he placed them in the midst of scenes and characters
with which they were already themselves acquainted; and thousands
were reading him with no less avidity because he introduced them to
passages of nature and life of which they before knew nothing, but of
the truth of which their own habits and senses sufficed to assure them.

With such work as this in hand, it will liardly seem surprising that,
as the time for beginning Nicklehy came on, and as he thought of his
promise for November, he should have the sense of "something
hanging over him like a hideous nightmare." He felt that he could not
complete the Barnahy Rudge novel by the November of that year as
promised, and that the engagement he would have to break was un-
fitting him for engagements he might otherwise fulfil. He had under-
taken what in truth was impossible. The labour of at once editing the
Miscellany, and supplying it with monthly portions of Oliver, more
than occupied all the time left him by other labours absolutely neces-
sary. "I no sooner get myself up," he wrote, "high and dry, to
attack Oliver manfully, than up come the waves of each month's
work, and drive me back again into a sea of manuscript." There was
nothing for it but that he should make further appeal to Mr. Bentley.
"I have recently," he wrote to him on 11 February, 1838, "been think-
in pj a great deal about Barnahy Rudge. Grimaldi has occupied so much
of the short interval I had between the completion of the Pickwick
and the commencement of the new work, that I see it will be v.'holly
impossible for me to produce it by the time I had hoped with justice

The Life of Charles Dickens

payment
IS of one
pyright,
jns. The
The Life
838 and

vist had
s, it had
ill see it
lose who
)re than
bructed;
ut more
the sub-
so than
ally be-
2en, had
purpose
lecessor,
lements
e writer.
st equal
ttracted
aracters
ousands
them to
I, but of
re them,
ng that,
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)uld not
year as
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Bentley.
Q think-
io much
Hckwick
! v.'holly
I justice

375

to myself or profit to you. What I wish you to consider is this: would
it not be far more to your interest, as well as within the scope of my
ability, if Barnaby Rudge began in the Miscellany immediately on the
conclusion of Oliver Twist, and were continued there for the same time,
and then published in three volumes.? Take these simple facts into
consideration. If the Miscellany is to keep its ground, it must have
some continuous tale from me when Oliver stops. If I sat down to
Barnaby Rudge, writing a little of it when I could (and with all my
other engagements it would necessarily be a very long time before I
could hope to finish it that way), it would be clearly impossible for
me to begin a new series of papers in the Miscellany. The conduct of
three different stories at the same time, and the production of a large
portion of each, every month, would have been beyond Scott himself.
Whereas, having Barnaby for the Miscellany, we could at once supply
the gap which the cessation of Oliver must create, ard you would have
all the advantage of that prestige in favour of the work which :s
certain to enhance the value of OHver Twist considerably. Just think
of this at your leisure. I am really anxious to do the best I can for you
as well as for myself, and in this case the pecuniary advantage must
be all on your side." This letter nevertheless, which had also re-
quested an overdue account of the sales of the Miscellany, led to
differences which were only adjusted after six months' wrangling;
and I was party to the understanding then arrived at by which, among
other things, Barnaby was placed upon the footing desired, and was
to begm when Oliver closed. . . .

On the 13th, after describing himself "sitting patiently at home
waiting for Oliver Twist, who has not yet arrived," which was his
agreeable form of saying that his fancy had fallen into sluggishness
that morning, he made remark in as pleasant phrase on some piece of
painful news I had sent him, now forgotten. "I have not yet seen the
paper, and you throw me into a fever. The comfort is, that all the
strange and terrible things come uppermost, and that the good and
pleasant things are mixed up with every moment of our existence so
plentifully that we scarcelvheed them." At the close of the month Mrs.
Dickens was well enough o accompany him to Richmond, for now
the time was come to start Nickleby, and having . een away from town
when Pickwick's first number came out, he made it a superstition to
be absent at many future similar times. The magazine day of that
April month, I remember, fell upon a Saturday, and the previous
evening had brought me a peremptory summons: "Meet me at the
Shakespeare on Saturday night at eight; order your horse at midnight,
and ride back with me": which was duly complied with. The smallest
hour was sounding into the night from St. Paul's before we started,
and the night was none of the pleasantest; but we carried news that
lightened every part of the road, for the sale of Nickleby had reached
that day the astonishing number of nearly fifty thousand ! I left him
working with unusual cheerfulness at Oliver Twist when I quitted the
"Star and Garter" on the next day but one, after celebrating with

i
' ■ !

376

The Life of Charles Dickens

both friends on the previous evening an anniversary which con-
cerned us all (their second and my twenty-sixth); and which we kept
always in future at the same place, except when they were living out
of England, for twenty successive years. It was a part of his love
of regularity and order, as well as of his kindliness of nature, to
place such friendly meetings as these under rules of habits and con-
tinuance.

Ill

"OLIVER twist"

1838

The whole of his time not occupied with Nickleby was now given to
Oliver, and as the story shaped itself to its close it took extraordinary
hold of him. I never knew him work so frequently after dinner, or to
such late hours (a practice he afterwards abhorred), as during the
final months of this task; which it was now his hope to complete
before October, though its close in the magazine would not be due
until the following March. "I worked pretty well last night," he
writes, referring to it in May, "verj" well indeed; but although I did
eleven close slips before half-past twelve I have four to write to close
the chapter; and, as I foolishly left them till this morning, havcj the
steam to get up afresh." A month later he writes: "I got to the six-
teenth slip last night, and shall try hard to get to the thirtieth before
I go to bed." Then, on a "Tuesday night" at the opening of August,
he wrote: "Hard at work still. Nancy is no more. I showed what I have
done to Kate last night, who was in an unspeakable 'state'; from which
and my own impression I auger well. When I have sent Sikes to the
devil, I must have yours." "No, no." he wrote, in the following
month: "don't, don't let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed
of the Jew, who is such an out and outer, that I don't know what to
make of him." No small difficulty to an inventor, where the creatures
of his invention are found to be as real as himself; but this also was
mastered; and then there remained but the closing quiet chapter to
tell the fortunes of those who had figured in the tale. To this he sum-
moned me in the first week of September, replying to a request of
mine that he'd give me a call that day. "Come and give me a call, and
let us have 'a bit o' talk' before we have a bit o' som'at else. My
missis is going out to dinner, and I ought to go, but I have got a bad
cold. So do you come, and sit here, and read, or work, or do something,
while I write the last chapter of Oliver, which will be arter a lamb
chop." How well I remember that evening! and our talk of what
should be the fate of Charley Bates, on behalf of whom (as indeed for

The Life of Charles Dickens

Lch con-
we kept
ving out
his love
iture, to
md con-

given to
ordinary
ler, or to
iring the
complete
t be due
ght." he
igh I did
3 to close
havd the
) the six-
th before
f August,
at I have
)m which
:es to the
following
disposed
what to
creatures
also was
lapter to
J he sum-
squest of
call, and
else. My
jot a bad
mething,
!r a lamb
of what
adeed for

377

the Dodger, too) Talfourd had pleaded as earnestly in mitigation of
judgment as ever at the bar for any client he most respected.

The publication had been announced for Octobei, but the third
yolumeillustrationsintercepteditalittle. . . . The completed niver
Twist found a circle of admirers, not so wide in its range as those of
others of his books, but of a character and mark that made their
honest liking for it, and steady advocacy of it, important to his
fame; and the story has held its ground in the first class of his
writings. It deserves that place. ... At the time of which I am
speaking, the debtors' prisons described in Pickwick, the parochial
management denounced in Oliver, and the Yorkshire schools exposed
in Nickleby, were all actual existences; which now have no vivider
existence than in the forms he thus gave to them. With wiser
purposes, he superseded the old petrifying process of the magician
in the Arabian tale, and struck the prisons and parish practices of
his country, and its schools of neglect and crime, into palpable life
for ever. A portion of the truth of the past, of the character and
very history of the moral abuses of his time, will thus remain al-
ways in his writings; and it will be rciiiembered that with only the
light arms of humour and laughter, and the gentle ones of pathos
and sadness, he carried cleansing and reform into those Augean
:; ibles. . . .

And now, while Oliver was running a great career of popularity and
success, the shadow of the tale of Bamahy Rudge, which he was to
write on similar terms and to begin in the Miscellany when the other
should have ended, began to darken everything around him. We had
much discussion respecting it, and I had no small difficulty in re-
straining him from throwing up the agreement altogether; but the
real hardship of his position, and the considerate construction to be
placed on every effort made by him to escape from obligations in-
curred in ignorance of the sacrifices implied by them, will be best
understood from his own frank statement. On 21 January, 1839,
enclosing me the copy of a letter which he proposed to send to Mr!
Bentley the following morning, he thus %vrote: "From what I have
already said to you, you will have been led to expect that I enter-
tained some such intention. I know you will not endeavour to dis-
suade me from sending it. Go it must. It is no fiction to say that at
present I cannot write this tale. The immense profits which Oliver
has realised to its publisher, and is still realisinqf, the paltry, wretched,
miserable sum it brought to me (not equal to what is every day paid
for a novel that sells fifteen hundred copies at most); the recollection
of this, and the consciousness that I have still the slavery and drud-
gery of another work on the same journeyman-terms; the conscious-
ness that my books are enriching everybody connected with them but
myself, and that I, with such a popularity as I have acquired, am
struggling in old toils, and wasting my energies in the very height and
freshness of my fame, and the best part of my life, to fill the pockets
of others, while for those who are nearest and dearest to me I can

•

'ja

•f 1

«■■

378

The Life of Charles Dickens

realise little more than a genteel subsistence: all this puts me out of
heart and spirits: and I cannot— cannot and will not — under such
circumstances that keep me down with an iron hand, distress myself
by beginning this tale until I have had time to breathe; and until the
intervention, shall have restored me to a more genial and composed
state of feeling. There — for six months Batnaby Rudge stands ovfer.
And but for you, it should stand over altogether. For I do most
solemnly declare that morally, before God and man, I hold myself
released from such hard bargains as these, after I have done so much
for those who drove them. This net that has been wound about me so
chafes me, so exasperates and irritates my mind, that to break it at
whatever cost — that I should care nothing for — is my constant im-
pulse. But I have not yielded to it. I merely declare that I must have
a postponement very common in all literary agreements; and for the
time I have mentioned — six months from the conclusion of Oliver
in the Miscellany — I wash my hands of any fresh accumulation of
labour, and resolve to proceed as cheerfully as I can with that which
already presses upon me."

To describe what followed upon this is not necessary. It will
suffice to state the results. Upon the appearance in the Miscellany, in
the early months of i8 19, of the last portion of Oliver Twist, its author,
having been relieved altogether from his engagement to the mag-
azine, handed over, in a familiar epistle from a parent to his child,
the editorship to Mr. Ainsworth; and the still subsisting agreement
to write Barnaby Rudge was, upon the overture of Mr. Bentley
himself, in June of the following year, 1840, also put an end to, on
payment by Dickens, for the copyright of Oliver Twist and such
printed stock as remained of the edition then on hand, of two
thousand two hundred and fifty pounds. What was further incident
to this transaction will be told hereafter; and a few words may mean-
while be taken, not without significance in regard to it, from the
parent's familiar epistle. It describes the child as aged two years and
two months (so :>ng had he watched over it); gives sundry pieces
of advice conceniing its circulation, and the importance thereto of
light and pleasant articles of food; and concludes, after some general
moralising on the shiftings and changes of this world having taken
so wonderful a turn that mail-coach guards were become no longer
judges of horse-flesh: "I reap no gain or profit by parting from you,
nor will any conveyance of your property be required, for in this
respect you have always been literally Bentley's Miscellany and
never mine,"

ne out of
ider such
ss myself

until the
composed
nds ovfer.

do most
Id myself
! so much
)ut me so
reak it at
jtant im-
lust have
id for the
of Oliver
ilation of
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r. It will
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incident
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ry pieces
bereto of
e general
ng taken
lo longer
rom you,
T in this
lany and

The Life of Charles Dickens

"NICHOLAS NICKLEBY'*

1838 and 1839

I WELL recollect the doubt there was, mixed with the eager expec-
tation which the announcement of his second serial story had
awakened, whether the event would justify all that interest; and if
indeed it were possible that the young writer could continue to walk
steadily under the burthen of tne popularity laid upon him. The first
number dispersed this cloud of a question in a burst of sunshine; and
as much of the gaiety of nations as had been eclipsed by old Mr
Pickwick's voluntary exile to Dulwich was restored by the cheerful
confidence with which young Mr. Nicholas Nickleby stepped into his
shoes. Everything that had given charm to the first book was here,
with more attention to the important requisite of a story, and more
wealth as well as truth of character. . . .

Who that recoll^^cts the numbers of Nickleby as they appeared can
have forgotten how each number added to the general enjoyment?
All that had given Pickwick its vast popularity, the overflowing
mirth, hearty exuberance of humour, and genial kindliness of satire
had here the advantage of a better-laid design, more connected
incidents, and greater precision of character. Everybody seemed
immediately to know the Nickleby family as well as his own Dothe-
boys, with all that rendered it, like a piece by Hogarth, both luc
crous and terrible, became a household word. Successive groups of
Mantalinis, Kenwigses, Crummleses, introduced each to its little
world of reality, lighted up everywhere with truth and life, with
capital observation, the quaintest drollery, and quite boundless
mirth and fun. The brothers Cheeryble brought with them all the
charities. With Smike came the first of those pathetic pictures that
filled the world with pity for what cruelty, ignorance or neglect may
inflict upon the young. And Newman Noggs ushered in that class of
the creatures of his fancy in which he took himself perhaps the most
delight, and which the oftener he dealt with the more he seemed to
know how to vary and render attractive;, gentlemen by nature
however shocking bad their hats or ungenteel their dialects; philoso-
phers of modest endurance, and needy but most respectable coats-
a sort of humble angels of sympathy and self-denial, though without
a particle of splendour or even good looks about them, except what
an eye as fine as their own feelings might discern. "My friends "
wrote Sydney Smith, describing to Dickens the anxiety of some
ladies of his acquaintance to meet him at dinner, "have not the
smallest objection to be put into a number, but on the contrary

38o

The Life of Charles Dickens

would be proud of the distinction; and Lady Char lotte, in particular,
you may marry to Newman Noggs." Lady Charlotte was not a more
real person to Sydney than Newman Noggs; and all the world whom
Dickens attracted to his books could draw from them the same
advantage as the man of wit and genius. It has been lately objected
that humanity is not seen in them in its highest or noblest types, and
the assertion may hereafter be worth considering; bat what is very
certain, is that they have inculcated humanity in familiar and
engaging forms to thousands and tens of thousands of their readers,
who can hardly have failed each to make his little world around
him somewhat the better for their teaching. From first to last they
were never for a moment alien to either the sympathies or the under-
standings of any class; and there were crowds of people at this time
that could have not told you what imagination meant, who were
adding month by month to their limited stores the boundless gains of
imagination, . . .

Of such notices as his letters give of his progress with Nickleby,
which occupied him from February 1838 to October 1839, something
may now be said. Soon after the agreement for it was signed, before
the Christmas of 1837 was over, he went down into Yorkshire with
Mr. Hablot Browne to look up the Cheap Schools in that county to
which public attention had been painfully drawn by a law case in the
previous year; which had before been notorious for cruelties com-
mitted in them, whereof he had heard as early as in his childish
days; and which he was bent upon destroying if he could. I soon
heard the result of his journey; and the substance of that letter,
returned to him for the purpose, is in his preface to the story written
for the collected edition. He came back confirmed in his design, and
in February set to work upon his first chapter. On his birthday he
wrote to me. "I have begun 1 I wrote four slips last night, so you see
the beginning is made. And what is more, I can go on: so I hope the
book is in training at last." "The first chapter of Nicholas is done,"
he wrote two days later. "It took time, but I think answers the
purpose as well as it could." Then, after a dozen days more: "I wrote
twenty slips of Nicholas yesterday, left only four to do this morning
(up at 8 o'clock, too!), and have ordered my horse at one." I joined
him as he expected, and we read together at dinner that day the
first number of Nicholas Nickleby.

In the following number there was a difficulty which it was
marvellous should not have occurred to him in this form of publica-
tion. "I could not write a line till three o'clock," he says, describing
the close of that number, "and have yet five slips to finish, and don't
know what to put in them, for I have reached the point I meant to
leave off with." He found easy remedy for such a miscalculation at
his outset, and it was nearly his last as well as first misadventure of
the kind: his constant difficulty in Pickwick, as he said repeatedly,
having been not the running short but the running over: not the
whip but the drag that v/as wanted. Sufflaminandus erat, as Ben

irticular,
)t a more
Id whom
he same
objected
-^pes, and
t is very-
liar and
readers,
I around
ast they
le under-
;his time
ho were
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mething
3, before
lire with
junty to
se in the
ies com-
childish
. I soon
,t letter,
• written
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hday he
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'I wrote
morning
I joined
day the

it was
publica-
scribing
id don't
leant to
ation at
nture of
eatedly,
not the
as Ben

The Life of Charles Dickens

Jonson said of Shakespeare. And in future works, with such
marvellous nicety could he do always what he had planned, strictly
within the space available, that I can only remember two other
similar instances. The third number introduced the school; and "I
remain dissatisfied until you have seen and read number three," was
his way of announcing to me his o'-n satisfaction with that first
handling of Dotheboys Hall. Nor had it the least part in my admira-
tion of his powers at this time, that he never wrote without the
printer at his heels; that, always in his latest works two or three
numbers in advance, he was never a single number in advance with
this story; that the more urgent the call upon him the more readily
he rose to it; and that his astonishing animal spirits never failed him.
As late as the 20th in the November month of 1838, he thus wrote to
me: "I have just begun my second chapter; cannot go out to-night;
must get on; think there will be a Nickleby at the end of this month
now (I doubted it before); and want to make a start towards it if I
possibly can." That was on Tuesday; and on Friday morning in the
same week, explaining the sudden failure of something that had been
promised the previous day, he says: "I was writing incessantly until
it was time to dress; and have not yet got the subject of my last
chapter, which must be finished to-night."

But this was not all. Between that Tuesday and Friday an
indecent assault had been committed on his book by a theatrical
adapter named Stirling, who seized upon it without leave while yet
only a third of it was written; hacked, cut and garbled its dialogue to
the shape of one or two favourite actors; invented for it a plot and an
ending of his own, and produced it at the Adelphi; where the outraged
author, hard pressed as he was with an unfinished number, had seen
it in the interval between the two letters I have quoted. He would
not have run such a risk in later years, but he threw ofi lightly at
present even such offences to his art; and though I was with him at a
representation of his Oliver Twist the following month at the Surrey
Theatre, when in the middle of the first scene he laid himself down
upon the floor in a corner of the box and never rose from it until the
drop-scene fell, he had been able to sit through Nickleby, and to see
a merit in parts of the representation. Mr. Yates had a sufficiently
humorous meaning in his wildest extravagance, and Mr. O. Smith
could put into his queer angular oddities enough of a han! dry pathos
to conjure up shadows at least of Mantalini and Newman Noggs; of
Ralph Nickleby there was only a wig, a spencer and a pair of boots,
but a quaint actor named Wilkinson proved equal to the drollery^
though not to the fierce brutality of Squeers; and even Dickens, in
the letter that amazed me by telling me of his visit to the theatre,
was able to praise "the skilful management and dressing of the boys]
the capital manner and speech of Fanny Squeers, the dramatic
representation of her card-party in Squeers's parlour, the careful
making-up of all the people, and the exceedingly good tableaux
formed from Brovme's sketches. . . . Mrs. Keeley's first appearance

:^ m

382

The Life of Charles Dickens

beside the fire (see woUum), and all the rest of Smike, was excellent;
bating sundry choice sentiments and rubbish regarding the little
rol'ns in the fields which have been put in the boy's mouth by Mr.
Sti. .ng the adapter." His toleration could hardly be extended to the
robins, and their author he properly punished by introducing and
denouncing him at Mr. Crummles's farewell sapper. . . .

The close of the story was written at Broadstairs, from which (he
had taken a house "two doors from the Albion Hotel, where we had
that merry night two years ago") he wrote to me on 9 September,
1839. "I am hard at it, but these windings-up wind slowly, and I
shall think I have done great things if I have entirely finished by the
2oth. Chapman and Hall came down yesterday with Browne's
sketches, and dined here. They imparted their intentions as to a
Nicklebeian fdte which will make you laugh heartily — so I reserve
them till you come. It has been blowing great guns for the last three
days, and last night (I wish you could have seen it !) there was such a
sea! I staggered down to the pier and, creeping under the lee of a
large boat which was high and dry, watched it breaking for nearly an
hour. Of course I came back wet through." On the afternoon of
Wednesday the i8th he wrote again. "I shall not finish entirely
before Friday, sending Hicks the last twenty pages of manuscript by
the night coach. I have had pretty stiff work as you may suppose, and
I have taken ,great pains. The discovery is made, Ralph is dead, the
loves have come all right, Tim Linkinwater has proposed, and I have
now only to break up Dotheboys and the book together. I am very
anxious that you should see this conclusion before it leaves my hands,
and I plainly see therefore that I must come to town myself on
Saturday if I would not endanger the appearance of the number. So I
have written to Hicks to send proofs to your chambers as soon as
he can that evening; and if you doi:'t object I will dine with you any
time after five, and we will devote the night to a careful reading. I
have not written to Macready, for they have not yet sent me the
title-page of dedication, which is merely To W. C. Macready Esq. the
following pages are inscribed, as a slight token of admiration and
regard, by his friend the Author.' Meanwhile will you let him know
that I have fixed the Nickleby dinner 'for Saturday, the 5th of
October. Place, the Albion in Aldersgate Street. Time, six for half-
past exactly. ... I shall be more glad than I can tell you to see
you again, and I look forward to Saturday, and the evenings that
are to follow it, with the most joyful anticipation. I have had a good
notion for Barnaby, of which more anon."

The shadow from the old quarter, we see, the unwritten Barnaby
tale, intrudes itself still; though hardly, as of old, making other
pleasanter anticipations less joyful. Such indeed at this time was his
buoyancy of spirit that it cost him little, compared with the suffering
it gave him at subsequent similar times, to separate from the people
who for twenty months had been a part of himself, . . .

excellent;
the little
th by Mr.
led to the
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re we had
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nd I have

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ition and
dm know
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for half-
ou to see
ings that
id a good

Barnahy
ing other
le was his

suffering
he people

The Life of Charles Dickens

DURING AND AFTER "nICKLEBY

1838 and 1839

The name of his old gallery companion may carry me back from the
days to which .he close of Nichleby had led me, to those \ aen it was
only beginning. "This snow will take away the cold weather " he had
written, in that birthday-letter of 1838 already quoted, "and then
for Twickenham." Here a cottage was taken, nearly all the summer
was passed, and a familiar face there was Mr. Beard's. There too. with
Talfourd and with Thackeray and Jerrold, we had many friendly
days; and the social charm of Maclise was seldom wanting. Nor was
there anything that exercised a greater fascination over Dickens than
the grand enjoyment of idleness, the ready self-abandonment to the
luxury of laziness, which we both so laughed at in Maclise, under
whose easy swing of indifference, always the most amusing at the
most aggravating events and times, we knew that there was
artist-work as eager, energy as unwearying, and observation almost
as penetrating as Dickens's own. A greater enjoyment than the
fellowship of Maclise at this period it would indeed be difficult to
imagine. Dickens hardly saw more than he did, while yet he seemed
to be seeing nothing; and the small esteem in which this rare
faculty was held by himself, a quaint odditv thr
shrewdness itself an air of Irish simplicity
for literature, and a varied knowledge of bt
with such intense love and such unweariv
and absorbing art, combined to render him .
common. His fine genius and his handsomv

which at any time he seemed himself to be in tuu -..„ .. ^^^.^^

conscious, completed the charm. Edwin Landseer, all the world's
favourite, and the excellent Stanfield, came a few months later, in
the Devonshire Terrace days; but another painter-friend was George
Cattermole, who had then enough and to spare of fun as well as
fancy to supply ordinary artists and humorists by the dozen, and
wanted only a little more ballast a^d steadiness to possess all that
could give attraction to good-fellowship. A friend now especially
welcome, also, was the novelist, Mr. Ainsworth. who shared with us
incessantly for the three following years in the companionship which
began at his house; with whom we visited, during two of those years,
friends of art and letters in his native Manchester, from among
whom Dickens brought away his Brothers Chee^yble. and to whose
sympathy in tastes and pursuits, accomplishments in literature,
open-hearted generous wa^s, and cordial hospitality, many of cba

in him gave to

uestionable turn

•ays connected

* one special

beyond the

f neither of

-xjjiitest degree

384

The Life of Charles Dickens

Sfter nfit ''Jlf^' ^'^'f T'.^. ^"*'- Pred^"ck Dickens, to whom soon
after tins a treasury-clerkship was handsomely giver, r: Dickens's

tFFlTT-^^ ^'- ^^"'^y "^ ^"'^^^'^y- J^""^" •" and before those
Manchester days, was for the present again living with his father but

passed much time in his brother's home; and anothci Smillr f^ce
was that of Mr. Thomas Mitton. who had known him when himself a
IZ'rlT.^- *" ^T^°i":« I""' through whom there was introduction of

^nL.rf!r%K^v ^7^u^ ^"^ P^^'"^^' ^'- Smithson. the gentleman
connected with YorkGhire. mentioned in his preface to Nickleby who
became very mtimate in his house. These, his father and mother anS
their two younger sons, with members of his wife's family, and his
married sisters and their husbands. Mr. and Mrs. Burnett and Mr
?nfi ";>, .k'*T' ""'^/tS^'^^ that all associate themselves promin^
har^i^anH P^' ^u^' °* ^^"^^^^ ^^'''^ ^"^ *^« ^«ttages of Twicken-
and 183^ ^*''"^™ ^' remembered by me in the summers of 1838

In the former of these years the spoi ts were necessarily quieter than
nih w " ' J^.^^""*" r*^"'^^^ garden-grounds admitted of much
ainir f ^^'fPt^t^^"'. f^-" the more difficult forms of which I in
general modestly retired, but where Dickens for the most part held
R^rrS^^'f * ^"'^^ such accomplished athleties as Maclise and Mr.
±ieard Bar-leaping, bowling and quoits were among the games
carried on with th. greatest ardour; and in custaineJenfrgy^^^^^
IS called keeping it up. Dickens certainly distanced every competitor
Even the lighter recreations of battledore and bagatelle were pursued

ratslnU're^;'^"^*^^^^ ^? ^ ^^^ amusements as the Pefersham
whn!'/i? ^ ! ?r '"^^^^'^ celebrated, and which he visited daily

horses dfd^ ' ^"""^""^ '^'"'^ ^^'^'^ ^^™^"^^ *^^^ the running

What else his letters of these years enable me to recall that could

possess any mterest now rnay be told in a dozen sentences. He wrote

a farce by way of helping the Covent Garden manager which the

ttoZV.Z^?^'?^'lr^r'' ^"^ ^^^^^ ^' *"^"^d aftfrwaTds' nto a
?£T.^ ^ ^^' /-.am/,/^^;,/,^. He re-^.d the piece at the theatre, before

H^lrtT ^*';i?^-"^a?agt^ to whom he had written to request a very
different audience in the same green-room a few years before- and
Dickens could not but fancy that into Mr. Bartley's face as he
listened to the humorous reading, there crept some strTnge^wildered
half-consciousness that in the famous writer he saw agahi S^youth

nr ofTe'Midd I't"' T'ti'^ ^^\^""^^ ^"^^^^ ^^^ Ldents^t the
mL^ Middle Temple, though he did not eat dinners there until
many years later. We made together a circuit of nearly all the London
prisons; and m coming to ae prisoners under remLd while going
w7re ^iTJuA'"'''''''^^.^!'^'^ ^y Macready and Mr. Hablot Browne

wXh?f^Tnl7 K rvf"^^"" ?^P^ ""^y ^^ "My <^°^' there's Wrine^
Tni hL the shabby-genteel creature, with sandy distorted hair

SIre^t^,r."n^S'n ' T^° -^^ ^^"'^^ ^"^"^^y ^^^^d ^ith a defiant
stare ut our entrance, looKmg at once mean and fierce, and quite

whom soon
on Dickens's
before those
is father, but
familiar lace
fien himself a
troduction of
kc gentleman
Hckleby, who

1 mother and
nily, and his
lett and Mr.
Ives promin-

of Twicken-
ners of 1838

quieter than
ted of much
' which I in
>st part held
:lise and Mr.
the games
rgy, or what
competitor.
reie pursued
; Petersham
'Isited daily
the running

1 that could
!S. He wrote
r which the
vards into a
atre, before
uest a very
before; and
face, as he
i bewildered

the youth-
lents at the

there until
the London
while going
ot Browne,
e's Wt ine-
torted hair
h a defiant

and quite

The Life of Charles Dickens

36«;

capable of the cowardly murders he had committed, Macready ;.
been horri^ed to recognise a man familiarly known to him in fr mer
years, and at whose table he haJ dined. . . . The closhig months
of this year o* 1839 had special interest for him. At the end of
October another daught-jr was born to him. who bears the name of
that dear friend of hi3 and mine, Macready, whom he asked to be her
godfather; and before the close of the year he had moved out of
Doughty Street into Devonshire Terrace, a liandsome house with a
garden of considerable size, shut out from the New Road by a high
bnck-wall facing the York gate into Regent's Park. These various
matters, and his attempts at the Barnaby novel on the conclusion of
Nicklehy. are the subj'-cts of his letters between October and Decem-
ber.

"Thank God. all goes famously. I have worked at Barnaby all day.
and moreover seen a beautiful (and reasonable) house in Kent
Terrace, where Macready once lived, but larger than his." Aga>u
(this having gone off): "Barnaby has suffered 30 much from the
house-hunting, that I mus*-n't chop to-day." Then (for the matter of
vhe Middle Temple) "I return the form. It's the right Temple. I take
for granted. Barnaby mov^s, not at race-horse speed, but -..': as fast
(I think) as under these unsettled circumstances could ( :,3ibly be
expected." Or again: 'All well. Barnaby has reached his tenth page.
I have just turned lazy, and have passed into Christabel. and thence
to Wallens/em:' At last the choice was made. "A house of great
proiiiise (and great premium), 'undeniable' situation and excessive
splendour, is in view. Mitton is in tre- y, and I am in ecstatic rest-
lessness. Kate wants to know whether you have any books to send
her, so please to shoot here any literary rubbish on hand." To these I
will only add a couple of extracts from his letters while in Exeter
arranging his father's and mother's new home. They are pleasantly
written; and the vividness with which everything, once seen, was
photographed in his mind and memory, is humoroubly shown in
them.

"I took a little house for them this morning "(5 March, 1839: from
the New London Inn), "and if they are not pleased with it I shall be
grievcisly disappointed. Exactly a mile beyond the city on the
Plymouth road there are two white cottages: one is theirs and the
other belongs to their landlady. I almost forget the number of rooms;
but there is jan excellent parlour with two other rooms on the ground
floor, there is really a beautiful little room over the parlour which I
ani furnishing as a drawing-room, and there is a splendid garden. The
paint and paper throughout are new and fresh and cheerful-looking,
the place is clean beyond all description, and the neighbourhood
I suppose the most beautiful in this most beautiful of English
counties. Of the landlady, a Devonshire widow with whom I had the
honour of taking lunch to-day, I must make most especial mention.
She is a fat, infirm, splendidly fresh-faced country dame, rising
sixty and recovering from an attack 'on the nerves' — I thought they

331

1^1

P, m

Yt'

386

The Life of Charles Dickens

never went off the stones, but I find they try country air with the
best of us. In the event of my mother's being ill at any time, I really
think the vicinity of this good dame, the very picture of respectability
and good humour, will be the greatest possible comfort. Her furniture
and do:-.estic arrangements are a capital picture, but that I reserve
till I see you, when I anticipate a hearty laugh. She bears the highest
character with the bankers and the clergyman (who formerly lived
in my cottage himself), and is a kind-hearted worthy capital specimen
of the sort of life, or I have no eye for the real and no idea of finding it
out.

"This good lady's brother and his wife live in the next nearest cot-
tage, and the brother transacts the good lady's business, the nerves not
admitting of her transacting it herself, although they leave her in her
debilitated state something sharper than the finest lancet. Now the
brother, having coughed all night till he coughed himself into such a
perspiration that you might have 'wringed his hair,' according to the
asseveration of eye-witnesses, his wife was sent for to negotiate with
me; and if you could have seen me sitting in the kitchen with the two
old women, endeavouring to make them comprehend that I had no
evil intentions or covert designs, and that I had come down all that way
to take some cottage and had happened to walk down that road and
see that particular one, you would never have forgotten it. Then, to
see the servant-girl run backwards anji forwards to the sick man,
and when the sick man had signed one agreement which I drew up
and the old woman in^itantly put away in a disused tea-caddy, to see
the trouble and the number of messages it took before the sick man
could be brought to sign another (a duplicate) that we might have
one apiece, was one of the richest scraps of genuine drollery I ever
saw in all my days. How, when the business was over, we became
conversational: how I was facetious, and at the same time virtuous
and domestic; how I drank toasts in the beer, and stated on interro-
gatory that I was a married man and the f.-.ther of two blessed infants;
how the ladies marvelled thereat; how one of the ladies, having been
in London, inquired where I lived, and, being told, remembered that
Doughty Street and the Foundling Hospital were in the Old Kent
Road, which I didn't contradict—all this and a great deal more must
make us laugh when I return, as it makes me laugh now to think of.
Of my subsequent visit to the upholsterer recommended by the land-
lady; of the absence of the upholsterer's wife, and the timidity of the
upholsterer fearful of acting in her absence; of my sitting behind a
high desk in a little dark shop, calling over the articles in requisition
and checking off the prices as the upholsterer exhibited the goods and
called them out; of my coming over the upholsterer's daughter, with
many virtuous endearments, to propitiate the establishment and
reduce the bill; of these matters I say nothing, either, for the same
reason as that just r^entioned. The discovery of the cottage I seriously
regard as a blessing (not to speak it profanely) upon our efforts in this
cause. I had heard nothing from the bank, and walked straight there.

The Life of Charles Dickens

387

by some strange impulse, directly after breakfast. I am sure thev
may be happy there; for if I were older, and my course of activity were
run. I am sure / could, with God's blessing, for many and many a
year. ... •'

"The theatre is open here, and Charles Kean is to-night playing for
hi. last mght. If It had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gJne^but
I was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me. so I stay! d away
My quarters are excellent and the head waiter is such\ waiter'
Knowles (not Sheridan Knowles. but Knowles of the Cheetham
Hill Road) is an ass to him. This sounds bold, but truth is stranger
than fiction. By the by. not the least comical thing that has occurred
was the visit ot the upholsterer (with some further calculations)
smce I began this letter. I think they took me here at the Iscw-
i;?H rf "i°'' the Wonderful Being I am; they were amazingly sedulous;
and no doubt they looked for my being visited by the nobility and
gentry of the neighbourhood. My first and only visitor came to-nirht-
A ruddy-faced man m faded black, with extracts from a feather-bed
all over him; an extraordinary and quite miraculously dkty face- a
thick stick; and the personal appearance altogether of an amiable
baihflE m a green old age. I have not seen the proper waiter since, and
more than suspect I shall not recover this blow. He was announced
[hy the waiter) as a person.' I expect my bill every minute.
.V,- ^^!^^'?*^/^ 1? laughing outside the door with another wkiter—
this IS the latest intelligence of my condition."

NEW LITERARY PROJECT
1839

The time was now come for him seriously to busy himself with a
successor to Pickwick and Nicklehy, which he had not. however
v^ /A ' long before turning over thoroughly in his mind!
^licklebys success had so far outgone even the expectation raised by
P^ckwtcks that, without some handsome practical admission of this
fact at the close, its publishers could hardly hope to retain him. This
had been frequently discussed by us. and was well understood But

2f ?Tu* Sr!*'""^ ?* ''^^ resuming with them at all. he had
persuaded himself it might be unsafe to resume in the old way
believing the public likely to tire of the same twenty numbers over
again Ihere was also another and more sufficient reason for change

which naturally had ereat wpi^hf wifh )iir«. ^^a 4.1,: xi. _ , ^ '

that, by invention of a new mode as well as kind of serial publication
he might be able for a time to discontinue the writing of a long story

.! ■ll

S i

588

The Life of Charles Dickens

with all its strain on his fancy, or in any case to shorten and vary the
length of the stories written by himself, and perhaps ultimately to
retain all the profits of a continuous publication, without necessarily
himself contributing every line that was to be written for it. These
considerations had been discussed still more anxiously; and for several
months some such project had been taking form in his thoughts.

While he was at Petersham (July 1839) he thus wrote to me: "I
have been thinking that subject over. Indeed I have been doing so to
the great stoppage of Nickleby and the great worrying and fidgetting
of myself. I have been thinking that if Chapman and Hall were to
admit you into their confidence with respect to what they mean to do
at the conclusion of Nickleby, without admitting me, it would help
us very much. You know that I am well-disposed towards them, and
that if they do something handsome, even handsomer perhaps than
they dreamt of doing, they will find it their interest, and will find me
tractable. You know also that I have had straightforward offers from
responsible men to publish anything for me at a percentage on the
profits, and take all the risk, but that I am unwilling to leave them,
and have declared to you th^t if they behave with liberality to me I
will not on any consideration, although to a certain extent I certainly
and surely must gain by it. Knowing all this, I feel sure that if you
were to put before them the glories of our new project, and, reminding
them that when Barnaby is published I am clear of all engagements,
were to tell them that, if they wish to secure me and perpetuate our
connection, now is the time for them to step gallantly forward and
make such proposals as will produce that result — I feel quite sure
that if this should be done by you, as you only can do it, the result will
be of the most vital importance to me and mine, and that a great deal
may be effected, thus, to recompense your friend for very, small
profits and very large work as yet. I shall see you, please God, on
Tuesday night; and if they wait upon you on Wednesday, I shall re-
main in town until that evening."

They came; and the tenor of the interview was so favourable that I
wished him to put in writing what from time to time had been discussed
in connection with the new project. This led to the very interesting
letter I shall now quote, written also in the same month from Peter-
sham. I did not remember, until I lately read it, that the notion of a
possible visit to America had been in his thoughts so early.

"1 should be willing to commence on the thirty-first of March,
1 840, a new publication consisting entirely of original matter, of which
one number price threepence should be published every week, and of
which a certain amount of numbers should form a volume, to be
published at regular intervals. The best general idea of the plan of the
work might be given perhaps by reference to The Taller, The Spectator,
and Goldsmith's Bee, but it would be far more popular both in the
subjects of which it treats and its mode of treating them.

"I should propose to start, as The Spectator does, with some pleas-
antfiction relative to theorigin of the publication; to introduce sJitXle

id vary the
timately to
necessarily
)r it. These
[ for several
ughts.
! to me: "I
doing so to
1 fidgetting
all were to
mean to do
»vould help

them, and
rhaps than
v^ill find me
offers from
:age on the
save them,
ity to me I
I certainly
that if you

reminding
jagements,
)etuate our
•rward and

quite sure
; result will
L great deal
v^ery. small
se God, on

I shall re-
able that I
n discussed
interesting
rom Peter-
notion of a

of March,
jr, of which
sek, and of
ime, to be
plan of the
e Spectator,
►oth in the

lome pleas-
iuceeJittle

The Life of Charles Dickens

389

dub or knot of characters and to carry their personal histories and
proceedings through the work; to introduce fresh characters con-
stantly; to reintroduce Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, the latter of
whom might furnish an occasional communication with great effect-
to write amusmg essays on the various foibles of the day as thev arise-
to take advantage of all passing events; and to vary the form of the
papers by throwmg them into sketches, essays, tales, adventures
letters froni imaginary correspondents and so forth, so as to diversify
the contents as much as possible. vcxsiiy

' In addition to this general design, I may add that under part ular
heads I should strive to establish certain features in the work which
the whole ^"^ ""^"^ ''^'"^ "^^ interest and amusement running through
"The heads of th« terms upon which I should be prepared co go
mto the underirakinf, ould be-That I be made a proprietor in the
work and a sharer m the profits. That when I bind myself to write
a certain portion of every number, I am ensured, for that writing in
every number a certain sum of money. That those who assist me and
contribute the remainder of every number, shall be paid by the oub-
hshers immediately after its appearance, according to a scale to be
calculated and agreed upon, on presenting my order for the amount to
•li?. i!^ ""^^ ^1 respectively entitled. Or, if the publishers prefer
It, that they agree to pay me a certain sum for the whole of every num-
ber, and leave me to make such arrangements for that part which I
may not write, as I think best. Of course I should require that for
these payments, or any other outlay connected with the vvork I am not
held accountable in any way; and that no portion of them is to be
considered as received by me on account of the profits. I need not add
that some arrangement would have to be made, if I undertake my
1 ravels, relative to the expenses of travelling. ^

**Now I want our publishing friends to take these things into con-
sideration, and to give me the views and proposals they would be dis-
posed to entertain when they have maturely considered the matter "

An on/r "" ,''i..*^^'^''''"i'^f ^^^^'^ "^^^ °^ *^^ ^hole satisfactory.
An additional fifteen hundred pounds was to be paid at the close oi
h.ickxby, the new adventure was to be undertaken, and Cattermole
was to be joined with Browne as its illustrator. Nor was its plan much
modified be. ore starting, though itwas felt byus all that,for the ooen-
ing nunibers at least, Dickens would have to be sole contributor-
n?i ^ ; '^^^*^^^^ otherwise might be its attraction, or the success
ot the detached papers proposed by nim, some reinforcement of them
from time to time, by means of a story with his name continued
at reasonable if not regular intervals, would be found absolutely

Six weeks before signature of the agreement, while a title was still
undetcrmmed, I had this letter from him. -T will dine with you I
intended to spend the evening in strict meditation (as I did last nightV
but perhaps I had better go out, lest all work and no play should make

^ ) \

s f

390

The Life of Charles Dickens

me a dull boy. / have a list of titles too, but the final title I have de-
termined on — or something very near it. I have a notion of this old
file in the queer house, opening the book by an account of himself, and,
among other peculiarities, of his affection for an old quaint queer-
cased clock; showing how that when they have sat alone together in
the long evenings, he has got accustomed to its voice, and come to
consider it as the voice of a friend; how its striking, in the night,
has seemed like an assurance to him that it was still a cheerful watcher
at his chamber-door; and how its very face has seemed to have some-
thing of welcome in its dusty features, and to relax from its grimness
when he has looked at it from his chimney-corner. Then I mean to tell
how that he has kept odd manuscripts in the old, deep, dark, silent
closet where the weights are; and taken them from thence to read
(mixing up his enjoyments with some notion of his clock); and how,
when the club came to be formed, they, by reason of their punctuality
and his regard for his dumb servant, took their name from it. And
thus I shall call the book either Old Humphrey's Clock; or Master
Humphrey's Clock; beginning with a woodcut of old Humphrey and
his clock, and explaining the why and wherefore. All Humphrey's
own papers will then be dated From my clockside, and I have divers
thoughts about the best means of introducing the others. I thought
about this all day yesterday and all last night till I went to bed. I am
sure I can make a good thing of this opening, which I have thoroughly
warmed up to in consequence . "

A few days later: "I incline more to Master Humphrey's Clock than
Old Humphrey's — if so be that there is no danger of the Pensive con-
founding master with a boy." After twodavs more: "I was thinking
all yesterday, and have begun at Master Humphrey to-day." Then,
a week later: "I have finished the first number, but have not been
able to do more in the space than lead up to the Giants, who are just
on the scene."

VII

"old curiosity shop'*

1840 and 1841

A DAY or two after the date of the last letter quoted, Dickens and his
wife, with Maclise and myself, visited Landor in Bath, and it was
during three happy days passed together there that the fancy which
was shortly to take the form of little Nell first occurred to its author.
But as yet with the intention only of making out of it a tale of a few
chapters. On i March we returned from Bath; and on the 4th I had
this letter: "If you can manage to give me a call in the course of the

i !,•-

ave some-

The Life of Charles Dickens 391

day or evening, 1 wish you would. I am laboriously turning over in my
mmd how I can best effect the improvement we spoke of last night
which I will certainly make by hook or by crook, and which I would
like you to see before it goes finally to the printer's. I have determined
not to put that witch-story into number 3. for I am by no means
satisfied of the effect of its contrast with Humphrey. I think of
lengthening Humphrey, finishing the description of the society and
closing with the little child-story, which is sure to be effective
especially after the old man's quiet way." Then there came hard
upon this: "What do you think of the following double title for the
beginning of that little tale? 'Personal Adventures of Master
Humphrey: The Old Curiosity Shop: I have thought of Master
Humphrey's Tale, Master Humphrey's Narrative, A Passage in Master
Humphrey's Life—hut I don't think any does as well as this. I have
also thought of The Old Curiosity Dealer and the Child instead of
I he Old Curiosity Shop. Perpend. Topping waits."— And thus was
taking gradual form, with less direct consciousness of design on his
own part than I can remember in any other instance throughout his
career, a story which was to add largely to his popularity, more than
any other of his works to make the bond between himself and his
readers one of personal attachment, and very widely to increase the
sense of personal attachment, and very widely to increase the sense
entertained of his powers as a pathetic as well as humorous writer

He had not written more than two or three chapters, when the
capability of the subject for more extended treatment than he
had at first proposed to give to it pressed itself upon him and he
resolved to throw everything else aside, devoting himself to the one
story only. There were other strong reasons for this. Of the first
number of the Clock nearly seventy thousand were sold; but with the
discovery that there was no continuous tale the orders at once dim-
inished, and a change must have been made even if the material and
means for it had not been ready. There had been an interval of three
numbers between the first and second chapters, which the society
.. A . ^"^^^^^ ^^^ *^® *^° Wellers made pleasant enough; but
alter the introduction of Dick Swiveller there were three consecutive
chapters; and in the continued progress of -.he tale to its close there
were only two more breaks, one between the fourth and fifth chap-
ters and one between the eight and ninth, pardonable and enjoyable
now for the sake of Sam and his father. The re-introduction of those
old favourites, it will have been seen, formed part of his original plan-
of his abandonment of which his own description may be added from
his preface to the collected edition. "The first chapter of this tale
appeared m the fourth number of Master Humphrey's Clock, when I
had already been made uneasy by the desultory character' of that
work, and when, I believe, my readers had thoroughly participated

.........g. xxiv, -vjiiiiiiciiuciiiciii, VI a acory was a great satisfaction

to nie, and I had reason to believe that my readers participated in
this feeling too. Hence, being pledged to some interruptions and some

1 1 ;

^ f

i [

if.

392

The Life of Charles Dickens

pursuit of the original design, I set cheerfully about disentangling
myself from those impediments as fast as I could; and, thi« done,
from that time until its completion The Old Curiosity Shop was
written and published from week to week, in weekly parts."

He had very early himself become greatly taken with it. ' ' I am yery
glad indeed," he wrote to me after the first half-dozen chapters, "that
you think so well of the Curiosity Shop, and especially that what may
be got out of Dick strikes you. I mean to make much of him. I feel
the story extremely myself, which I take to be a good sign; and am
already warmly interested in it. I shall run it on now for four whole
numbers together, to give it a fair chance." Every step lightened the
road, as it became more and more real with each character that
appeared in it; and I still recall the glee with which he told me what
he intended to do not only with Dick Swiveller, but with Septinius
Brass, changed afterwards to Sampson. Undoubtedly, however, Dick
was his favourite. "Dick's behaviour in the matter of Miss Wackles
will, I hope, give you satisfaction," is the remark of another of his
letters. "1 cannot yet discover that his aunt has any belief in him,
or is in the least degree likely to send him a remittance, so that he
will probably continue to be the sport of destiny." His difficulties were
the quickly recurring times of publication, the confined space in each
number that yet had to contribute its individual effect, and (from
the suddenness with which he had begun) the impossibility of getting
in advance. "I was obliged to cramp most dreadfully what I thought
a pretty idea in the last chapter. I hadn't room to turn": to this oi
a similar effect his complaints are frequent, and of the vexations
named it was by far the worst. But he steadily bore up against all,
and made a triumph of the little story.

To help his work he went twice to Broadstairs, in June and in
September; and at his first visit (17 June) thus wrote: "It's now four
o'clock and I have been at work since half-past eight. I have really
dried myself up into a condition which would almost justify me in
pitching off tne cliff, head first — but I must get richer before I indulge
in a crowning luxury. . . . "At the opening of September he was again
at the little v/atering place. The residence he most desired there. Fort
House, stood prominently at the top of" a breezy hill on the road to
Kingsgate, with a cornfield between it and the sea, and this in many
subsequent years he always occupied; but he was fain to be content,
as yet, with Law House, a smaller villa between the hill and the corn-
field, from which he now wrote of his attentions to Mr. Sampson
Brass's sister. "I have been at work of course" (2 September) "and
have just finished a number, I have effected a reform by virtue of
which we breakfast at a quarter before eight, so that I get to work
as half-past, and am commonly free by one o'clock or so, which is a
great happiness. Dick is now Sampson's clerk, and I have touched
Miss Brass in Number 25, lightly, but effectively I hope." . . .

At the opening of November, there seems to have been a wish on
Maclise's part to try his hand at an illustration for the story; but I do

jentangling
thin done,

Shop was

"I am very
)ters, "that
t what may
him. I feel
^n; and am

four whole
(htened the
racter that
Id me what
li Septimus
vever, Dick
ss Wackles
)ther of his
lief in him,

so that he
:ulties were
»ace in each

and (from
Y of getting
1 1 thought
: to this 01
3 vexations
against all,

une and in
's now four
have really
stify me in
re I indulge
e was again
there, Fort
the road to
lis in many
be content,
id the corn-
r, Sampson
nber) "and
y virtue of
;et to work
. which is a
ve touched

The Life of Charles Dickens

393

I a wish on
y; but I do

not remember that it bore other fruit than a very pleasant day at
Jack Straw's Castle, where Dickens read one of the later numbers to
us. Machse and myself (alonie in the carriage)," he wrote, "will be
with you at two exactly. We propose driving out to Hampstead and
walking there if it don't rain in buckets'-fuU. I shan't send Brad-
burys the MS. of next number till to-morrow, for it contains the
shadow of the number after that, and I want to read it to Mac as
It he likes the subject, it will furnish him with one. I think You can't
imagine (gravely I write and speak) how exhausted I am to-day with
yesterday's labours. I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and
done up. ... j f

Fast shortening as the life of little Nell was now, the dying year
might have seen it pass away; but I never knew him wind up any
tale with such a sorrowful reluctance as this. He caught at any excuse
to hold his hand from it, and stretched to the utmost limit the time
left to complete it in. . . . He read to me the two chapters of Nell's
death, the seventy-first and seventy-second, with the result described
in a letter of the following Monday, 17 January, 1841.

"I can't help letting you know how much your yesterday's letter
pleased me. I felt sure you liked the chapters when we read them on
Thursday night, but it was a great delight to have my impression so
strongly and heartily confirmed. You know how littl< value I should
set on what I had done, if all the world cried out that it was good
and those whose good opinion and approbation I value most were
silent. The assurance that this little closing of the scene touches and
is felt by you so strongly, is better to me than a thousand most sweet
voices out of doors. When I first began, on your valued suggestion to
keep my thoughts upon this ending of the tale, I resolved to try and
do something which might be read by people about whom Death had

been, with a softened feeling, and with consolation After you left

last night, I took my desk upstairs; and writing until four o'clock this
morning, finished the old story. It makes me very melancholy to think
that all these people are lost to me for ever, and I feel as if I never
could become attached to any new set of characters." The words
printed in italics, as underlined by himself, give me my share in the
story which had gone so closely to his heart. I was responsible for its
tragic ending. He had not thought of killing her, when, about half-
way through, : asked him to consider whether it did not necessarily
belong even to his own conception, after taking so mere a child
through such a tragedy of sorrow, to lift her also out of the common-
place of ordinary happy endings, so that the gentle pure little figure
and form should never change to the fancy. All that I meant he
seized at once, and never turned aside from it again.

The published book was an extraordinary success, and, in America
more especially, very greatly increased the writer's fame. The pathetic

vein it had Or>Pnp>rl wpt! n^rhanc moinlTr 4-\ta. ^n,,^^ ^t xu:_ •L.-j- i_?_^

at home continued still to turn on the old characteristics; the fresh-
ness of humour of which the pathos was but another form or product,
331*

!■ (

394

The Life of Charles Dickons

the grasp of reality with which character had again been seized, the
discernment of good under its least attractive forms and of evil in its
most captivating disguises, the cordiat wisdom and sound heart, the
enjoyment at^d fun, luxuriant yet under proper control. No falling-off
was found in these, and I doubt if any of his ptople have been more
widely liked than Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness. ...

VIII

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE AND BROADSTAIRS

1840

It was an excellent saying of the first Lord Shaftesbury, that, seeing
every man of any capacity holds within himself two men, the wise and
the foolish, each of them ought freely to be allowed his turn; and it
was one of the secrets of Dickens's social charm that he could, in strict
accordance with this saying, allow each part of him its turn; could
afford thoroughly to give rest and relief to what was serious in him,
and, when the time came to play his gambols, could surrender him-
self wholly to the enjoyment of the time, and become the very genius
and embodiment of one of his own most whimsical fancies.

Turning back from the narrative of his last piece of writing to recall
a few occurrences of the year during which it had occupied him, I find
him at its opening in one of these humorous moods, and another
friend, with myself, enslaved by its influence. "What on earth does it
all mean!" wrote poor puzzled Mr. Landor to me, enclosing a letter
from him of the date 11 February, the day after the royal nuptials of
that year. In this he had related to our old friend a wonderful halluci-
nation arising out of that event, which had then taken entire pos-
session of him. "Society is unhinged here," thus ran the letter, "by
her TTiajesty's marriage, and I am sorry to add that I have fallen hope-
lessly in love with the Queen, and wander up and down with vague
and dismal thoughts of running away to some uninhabited island
with a maid of honour, to be entrapped by conspiracy for that pur-
pose. Can you suggest any particular young person, serving in such a
capacity, who would suit me? It is too much perhaps to ask you to
join the band of noble youths (Forster is in it, and Maclise) who are to
assist me in this great enterprise, but a man of your energy would be
invaluable. I have my eye upon Lady . . ., principally because she is
very beautiful, and has no strong brothers. Upon this, and other points
of the scheme, however, we will confer more at large when we meet;
and meanwhile bum this document, that no suspicion may arise or

The maid of honour and the uninhabited island were flights of

The Life of Charles Dickens 395

fancy, but the other daring delusion was for a time encouraRed to
such whimsical lengths, not alone by him but ( under his influence) bv
the two friends named, that it took the wildest forms of humorous
extravagance; and of the private confidences much interchanged a«»
well as of his own style of open speech in which the joke of a despkir'-
ing unfitness for any further use or enjoyment of life was unflagginKly
kept up, to the amazement of bystanders knowing nothing of what it
meant and believing he had half lost his senses, I permit myself to
give from his letters one further illustration. "I am utterly lost in
misery, he writes on 12 February, "and can do nothing. I have been
reading Ohver, Ptckmck and Nichlehy tc get my thoughts together
tor the new effort, but all m vain:

My heart is at Windsor,

My heart isn't here;
My heart is at Windsor,

A following my dear.

I saw the Responsibilities this morning, and burst into tears The
presence of iny wife aggravates me. I loathe my parents. I detest my
house. I begm to have thoughts of the Serpentine, of the Regent's
Canal, of the razors upstairs, of the chemist's down the street of

poisoning myself at Mrs. 's table, of hanging myself upon the

Dear-tree in the garden, of abstaining from food and starving myself
to death, of being bled for my cold and tearing off the bandage of
fallmg u^-^er the feet of cab-horses in the New Road, of murdering
Chapman and Hall and becoming great in story(SHE must hear some-
thing of me then— perhaps sign the warrant: or is that a fable?) of
turning Chaxtist. of heading some bloody assault upon the palace and

savmg Her by my single hand of being anything but what I have

WnH^r n "^l^"^f?^^ but what I have done. Your distracted
tnend, CD. The wild derangement of asterisks in every shape and
form, with which this incoherence closed, cannot be given

Some ailments which dated from an earlier period in his life made
themselves felt in the spring of the year, as I remember, and increased
horse exercise was strongly recommended to him. "I find it will be
positively necessary to go. for five days in the week at least " he
wrote in March 'on a perfect regimen of diet and exercise, and am
anxious not to delay treating for a horse." We were now, therefore
when he was not at the seaside, much, on horseback in suburban lanes
and roads; and the spacious garden of his new house was also turned
to healthful use at even his busiest working times. I mark this, too.
as the time when the first ol his ravens took up residence; and as the
begmmng of disputes with two of his neighbours about the smoking
of the stable chimney, which his groom Topping, a highW absurd
little man with flaming redhair, so complicated by Scret devices of his
own. meant to conciliate each complainant alternately and having
a,,^r^~T".V;"*i^Vf V5 D^"x. mat law proceeaings were only barely
avoided. I shall give you." he writes, "my latest report of the

The Life of Charles Dickens

chimney in the form of an address from Topping, made t '^ me on our
way from little Hall's at Norwood the other night, where he and
Chapman and I had been walking all day, while Topping drove Kate,
Mrs. Hall, and her sisters, to Dulwich. Topping had been regaled upon
the premises, and was just drunk enough to be confidential. 'Beggin'
your pardon, sir, but the genelman next door sir, seems to be gettin'
quite comfortable and pleasant about the chimley.' — ' I don't think he
is. Topping.' — 'Yes he is sir I think. He comes out in the yard this
morning and says Coachman he says' (observe the vision of a great
large fat man called up by the word) 'is that your raven he says
Coachman? or is it Mr. Dickens's raven? he says. My master's sir, I
says. ^Vell, he says, it's a fine bird. I think the chimley 'ill do notu
Coachman, — nowthejint's taken off the pipe he says. I hope it will, sir,
I says; my master's a genelman as wouldn't annoy no genelman if he
could help it, I'm sure; and my own missis is so afraid of havin' a bit
o' fire that o' Sundays our little bit o' weal or what not, goes to the
baker's a purpose. — Damn the chimley Coachman, he says, it's a
smokin' now. — It an't a smokin' your way sir, I says; Well, he says,
no more it is, Coachman, and as long as it smokes anybody else's way,
it's all right and I'm agreeable.' Of course I shall now have the man
from the other side upon me, and very likely with an action of nuis-
ance for smoking into his conservatory."

A graver incident, which occurred to him also among his earliesc
experiences as tenant of Devonshire Terrace, illustrates too well the
practical turn of his kindness and humanity not to deserve relation.
He has himself described it, in one of his minor writings, in setting
down what he remembered as the only good that ever came of a
beadle. 'Of that great parish functionary," he remarks, "having
newly taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metro-
politan parish, a house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully
first-class family mansion involving awful responsibilities, I became
the prey." In other words he was summoned, and obliged to sit, as
juryman at an inquest on the body '^f a little child alleged to have
been murdered by its mother; of which the result was, by his per-
severing exertion, seconded by the humane help of the coroner, Mr.
Wakley, the verdict of himself and his fellow- jurymen charged her
only with the concealment of birth. "The poor desolate creature
dropped upon her knees before us with protestations that we were
right (protestations amoixg the most affecting that I have ever heard
in my life), and was carried away insensible. I caused some extra care
to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained for her
defence when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence was
lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was right." How
much he felt the little incident, at the actual time of its occurrence,
may be judged from the few lines written next morning: "Whether it
was the poor baby, or its poor mother, or the coffin, or my fellow-

inrizm*»T» o'*' 'wV»a+ nni- T 0311'+ sair bu'^ la^J^ ■nicrhi- T ViaH a TYincf irirjio-nf

attack of sickness and indigestion, which not only prevented me from

me on our
jre he and
rove Kate,
galed upon
il. ' Beggin'
) be gettin'
I't think he
9 yard this
of a great
en he says
iter's sir, 1
'ill do now
it will, sir,
2lman if he
lavin' a bit
goes to the
ays, it's a
II, he says,
else's way,
'e the man
on of nuis-

liis earliest
30 well the
re relation.
, in setting
came of a
s, "having
led metro-
frightfully
, I became
d to sit, as
ed to have
yy his per-
)roner, Mr.
harged her
;e creature
it we were
ever heard
I extra care
led for her
titence was
ght." How
)ccurrence,
Whether it
my fellow-

lOSt violfiTit

3d me from

The Life of Charles Dickens

397

sleeping, but even from lying down. Accordingly Kate and I sat up
through the dreary watches."

The day of the first publication of Master Humphrey (Saturday,
4 April) had by this time come, and, according to the rule observed
ia his two other great ventures, he left town with Mrs. Dickens on
Friday the 3rd. With Maclise we had been together at Richmond the
previous night; and I joined him at Birmingham the day foUowii-g,
with news of the sale of the whole sixty thousand copies to which the
first working bad been limited, and of orders already in hand for ten
thousand more ! The excitement of the success somewhat lengthened
our holiday; and, after visiting Shakespeare's house at Stratford, and
Johnson's at Lichfield, we found our resources so straitened in return-
ing, that, employing as our messenger of need his younger brother
Alfred, who had joined us from Tamworth where he w.as a student-
engineer, we had to pawn our gold watches at Birmingham.

At the end of the following month he went to Broadstairs, and
not many days before (on 20 May) a note from Mr. Jerdan on behalf
of Mr. Bentley opened the negotiations formerly referred to, which
transferred to Messrs. Chapman and Hall the agreement for Barnaby
Rudge. I was myself absent when he left, and in a letter announcing
his departure he had written: "I don't know of a word of news in all
I^ndon, but there will be plenty next week, for I am going away,
and - hope you'll send me an account of it. I am doubtful whether it
will be a murder, a fire, a vast robbery, or the escape of Gould, but it
will be something remarkable no doubt. I almost blame myself for
the death of that poor girl who leaped off the monument upon my
leaving town last year. She would not have done it if I had remained,
neither would the two men have found the skeleton in the sewers."
His prediction was quite accurate, for I had to tell him, after not
many days, of the pitboy who shot at the queen. "It's a great pity
they couldn't suffocate that boy. Master Oxford," he replied very
sensibly, "and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between
two feather-beds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled
the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run the
gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of whom may perchance
be better shots and use other than Brummagem firearms." How much
of this actually came to pass, the reader knows.

From the letters of his present Broadstairs visit, there is little more
to add to the account of his progress with his story; but a sentence
may be given for its characteristic expression of his invariable habit
upon entering any new abode, whether to stay in it for days or for
years. On a Monday night he arrived, and on the Tuesday (2 June)
wrote: "Before I tasted bit or drop yesterday, I set out my writing-
table with extreme taste and neatness, and improved the disposition
of the furniture generally." He stayed till the end of June; when
Maclise and myself joined him for the pleasure of posting back home
by way of his favourite Chatham, Rochester, and Cobham, where we
passed two agreeable days in revisiting well-remembered scenes.

? V

Iff I

398

The Life of Charles Dickens

Meanwhile there had been brought to a close the treaty for repurchase
of Oliver and surrender of Barnaby, upon terms which are succinctly
stated in a letter written by him to Messrs. Chapman and Hall on
2 July, the day after our return.

"The terms upon which you advance the money to-day for the
purchase of the copyright and stock of Oliver on my behalf, are under-
stood between us to be these. That this ;^225o is to be deducted from
the purchase-money of a work by me entitled Barnaby Itudge, of
which two chapters are now in your hands, and of which the whole is
to be written within some convenient time to be agreed upon between
us. But if it should not be written (which God forbid!) within five
years, you are to have a lien to this amount on the property belonging
to me that is now in your hands, namely, my shares in the stock and
copyright of Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby,
Olivet Twist, and Master Humphrey's Clock; in which we do not
include any share of the cunent profits of the last-named work,
which I shall remain at liberty to draw at the times stated in our
agreement. Your purchase of Barnaby Rudge is made upon the follow-
ing terms. It is to consist of matter sufiftcient for ten monthly numbers
of the size of Pickwick and Nickleby, which you are however at liberty
to divide and publish in fifteen smaller numbers if you think fit. The
terms for the purchase of this edition in numbers, and for the copy-
right of the whole book for six months after the publication of the
last number, are ^3000. At the expiration of the six months the
whole copyright reverts to me." The sequel was, as all the world
knows, that Barnaby became successor to kttle Nell, the money
being repaid by the profits of the Clock; but I ought also to mention
the generous sequel that was given to the small service thus rendered
to him, by the gift, after not many days, of an antique silver-
mounted jug of great beauty of form and workmanship, and with a
wealth far beyond artist's design or jeweller's chasing in written
words that accompanied it.^ They were accepted to commemorate,
not the help they would have far overpaid, but the gladness of his
own escape from the last of the agreements that had hampered the
opening of his career, and the better future which was now before
him. 1

At the opening of August he was with Mrs. Dickens for some days

1 "Accept : ■ .le" (8 Ju'^, 1840), "as a slight memorial of your attached
companion, the poor keepsake which accompanies this. My heart is not an eloquent
one on matters which touch it most, but suppose this claret jug the urn in which it
lies, and believe that its wannest and truest blood is ^ rs. This was the object
of my fruitless search, and you. curiosity, on Friday. first I scarcely knew
what trifle (you will deem it valuable, I know, for the b'Ver's sake) to send j'ou-
but I thought it would be pleasant to connect it with our jovial moments, and to
let it add, to the wine we shall drink from it together, a flavour which the choicest
vintage could never impart. Take it from my hand— filled to the brim and running
over with truth and earnestness. I have just taken one parting look at it, and
it seems the most elegant thin^ in the world to me, for I lose sight of the vase in
the crowd of wfc^-ome associations that are clusterine and wreathin? them<;f»lvp«
about it." "

purchase

iccinctly

Hall on

r for the
■e under-
ted from
*udge, of
whole is
between
thin five
elonging
;ock and
"^ickleby,

do not
d work,
d in our
B follow-
lumbers
t liberty

fit. The
le copy-
n of the
iths the
ke world
I money
mention
endered
; silver-
i with a
written
morate,
js of his
sred the
V before

ne days

attached
eloquent
1 which it
he object
ely knew
send 5'ou*
ts, and to
3 choicest
i running
it it, and
le vase in
lemsplvpn

The Life of Charles Dickens 399

in Devonshire, on a visit to hi? father, but he had to take his work
with him; and they had only one real holiday, when Dawlish. TeiRn-
mouth Babbicombe. and Torquay were explored, returning to Exeter
at niMht. In the beginning of September he was again at Broadstairs
1 was just going to work." he wrote on the 9th. "when I got this
etter. and the story of the man who went to Chapman and Hall's
knocked me down flat. I wrote until now (a quarter to one) against
the grain, and have at last given it up for one day. Upon my word it
13 intolerable. I have been grinding my teeth all the morning. I think
I could say m two lines something about the general report with

P?T'!^r I " ^^'^ ^^"""^ *° *^^ P^""^" '^^^^ P«"e^ace to the first volume
of the Chck was at this time in preparation), "giving you full power
to cut theni out if you should think differently iiom me. and from
L- and H, who m such a matter must be admitted judges." He refers
here to a report, rather extensively circulated at the time, and which
through various channels had reached his publishers, that he was
suffering from loss of reason and was under treatment in an asylum '
I would have withheld it from him. as an absurdity that must quickly
be forgotten— but he had been told of it. and there was a difficulty in
keeping within judicious bounds his not unnatural wrath

A few days later (the 15th) he wrote: "I have been rather surprised
ot late to have applications from Roman Catholic clergymen, demand-
ing (rather pastorally and with a kind of grave authority) assistance
literary employment, and so forth. At length it struck me tl at'
through some channel or other. I must have been represented as
belonging to that religion. Would you believe, that in a letter from
Lamert at Cork, to my mother, which J saw last night, he says 'What
do the papers mean by saying that Charles is demented, and further
that he has turned Roman Catholic?' \" Of the begging-letter writers'
hinted at here. I ought earlier to have said something. In one of his
detached essays he has described, without a particle of exaggeration
the extent to which he was made a victim by this class of swindler'
and the extravagance of the devices practised on him; but he had not
confessed, as he might, that for much of what he suffered he was
himseli responsible, by giving so largely, as at first he did. to almost
evetyone who applied to him. What at last brought him to his senses
m this respect. I think, was the request m.ade by the adventurer who
had exhausted every other expedient, and who desired finally after
describing himself reduced to the condition of a travelling Cheap
Jack in the smallest way of crockery, that a donkey might be le't

i-Lt^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^««" the subject of similar reports on the occasion of the
S^n L'^'I^r "^^'"^^ ponipeUed hun to suspend the publication of Pickxvick for two
months when, upon issuing a brief address in resuming his work (30 Tune le'T
he said: "By one set of intimate acquaintances, especially well-informed 'he /as
been kiUed outright; by another, driven mad; by a third. imprisoSd for debt-
by a fourth, sent per steamer to the United States; by a fifth, rendered incapable
of mental exertion for evermore; by all. in short, represented as doiS; Tn5?hS
n^' f ^f"?-*u ^ ^^^ ^^^^' retirement the restoration of that cheerfulness' ani
ptace of which a sad bereavement had temporarily deprived him."

Hi 1

ill ;,

¥:rl

4k'

11^' •

400

The Life of Charles Dickens

r '

out for him next day, which he would duly call for. This I perfectly
remember, and I much fear that the applicant was the Daniel Tobin
before mentioned.

' Many and delightful were other letters written from Broadstairs
at this date, filled with whimsical talk and humorous description,
relating chiefly to an eccentric friend who stayed with him most of
the time, and is sketched in one of his published papers as Mr. Kind-
heart; but all too private for reproduction now. He returned in the
middle of October, when we resumed our almost daily ridings, fore-
gatherings with Maclise at Hampstead and elsewhere, and social
entertainments with Macready, Talfourd, Procter, Stanfield, Fon-
blanque, Elliotson, Tennent, d'Orsay, Quin, Harness, Wilkie, Edwin
Landseer, Rogers, Sydney Smith, and Bulwer. Of the genius of the
author of Pelham and Eugene Aram he had, early and late, the highest
admiration, and he took occasion to express it during the present
year in a new preface which he published to Oliver Twist. Other
friends became familiar in later years; but, disinclined as he was to
the dinner invitations that reached him from every quarter, all such
meetings with those whom I have named, and in an especial manner
the marked attentions shown him by Miss Coutts, which began
with the very beginning of his career, were invariably welcome.

To speak here of the pleasure his society afforded, would anticipate
the litter mention to be made hereafter. But what in this respect
distinguishes nearly all original men, he possessed eminently. His
place was not to be filled up by any other. To the most trivial talk
he gave the attraction of his own character. It might be a small
matter; something he had read or observed during the day, some
quaint odd fancy from a book, a vivid little outdoor picture, the
laughing exposure of some imposture, or a burst of sheer mirthful
enjoyment; but of its kind it would be something unique, because
genuinely part of himself. This, and his unwearying animal spirits,
made him the most delightful of companions; no claim on good-fellow-
ship ever found him wanting; and no one so constantly recalled to his
friends the description Johnson gave of Garrick, as "the cheerfuUest
man of his age,"

Of what occupied him in the way of literary labour in the autumn
and winter months of the year, some description has been given; and,
apart from what has already thus been said of his work at the closing
chapters of The Old Curiosity Shop, nothing now calls for more special
allusion, except that in his town- walks in November, impelled thereto
by specimens recently discovered in his country walks between
Broadstairs and Ramsgate, he thoroughly explored the ballad
literature of Seven Dials, and would occasionally sin^, with an effect
that justified his reputation for comic singing in his childhood, not a
Jew of those wonderful productions. . . .

The Life of Charles Dickens

perfectly
liel Tobin

roadstairs
scription,
n most of
Mr. Kind-
led in the
ngs, fore-
.nd social
eld, Fon-
ie, Edwin
ius of the
le highest
e present
ist. Other
le was to
r, all such
d manner
:h began
tne.

mticipate
is respect
ntly. His
ivial talk
e a small
lay, some
;ture, the
mirthful
, because
al spirits,
)d-fellow-
lled to his
eerfuUest

3 autumn
ven; and,
le closing
re special
d thereto

between
le ballad

an effect
od, not a

401

BARNABY RUDGE'

184I

The letters of 1841 yield similar fruit as to his doings and sayhigs, and
may in like manner first be consulted for the literary work he had in
hand.

He had the advantage of beginning Barnaby Rudge with a fair
amount of story in advance, which he had only to make suitable,
by occasional readjustment of chapters, to publication in weekly
portions; and on this he was engaged before the end of January.
"I am at present " (22 January, 1841) "in what Leigh Hunt would
call a kind of impossible state — thinking what on earth Master
Humphrey can think of through four mortal pages. I added here
and there to the last chapter of the Curiosity Shop yesterday, and it
leaves me only four pages to write." (They were filled by a paper from
Humphrey introductory of the new tale, in which will be found a
striking picture of London, from midnight to the break of day.) "I
also made up, ana wrote the needful insertions for, the second number
of Barnaby — so that I came back to the mill a little." Hardly yet:
for after four days he writes, having meanwhile done nothing: "I have
been looking (three o'clock) with an appearance of extraordinary
interest and study at one leafoi the Curiosities of Literature ever since
half-past ten this morning — I haven't the heart to turn over." Then,
on Friday the 29th, better news came. "I didn't stir out yesterday',
but sat and thought all day; not writing a line; not so much as the
cross of a / or dot of an i. I imaged forth a good deal of Barnaby by
keeping my mind steadily upon him; and am happy to say I have
gone to work this morning in good twig, strong hope, and cheerful
spirits. Last night I was unutterably and impossible-to-form-an-idea-
of-ably miserable. ... By the by don't engage yourself otherwise
than to me for Sunday week, because it's my birthday. I have no
doubt we shall have got over our troubles here by that time, and I
purpose having a snug dinner in the study." We had the dinner,
though the troubles were not over; but the next day another son was
born to him. "Thank God." he wrote on the gth, "quite well. I am
thinking hard, and have just written to Browne inquiring when he
will come and confer about the raven." He had by this time resolved
to make that bird, whose accomplishments had ien daily ripening
and enlarging for the last twelve months to the increasing mirth and
delight of us all, a prominent figure in Barnaby; and the invitation
to the artist was for a conference how best to mtroduce him graphic-
ally.

III

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402

The Life of Charles Dickens

The next letter mentioning Barnaby was from Brighton (25
February-), whither he had flown for a week's quiet labour. "I have
(it's four o'clock) done a very fair morning's work, at which I have
sat very close, and been blessed besides with a clear view of the end
of the volume. As the contents of one number usually require a day's
thought at the very least, and often more, this puts me in great
spirits. I think — that is, I hope — the story takes a great stride at this
point, and takes it well. Nous verrons. Grip will be strong and I
build greatly on the Varden household."

Upon his return he had to lament a domestic calamity, which, for
Its connection with a famous personage in Barnaby, must be mentioned
here. The raven had for some days been ailing, and Topping had
reported of him, as Hamlet declared of himself, that he had lost his
mirth and foregone all custom of exercises: but Dickens paid no great
heed, remembering his recovery from an illness of the previous sum-
mer when he swallowed some white paint; so that the graver report
which led him to send for the doctor came upon him unexpectedly,
and nothing but his own language can worthily describe the result!
Unable from the state of his feelings to write two letters, he sent the
narrative to Maclise under an enormous black seal, for transmission
to me.

"You will be greatly Shocked" (the letter is dated Friday evening
12 March, 1841) "and grieved to hear that the Raven is no more!
He expired to-day at a few minut'-s after twelve o'clock at noon. He
had been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result
conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last
summer might be lingering about his vitals without having any
serious effect upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was
takenso much worse that I sent an express for the medical gentleman
(Mr. Hemng), who promptly attended, and administered a powerful
dose of castor oil. Under the influence of this medicine, he recovered
so far as to be able at eight o'clock p.m. to bite Topping. His night
was peaceful. This morning at daybreak he appeared better; received
(agreeably to the doctor's directions) another dose of castor oil- and
partook plentifully of some warm gruel, the flavour of which he
appeared to relish. Towards eleven o'clock he was so much wor >
thtit It was found necessary to muffle the stable-knocker. At half-past
or thereabouts, he was heard talking to himself about the horse and
Topping's family, and to add some incoherent expressions which are
supposed to have been either a foreboding of his approaching dissolu-
tion, or some wishes relative to the disposal of his little property-
consisting chiefly of half-pence which he had buried in different parts
of the garden. On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly
agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the
coach-house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed Halloa old eirV
(his favourite expression), and died.

He behaved tliroughwut with a decent fortitude, equanimity
and self-possession, which cannot be too much admired. I deeply

;hton {25
. "I have
:h I have
>f the end
re a day's
in great
de at this
ig, and I

/hich, for
lentioned
ping had
d lost his
. no great
ous sum-
er report
pectedly,
le result,
sent the
Lsmission

evening,
ao more,
loon. He
IS result,
wed last
dng any

he was
ntleman
powerful
jcovered
lis night
received

oil; and
rhich he
h wor ^
alf-past,
3rse and
hich are
dissolu-
roperty:
nt parts
slightly
ong the
old girl!

mimity,
deeply

The Life of Charles Dickens

403

regret that being in ignorance of hi. .ianger I did not attend to receive
his last instructions. Something remarkable about his eyes occasioned
Topping to run for the doctor at twelve. When they returned together
our friend was gone. It was the medical gentleman who informed me
of his decease. He did it with great caution and delicacy, preparing
me by the remark that 'a jolly queer start had taken place'; but the
shock was very great notwithstanding. I am not wholly free from
suspicions of poison. A malicious butcher has been heard to say that
he would 'do' for him: his plea was that he would rot be molested in
taking orders down the mews, by any bird that wore a tail. Other
persons have also been heard to threaten: among others, Charles
Knight, who has just started a weekly publication price fourpence:
Barnaby being, as you know, threepence. I have directed a post-
mortem examination, and the body has been removed to Mr. Her-
ring's school of anatomy for that purpose.

"I could wish, if you can take the trouble, that you could enclose
this to Forster immediately after you have read it. I cannot discharge
the painful task of communication more than once. Were they ravens
who took manna to somebody in the wilderness? At times I hope
they were, and at others I fear they were not, or they would certainly
have stolen it by the way. In profound sorrow, I am ever your
bereaved friend C.D. Kate is as well as can be expected, but terribly
low as you may suppose. The children seem rather glad of it. He bit
their ankles. But that was play."

In what way the loss, was replaced, so that Barnaby should have
the fruit of continued study of the habits of the family of birds which
Grip had so nobly represented, Dickens has told in the preface to
the story; and another, older, e-id larger Grip, obtained through
Mr. Smithson, was installed in the stable, almost before the. stuffed
remains of his honoured predecessor had been sent home in a glass
case, by way of ornament to his bereaved master's study.

I resume our correspondence on what he was writing. ''I see there
is yet room for a few lines " (25 March), "and you are quite right in
wishing what I cut out to be restored. I did not want Joe to be so
short about Dolly, and really wrote his references to that young lady
carefully — as natural things with a meaning in them. Chigwell, my
dear fellow, is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for
going. Such a delicious old inn opposite the churchyard — such a
lovely ride — such beautiful forest scenery — such an out of the way,
rural place — such a sexton! I say again, name your day." The day
was named at once; and the whitest of stones marks it now in
sorrowful memory. His promise was exceeded by our enjoyment; and
his delight in the double recognition, of himself and of Barnaby, by
the landlord of the nice old inn, far exceeded any pride he would have
taken in what the world thinks the highest sort of honour.

A iii^',^- ........ •••J - ^•i' \-^"- ^-iifivm^ j.-jf iiij-o\.ii t.\j-\j.a.y , aiivi iiica.n

to try and 'go it' at the Clock; Kate being out, and the house peace-
fully dismal. I don't remember altering the exact part you object to.

■^ .

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I !

but if there be anything here you object to, knock it out ruthlessly."
"Don't fail" (5 April) "to erase an>i^ing that seems to you too
strong. It is difi&cult for me to judge what tells too much, and what
does not. I am trying a very quiet number to set against this neces-
sary one. I hope it will be good, bwt I am in very sad condition for
work. Glad you think this powerful. What I have put in is more
relief, from the raven." Two days later: "I have done that number,
and am now going to work on another. I am bent (please Heaven) oii
finishing the first chapter by Friday night. I hope to look in upon
you to-night, when we'll dispose of the toasts for Saturday. Still
bilious— but a good number, I hope, notwithstanding. Jeffrey has
come to town, and was here yesterday." The toasts to be disposed of
were those to be given at the dinner on the loth to celebrate the
second volume of Master Humphrey; when Talfourd presided, and
there was much jollity. According to the memorandum drawn up
that Saturday night now lying before me, we all in the greatest good
humour glorified each other: Talfourd proposing the Clock, Macready
Mrs. Dickens, Dickens the publishers, and myself the artists; Mac-
ready giving Talfourd, Talfourd Macready, Dickens myself, and
myself the comedian Mr. Harley, whose humorous songs had been no
inconsiderable element in the mirth of the evening.

Five days later he writes: "I finished the number yesterday, and,
although I dined with Jeffrey, and was obliged to go to Lord Den-
man's afterwards (which made me late), have done eight slips of the
Lamplighter for Mrs. Macrone, this morning. When I have got that
off my mind I shall try to go on steadily, fetching up the Clock
lee-way." The Lamplighter was his old farce, which he now turned
into a comic tale; and this, with other contributions given him by
friends and edited by him as Pic Nic Papers, enabled him to help the
widow of his old publisher in her straitened means by a gift of ;^3oo.
He had finished his work of charity before he next wrote of Barnahy
Rudge, but he was fetching up his lee-way lazily. "I am getting on"
(29 April) "very slowly. I want to stick to the story; and the fear of
committing myself, because of the impossibiity of trying back or
altering a syllable, makes it much harder than it looks. It was too
bad of me to give you the trouble of cutting the number, but I knew
so well you would do it in the right places. For what Harley would
call the 'onward work' I really think I have some famous thoughts."
There is an interval of a month before the next allusion. "Solomon's
expression" (3 June) "I meant to be one of those strong ones to which
strong circumstances give birth in the commonest minds. Deal with
it as you like. . . . Say what you please of Gordon" (I had objected
to some points in his view of this madman, stated much too favour-
ably as I thought), "he must have been at heart a kind man, and a
lover of the despised and rejected, after his own fashion. He lived
upon a small income, and always within it; was known to relieve the
necessities of many people; exposed in his place the corrupt attempt
of a minister to buy him out of Parliament; and did great charities in

The Life of Charles Dickens

the

405

Newgate. He always spoke on the people's side, and tried against his
muddled brains to expose the profligacy of both parties. He never got
anything by his madness, and never sought it. The wildest and most
ragmg attacks of the time, allow him these merits; and not to let him
have 'em m their full extent, remembering in what a (politically)
wicked time he lived, would lie upon my conscience heavily. The
libel he was imprisoned for when he died, was on the queen of France-
and the French government interested themselves warmly to procure
his release— which I think they might have done, but for Lord
Grenville," . . .

This tale was Dickens's first attempt out of the sphere of the life
of the day and its actual manners. Begun during the progress of
Oliver Twist, it had been for some time laid aside; the form it ulti-
mately took had been comprised only partially within its first design-
and the story in its finished shape presented st/ongly a special pur-
pose, the characteristic of all but his very earliest writings. Its scene
is laid at the time when the incessant execution of men and women
comparatively innocent, disgraced every part of the country-
demoralising thousands, whom it also prepared for the scaffold In
those days the theft of a few rags from a bleaching-ground, or the
abstraction of a roll of j-ibbons irom a counter, was visited with the
penalty of blood; and such laws brutalised both their ministers and
victims. It was the time, too, when a false religious outcry brought
with it appalling guilt and misery. Such vices leave more behind
them than the first forms assumed, and involve a lesson sufficiently
required to justify a writer in dealing with them. There were also
others grafted on them. In Barnaby himself it was desired to show
what sources of comfort there might be, for the patient and cheerful
heart, m even the worst of all human afflictions; and in the hunted life
of the outcast father, whose crime had entailed not that affliction
only, but other more fearful wretchedness, we have as powerful a
picture as any in his writings of the inevitable and unfathomable
consequences of sin. . . .

IN EDINBURGH
184I

His first letter from Edinburgh, where he and Mrs. Dickens had
taken up quarters at the Royal Hotel on their arrival the previous
night, is dated 23 June. "I have been this morning to the Parliament
House, and am now introduced (1 hope) to everybody in Edinburgh
The hotel is perfectly besieged, and I have been forced to take refuge

: !

4o6

The Life of Charles Dickens

in a sequestered apartment at the end of a long passage, wherein I
write this letter. They talk of 300 at the dinner. We are very well off
in point of rooms, having a handsome sitting-room, another next to
it for Clock purposes, a spacious bedroom, and large dressing-room
adjoining. The castle is in front of the windows, and the view noble.
There was a supper ready last night which would have been a dinner
anywhere." This was his first practical experience of the honours his
fame had won for him, and it found him as eager to receive as all
were eager to give. Very interesting still, too, are those who took
leading part in the celebration; and, in his pleasant sketches of them,
there are some once famous and familiar figures not so well known to
the present generation. Here, among the first, are Wilson and
Robertson.

"The renowned Peter Robertson is a 'arge, portly, full-faced man
with a merry eye, and a queer way of looking under his spectacles
which is characteristic and pleasant. He seems a very warm-hearted
earnest man too, and I felt quite at home with him forthwith.
Walking up and down the hall of the courts of law (which was full of
advocates, writers to the signet, clerk-, and idlers) was a tall, burly,
handsome man of eight and fifty, with a gait like O'Connell's, the
bluest eye you can imagine, and long hair — longer than mine —
falling down in a wild way under the broad brim of his hat. He had
on a surtout coat, a blue checked shirt; the collar standing up, and
kept in its place with a wisp of black neckerchief; no waistcoat; and a
large pocket-handkerchief thrust into his breast, which was all
broad and open. At his heels followed a wiry, sharp-eyed, shaggy
devil of a terrier, dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down,
now with one man beside him, now with another, and now quite
alone, but always at a fast, rolling pace, with his head in the air, and
his eyes as wide open as he could get them. I guessed it was Wilson,
and it was. A bright, clear-complexioned, mountain-looking fellow,
he looks as though he had just come down from, the Highlands, and
had never in his life taken pen in hand. But he has had an attack of
paralysis in his right arm. within this month. He winced when I
shook hands with him; and once or twice when we were walking up
and down, slipped as if he had stumbled on a piece of orange-peel. He
is a great fellow to look at, and to talk to; and, if you could divest
your mind of the actual Scott, is jus , the figure you would put in his
place." . . .

His next letter was written the morning after the dinner, on
Saturday, 26 June. "The great event is over; and being gone, I am a
man again. It was the most brilliant affair you can conceive; the
completest success possible, from first to last. The room was crammed,
and more than seventy applicants for tickets were of necessity
refused yesterday. Wilson was ill, but plucked up like a lion, and
spoke famously. I send you a paper herewith, but the report is
dismal in the extreme, ihey say there will be a better one — I don't
know where or when. Should there be, I will send it to you. I think

'^herein I
' well off
• next to
ng-room
IV noble,
a dinner
lours his
^e as all
ho took
of them,
nown to
>on and

:ed man
>ectacles
-hearted
rthwith.
IS full of
1, burly,
;ll's, the
mine —
He had
up, and
.t; and a
was all
shaggy
d down,
w quite
air, and
Wilson,
; fellow,
ids, and
ttack of
when I
king up
seel. He
i divest
it in his

ner, on
I am a
ve; the
immed,
jcessity
Dn, and
sport is
I don't
I think

The Life of Charles Dickens 407

(ahem!) that I spoke rather well. It was an excellent room, and both
the subjects (Wilson and Scottish Literature, and the Memory of
Wilkie) were good to go upon. There were nearly two hundred ladies
present. The place is so contrived that the cross table is raised
enormously; much above the heads of people sitting below: and the
effect on first coming in (on me, I mean) was rather tremendous. 1
was quite self-possessed, however, and, notwithstanding the,
enthoosemoosy, which was very startling, as cool as a cucumber. I
wish to God you had been there, as it is impossible for the 'dis-
tinguished guest' to describe the scene. It beat all natur'. . . ."

Here was the close of his letter. "I have been expecting every day
to hear from you, and not hearing mean to make this the briefest
epistle possible. We start next Sunday (that's to-morrow week). We
are going out to Jeffrey's to-day (he is very unwell), and return here
to-morrow evening. If I don't find a letter from you when I come
back, expect no Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life from your
indignant correspondent. Murray the manager made very excellent,
tasteful, and gentlemanly mention of Macready, about whom
Wilson had been asking me divers questions during dinner." "A
hundred thanks for your letter," he writes four days later. "I read it
this morning with the greatest pleasure and delight, and answer it
with ditto, ditto. Where shall I begin — about my darlings? I am
delighted with Charley's precocity. He takes arter his father, he
does. God bless them, you can't imagine {you/ how can you?) how
much I long to see them. It makes me quite sorrowful to think of
them. . . . Yesterday, sir, the Lord Provost, council, and magis-
trates voted me by acclamation the freedom of the city, in testimony
(I quote the letter just received from 'James Forrest, Lord Provost')
'of the sense entertained by them of your distinguished abilities as an
author.' I acknowledged this morning in appropriate terms the
honour they had done me, and through me the pursuit to which I was
devoted. It is handsome, is it not? "

The parchment scroll of the city-freedom, recording the grounds on
which it was voted, hung framed in his study to the last, and was one
of his valued possessions. Answering some question of mine, he told
me further as to the speakers, and gave some amusing glimpses of the
party-spirit which still at that time ran high in the capital of the
north.

"The men who spoke at the dinner were all the most rising men
here, and chiefly at the Bar. They were all, alternately, Whigs and
Tories; with some few Radicals, such as Gordon, who gave the
memory of Burns. He is Wilson's son-in-law and the Lord Advocate's
nephew — a very masterly speaker indeed, who oughi; to become a
distinguished man. Neaves, who gave the other poets, a little too
lawyer-like for my taste, is a great gun in the courts. Mr. Primrose is
Lord Rosebery's son. Adam Black, the publisher as you know. Dr.
Alison, a very popular friend of the poor. Robertson you know. Allan
you know. Colquhoun is an advocate. All these men were selected for

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408

The Life of Charles Dickens

the toasts as being crack speakers, known men, and opposed to each
other very strongly in politics. For this reason, the professors and so
forth who sat upon the platform about me made no speeches and had
none assigned them. I felt it was very remarkable to see such a
number of grey-headed men gathered about my brown flowing locks;
and it struck most of those who were present very forcibly. The
judges, Solicitor-General, Lord Advocate, and so forth, were all here to
call, the day after our arrival. The judges never go to public dinners
in Scotland. Lord Meadowbank alone broke through the custom, and
none of his successors have imitated him. It will give you a good
notion of party to hear that the Solicitor-General and Lord-Advocate
refused to go, though they had previously engaged, unless the croupier
or the chairman were a Whig. Both (Wilson and Robertson) were
Tories, simply because, Jeffrey excepted, no Whig could be found
who was adapted to the office. The solicitor laid strict injunctions on
Napier not to go if a Whig were not in office. No Whig was, and he
stayed away. I think this is good — bearing in mind that all the old
\yhigs of Edinburgh were cracking their throats in the room. They
give out that they were ill, and the Lord Advocate did actually lie in
bed all the afternoon; but this is the real truth, and one of the judges
told it to me with great glee. It seems they couldn't quite trust
Wilson or Robertson, as they thought; and feared some Tory demon-
stration. Nothing of the kind took place; and ever since, these men
have been the loudest in their praises of the whole affair."

The close of his letter tells us all his engagements, and ccmpletes
his grateful picture of the hearty Scottish welcome. . . . The
narrative of the trip to the Highlands must have a chapter to itself
and its incidents of adventure and comedy. The latter chiefly were
due to the guide who accompanied them, a quasi-high lander himself,
named a few pages back as Mr. Kindheart, whose real name was Mr.
Angus Fletcher, and to whom it hardly needs that I should give
other mention than will be supplied b}' future notices of him as his
friend's letters may contain. He had rnuch talent, but too fitful and
wayward to concentrate on a settled pursuit; and though at the time
we knew him first he had taken up the profession of a sculptor, he
abandoned it soon afterwards. His mother, ^a woman distinguished by
many remarkable qualities, lived now in the English lake-country;
and it was no fault of hers tiiat her son preferred a wandering life to
that of home. His unfitness for an ordinary career was, perhaps, the
secret of such liking for him as Dickens had. Fletcher's eccentricity
and absurdities, divided often by the thinnest partition from a
foolish extravagance, but occasionally clever, and always the
genuine though whimsical outgrowth of the life he led, had a curious
charm for Dickens. He Ci^ joyed the oddity and humour; tolerated all
the rest; and to none move freely than to Kindheart during the next
few years, both in Italy and in England, opened his house and hospi-
tality.

1 to each

rs and so
and had
; such a
ng locks;
bly. The
U here to

2 dinners
torn, and
1 a good
Advocate
croupier
on) were
3e found
;tions on
1, and he
1 the old
m. They
illy lie in
le judges
ite trust
'' demon-
lese men

rmpletes
. . The
to itself
;fly were

himself,
was Mr.
uld give
m as his
tful and
the time
ptor, he
ished by
:ountry;
ig life to
aps, the
mtricity

from a
lys the

curious
•ated all
:he next
d hospi-

The Life of Charles Dickens

409

IN THE HIGHLANDS
1 841

From hoch Earn Head Dickens wrote on Monday, 5 July, having
reached it, "wet through," at four that afternoon. "Having had a
great deal to do in a crowded house on Saturday night at the theatre,
we left Edinburgh yesterday morning at ha!f-pas:: seven, and tra-
velled, with Fletcher for our guide, to a place called Stewart's Hotel
nine miles further than Callender. We had neglected to order rooms,
and were obliged to make a sitting-room of our own bed-chamber; in
which my genius for stowing furniture away was of the very greatest
service. Fletcher slept in a kennel with three panes of glass in it,
which formed part and parcel of a window; the other three panes
whereof belonged to a man who slept on the other side of the par-
tition. He told me this morning that he had had a nightmare all
night, and had screamed horribly, he knew. The stranger, as you may
suppose, hired a gig and went off at full gallop with the first glimpse
of daylight. Being very tired (for we had not had more than three
hours' sleep on the previous night) we lay till ten this morning; and
at half-past eleven went through the Trossachs to Lech Katrine,
where I walked from the hotel after tea last night. It is impossible fo
say what a glorious scene it was. It rained as it never does rain any-
where but here. We conveyed Kate up a rocky pass to go and see the
island of the Lady of the Lake, but she gave in after the first five
minutes, and we left her, very picturesque and uncomfortable, with
Tom" (the servant they had brought with them from Devonshire
Terrace) "holding an umbrella over her head, while we climbed on.
When we came back, she had gone into the carriage. We were wet
through to the skin, and came on in that state lour and twenty
miles. Fletcher is very good-natured, and of extraordinary use in
these outlandish parts. His habit of going into kitchens and bars,
disconcerting at Broadstairs, is here of great service. Not expecting
us till six, thoy hadn't lighted our fires when we arrived here; and if
you had seen him (with whom the responsibility of the omission
rested) running; in and out of the sitting-room and the two bedrooms
with a great pair of bellows, with which he distractec ■ ' >1 ew each of the
fires out in turn, you would have died of laughing. H. , had on his head
a great highland cap, on his back a white coat, and cut such a figure
as even the Inimitable can't depicter. . . .

"The inns, inside and out, arc the queerest places imaginable.
From the road, this one," at Loch Earn Head, "looks like a white
wall, with windows in it by mistake. We have a good sitting-room

ill

V I

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, /

410

The Life of Charles Dickens

though, on the first floor: as large (but not so lofty) as my study The
bedrooms are of that size which renders it impossible for you to
move after you have taken your boots off. without chipping pieces
out of your legs. There isn't a basin in the Highlands which will hold
my face; not a drawer which will open after you have put your
clothes m it; not a water-bottle capacious enough to wet your tooth-
brush. The huts are wretched and miserable beyond all description
Ihe food (for those who can pay for it) 'not bad.' as M. would say-
oatcake, mutton, hotchpotch, trout from the loch, small beer
bottled, marmalade, and whisky. Of the last-named article I have
taken about a pint to-day. The weather is wlnt thcv call 'soft'—
which means that the sky is a vast waterspout that never leaves off
emptying 2tself; and the liquor has no more effect than water.
(I am going to work to-morrow, and hope before leaving here' to
write you again. The elections have been sad work indeed. That they
should return Sibthorp and reject Bulwer, is. by Heaven, a national
disgrace. ... I don't wonder the devil flew over .Lincoln The
people were far too addle-headed, even for him.) . . . l uon't bore
you with accounts of Ben this and that, and Lochs of all sorts of
names, but this is a wonderful region. The way the mists were
stalking about to-day. and the clouds lying down upon the hills; the
deep glens, the high rocks, the rushing waterfalls, and the roaring
rivers down in deep gulfs below; were all stupendous. This house is
wedged round by great heights that are lost in the clouds; and the
Jock twelve miles Jong, stretches out this dreary length before the
windows. In my next I shall soar to the sublime, perhaps; in this here
present writing I confine myself to the ridiculous. But 1 am alwavs "
etc., etc. •" '

His next letter bore the date of "Ballechelish, Friday evening
nmth July, 1841, half-past nine, p.m." and described what we had
often longed to see together, the Pass of Glencoe. "... I can't go
to bed without writing to you from here, though the post will not
leave this place until we have left it. and arrived at another
The cold all day has been intense, and the rain sometimes most
violent. It has been impossible to keep warm, by any means; even
whisky failed; the wmd was too piercing even for that. One stage of
ten miles over a place called the Black Mount, took us two hours
and a half to do; and when we came back to a lone public called the
King's House,' at the entrance to Glencoe— this was about three
o clock— we were wellnigh frozen. We got a fire directly, and in
twenty minutes they served us up some famous kippered salmon
broiled; a broiled fowl; hot mutton, ham and poached eggs; pancakes-
oatcakes, wheaten bread; butter; bottled porter; hot water lump
sugar, and whisky; of which we made a very hearty meal All the
Avay, the road had been among moors and mountains with huge
masses of rock, which fell down God knows where, sprinkling the
o; " '" '-•'■-'-7 vixxcvLiuii, iiiiu giving ir the aspect ol the burial-
place of a race of giants. Now and then we passed a hut or two, with

itudy. The
or yon to
ling pieces
h will hold
put your
3ur tooth-
!scription.
'ould say;
nail beer
;le I have
11 'soft'—
leaves off
er. . . .
f? here to
rhat they
I national
:oln The
on't bore
1 sorts of
ists were
hills; the
B roaring
house is
and the
efore the
this here
always,"

evening,
: we had
can't go
will not
jr. . . ,
les most
ns; even
stage of
^o hours
illed the
at three

and in
salmon,
mcakes;
r, lump

All the
th huge
ing the

buriai-
vo, with

The Life of Charles Dickens

411

neither v^rindow nor chimney, and the smoke of the peat fire rolling
t)ut at the door. B t there were not six of these dwellings in a dozen
miles; and anything so bleak and wild, and mighty in its loneliness,
as the whole country, it is impossible to conceive. Glencoe itself is
perfectly terrible. The pass in an awful place. It is shut in on each side
by enormous rocks from which great torrents come rushing down in
all directions. Ii» amongst these rocks on one side of the pass (the
left as we came) there are scores of glens, high up, which form such
haunts as you might imagine yourself wandering in, in the very

height of madness of a fever. They will live in my dreams for years

I was going to say as long as I live, and I seriously think so. The very
recollection of them makes me shudder. . . . Well, I will not bore
you with my impressions of these tremendous wilds, but they really
are fearful in their grandeur and amazing solitude. Wales is a mere
toy compared with them. ..."

The impression made upon him by the Pass of Glencoe was not
overstated in this letter. It continued with him; and, even where he
expected to find nature in her most desolate grandeur, on the dreary
waste of an American prairie, his imagination went back with a
higher satisfaction to Glencoe. But his experience of it is not yet
completely told. The sequel was in a letter of two days later date
from "Dalmally, Sunday, July the eleventh, 1841."

"As there was no place of this name in our route, you will be sur-
prised to see it at the head of this present writing. But our being
here is a part of such moving accidents by flood and field as will
astonish you. If you should happen to have your hat on, take it oft,
that your hair may stand on end without any interruption. To get
from Ballyhoolish (as I am obliged to spell it when Fletcher is not
in the way; and he is out at this moment) to Oban, it is necessary
to cross two ferries, one of which is an arm of the sea, eight or ten
miles broad. Into this ferry-boat, passengers, carriages, horses, and
all, get bodily, and are got across by hook or by crook if the weather
be reasonably fine. Yesterday morning, however, it blew such a
strong gale 4:hat the landlord of the inn, where we had paid for
horses all the way to Oban (thirty miles), honestly came upstairs
just as we were starting, with the money in his hand, and told us it
would be impossible to cross. There was nothing to be done but to
come back five and thirty miles, through Glencoe and Inverouran,
to a place called Tyndrum, whence a road twelve miles long crosses
to Dalmally, which is sixteen miles from Inverary. Accordingly
we turned back, and in a great storm of wind and rain began to
retrace the dreary road we had come the day before. ... I was not
at all ill-pleased to have to come again through that awful Glencoe.
If it had been tiemendous on the previous day, yesterday it was
perfectly horrific. It had rained all night, and was raining then, as
..,..,,, J s,,,,^,j,j, ,...,v:>^ pdi to. ixiiuu5ii tHc wiiuic gicii, vvuicii is ten miles
long, torrents were boiling and foaming, and sending up in every
direction spray like the smoke of great fires. They were rushinj?

'Wa ' i

f J

412 The Life of Charles Dickens

down every hill and mountain side, and tearing like devih across
he path, and down into the depths of the rocks. Some of the hHls
looked as ,f they were full of silver, and had cracked in a hundred
places. Others as if they were frightened, and had broken out into a
deadly sweat. In others there was no compromise or division of
streams, but one great torrent came roaring down with a dea enii^e
no.se. and a rushing of water that was quite appalling. Such a JZf
m short (that's the country word) has not been known for many
years, and the sights and sounds were beyond description The^ost^
boy was not at all at his ease, and the horses were very much
frightened (as well they might be) by the perpetual ragfng and
roaring; one of them started as we came down a steep place and we

were withm that much ( ) of tumbling over a precipfceMust theT

too the drag broke, and we were obliged to go on as we best couW
without It: getting out every now and then. Ind hanging on at the
back of the carriage to prevent its rolling down too fLtf^and goW
Heaven knows where. Well, in this pleasant state of things we ?ame
^i1.^Th' "°"Kf ^f »"'i^^i"g been four hours doing the rixte^n
niiles The rumble where Tom sat waa by this time so full of water
that he was obliged to borrow a gimlet, and bore holes in the bottom
to let It run out The horses that were to take us on. were out uC
the hills, some^vhere within ten miles round; and three or four h^e-
legged fellows went out to look for ^em. while we sat by the firc^nd
tried to dry ourselves. At last we got off again (without^the drag and

l^mnin. '''^.'"t'P""^' "^ T''^ ^^^^"^ within ten miles) and went
Iiniping on to Inverouran. In the first three miles we were in a diLh
and out agam, and lost a horse's shoe. All this time it never once left
off rammg. and was very windy, very cold, very mist^ and most
intensely dismal. So we crossed :he Black Mount, and came To a
place we had passed the day before, where a rapid river runTover a
bed of broken rock. Now this river, sir. had a bridge last winter but

m.'nH'iH^' ^"^^' ^n^'" ^^"" '^' ^^^'' ^^"^^' ^^^ has never ince been
mended; so travellers cross upon a little platform, made of rou Jh

ford P^^"k%^tn'^^"^ ^"^"^ ^°^^ *° ^°^k: ^"d carrkges and horses
ford the water at a certain point. As the platform is the reverse of

steady (we had proved this the day b3fo?e). is very slipped and

affords anything but a pleasant footing, having only a trembfin^

ittle ran on one side, and on the other nothing between it and thf

foaming stream Kate decided to remain in thi carriage and trust

herself to the wheels rather than to her feet. Fletcher and I got out

and It was going away, when I advised her. as I had done several

times before to come with us; for I saw that the water was very hgh

the current being greatly swollen by the rain, and that thrpostbov

had been eyeing it m a very disconcerted manner for the last haH

hour. This decided her to come out; and Fletcher, she. Tom and I

began to cross, while the carriage went about a auart.r n/ ^11

u IT ?^"^' '" ^^''''''^'' ^^ ^ ^^^^^o^ place. The platform "shook so
much that we could only come across two at a time aTd then It

The Life of Charles Dickens

mi1<

413

ram

felt as if it were hung on springs. As to the wind J
put into one gust all the wind and rain you ever saw and heard, and
you'll have some faint notion of it ! When we got safely to the opposite
bank, there came riding up a wild highlander in a great plaid, whom
we recognised as the landlord of the inn, and who, without takin,
the least notice of us, went dashing on, with the plaid he was wrapped
in streaming in the wind, screeching in Gaelic to the postboy on the
opposite bank, and making the most frantic gestures you ever saw,
in which he was joined by some other wild men on foot, who had
come across by a short cut, knee deep in mire and water. As we
began to see what this meant, we (that is, Fletcher and I) scrambled
on after them, while the boy, horses, and carriage were plunging in
the water, which left only the horses' heads and the boy's body
visible. By the time we got up to them, the man on horseback and
the men on foot were perfectly mad with pantomine; for as to any
of their shouts being heard by the bov, the water made such a great
noise that they might as well have been dumb. It made me quite
sick to think how I should have felt if Kate had besn inside. The
carriage went round and round like a great stone, the boy was as
pale as death, the horses were struggling and plashing and snorting
like sea-animals, and we were all roaring to the driver to throw him-
self off, and let them and the coach go to the devil, when suddenly
it came all right (having got into shallow water), and, all tumbling
and dripping and jogging from side to side, climbed up to the dry
land. I assure you we looked rather queer, as we wiped our faces and
stared at each other in a little cluster round about it. It seemed that
the man on horseback had been lookinit; at us through a telescope as
we came to the track, and knowing that the place was very danger-
ous, and seeing that we meant to bring the carriage, had come on at
a great gallop to show the driver the only place where he could cross.
By the time he came up, the man had taken the water at a wrong
place, and in a word was as nearly drowned (with carriage, horses,
luggage, and all) as ever man was. V'as this a good adventure?

"We all went on to the inn— the -jvild man galloping on first, to get
a fire lighted— and there we dined on eggs and bacon, oatcake, and
whisky; and changed and dried ourselves. The place was a mere kiAot
of little outhouses, and in one of these there were fifty highlanders
all drunk. . . . Some were drovers, some pipers, and some work-
men engaged to build a hunting-lodge for Lord Breadalbane hard by,
who had been driven in by stress of weather. One was a paperhanger!
He had come out three days before to paper the inn's best room, a
chamber almost large enough to keep a Newfoundland dog in; and,
from the first ha If -hour after his arrival to that moment, had been
hopelessly and irreclaimably drunk. They were lying about in all
directions: on forms, on the ground, about a loft overhead, round the
turf-fire wrapped in plaids, on the tables, and under them. We paid
our bill, thanked our host very heartily, gave some money to his
children, and after an hour's rest came on again. At ten o'clock at

(

414

The Life of Charles Dickens

night, we reached this place, and were overjoyed to find quite an
English inn, with good beds (those we have slept on, yet, have
always been of straw), and every possible comfort. We breakfasted
this morning at half-past ten, and at three go on to Inverary to
dinner. I believe the very ro gh part of the journey is over, and I am
really glad of it. Kate sends all kinds of regards. I shall hope to find
a letter from you at Inverary when the post reaches there, to-morrow.
I \%rote to Oban yesterday, desiring the post-office keeper to send
any he might have for us, over to that place. Love to Mac." . . .

XII

AGAIN AT BROADSTAIRS

1 841

Soon after his return ["from Scotland], in August, he sent me some
rhymed squibs as his anonymous contribution to the fight the
Liberals were then making, against what was believed to be intended
by the return to office of the Tories; ignorant as we were how much
wise than his party the statesman then at the head of it was, or
how greatly what we all most desired would be advanced by the
very success that had been most disheartening. There will be no
harm no v in giving extracts from one or two of these pieces, which
will sufficiently show the tone of all of them, and with what relish
they were written. A celebrated address had been delivered at
Tamworth, in which the orator, though in those days big with
nothing much larger or graver than a sliding-scale, had made a
mystery of it as an infallible specific for public affairs, which he
refused to prescribe till regularly called in; and this was good-
humouredly laughed at in a quack-doctor's proclamation, to the
tune of "A Cobbler there was."

He's a famous corn-doctor, of wonderful skill —
No cutting, no rooting up, purging, or pill —
You're merely to take, 'stead of walking or riding,
The light schoolboy exercise, innocent sliding.

Tol de rol, etc

There's no advice gratis. If high ladies send
His legitimate fee, he's their soft-spoken friend.
At the great public counter, with one hand behind hira
And one in his waistcoat, they're certain to find him.

Tol de roi, etc.

quite an
yet, have
eakfasted
verary to
and I am
pe to find
(-morrow,
r to send

me some
ight the
intended
3w much
: was, or
i by the
ill be no
(s, which
at relish
-'ered at
big with
made a
i^hich he
IS good-
, to the

The Life of Charles Dickens 415

He has only to add he's the true Doctor Flam,
All others being purely fictitious and sham;
The house is a large one, tall, slated, and white,
With a lobby, and lights in the passage at night.

Tol de rol, diddle doll, etc.

The last of these rhymes I will give entire. This had no touch of
personal satire in it, and he would himself, for that reason, have least
objected to its revival. Thus ran his new version of "The Fine Old
English Gentleman, to be said or sung at all Conservative dinners":

I'll sing you a new ballad, and I'll warrant it first-rate.
Of the days of that old gentleman who had that old estate;
When they spent the public money at a bountiful old rate
On ev'ry mistress, pimp, and scamp, at ev'ry noble gate,

In the fine old English Tory times;

Soon may they come again!

The good old laws were garnished well with gibbets, whips, and chains
With fine old English penalties, and fine old English pains,
With rebel heads and seas of blood once hot in rebel veins:
For all these things were requisite to guard the rich old gains

Of the fine old English Tory times;

Soon may they come again !

This brave old code, like Argus, had a hundred watchful eyes
And ev'ry English peasant had his good old English spies,
To tempt his starving discontent with fine old English lies,
Then call the good old Yeomanry to stop his peevish cries,

In the fine old English Tory times;

Soon may they come again.

The good old times for cutting throats that cried out in their need
The good old times for hunting men who held their fathers' creed '
The good old times when William Pitt, as all good men agreed '
Came down direct from Paradise at more than railroad speed. '. , ,

Oh the fine old English Tory times;

When will they come again!

In those rare days, the press was seldom known to snarl or bark
But sweetly sang of men in pow'r, like any tuneful lark; '

Grave judges, too, to all their evil deeds were in the dark;
And not a man in twenty score knew how to ma':e his mark.

Oh the fine old English Tory times;

Soon may they come again! . . .

But Tolerance, though slow in flight, is strong-wing'd in the main;
That night must come on these fine days, in course of time was plain-
The pure old spirit struggled, but its str-iggles were in vain; '

A nation's grip was on it. and it died in choking pain.

With the fine old English Tory days,

All of the olden time.

1 , M

■;?i ■■

r.^ -ij'^iW

■ ''

III

1 1

416

The Life of Charles Dickens

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land,
In England there shall be — dear bread! In Ireland — sword and brand!
Anc^ poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,
So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand,

Of the fine old English Tory days;

Hail to the coming time!

Small causes of displeasure had been growing out of the Clock,
and were almost unavoidably incident to the position in which he
found himself respecting it. Its discontinuance had become necessary,
the strain upon himself being too great without the help from others
which experience had shown to be impracticable; but I thought he
had not met the difficulty wisely by undertaking, which already he
had done, to begin a new story so early as the following March. On
his arrival therefore we decided on another plan, with which we went
armed that Saturday afternoon to his publishers; and of which the
result will be best told by himself. He had returned to Broadstairs
the following morning, and next day (Monday, 23 August) he wrote
to me in ve. y enthusiastic terms of the share I had taken in what he
calls "the development on Saturday afternoon; when I thought
Chapman very manly and sensible. Hall morally and physically
feeble though perfectly well-intentioned, and both the statement
and reception of the project quite triumphant. Didn't you think so
too?" A fortnight later, Tuesday, 7 September, the agreement was
signed in my chambers, and its terms were to the effect following.
The Clock was to cease with the close of Barnahy Rudge, the respective
ownerships continuing as provided; and the new work in twenty
numbers, similar to those of Pickwick and Nickleby, was not to begin
until after an interval of twelve months, in November 1842. During
its publication he was to receive ;^2oo monthly, to be accounted as
part of th"^ expenses; for all which, and all risks incident, the publish-
ers made themselves responsible, under conditions the same as in
the Clock agreement; except that, out of the profits of each number,
they were to have only a fourth, three-fourths going to him, and this
arrangement was to hold good until th§ termination of six months
from the completed book, when, upon payment to him of a fourth
of the value of all existing stock, they were to have half the future
interest. During the twelve months' interval before the book began,
he was to be paid ;^i5o each month; but this was to be drawn from
his three-fourths of the profits, and in no way to interfere with the
monthly payments of ;^2oo while the publication was going on.
Such was the "project," excepting only a provision to be mentioned
hereafter against the improbable event of the profits being inade-
quate to the repayment: and some fear as to the use he was likely to
make of the leisure it afforded him seemed to me its only drawback.

That this fear was not ill-founded appears at the close of his
next letter. "There's no news" (13 September) "since my last. We
are going to dine with Rogers to-day, and with Lady Essex, who is

md,
>rand !

the Clock,
which he
lecessary,
om others
lought he
.Iready he
larch. On
ti we went
which the
roadstairs

he wrote
n what he
[ thought
physically
statement
1 think so
ment was
following,
respective
n twenty
t to begin
2. During
ounted as
e publish-
ime as in
1 number,
[, and this
X months
I a fourth
he future
ok began,
awn from
: with the
going on.
mentioned
x\g inade-
3 likely to
Irawback.
»se of his

last. We
!X, who is

The Life of Charles Dickens 417

also here. Rogers is much pleased with Lord Ashley, who was offered
by Peel a post m the government, but resolutely refused to take
office unless Peel pledged himself to factory improvement. Peel
hadn t made up his mind'; and Lord Ashley was deaf to all other
inducements, though they must have been very tempting. Much do
I honour him for it. I am in an exquisitely lazy state, bathing,
walking, reading, lying m the sun, doing everything but workini!
This frame of mind is srper-induced by the prospect of rest, and the
promising arrangements which I owe to you. I am still haunted bv
visions of America, night and day. To miss this opportunity would be
a sad thing Kate cries dismally if I mention the subject: But God
\villing. I think it must be managed somehow ! "

)*'.'
!-

m\i

332

H i :ll:

J
1 ^

BOOK THIRD
AMERICA

184I — 2. MT. 29-30

I. Eve of the Visit

II. First Impressions

III. Second Impressions

IV. Philadelphia and the South

V. Canal and Steam Boat Journeys

VI. Far West: to Niagara Falls

VII. "American Notes "

419

so far
his bo\

EVE OF THE VISIT

1841

The notion of America was in his mind, as we have seen, when he
first projected the Clock, and a very hearty letter from Washington
Irving about little Nell and the Curiosity Shop, expressing the delight
with his writings and the yearnings for himself which had indeed
been pourmg in upon him for some time from every part of the
States, had very strongly revived it. . . . Upon his return from
Scotland it began to take shape as a thing that somehow or other
at no very distant date, must be; and at last, near the end of a letter
filled with many unimportant things, the announcement, doublv
underlined, came to me.

The decision once taken, he was in his usual fever until its diffi-
culties were disposed of. The objections to separation from the chil-
dren led at first to the notion of taking them, but this was as quickly
abandoned; and what remained to be overcome yielded readily to
the kind offices of Macready, the offer of whose home to the little
ones during the time of absence, though not accepted to the full
extent, gave yet the assurance needed to quiet natural apprehensio:.s
All this, including an arrangement for publication of such notes as
might occur to him on the journey, took but a few days; and I was
reading in my chambers a letter he had written the previous day
from Broadstairs, when r. note from him reached me, written that
mornng in London, to tell me he was on his way to take share of my
breakfast. He had come overland by Canterbury after posting his
first letter; hai seen Macready the previous night; and had completed
some part of the arrangements. This mode of rapid procedure was
characteristic of him at all similar times, and will appear in the few
follow' ^ extracts from his letters.

"Now" (19 September) "to astonish you. After balancing, con-
sidermg, and v/'^ighing the matter in every point of view, I have

MADE UP .vIY MIND (WITH God's LEAVE) TO GO TO AMERICA— AND TO
START AS SOON AFTER CHRISTMAS AS IT WILL BE SAFE TO GO." Further

information was promised immediately; and a request followed,
characteristic as anv he could havp. aHHftH +r» hio rioo^rTr. />f +— -^-n:_^
so tar away, that we should visit once more together the scenes of
his boyhood. "On the ninth of October we leave here. It's a Saturday.

421

i tfl

]:W

422

The Life of Charles Dickens

If It should be fine dry weather, or anything :ke it, will you meet us
at Rochester, and stop there two or three days to see all the lions in
the surrounding country? Think of this. , . .

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

1842

His first " American " letter was written as soon as he got sight
of earth again, from the banks of Newfoundland, on Monday,
17 January, the fourteenth day from their departure: even then so far
from Halifax that they could not expect to make it before Wednes-
day night, or to reach Boston until Saturday or Sunday. They had
not been fortunate in the passage. During the whole voyage -le
weather had been unprecedentedly bad, the wind for the most part
dea^ against them, the wet intolerable, the sea horribly disturbed,
th days dark, and the nights fearful. On the previous Monday night
it had blown a hurricane, begmning at five in the afternoon and
raging all night. Hi<^ description of the storm is published, and the
peculiarities of a steamer's behaviour in such circumstances are hit
off as if he had been all his life a sailor. . . ,

He stood out against sickness only for the day following that on
which they sailed. For the three following days he kept his bed;
miserable enough; and had not, until the eighth day of the voyage]
six days before the date of his letter, been able to get to work at the
dinner-table. What he then observed of his fellow-travellers, and had
to tell of their life on board, has been set forth in his Notes with
delightful humour; but in its first freshness I received it in this letter,
and some whimsical passages, then suppressed, there will be no
harm in printing now.

"We have 86 passengers; and such a^ strange collection of beasts
never was got together upon the sea, since the days of the Ark.
"I have established myself, from the first in the ladies' cabin— you
remember it.? I'll describe its other occupants, and our way of passin"
the time, to you. ^

"Plrst, for the occupants. Kate and I, and Anne — when she is out

of bed, which is not often. A queer little Scotch body, a Mrs. P ,*

whose husband is a silversmith in New York. He married her at Glas-
gow three years ago, and bolted the day after the wedding; being

* The initials used here are in no case those of the real names, being employed
m everv case for the express purpose of disguising the names. Generally "the
rexnoiK is applicable to ail initials used in the letters priiiLed in the course of this
work. The exceptions are unimportant.

u meet us
le lions in

got sight
Monday,
hen so far
i Wednes-
They had
yage. -le
most part
iisturbed,
day night
noon and
, and the
es are hit

g that on
his bed;
e voyage,
)rk at the
;, and had
^otss with
his letter,
ill be no

of beasts

the Ark.

bin — you

Df passing

she is out
p *

r at Glas-
ng;

being

» employed
nerally the
urse of tliis

The Life of Charles Dickens

423

(which he had not told her) heavily in debt. Since then she has been
living with her mother; and she is now going out under the protection
of a male cousin, to give him a year's trial. If she is not comfortable
at the expiration of that time, she means to go back to Scotland

again. A Mrs. B , about twenty years old, whose husband is on

board with her. He is a young Englishman domiciled in New York,
and by trade (as well as I can make out) a woollen-draper. They have

been married a fortnight. A Mr. and Mrs. C , marvellously fond

of each other, complete the catalogue. Mrs. C , I have settled, is

a publican's daughter, and Mr. C is running away with her, the

till, the time-piece off the bar mantel-shelf, the mother's gold watch
from the pocket at the head of the bed, and other miscellaneous
property. The women are all pretty; unusually pretty. I never saw
such good faces together, anywhere." . . .

The news that excited them from day to day, too, of which little
more than a hint appears in the Notes, is worth giving as originally
written.

"As for news, we have more of that than you would think for.
One man lost fourteen pounds at vingt-un in the saloon yesterday^
or another got drunk before dinner was over, or another was blinded
with lobster sauce spilt over him by the steward, or another had a
fall on deck and fainted. The ship's cook was drunk yesterday
morning (having got at some salt-water-damaged whisky), and the
captain ordered the boatswain to play upon him the hose of the fire-
engine until he roared for mercy — which he didn't get; for he was
sentenced to look out, for four hours at a stretch for four nights
running, without a greatcoat, and to have his grog stopped. Four
do.-en plates were broken at dinner. One steward fell down the
cabin stairs with a round of beef, and injured his foot severely.
Another steward fell down after him, and cut his eye open. The
baker's taken ill: so is the pastry-cook. A new man, sick to death, has
been required to fill the place of the latter officer, and has been
dragged out of bed and propped up in a little house upon deck,
between two casks, and ordered (the captain standing over him) to
make and roll out pie-crust; which he protests, with tears in his eyes,
it is death to him in his bilious state to look at. Twelve dozen of
bottled porter has got loose upon deck, and the bottles are rolling
about distractedly, overhead. Lord Mulgrave (a handsome fellow, by
the by, to look at, and nothing but a good 'un to go) laid a wager
with twenty-five other men last night, whose berths, like his, are in
the fore-cabin whicii can only be got at by crossing the deck, that he
would reach his cabin first. Watches were set by the captain's, and
they sallied forth, wrapped up in coats and storm caps. The sea
broke over the ship 30 violently, that they were five and twenty
minutes holding on by the hand-rail at the starboard paddle-box,
drenched to the skin by every wave, and not daring to go on or come
back, lest they should be washed overboard. News ! A dozen murders
in town wouldn't interest us half as much." . . .

i . If

I •

|2 sf|^ ? •

424

The Life of Charles Dickens

The next day's landing at Halifax, and delivery of the mails, are
sketched in the Notes: but not his personal part in what followed.
"Then, sir, comes a breathless man who has been already into the
ship and out again, shouting my name as he tears along. I stop, arm
in arm with the little doctor -vhom I have taken ashore for oysters.
The breathless man introduces himself as The Speaker of the House
of Assembly; will drag me away to his house; and will have a carriage
and his wife sent down for Kate, who is laid up with a hideously
swollen face. Then he drags me up to the Governor's house (Lord
Falkland i ^he Governor), and then Heaven knows where; conclud-
ing with botu Houses of Parliament, which happen to meet for the
session that very day, and are opened by a mock speech from the
throne delivered by the Governor, with one of Lord Grey's sons for
his aide-de-camp, and a great host of officers about him. I wish you
could have seen the crowds cheering the Inimitable in the streets. I
wish you could have seen judges, law-officers, bishops, and law-
makers welcoming the Inimitable. I wish you could have seen the
Inimitable shown to a great elbow-chair by the Speaker's throne, and
sitting alone in the middle of the floor of the House of Commons, the
observed of all observers, listening with exemplary gravity to the
queerest speaking possible, and breaking in spite of himself into a
smile as he thought of this commencement to the Thousand and One
stories in reserve for home and Lincoln's Inn Fields and Jack Straw's
Castle. — Ah, Forster! when I dc come back again! " . . .

What further he had to say of that week's experience, finds its
first public utterance here. "How can I tell yoj," he continues,
"what has happened since that first day? How can I give you the
faintest notion of my reception here; of the crowds that pour in and
out of the whole day; of the people that line the streets when I go
out; of tl e cheering when I went to the theatre; of the copies of
verses, letters of congratulation, welcomco of all kinds, balls, dinners,
assemblies without end ? There is to be a public dinner to me here in
Boston, next Tuesday, and great dissatisfaction has been given to
the many by the high price (three pounds sterling each) of the tickets.
There is to be a ball next Monday week at New York, and 150 names
appear on the list of the committee. Tliere is to be a dinner in the
same place, in the same week, to which I have had an invitation with
every known name in America appended to it. But what can I tell
you about any of these things which will give you the slightest notion
of the enthusiastic greeting they give me, or the cry that runs through
the whole country 1 I have had deputations from the Far West, who
have come from more than two thousand miles distance: from the
lakes, the rivers, the backwoods, the log-houses, the cities, factories,
villages, and towns. Authorities from nearly all the States have
written to me. I have heard from the universities, congress, senate,
and bodies, public and private, of every sort and kind. 'It is no
nonsense, and no common ieeiiiig,' wrote Dr. Chanumg to me
yesterday. It is all heart. There never was, and never will be, such a

The Life of Charles Dickens

mails, are
followed.
f into the
stop, arm
ir oysters.
:he House
a carriage
hideously
use (Lord
; conclud-
st for the
from the
s sons for
wish you
streets. I
and law-
seen the
rone, and
mons, the
ty to the
!elf into a
I and One
k Straw's

finds its
ontinues,
i you the
ur in and
/hen I go
copies of
;, dinners,
le here in

given to
le tickets.
50 names
ler in the
,tion with
can I tell
ist notion
s through
Vest, who
from the
factories,
ites have
)S, senate,

'It is no
Lg to me
36, such a

425

triumph.' And it is a good thing, is it not, ... to find those fancies it
has given me and you the greatest satisfaction to think of, at the core
of it all ? It makes my heart quieter, and me a more retiring, sober,
tranquil man to watch the effect of those thoughts in all this noise
and hurry, even than if I sat, pen in hand, to put them down for the
first time. I feel, in the best aspects of this welcome, something of the
presence and influence of that .spirit which directs my life, and
through a heavy sorrow has pointed upward with unchanging
finger for more than four years past. And if I know my heart, not
twenty times this praise would move me to an act of folly. . . ."

The last addition made to this letter, from which many most vivid
pages of the Notes (among them the bright quaint picture of Boston
streets) were taken with small alteration, bore date 29 January.
"I hardly know what to add to all this long and unconnected history.
Dana, the author of that Two Years before the Masf' (a book which I
had praised much to him, thinking it like De Foe), "is a very nice
fellow indeed; and in appeiiiance not at all the man you would expect.
He is short, mild-looking, and has a care-worn face. His father is
exactly like George Cruikshank after a night's jollity — only shorter.
The professors at the Cambridge University, Longfellow, Felton,
Jared Sparks, are noble fellows. ..."

Unmistakably to be seen, in this earliest of his letters, is the quite
fresh and unalloyed impression first received by him at this memor-
able visit; and it is due, as well to himself as to the country which
welcomed him, that this should be considered independently of any
modification or change it afterwards underwent. Of the fervency
and universality of the welcome there could be no doubt, and as little
that it sprang from feelings honourable both to giver and receiver.
The sources of Dickens's popularity in England were in truth multi-
plied many-fold in America. The hearty, cordial, and humane side of
his genius had fascinated them quite as much; but there was also
something beyond this. The cheerful temper that had given new
beauty to the commonest forms of life, the abounding humour which
had added largely to all innocent enjoyment, the honourable and in
those days rare distinction of America which left no home in the
Union inaccessible to such advantages, had made Dickens the object
everywhere of grateful admiration, for the most part of personal
affection. But even this was not all. I do not say it either to lessen or
increase the value of the tribute, but to express simply what it was;
and there cannot be a question that the young English author,
whom by his language the Americans claimed equally for their own,
was almost universally regarded by them as a kind of embodied
protest against what was believed to be worst in the institutions of
England, depressing and overshadowing in a social sense, and adverse
to purely intellectual influences. In all their newspapers of evtry
grade at the time, the feeling of triumph over the Mother Country in
this particular is predominant. You worship titles, they said, and
military heroes, and millionaires, and we of the New World want to

332*

III

f I

I i

^ I

•If ' i

426

The Life of Charles Dickens

show you, by extending the kind of homage that the Old World
reserves for kings and conquerors to a young man with nothing to
distinguish him but his heart and his genius, what it is wo think in
these parts worthier of honour than birth or wealth, a title or a sword.
■Well, there was something in this, too, apart from a mere crowing
over the Mother Country. The Americans had honestly more than a
common share in the triumphs of a genius, which in more than one
sense had made the deserts and wildernesses of life to blossom like the
rose. They were entitled to se" t for a welcome, as emphatic as they
might please to render it, the writer who pre-eminently in his genera-
tion had busied himself to "detect and save," in human creatures,
such sparks of virtue as misery or vice had not availed to extinguish;
to discover what is beautiful and comely, under what commonly
passes for the ungainly and deformed; to draw happiness and hope-
fulness from despair itself; and, above all, so to have made known to
his own countrymen the wants and sufferingsof the poor, the ignorant,
and the neglected, that they could be left in absolute neglect no
more. ...

Ill

SECOND IMPRESSIONS

1842

His second letter, radiant with the same kindly warmth that gave
always charm to his genius, was dated from the Carlton Hotel, New
York, on 14 February, but its only allusion of any public interest
was to the beginning of his agitation of the question of international
copyright. He went to America with no express intention of starting
this question in any way; and certainly with no belief that such
remark upon it as a person in his position could alone be expected to
make, would be resented strongly by any sections of the Amer.''.an
people. But he was not long left in doubt on this head. He had spoken
upon it twice publicly, "to the great indignation of some of the
editors here, who are attacking me for so doing, right and left." On the
other hand all the best men had assured him, that, if only at once
followed up in England, the blow .uck might bring about a change
in the law; and, yielding to the agieeable delusion that the best men
could be a match for the worst in such a matter, he urged me to enlist
on his side what force was obtamable, and in particular, as he had
made Scott's claim his wr -cry, to bring Lockhart into the field. I
could not do much, but wl at I could was done. . . .

J.TCVT

1842.

J '

T7~U _

CiXi

J.U

As there is a sailing-packet from here to England to-

The Life of Charles Dickens

)ld World
lothing to
e think in
►r a sword,
e crowing
yre than a
: than one
m like the
ic as they
lis genera-
creatures,
xtinguish;
commonly
and hope-
known to
: ignorant,
leglect no

427

that gave
otel, New
c interest
jrnational
if starting
that such
pected to
American
id spoken
le of the
;."Onthe
y at once
a change
best men
3 to enlist
IS he had
le field. I

^ — J. -.,-■-, J. u

gland to-

morrow which is warranted (by the owners) to be a marvellous fast
sailer, and as it appears most probable that she will reach home (I
v/nte the word with a pang) before the Cunard steamer of next
month, I mdite this letter. And lest tnis letter should reach you
before another letter which I despatched from here last Monday let
me say m the first place that I dtd despatch a brief epistle fo you on
that day, together with a newspaper, and a pamphlet touchinir the
Boz ball; and tb.at I put in the postoftico at Boston anoth, r news-
papci lor you containing an account of the dinner, which was just
about to come off, you remember, when 1 wrote to you from that
city.

"It was a most superb affair; and the speaking admirable. Inc d
the general talent for public speaking here, is one of the most stril 1 ig
f)f the thir- -. that force themselves upon an Englishman's notice. \s
every ma; oks on to being a member of Congress, every man pre-
pares himi lor it; and the result is quite surprising. You will observe
one odd cu«..om— the drinking of sentiments. It is quite extinct with
us, but here everybody is expected to be prepared with an epigram aa
a matter of course. ...

Washington Irving was chairman of this dinner, and having from
the first a dread that he should break down in his speech, the catas-
trophe came accordingly. Near him sat the Cambridge professor who
had come with Dickens by boat from Newhaven, with whom already
a warm friendship had been formed that lasted for life, and who has
pleasantly sketched what happened. Mr. Felton saw Irving con-
stantly in the interval of preparation, and could not but despond at
his daily iterated foreboding of "I shall certainly break down":
though, besides the real dread, there was a sly humour which height-
ened its whimsical horror with an irresistible drollery. But the pro-
fessor plucked up hope a little when the night came, and he saw that
Irving, had laid under his plate the manuscript cf his speech. During
dinner, nevertheless, his old foreboding cry was still heard, and "at
last the moment arrived; Mr. Irving rose; and the deafening and long-
continued applause by no means lessened his apprehension. He began
in his pleasant voice; got through two or three sentences pretty
easily, but in the next hesitated; and, after one or two attempts to
go on, gave it up, with a graceful allusion to the tournament and the
troop of knights all armed and eager fir the fray; and ended with the
toast Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation. 'There, said he,
as he resumed his seat amid applause as great as had greeted his
rising, 'fhcxel I told you I should break down, and I've done it!' "
H-^ was in London a few months later, on his way to Spain; and I
heard Thomas Moore describe at Rogers's table the difficulty there
had been to overcome his reluctance, because of this breakdown, to
go to the dinner of the Literary Fund on the occasion of Prince
Mbert's presiding. "However," said Moore, "I told him only to
a ^empt a few words, and I suggested what they should "be, and he
said he'd never thought of anything so easy, and he went and did

■I.
■

428

The Life of Charles Dickens

famously." I knew very well, as I listened, that this h.d not been the
result; but as the distinguished American had found himself, on this
second occasion, not among orators as in New York, but among men
as unable as himself to speak in public, and equally able to do better
things, he was doubtless more reconciled to his own failure. I have
been l^d to this digression by Dickens's silence on his friend's break-
down. He had so great a love for Irving that it was painful to speak
of him as at any disadvantage, and of the New York dinner he wrote
only in its connection with his own copyright speeches. .

"We mean to retu'-n home in a packet-ship — not a steamer. Her
name is the George Washin-'on, and she will sail from here, for Liver-
pool, on the seventh of June. At that season of the year, they are
seldom more than three weeks making the voyage; and I never will
trust myself upon the wide ocean, if it please Heaven, in a steamer
again. When I tell you all that I observed on board that Britannia,
I shall astonish you. Meanwhile, consider two of their dangers. First,
that if the funnel were blown overboard, the vessel must instantly
be on fire, from stem to stern: to comprehend which consequence, you
have only to understand that the funnel is more than 40 feet high,
and that at night you see the solid fiire two or three feet above its
top. Imagine this swept down by a strong wind, and picture to your-
self the amount of flame on deck; and that a strong wind is likely to
sweep it down you soon learn, from the precautions taken to keep it
up in a storm, when it is the first thing thought of. Secondly, each oi
these boats consumes between London and Halifax 700 tons of coals;
and it is pretty clear, from this enormous difference -^' - /eight in a
ship of only 1200 tons burden in all, that she mu he e - ^. o heavy
when she comes out of port, or too light when s 51. The daily

difference in her rolling, as she burns the coa, ov' something
absolutely fearful. Add to all this, that by day and .i.^,uc she is full of
fire and people, that she has no boats, and that the struggling of that
enormous machinery in a heavy sea seems as though it would rend
her into fragments— and you may have a pretty considerable damned
good sort of a feeble notion that it don't fit nohow; and that it an't
calculated to make you smart, overmuch; and that you don't feel
special bright; and by no means first-rate; and not at all tonguey (or
disposed for conversation); and that however rowdy you may be by
natur', it does use you up com-plete, and that's a fact; and makes you
quake considerable, and disposed toe damn the Engine ! — All of which
phrases, I beg to add, are pure Americanisms of the first water.

"When we reach Baltimore, we are in the regions of slavery. It
exists there, in its least shocking and most mitigated form; but there
it is. They whisper, here (they dare only whisper, you know, and that
below their breaths), that on that place, and all through the South,
there is a dull gloomy cloud on which the very word seems written!
I shall be able to say, on*^ of these days, that I accepted no public
mark of respect in any place where slavery was; — and that's some-
thing.

Englan

The Life of Charles Dickens

429

t been the
If, on this
long men
do better
e. I have
I's break-
to speak
he wrote

mer. Her
tor Liver-
they are
Lever will
L steamer
'ritannia,
srs. First,
instantly
3nce, you
eet high,
ibove it^
to your-
likely to
o keep it
', each oi
of coals;
ight in a
o heavy
.'he daily
>mething
is full of
g of that
uld rend
damned
Lt it an't
on't feel
guey (or
ly be by
=ikes you
of which
ter.

very. It
lut there
md that
B South,
written,
o public
's some-

"The ladies of America are decidedly ad unquestionably beauti-
ful. Their complexions are not so good as those of Englishwomen;
their beauty does not last so long; and their figures are very inferior.
But they are most beautiful. I still reserve my opinion of the national
character — just whispering that I tremble for a Radical coming here,,
unless he is a Radical on principle, by reason and reflection, and from
the sense oi right. I fear that if he were anything else, he would return
home a Tory. ..."

A brief letter, sent me next day by the minister's bag, was in effect
a postscript; and expressed still more strongly the i^pprehensions his
voyage out had impressed him with, and which, though he after-
wards saw reason greatly to modify them, were not so strange at the
time as they appear to us now.

"Carlton House, New York, February twenty-eighth, 1842. . . .
The Caledonia, I grieve and regret to say, has not arrived. If she left
England to her time, she has been four and twenty days at sea. There
is no news of her; and on the nights of the fourteenth and eighteenth
it blew a terrible gale, which almost justifies the worst suspicions.
For myself, I have hardly any hope of her; having seen enough, in our
passage out to convince me that steaming across the ocean in heavy
weather is as yet an experiment of the utmost hazard.

"As it v/as supposed that there would be no steamer whatever for
England this month (since in ordinar)'- course the Caledonia would
have returned with the mails on the 2nd of March) I hastily got the
letters ready yesterday and sent them by the Garrick; which may
perhaps be three weeks out, but is not very likely to be longer. But
belonging to the Cunard Company is a boat called the Unicorn, which
in the summer time plies up the St. Lawrence, and brings passengers
from Canada to join the British and North American steamers at
Halifax. In the winter she lies at the last-mentioned place; from which
news has come this morning that they have sent her on to Boston for
the mails; and, rather than interrupt the communication, mean to dis-
patch her to England in lieu of the poor Caledonia. This in itself, by
the way, is a daring deed; for she was originally built to run between
Liverpool and Glasgow, and is no more designed for the Atlantic
than a Calais packet-boat; thoU||h she once crossed it, in the summer
season.

"You may judge, therefore, what the owners, think of the proba-
bility of the Caledonia's arrival. How slight an alteration in our plans
would have made us passengers on board of her !

"It would be difficult to tell you, my dear fellow, what an impres-
sion this has made upon our minds, or with what intense anxiety and
suspense we have been waiting for your letters from hor-13. We were
to have gone South to-day, but linger here until to-morrow afternoon
(having sent the secretary'- and luggage forward) for one more chance
of news. Love to dear Macready, and to dear Mac, and every rne we
care tor. It's useless to speak of the dear children. It seem^ now as
though we should never hear of them. . , .

t'i*''

430

The Life of Charles Dickens

-J'

"P.S. Washington Irving is a great fellow. We have laughed most
heartily together. He is just the man he ought to be. So is Doctor
Channing, with whom I have had an interesting correspondence since I
saw him last at Boston. Halleck is a merry little man. Bryant a sad
one, and very reserved. Washington Allston the painter (who wrote
Monaldi) is a fine specimen of a glorious old genius. Longfellow,
whose volume of poems I have got for you, is a frank accomplished
man as well as a fine writer, and will be in town 'next fall.' Tell
Macready that I suspect prices here must have rather altered since his
time. I paid our fortnight's bill here, last night. We have dined out
every day (except when I was laid up with a sore throat), and only
had in all four bottles of wine. The bill was £70 English ! ! !

"You will see, by my other letter, how we have been fSted and
feasted; and how there is war to the knife about the international
copyright; and how I will speak about it, and decline to be put
down. . . ,

"Oh for news from home ! I think of y(^ur letters so full of heart arid
friendship, with perhaps a little scrawl of Charley's or Mamey's,
lying at the bottom of the deep sea; and am as full of sorrow
as if they had once been living creatures. — Well ! they may come,
yet. ..."

PHILADELPHIA AND THE SOUTH
1842

Dickens's next letter was begun in the "United States Hotel, Phila-
delphia," and bore date "Sunday, sixth March, 1842." It treated of
much dealt with afterwards at greater length in the Notes, but the
freshness and vivacity of the first impressions in it have surprised
me. I do not, however, print any passage here which has not its own
interest independently of anything contained in that book. The rule
will be continued, as in the portions of letters already given, if not
transcribing anything before printed, or anything having even but a
near resemblance to descriptions that appear in the Notes.

". . . I have often asked Americans in London which were the
better railroads — ours or theirs? They have taken time for reflection,
and generally replied, on mature consideration, that they rather
thought we excelled; in respect of the punctuality with which we
arrived at our stations, and the smoothness of our travelling. I wish
you could see what an American railroad is, in some parts where I
now have seen them. I won't say I wish you could feel what it is,

The Life of Chailes Dickens

431

hed most
is Doctor
ice since I
ant a sad
ho wrote
ngfellow,
mplished
■all.' Tell
i since his
lined out
and only

Sted and
rnational
3 be put

leart arid
klamey's,
f sorrow
ly come,

;1, Phila-
"eated of
but the
urprised
: its own
The rule
n, if not
en but a

vere the
I flection,
Y rather
hich we
r. I wish
where I
lat it is,

because that would be an unchristian and savage aspiration. It is
never enclosed, or warded off. You walk down the main street of a
large town: and, slap-dash, headlong, pell-mell, down the middle of
the street; with pigs burrowing, and boys flying kites and playing
marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, and children crawl-
ing, close to the very rails; there comes tearing along a mad locomo-
tive with its train of cars, scattering a red-hot shower of sparks (from
its wood fire) in all directions; screeching, hissing, yelling, and pant-
ing; and nobody one atom more concerned than if it were a hundred
miles away. You cross a turnpike-road; and there is no gate, no
policeman, no signal — nothing to keep the wayfarer or quiet traveller
out r ' the way, but a wooden arch on which is written in great letters
"Loo; out for the locomotive." And if any man, woman, or child,
don't look out, why it's his or her fault, and there's an end of it.

"The cars are like very shabby omnibuses — only larger; holding
sixty or seventy people. The seats, instead of being placed long-ways,
are put crosswise, back to front. Each holds two. There is a long row
of these on each jide of the caravan, and a narrow passage up the
centre. The windows are usually all closed, and there is very often, in
addition, a hot, close, most intolerable charcoal stove in a red-hot
glow. The heat and closeness are quite insupportable. But this is the
characteristic of all American houses, of all the public institutions,
chapels, theatres, and prisons. From the constant use of the hard
anthracite coal in these beastly furnaces, a perfectly new class of
diseases is springing up in the country. Their effect upon an English-
man is briefly told. He is always very sick and very faint; and has an
intolerable headache, morning, noon, and night.

"In the ladies' car, there is no smoking of tobacco allowed. All
gentlemen who have ladies with them, sit in this car; and it is usually
very full. Before it, is the gentlemen's car; which is something nar-
rower. As I had a window close to me yesterday which commanded
this gentleman's car, I looked at it pretty often, perforce. The flashes
of saliva flew so perpetually and incessantly out of the windows all
the way, that it looked as though they were ripping open feather-
beds inside, and letting the wind dispose of the feathers. But this
spitting is universal. In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon on
the bench, the counsel have theirs, the witness has his, the prisoner
his, and the crier his. The jury are accommodated at the rate of three
m-^n to a spittoon (or spit-box as they call it here); and the spectators
in the gallery are provided for, as so many men who in the course of
nature expectorate without cessation. There are spit-boxes in every
steamboat, bar-room, public dining-room, house or ofiice, and place
of general resort, no matter what it be. In the hospitals, the students
are requested, by placards, to use the boxes provided for them, and
not to spit upon the stairs. I have twice seen gentlemen, at evening
parties in New York, turn aside when they were not engaged in con-
versation, and spit upon the drawing-room carpet. And iu every bar-
room and hotel passage the stone floor looks as if it were paved with

pffBf

432

The Life of Charles Dickens

open oysters — from the quantity of this kind of deposit which
tessellates it all over. ..."

"Washington, Sundny, March the Thirteenth, 1842.

"I must tell you a slight experience I had in Philadelphia. My rooms
had been ordered for a week, but, in consequence of Kate's illness,

only Mr. Q and the luggage had gone on. Mr. Q always lives

at the table d'hote, so that while we were in New York our rooms
were empty. The landlord not only charged me half the full rent for
the time during which the rooms were reserved for us (which was
quite right), but charged me also/oy board for myself and Kate and
Anne, at the rate of nine dollars per day for the same period, when we
were actually living, at the same expense, in New York!!! I did
remonstrate upon this head; but was coolly told it was the custom
(which I have since been assured is a lie), and had nothing for it but
to pay the amount. What else could I do? I was going away by the
steamboat at five o'clock in the morning; and the landlord knew per-
fectly well that my disputing an item of his bill would draw down
upon me the sacred wrath of the newspapers, which would one and all
demand in capitah if this was the grititude of the man whom
America had received as she had never received any other man but

La Fayette? ,

"I went last Tuesday to the Eastern Penitentiary near Phila-
delphia, which is the only prison in the Stater, or I believe, in the
world, on the principle of hopeless, strict, and unrelaxed solitary con-
finement, during the whole term of the sentence. It is wonderfully
kept, but a most dreadful, fearful place. The inspectors, immediately
on my arrival in Philadelphia, invited me to pass the day in the jail,
and to dine with them when I had finished my inspection, that they
might hear my opinion of the system. Accordingly I passed the whole
day in going from cell to cell, and conversing with the prisoners.
Every facility was given me, and no constraint whatever imposed
upon any man's free speech. If I were to write you a letter of twenty
sheets, I could not tell you this one day's work; so I will reserve it
until that happy time when we shall sit round the table at Jack
Straw's— you. and I, and Mac— and go over my diary. I never shall
be able to dismiss from my mind the impr'-ssions of that day. Making
notes of them, as I have done, is an absurdity, for they are written,
beyond all power of erasure, in my brain. I saw men who had been
there five years, six years, eleven years, two years, two months, two
days; some whose term was nearly over, and some whose term had
only just begun. Women too, under the same variety of circumstances.
Every prisoner who comes into the jail, comes at night; is put into a
bath, and dressed in the prison garb; and then a black hood is drawn
over his face and head, and he is led to the cell from which he never
stirs again until his whole period of confinement has expired. I looked
at some of them with the same awe as I should have looked at men

The Life of Charles Dickens

sit which

tth, 1842.

My rooms
e's illness,
ways lives
our rooms
ill rent for
rvhich was
' Kate and
, when we
k!!! I did
tie custom
; for it but
ay by the
knew per-
raw down
)ne and all
lan whom
r man but

ear Phila-

ive, in the

litary con-

onderfuUy

mediately

in the jail,

that they

the whole

prisoners.

r imposed

of twenty

reserve it

e at Jack

lever shall

,y. Making

:e written,

had been

3nths, two

term had

imstances.

put into a

d is drawn

h he never

d. I looked

:ed at men

433

who had been buried alive, and dug up again.

"We dined in the jail: and I told them after dinner how much the
sight had allected me, and what an awful punishment it was. I dwelt
upon this; for, although the inspectors are extremely kind and
benevolent men, I question whether they are sufficiently acquainted
with the human mind to know what it is they are doing. Indeed, I am
sure they do not know. I bore testimony, as every one who sees it
must, to the admirable government of the institution (Stanfield is the
keeper: grown a little younger, that's all); and added that nbthing
could justify such a punishment, but its working a reformation in
the prisoners. That for short terms — say two years for the maximum
— I conceived, especially after what they had told me of its good
effects in certain cases, it might perhaps be highly beneficial; but that,
carried to so great an extent, I thought it cruel and unjustifiable; and
further, that their sentences for small offences were very rigorous,
not to say savage. All this they took like men who were really
anxious to have one's free opinion, and to do right. And we were
very much pleased with each other, and parted in the friendliest
way . . .

"I said I wouldn't write anything more concerning the American
people, for two months. Second thoughts are best. I shall not change,
and may as well speak out — to you. They are friendly, earnest, hospit-
able, kind, frank, very often accomplished, far less prejudiced than
you wo^Tld suppose, warm-hearted, fervent, and enthusiastic. They
are chivalrous in their universal politeness to women, courteous,
obliging, disinterested; and, when they conceive a perfect affection
for a man (as I may venture to say of myself), entirely devoted to
him. I have received thousands of people of all ranks and grades, and
have never once been asked an offensive or unpolite question — except
by Englishmen, who, when they have been 'located' here for some
years, are worse than the devil in his blackest painting. The State is
a parent to its people: has a parental care and watch over all poor
children, women labouring of child, sick persons, and captives. The
common men render you assistance in the streets, and would revolt
from the offer of a piece of money. The desire to oblige is universal;
and I have never once travelled in a public conveyance, without
making some generous acquaintance whom I have been sorry to part
from, and who has in many cases come on miles, to see us again.
But I don't like the country. I would not live here on any considera-
tion It goes against the grain with me. It would with you. I think it
impossible, utterly impossible, for any Englishman to live here and
be happy. I have a confidence that I must be right, because I have
everything, God knows, to lead me to the opposite conclusion: and
yet I cannot resist coming to this one. As to the causes, they are too
many to enter upon here, ..."

The reader of the American Notes will remember the humorous
description of the night steamer on the Potomac, and of the black
driver over the Virginia Road. Both were in th'" letter; which, after

i|:|

%'i

■

434

The Life of Charles Dickens

three days, he resumed "At Washington again, Monday, March the
twenty-first.

"We had intended to go to Baltimore from Richmond, by a place
called Norfolk: but one of the boats being under repair, I found we
should probably be detained at this Norfolk two days. Therefore we
came back here yesterday, by th** road we had travelled before; lay
here last night; and go on to Baltimore this afternoon, at four o'clock.
It is a journey of only two hours and a half. Richmond is a prettily
situated town; but, like other towns in slave districts (as the planters
themselves admit), has an aspect of decay and gloom which to an
unaccustomed eye is most distressing. In the black car (for they don't
let them sit with the whites) on the railroad as we went there, were a
mother and family whom the steamer was conveying away, to sell;
retaining the man (the husband and father I mean) on his plantation.
The children cried the whole way. Yesterday, on board the boat, a
slave owner and two constables were our fellow-passengers. They
were coming here in search of two negroes who had run away on the
previous day. On the bridge at Richmond there is a notice against
fast driving over it, as it is rotten and crazy: penalty — for whites,
five dollars; for slaves, fifteen stripes. My heart is lightened as if a
great load had been taken from it, when I think that we are turning
our backs on this accursed and detested system. I really don't think
I could have borne it ? ny longer. It is all very well to say ' be silent on
the subject. ' They won't let you be silent. They will ask you what you
think of it; and will expatiate on slavery as if it were one of the
greatest blessings of mankind. 'It's not,' said a hard, bad-looking fel-
low to me the other day, ' it's not the interest of a man to use his
slaves ill. It's damned nonsense that you hear in England.' — I told
him quietly that it was not a man's interest to get drunk, or to steal,
or to game, or to indulge in any other vice, but he did indulge in it for
all that. That cnielty, and the abuse of irresponsible power, were two
of the bad passions of human nature, with the gratification of which,
considerations of interest or of ruin had nothing whatever to do; and
that, while every candid man must admit that even a slaVe might be
happy enougli with a good master, all human beings knew that bad
masters, cruel masters, and masters who disgraced the form they
bore, were matters of experience and history, whose existence was
as undisputed as that of slaves themselves. He was a little taken
aback by this, and asked me if I believed in the Bible. Yes, I said, but
if any man could prove to me that it sanctioned slavery, I would
place no further credence in it. 'Well, then,' he said, 'by God, sir, the
niggers must be kept down, and the whites have put down the
coloured people wherever they have found them.' 'That's the whole
question,' said I. 'Yes, and by God,' says he, 'the British had better
not stand out on that point when Lord Ashburton comes over, for I
oev^r felt so warlike as I do now, — and that's a fact.' I was obliged
t<>aec^pi a public supper in this Richmond, and I saw plainly enough,
khe^re, that the hatred which these Southern States bear to us as a

[arch the

y a place
found we
refore we
;fore; lay
r o'clock.
I prettily
! planters
ich to an
ley don't
e, were a
^, to sell;
antation.
e boat, a
Ts. They
ly on the
e against
r whites,
:d as if a
B turning
n't think

silent on
what you
le of the
)king fel-
o use his
'—I told
• to steal,
e in it for
were two
jf which,
3 do; and
might be
that bad
)rm they
gnce was
de taken
said, but

I would
1, sir, the
own the
he whole
id better
/er, for I
s obliged
' enough,
> us as a

The Life of Charles Dickens

435

nation has been fanned up and revived again by this Creole business,
and can scarcely be exaggerated. ... We were desperately tired at
Richmond, as we went to a great many places, and received a very
great number of visitors. We appoint usually two hours in every day
for this latter purpose, and have our room so full at that period that
it is difficult to move or breathe. Before we left Richmond, a gentle-
man told me, when I really was so exhausted that I could hardly
stand, that 'three people of great fashion' were much offended by
having been told, when they called last evening, that I was tired and
not visible, then, but would be 'at home' from twelve to two next
day! Another gentleman (no doubt of great fashion also) sent a letter
to me two hours after I had gone to bed preparatory to rising at four
next morning, with instructions to the slave who brought it to knock
me up and wait for an answer I ..."

CANAL AND STEAM BOAT JOURNEYS
1842

It would not be possible that a more vivid or exact impression, than
that which is derivable from these letters, could be given of either
the genius or the character of the writer. The whole man is here in
the supreme hour of his life, and in all the enjoyment of its highest
sensations. Inexpressibly sad to me has been the task of going over
them. ... ■',; .,.,

His next letter was begun from "On board the canal boat.
Going to Pittsburgh. Monday, March twenty-eighth, 1842"; and
the difficulties of rejection, to which reference has just been made,
have been nowhere felt by me so much. Several of the descrip-
tive masterpieces of the book are in it, with such touches of original
freshness as might fairly have justified a reproduction of them in
their first form. Among these are the Harrisburgh coach on its way
through the Susquehanah Valley; the railroad across the mountain;
the brown-forester of the Mississippi, the interrogative m.an in
pepper-and-salt, and the affecting scene of the emigrants put ashore
as the steamer passes up the Ohio. But all that I may here give,
bearing any resemblance to what is given in the Notes, are, the open-
ing sketch of the small creature on the top of the queer stage coach,
to which the printed version fails to do adequate justice; and an
experi^'ice to which the interest belongs of having suggested the

.<5f»ff-lf>mPTTf nf TTHAn in A/Tnvi'in/t ^hiivflaim'tf " WTa !«*•(- D^li.:

-.. , ,,....,„,„^„,,, , , ,,^^ ii_it -UdiHIiiUiC

last Thursday the twenty-fourth at half-past eight in the morning,
by railroad; and got to a place called York, about twelve. There we

f-|

436

The Life of Charles Dickens

'< it

dined, and took a stage-coach for Harrisburgh; twenty-five miles
further. This stage-coach was like nothing so much as the body of
one of the swings you see at a fair set upon four wheels and roofed
and covered at the sides with painted canvas. There were twelve
inside ! I, thank my stars, was on the box. The luggage was on the
roof; among it, a good-sized dining-table, and a big rocking-chair.
We also took up an intoxicated gentleman, who sat for ten miles
between me and the coachman; and another intoxicated gentleman
who got up behind, but in the course of a mile or two fell off without
hurting himself, and was seen in the distant perspective reeling back
to the grog-shop where we had found him. There were four horses to
this land-ark, of course; but we did not perform the journey until
half-past six o'clock that night. . . , The first half of the journey
was tame enough, but the second lay through the valley of the
Susquehanah (I think I spell it right, but I haven't that American
Geography at hand) which is very beautiful. . . .

"You know my small respect for our House of Commons. These
local legislatures are too insufferably apish of mighty legislation, to
be seen without bile: for which reason, and because a great crowd of
senators and ladies had assembled in both houses to behold the
Inimitable, and had already begun to pour in upon him even in the
secretary's private room, I went back to the hotel, with all speed.
The members of both branches of the legislature followed me there,
however, so we had to hold the usual levee bofore our half-past one
o'clock dinner. We received a p~eat number of them. Pretty nearly
every man spat upon the carpet, as usual; and one blew his nose —
with his fingers — also on the carpet, which was a very neat one, the
room given up to us being the private parlour of the landlord's wife.
This has become so common since, however, that it scarcely seems
worth mentioning. Please to observe that the gentleman in question
was a member of the Senate, which answers (as they very often tell
me) to our House of Lords.

"The innkeeper was the most attentive, civil, and obliging person
I ever saw in my life. On being asked for his bill, he said there was
no bill: the honour and pleasure, etc., being more than sufficient.

I did not permit this, of course; and begged Mr. Q to explain

to him, that, travelling four strong, I could not hear of it on any
account.

"And now I come to the Canal Boat. Bless your heart and soul,
my dear fellow, — if you could only see us on board the canal boat !
Let me think, for a moment, at what time of the day or night I
should best like you to see us. In the morning? Between five and six
in the morning, shall I say? Well! you would like to see me, standing
on the deck, fishing the dirty water out of the canal with a tin ladle
chained to the boat by a long chain; pouring the same into a tin
basin (also chained uv in like manner^: and scrubbinf^ rniy face with
the jack-towel. At night, shall I say? I don't know that you would
like to look into the cabin at night, only to see me lying on a tern-

ve miles
body of
id roofed
e twelve
Ls on the
ng-chair.
en miles
jntleman
; without
ing back
horses to
ley until
journey
y of the
Imerican

8. These
ation, to
crowd of
hold the
;n in the
11 speed,
le there,
past one
;y nearly
s nose —
one, the
d's wife,
ly seems
question
)ften tell

g person
lere was
afficient.
explain
; on any

nd soul,
al boat!
night I
i and six
standing
tin ladle
to a tin
ace with
>u would
1 a tem-

The Life of Charles Dickens

437

porary shelf exactly the width of this sheet of paper when it's open
(/ measured it this morning), with one man above me, and another
below; and, in all, eight and twenty in a low cabin, which you can't
stand upright in with your hat on. I don't think you would like to
look in at breakfast time either, for then these shelves have only just
been taken down and put away, and the atmosphere of the place is,
as you may suppose, by no means fresh; though there are upon the
table tea and coffee, and bread and butter, and salmon, and shad,
and liver, and steak, and potatoes, and pickles, and ham, and
pudding, and sausages; and three and thirty people sitting round it,
eating and drinlcing; and savoury bottles of gin, and whisky, and
brandy, and rum, in the bar hard by; and seven and twenty out of
the eight and twenty men, in foul linen, with yellow streams from
half-chewed tobacco trickling down their chins. Perhaps the best
time for you to take a peep would be the present: eleven o'clock in
the forenoon: when the barber is at his shaving, and the gentlemen
are lounging about the stove waiting for their turns, and not more
than seventeen are spitting in concert, and two or three are walking
overhead (lying down on the luggage every time the man at the
helm calls 'Bridge !'), and I am writing this in the ladies' cabin, which
is a part of the gentlemen's, and only screened off by a red curtain.
Indeed it exactly resembles the dwarf's private apartment in a
caravan at a fair; and the gentlemen, generally, represent the
spectators at a penny-a-head. The place is just as clean and just as
large as that caravan you and I were in at Greenwich Fair last past.
Outside, it is exactly like any canal boat you have seen near the
Regent's Park, or elsewhere.

"You never can conceive what the hawking and spitting is, the
whole night through. Last night was the worst. Upon my honour and
word I was obliged, this morning, to lay my fur-coat on the deck,
and wipe the half-dried flakes of spittle from it with my handker-
chief: and the only surprise seemed to be, that I should consider it
necessary to do so. When I turned in last night, I put it on a stool
beside me, and there it lay, under a cross fire from five men — three
opposite; one above; and one below. I make no complaints, and show
no disgust. I am looked upon as highly facetious at night, for I crack
jokes with everybody near me until we fall asleep. I am considered
very hardy in the morning, for I run up, bare-necked, and plunge my
head into the half-frozen water, by half-past five o'clock. I am re-
spected for my activity, inasmuch as I jump from the boat to the
towing-path, and walk five or six miles before breakfast; keeping up
with the horses all the time. In a word, they are quite astonished to
find a sedentary Englishman roughing it so well, and taking so much
exercise; and question me very much on that head. The greater part
of the men will sit and shiver round the stove c.ll day, rather than

■nn^ r\nf» ■fnr^'f K^^j-f/^ria -fliA rk-Mioi- Ac? "fr\ T-i< '

* ,(

not to be thought of.

"I told you of the many uses of the word 'fix.' I ask Mr. Q

438

The Life of Charles Dickens

on board a steam-boat if breakfast be nearly ready, and he tells me
yes he should think so, for when he was last below the steward was
'fixing the tables' — in other wirds, laying the cloth. When we have
been writing, and I beg him (do you remember anything of my love
of order, at this distance of time?) to collect our papers, he answers
that he'll 'fix 'em presently.' So when a man's dressing he's 'fixing'
himself, and when you put yourself under a doctor he 'fixes' you in
no time. T'other night, before we came on board here, when I had
ordered a bottle of mulled claret and waited some time for it, it was
put on table with an apology from the landlord (a lieutenant-colonel)
that 'he fear'd it wasn't fixed properly.' And here, on Saturday morn-
ing, a Western man, handing the potatoes to Mr. Q- — at breakfast,
inquired if he wouldn't take some of 'these fixings' with his meat.
I remained as grave as a judge. I catch them looking at me some-
times, and feel that they think I don't take any notice. Politics are
very high here; dreadfully strong; handbills, denunciations, invec-
tives, threats, and quarrels. The question is, who shall be the next
president. The election comes off in three years and a-half from this
time." . . .

All'
•if' \i

"Still in the Same Boat. April the Second, 1842.

"Many, many, happy returns of the day. It's only eight o'clock in
the morning now, but we mean to driiv.c your health after dinner, in
a bumper; and scores of Richmond dinners to us I We have some wine
(a present sent on board by our Pittsburgh landlord) in our own
cabin; and we shall tap it to good purpose, I assure you; wishing "ou
all manner and kinds of happiness, and a long life to ourselves that
we may be partakers of it. . . .

"Let me tell you that the other night at Pittsburgh, there being

present only Mr. Q and the portrait-painter, Kate sat down,

laughing, for me to try my hand upon her. 1 had been holding forth
upon the subject rather luminously, and asserting that I thought I
could exercise the influence, but had never tried. In six minutes, I
magnetised her into hysterics, and then into the magnetic sleep. I
tried again next night, and she fell into the slumber in little more
than two minutes. ... I can wake her with perfect ease; but I
confess (not being prepared for anything so sudden and complete)
I was on the first occasion rather alarmed. . . . The Western parts
being sometimes hazardous, I have fitted out the whole of my little
company/ with Life Preservers, which I inflate with gi-eat
solemnity when we get aboard any boat, and keep, as Mrs. Cluppins
did her umbrella in the court of common pleas, ready for use upon a
moment's notice. . . ."

He resumed his letter, on "Sunday, April the third." . . .

"At Pittsburgh I saw another solitary confinement prison: Pitts-
burgh being also in Pennsylvania. A horrible thought occurred to
me when I was recalling all I had seen, that night. What if ghosts be

The Life of Charles Dickens

439

one of the terrurs of the jails? I have pondered on it often, since then.
The utter solitude by day and night; the many hours of darkness;
the silence of death; the mind for ever brooding on melancholy
themes, and having no relief; sometimes an evil conscience very
busy: imagine a prisoner covering up his head in the bedclothes and
looking out from time to time, with a ghastly dread of some inex-
plicable silent figure that always sits upon his bed, or stands (if a
thing can be said to stand, that never walks as men do) in the same
comer of his cell. The more I think of it, the more certain I feel that
not a few of these men (during a portion of their imprisonment at
least) are nightly visited by spectres. I did ask one man in this last
jail, if he dreamed much. He gave me a most extraordinary look,
and said — under his breath — in a whisper — No.' . . ,

FAR west: to NIAGARA FALLS

1842

The next letter described his experiences in the Far West, his stay
in St. Louis, his visit to a Prairie, the return to Cincinnati, and, aftra:
a stage-coach ride from that city to Columbus, the travel thence to
Sandusky, and so, by Lake Erie, to the Falls of Niagara. All these
subjects appear in the Notes, but nothing printed there is repeated
in the extracts now to be given :

"... They won't let me alone about slavery. A certain Judge in
St. Louis went so far yesterday, that I fell upon him (to the indescrib-
able horror of the man who brought him) and told him a piece of my
mind. I said that I was very averse to speaking on the subject here,
and always forbore, if possible: but when he pitied our national
ignorance of the truths of slavery, I must remind him that we went
upon indisputable records, obtained after many years of careful
investigation, and at all sorts of self-sacrifice; and that I believed
we were much more competent to judge of its atrocity and horror,
than he who had been brought up in the midst of it. I told him that
I could sympathise with men who admitted it to be a dreadful evil,
but fra.nkly confessed their inability to devise a means of getting rid
of it: but that men who spoke of it as a blessing, as a matter of course,
as a state of things to be desired, were out of the pale of reason; and
that for them to speak of ignorance or prejudice was an absurdity
too ridiculous to be combated. ...

"It is not six vears ago, since a slave in this very same St. Louis
being arrested (1 forget for what), and knowing be bad no chance of
a fair trial be his offence what it might, drew his bowie knife and

440

The Life of Charles Dickens

ripped the constable across the body. A scuffle ensuing, the desperate
negro stabbed two others with the same weapon. The mob who
gathered round (among whom were men of mark, wealth, and in-
fluence in the place) overpowered him by numbers, carried him away
to a piece of open ground beyond the city; and burned him alive.
This, I say, was done within six years in broad day; in a city with its
courts, lawyers, tipstaffs, judges, jails, and hangman; and not a hair
on the head of one of those men has been hurt to this day. And it is,
believe me, it is the miserable, wretched independence in small
things; the paltry republicanism which recoils from honest service
to an honest man, but does not shrink from every trick, artifice, and
knavery in business; that makes these slaves necessary, and will
render them so, until the indignation of other countries sets them
free. . . .

"SxMii Boat, Saturday, Sixteenth April, 1842.

"Let me tell you, my dear Forster, before I forget it, a pretty
little scene we had on board the boat between Louisville and St.
Louis, as we were going to the latter place. It is not much to tell,
but it was very pleasant and interesting to witness."

What follows has been printed in the Notes, and ought not, by
the rule I have laid down, to be given here. But, beautiful as the
printed description is, it has not profited by the alteration of seme
touches, and the omission of others in the first fresh version of it,
which, for that reason, I here preserve — one of the most charming
poul-felt pictures of character and emotion that ever warmed the
heart in fact or fiction. It was, I think, Jeffrey's favourite passage in
all the writings of Dickens: and certainly, if anyone would learn the
secret of their popularity, it is to be read in the observation and
description of this little incident.

"There was a little woman on board, with a little baby; and both
little woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, bright-
eyed, and fair to see. The little woman had been passing a long time
with a sick mother in New York, and had left her home in St. Louis
in that condition in which ladies who truly love their lords desire to
be. The baby had been born in her mother's house, and she had not
seen her husband (to whom she was now returning) for twelve
months: having left him a month or two after their marriage. Well,
to be sure, there never was a little woman so full of hope, and
tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as t^ is little woman was: and
there she was, all the livelong day, wonde- ing whether 'he' would be
at the wharf; and whether 'he' had got her letter; and whether, if she
sent the baby on shore by somebody else, 'Ae' would know it, meeting
it in the street: which, seeing that he had never set ej.os upon it in
his life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough
to the young mo*"her. She was such an artless little creature; and was
in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out all this matter,

The Life of Charles Dickens

esperate
lob who
and in-
im away
m alive.
with its
)t a hair
ind it is,
n small
: service
[ice. and
md will
tts them

/, 1842.

a, pretty
and St.
I to tell,

not, by
il as the
of seme
Dn of it,
harming
med the
Lssage in
3arn the
ion and

nd both
bright-
)ng time
It. Louis
iesire to
had not
■ twelve
:e. Well,
pe, and
i^as: and
i^ould be
iT, if she
meeting
►on it in
! enough
and was
matter,

441

chnging close about her heart, so freely; that all the other lady
passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she: and the
captain (who heard all about it from his wife) was wondrous sly, I
promise you: inquiring, every time we met at table, whether she
expected anybody to meet her at St. Louis, and supposing she
wouldn't want to go ashore the night we reached it. and cutting
many other dry jokes which convulsed all his hearers, but especially
the ladies. There was one little, weazen, dried-apple old woman
among them, who took occasion to doubt the constancy of husbands
under such circumstances of bereavement; and there was another
lady (with a lap dog), old enough to moralise on the lightness of
human affections, and yet not so old that she could help nursing the
baby now and then, or laughing with the rest when the little woman
called it by its father's name, and asked it all manner of fantastic
questions concerning him, in the joy of her heart. It was something
of a blow to the little woman, that when we were within twenty
miles of our destination, it became clearly necessary to put the baby
to bed; but she got over that with the same good humour, tied a little
handkerchief over her little head, and came out into the gallery with
the rest. Then, such an oracle as she became in referenr-j to the
localities! and such facetiousness as was displayed by the ma Tied
ladies! and such sympathy as was shown by ^'le single onti and
such peals of laughter as the little woman her^ J (who would j^rst as
soon have cried) greeted every jest with! At last, there were the
lights of St. Louis— and here was the wharf— and those were the
steps— and the little woman, co-ering her face with her hands, and
laughing, or seeming to laugh, more than ever, ran into her own
cabin, and shut herself up tight. I have no doubt that, in the charm-
ing inconsistency of such excitement, she stopped her ears lest she
should hear 'him' asking for her; but 1 didn't see her do it. Then a
great crowd of people rushed ^" board, though the boat was not yet
made fast, and was staggering about among the other boats to find
a landing-place; and everybody looked for the husband, and nobody
saw him; when all of a sudden, right in the midst of them— God
knows how rhe ever got there— there was the little woman hugging
with both arms round the neck of 2 fine, good-looking, sturdy fellow 1
And in a moment afterwards, there she was again, dragging him
through the small door of her small cabin, to look at the baby as he
lay asleep ! — What a good thing it is to know that so many of us
would have been quite downhearted and sorry if that husband had
failed to come." ...

"Sandusky.
"Sunday, Twenty-fourth April, 1842.

". . . We remained at Cincinnati all Tuesday the nineteenth, and

all that night. At eight o'clock on Wednesday morning the twentieth.

wo left ill the mail stage for Columbus: Anne, Kate, and Mr. Q

inside; I on the box. The distance is a hundred and twenty miles;

442

The Life of Charles Dickens

the road macadamised; and for an American road, very good. We
were tliree and twenty hours performing the journey. We travelled
all night; reached Columbus at seven in the morning; breakfasted;
and went to bed until dinner time. At night we held a levee for half
an hour, and the people poured in as they always do: each gentleman
with a lady on each arm, exactly like the Chorus to God Save the
Queen. I wish you could see them, that you might know what a
splendid comparison this is. They wear their clothes precisely as the
chorus people do; and stand — supposing Kate and me to be in the
centre of the stage, with our backs to the footlights — just as the
company would, on the first night of the season. They shake hands
exactly after the manner of the guests at a ball at the Adelphi or
the Haymarket; receive any facetiousness on my part, as if there
were a stage direction 'all laugh'; and have rather more difficulty
in 'getting off' than the last gentlemen, in white pantaloons, polished
boots, and berlins, usually display, under the most trying circum-
stances. ...

"An inn at which we halted was a rough log-house. The people
were all abed, and we had to knock them up. We had the queerest
sleeping-room, with two doors, one opposite the other; both opening
directly on the wild black country, and neither having any lock or
bolt. The effect of these opposite doors was, that one was always
blowing the other open: an ingenuity in the art of building, which I
don't remember to have met with before. You should have seen me,
in my shirt, blockading them with portmanteaux, and desperately
endeavouring to make the room tidy ! But the blockading was really
needful, for in my dressing-case I have about ;^25o in gold; and for
the amount of the middle fi<?ure in that scarce metal, there are not a
few men in the West who would murder their fathers. Apropos of
this golden store, consider at your leisure the strange state of things
in this country. It has no money; really no money. The bank paper
won't pass; the newspapers are full of advertisements from trades-
men who sell by barter; and American gold is not to be had, or
purchased. I bought sovereigns, English sovereigns, at first: but as I
could get none of them at Cincinnati to this day, I have had to
purchase French gold; 20-franc pieces; with which I am travelling
as if I were in Paris !

"But let's go back to Lower Sandusky. Mr. Q went to bed up

in the roof of the log-house somewhefe, but was so beset by bugs
that he got up after an hour and lay in the coach . . , where he was
obliged to wait till breakfast time. We breakfasted, driver and all,
in the one common room. It was papered with newspapers, and was
as rough a place as need be. At half-past seven we started again, and
we reached Sandusky at six o'clock yesterday afternoon. It is or
Lake Erie, twenty-four hours' journey by steam-boat from Buffalo.
We found no boat here, nor has there been one, since. We are waiting,
with every thing packed up, ready to start on the shortest notice;
and are anxiously looking out for smoke in the distance. . . ,

"I do

Sandusl^
as I finis
whereup
hasty ap
the spee
burden,
and had
talking ;
to sea-si
as the /
We reac
sent to
can say
our Eng

"We ]
called C
crowds,
'gentleni
stared ir
in bed. I
in that t
war witt
again,' a
should s
courts
present ]
bade Mi
very coc
a whittl
closed di
the big i

"1 ne^
from Bu
two hou:
the roar,
in Liver]
Lincoln' I
white cl(
They ro;
Kate dc
bullied J
and felt,
louder ir

"Ther
what no

The Life of Charles Dickens 443

"Tuesday, April Twenty-sixth, 1842.
"NiAv.ARA Falls!!! (upon the English side).

"I don't know at what length I might have written you from
Sandusky, my beloved friend, if a steamer had not come in sight just
as I finished the last unintelligible sheet (oh I the ink in these parts !):
whereupon I was obliged to pack up bag and baggage, to swallow a
hasty apology for a dinner, and to hurry my train on board with all
the speed I might. She was a fine steamship, four hundred tons
burden, name the Constitution, had very few passengers on board,
and had bountiful and handsome accommodation. It's all very fine
talking about Lake Erie, but it won't do for persons who are liable
to sea-sickness. We were all sick. It's almost as bad in that respect
as the Atla^+ic. The waves are very short, and horribly constant.
We reached iuffalo at six this morning; went ashors to breakfast;
sent to the post-ofiice forthwith; and received — oh! who or what
can say with how much pleasure and what unspeakable delight I —
our English letters !

"We lay all Sunday night at a town (and a beautiful town too)
called Cleveland, on Lake Erie. The people poured on board, in
crowds, by six on Monday morning, to see me; and a part^-^ of
'gentlemen' actually planted themselves before our little cabin, and
stared in at the door and windows while I was washing, and Kate lay
in bed. I was so incensed at this, and at a certain newspaper published
in that town which I had accidentally seen in Sandusky (advocating
war with England to the denth, saying that Britain must be 'whipped
again,' and promising all true Americans that within two years they
should sing Yankee Doodle m Hyde Park and Hail Columbia in the
courts of Westminster), that when the mayor came on board to
present himself to me, according to custom, I refused to see him, and

bade Mr. Q tell him why and wherefore. His honour took it

very coolly, and retired to the top ol the wharf, with a big stick and
a whittling \nife, with which he worked so lustily (staring at the
closed door of our cabin all the time) that long before the boat left
the big stick was no bigger than a cribbage peg !

"I never in my life was in such a state of excitement as coming
from Buffalo here, this morning. You come by railroad; and are nigh
two hours upon the way. I looked out for the spray, and listened for
the roar, as far beyond the bounds of possibility, as though, landing
in Liverpool, I were to licten for the music of your pleasant voice in
Lincoln's Inn Fields. At la.«t, when the train stopped, I saw two great
white clouds rising up from the depths of the earth — nothing more.
They rose up slowly, gently, majestically, into the air. I dragged
Kate down a deep and slippery path leading to the ferry boat:
bullied Anne for not coming fast enough; perspired at every pore:
and felt, it is impossible to say how, as the sound grew louder ana
louder in my ears, and yet nothing could be seen for the mist.

"There were two English oiiicers with us (ahi what gentlemen,
what noblemen of nature they seened), and they hurried oft with

/' y '^ *

I Hi

444

The Life of Charles Dickens

me; leaving Kate and Anne on a crag of ice; and clambered after me
over the rocks at the foot of the small Fall, while the ferryman was
getting the boat ready. I was not disappointed — but I could make
out nothing. In an instant, I was blinded by the spray, and wet to
the skin. I saw the water tearing madly down from some immense
height, but could get no idea of shape, or situation, or anything but
vague immensity. But when we were seated in the boat, and crossing
at the very foot of the cataract — then I began to feel what it was.
Directly I had changed my clothes at the inn I went out again,
taking Kate with me; and hurried to the Horseshoe Fall. I went down
alone, into the very basin. It would be hard for a man to stand nearer
God than he does there. There was a bright rainbow at my feet; and
from that I looked up to — great Heaven ! to what a fall of bright green
water! The broad, deep, mighty stream seems to die in the act of
falling; and, from its unfathomable grave, arises that tremendous
ghost of spray and mist which is never laid, and has been haunting
this place with the same dread solemnity — perhaps from the creation
of the world.

"We purpose remaining here a week. In my next, I will try to give
you some idea of my impressions, and to tell you hcv they change
with every day. At present it is impossible. I can only say that the
first eftect of this tremendous spectacle on me, was peace of mind —
tranquillity — great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness — nothing
of terror. I can shudder at the recollection of Glencoe (dear friend,
with Heaven's leave we must see Glencoe together), but whenever I
think of Niagara, I shall think of its beauty."

VII

"AMERICAN notes"

1842.

Reality did not fall short of his anticipation of home. His return
was the occa- ion of unbounded enjoyment; and what he had planned
before sailing as the way we should meet, received literal fulfilment.
By the sound of his cheery voice I first knew that he was come; and
from my house we went together to Maclise, also "without a moment's
wariiing." A Greenwich dinner in which several friends (Talfourd,
Milnes, Procter, Maclise, Stanfield, Marryat, Barham, Hood, and
Cruikshank among them) took part, and other immediate greetings,
followed; but the most special celebration was reserved for autumn,
when, by way of challenge to what he had seen while abroad, a home-
journey was arranged with Stanfield, Maclise, and myself for his
companions, into such of the most striking scenes of a picturesque

The Life of Charles Dickens

445

after me
'^man was
uld make
id wet to
im,mense
thing but
1 crossing
it it was.
ut again,
ent down
nd nearer
feet; and
ght green
he act of
;mendous
haunting
3 creation

ry to give
y change
that the
if mind —
—nothing
ar friend,
tienever I

[is return
I planned
alfilment.
ome; and
noment's
Palfourd,
ood, and
greetings,
autumn,
, a home-
i for his
;turesque

English county as the majority of us might not before have visited:
Cornwall being ultimately chosen.

Before our departure he was occupied by his preparation of the
American Notes; and to the same interval belongs the arrival ' i
London of Mr. Longfellow, who became his guest, and (for both of
us I am privileged to add) our attached friend. Longfellow's name
was not then the familiar word it has since been in England; but he
had already written several of his most felicitous pieces, and he
possessed all the qualities of delightful companionship, the culture
and the charm, which have no higher type than the accomplished
and genial American. He reminded me, when lately again in England,
of two experiences out of many we had enjoyed together this quarter
of a century before. One of them was a day at Rochester, when, met
by one of those prohibitions which are the wonder of visitors and
the shame of Englishmen, we overleapt gates and barriers, and,
setting at defiance repeated threats of all the terrors of law coarsely
expressed to us by the custodian of the place, explored minutely the
castle ruins. The other was a night among those portions of the
population which outrage law and defy its terrors all the days of their
lives, the tramps and thieves of London; when, under guidance and
protection of the most trusted officers of the two great metropolitan
prisons afforded to us by Mr. Chesterton and Lieut. Tracy, we went
over the worst haunts of the most dangerous classes. Nor will it be
unworthy of remark, in proof that attention is not drawn vainly to
such scenes, that, upon Dickens going ovei them a dozen years later
when he wTote a paper about them for his Household Words, he found
important changes etfected whereby these human dens, if not less
dangerous, were become certainly more decent. On the night of our
earlier visit, Maclise, who accompanied us, was struck with such
sickness on entering the first of the Mint lodging-houses in the
Borough, that he had to remain, for the time we were in them, under
guardianship of the police outside. Longfellow returned home by the
Great Western from Bristol on 21 October, enjoying as he passed
through Bath the hospitality of Landor; and at the end of the
following week we started on our Cornish travel. . . .

With the opening of September I had renewed report of his book,
and of other matters. "The Philadelphia ch^ipter I think veiy good,
but I am sorry to say it has not made as much in print as I hoped. . . .
In America they have forged a letter witii my signature, which they
coolly declare appeared in the Chronirie. with the copyright circular;
and in which I express myself in such ^rms as you may imagine, in
reference to the dinners and so forth. It has been widelj distributed
all over the States; and the felon who invented it is a 'smart man' of
course. You are to understand that it is not done as a joke, and is
scurrilously reviewed. Mr. Park Benjamin begins a lucubration upon
it with these capitals, Dickens is a Fool, and a Liar. ... I have
a new protege, in tiie person of a wretched deaf and dumb boy whom
I found upon the sands the other day, half dead, and have got (for

i '

f
It

,t »i

446

The Life of Charles Dickens

a.* I

the present) into the union infirmary at Minster. A most deplorable
case."

The printers were now hard at work, and in the last week of
September he wrote: "I send you proofs as far as Niagara. ... I
am rather holiday-making this week . . . taking principal part in
a regatta here yesterday, very pretty and gay indeed. We think of
coming up in time for Macready's opening, when perhaps you will
give us a chop; and of course you and Mac will dine with us the next
day? I shall leave nothing of the book to do after coming home,
please God, but the two chapters on slavery and the people which I
could manage easily in a week, if need were. . . . The policeman
who supposed the Duke of Brunswick to be one of the swell mob,
ought instantly to be made an inspector. The suspicion reflects the
highest credit (I seriously think) on his penetration and judgment."
Three days later: "For the last two days we have had gales blowing
from the north-east, and seas rolling on us that drown the pier.
To-day it is tremendous. Such a sea was never known here at this
season, and it is running in at this moment in waves of twelve feet
high. You would hardly know the place. But we shall be punctual to
your dinner hour on Saturday. If the wind should hold in the same
quarter, we may be obliged to come up by land; and in that case I
should start the caravan at six in the morning. . , . What do you
think of this for my title — American Notes for General CirculationV
On lo October I heard from him that the chapter intended to be
introductory to the Notes was written, and waiting our conference
whether or not it should be printed. We decided against it; on his
part so reluctantly, that I had to undertake for its publication when
a more fitting time should come. This in my judgment has arrived,
and the chapter first sees the light on this page. There is no danger
at present, as there would have been when it was written, that its
proper self-assertion should be mistaken for an apprehension of
hostile judgments which he was anxious to deprecate or avoid. He
is out of reach of all that now; and reveals to us here, as one whom
fear or censure can touch no more, his honest purpose in the use of
satire even where his humorous temptations were strongest. What
he says will on other grounds also be read with unusual interest, for
it will be found to connect itself impressively not with his first
experiences only, but with his second visit to America at the close
of his life. He held always the same high opinion of what was best
in that country, and always the same contempt for what was worst
in it.

"INTRODUCTORY. AND NECESSARY TO BE READ

, } ?,^^^ placed the foregoing title at the head of this page., because
I challenge and deny the right of any person to pass judgment on
this book, or to arrive at any reasonable conclusion in reference to

The Life of Charles Dickens

447

[eplorable

week of
a. ... I
il part in
; think of

you will
• the next
ng home,
3 which I
•oliceman
veil mob,
fleets the
igment."
5 blowing
the pier,
e at this
'elve feet
nctual to
the same
at case I
t do you
'ilationV
led to be
inference
t; on his
ion when

arrived,
o danger

that its
nsion of
void. He
le whom
le use of
It. What
jrest, for
his first
:he close
ivas best
as worst

EAD

because
tnent on
rence to

it, without first being at the trouble of becoming acquainted with its
design and purpose.

"It is not statistical. Fi^jares of arithmetic have already been
heaped upon America's devoted head, almost as lavishly as figures
of speech have been piled above Shakespeare's grave.

"It comprehends no small talk concerning individuals, and no
violation of the social confidences of private life. The very prevalent
practice of kidnapping live ladies and gentlemen, forcing them into
cabinets, and labelling and ticketing them whether they will or no,
for the gratification of the idle and the curious, is not to my taste.
Therefore I have avoided it.

"It has not a grain of any political ingredient in its whole com-
position.

"Neither does it contain, nor have I intended that it should con-
tain, any lengthened and minute account of my personal reception
in the United States; not because I am, or ever was, insensible to
that spontaneous effusion of affection and generosity of heart, in a
most affectionate and generous-hearted people; but because I con-
ceive that it would ill become me to flourish matter necessarily
involving so much of my own praises, in the eyes of my unhappy
readers.

"This book is simply what it claims to be — a record of the impres-
sions I received from day to day, during my hasty travels in America,
and sometimes (but not always) of the conclusions to which they,
and after-reflection on them, have led me; a description of the
country I passed through; of the institutions I visited; of the kind
of people among whom I journeyed; and of the manners and customs
that came within my observation. Very many works having just
the same scope and range, have been already published, but I think
that these two volumes stand iii need of no apology on that account.
The interest of such productions, if they have any, lies in the varying
impressions made by the same novel things on different minds; and
not in new discoveries or extraordinary adventures.

' ' I can scarcely be supposed to be ignorant of the hazard I run in
writing of America at all. I know perfectly well that there is, in that
country, a numerous class of well-intentioned persons prone to be
dissatisfied with all accounts of the Republic whose citizens they are,
which are not couched in terms of exalted and extravagant praise. I
know perfectly well that there is in America, as in most other places
laid down in maps of the great world, a numerous class of persons so
tenderly and delicately constituted, that they cannot bear the truth
in any form. And I do not need the gift of prophecy to discern afar
off, that they who will be aptest to detect malice, ill-will, and all
uncharitableness in these pages, and to show, beyond any doubt,
that they are perfectly inconsistent with that grateful and enduring
recollection which I profess to entertain of the welcome I found
awaiting me beyond the Atlantic — will be certain native journalists,
veracious and gentlemanly, who were at great pains to prove to me.

i.' n

«'

..i^

448

The Life of Charles Dickens

on all occasions during my stay there, that the aforesaid welcome
was utterly worthless.

''But, venturing to dissent even from these high authorities, I
formed my own opinion of its value in the outset, and retain it to this
hour; and in asserting (as I invariably did on all public occasions) my
liberty and freedom of speech while I was among the Americans, at 1
in n aintaining it at home, I believe that I best show my sense of the
high worth of that welcome, and of the honourable singleness of
purpose with which it was extended to me. From first to last I saw,
in the friends who crowded round me in America, old readers, over-
grateful and over-partial perhaps, to whom I had happily been the
means of furnishing pleasure and entertainment; not a vulgar herd
who would flatter and cajole a stranger into turning v 'th closed eyes
from all the blemishes of the nation, and into chauncing iu praises
with the discrimination of a street ballad-singer. From first to last I
saw, in those hospitable hands, a home-made wreath of laurel; and
not an iron muzzle disguised beneath a flower or two.

"Therefore I take — and hold myself noc only justined in taking,
but bound to take — the plain course of saying what I think, and
noting what I saw; and as it is not my custom to exalt what m my
judgment are foibles and abuses at home, so I have no intention of
softening down, or glozing over, those that I have observed abroad,

' ' If ihis book should fall into the hands of any sensitive American
who cannot bear to be told that the working of the institutions of
his country is far from perfect; that in spite of the advantage she has
over all other nations in the elastic freshness and vigour of her youth,
she is far from being a model for the earth to copy; and that even
in those pictures of the national manners with which he quarrels
most, there is still (after the lapse of several years, each of which
may be fairly supposed to have had its stride in improvement) much
that is just and true at this hour; let him lay it down, now, for I shall
not please him. Of the intelligent, reflecting, and educated among his
countrymen, I have no fear; for I have ample reason to believe, after
many delightful conversations not easily to be forgotten; that there
are very few topics (if any) on which their sentiments differ materially
from mine.

"I may be asked — 'If you have been in any respect disappointed
in America, and are assured beforehand that the expression of your
disappointment will give offence to any class, why do you write at
all?' My answer is, that I went there expecting greater things than I
found, and resolved as far as in me lay to do justice to the country, at
the expense of any (in my view) mistaken or prejudiced statements
that might have been made to its disparagement. Coming home with
a corrected and sobered judgment, I consider myself no less bound
to do justice to what, according to my best means of judgment, I
found to be the truth."

Of the book for whose opening page this matter introductory was

The Life of Charles Dickens

449

welcome

lorities, I
I it to this
sioms) my
cans, at 1
nse of the
jlenpss of
ist I saw,
ers, over-
been the
Igar herd
osed eyes
U praises
t to last I
urel; and

written it will be enough merely to add that it appeared on i8
October; that before the close of the year four large editions had been
sold; and that in my opinion it thoroughly deserved the estimate
formed of it by one connected with America by the strongest social
affections, an., otherwise in all respects an honourable, high-minded,
upright judge. "You have been very tender," wrote Lord Jeffrey,
"to our sensitive friends beyond sea, and my whole heart goes along
with every word you have written. I think that you have perfectly
accomplished all that you profess or undertake to do, and that the
world has never yet seen a more faithful, graphic, amusing, kind-
hearted narrative."

n taking,
link, and
lat ill my
ention of
1 abroad.
American
ntions of
;e she has
er youth,
;hat even
quarrels
of which
nt) much
or I shall
mong his
eve, after
hat there
laterially

ppointed
1 of your
write at
gs than I
untry, at
atements
Dme with
ss bound
gment, I

tory was

333

I. Firs-

II. " Ch

III. Yeai

IV. Idle
V. WOR

VI. Ital:

VII. Last

BOOK FOURTH

LONDON AND GENOA

1843-5. ^T. 31-3

I. First Year of "Martin Chuzzlewit."

II. " Chuzzlewit " Disappointments and "Christmas Carol."

III. Year of Departure for Italy.

IV. Idleness at Albaro: Villa Bagnerello.
V. Work in Genoa: Palazzo Peschiere.

VI. Italian Travel.
Vll. Last Months in Italy.

451

'M^'^'

wwtr'Tr,' —

The Corni

and contii

week of a

helped us

post-horse

tain or sea

"Behold

from Dick

have no cc

we travelh

those Corn

doned, anc

house or m

autumn ev

name he fi

tion of his

surname v

Sweezlewa,

Chuzzlewi^

hesitation

finally adc

Chuzzlevvig

and his wa

didn't. Th(

wig." All V

the work I

contemplat

of "old Mi

difficulties

scheme we

bent upon

as might b(

The first

quite finish

copy makes

done. Than

his course «

FIRST YEAR OF "MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT"
1843

The Cornish trip had come off, meanwhile, with such unexpected
and continued attraction for us that we were well into the third
week of absence before we turned our faces homeward. Railways
helped us then not much; but where the roads were inacces. ble to
post-horses, we walked. Tintagel was visited, and no part of moun-
tain or sea consecrated by the legends of Arthur was left unexplored.
"Behold finally, the title of the new book," was the first note I had
from Dickens (12 November) after our return; "don't lose it, for I
have no copy." Title and even story had been undetermined while
we travelled, from the lingering wish he still had to begin it among
those Cornish scenes; but this intention had now been finally aban-
doned, and the reader lost nothing by his substitution, for the light-
house or mine in Cornwall, of the Wiltshire village forge on the windy
autumn evening which opens the tale of Martin Chuzzlewit. Into that
name he finally settled, but only after much deliberation, as a men-
tion of his changes will show. Martin was the prefix to all, but the
surname varied from its first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback, and
Sweezlewag, to those of Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig, and
Chuzzlewig; nor was Chuzzlewit chosen at last until after more
hesitation and discussion. What he had sent me in his letter as
finally adopted, ran thus: "The Life and Adventures of Martin
Chuzzlewig, his family, friends, and enemies. Comprising all his wills
and his ways. With an historical record of what he did and what he
didn't. The whole forming a complete key to the house of Chuzzle-
wig." All which latter portion of the title was of course dropped as
the work became modified, in its progress, by changes at first not
contemplated; but as early as the third number he drew up the plan
of "old Martin's plot to degrade and punish Pecksniff," and the
difficulties he encountered in departing from other portions of his
scheme were such as to render him, in his subsequent stories, more
bent upon constructive care at the outset, and on adherence as far
as might be to any design he had formed.

The first number, which appeared in January 1843, had not been
quite finished when he wrote to me on 8 December: "The Chuzzlewit
copy makes so much more than I supposed, that the number is nearly
uuiiv. ii^ciiiiv \j\j.jl: i-v-Qiniiin^ su iiuxiicuiy us iit last ne aia, altering
his course at the opening and seeing little as yet of the main track

453

454 The Life of Charles Dickens

of his design perhaps no story was ever begun by him with stronger
heart or confidence. Illness kept me to my rooms for some days and
he was so eager to try the effect of Pecks.iiff and Pinch that he came
down with the mk hardly dry on the last slip to roa-l the manuscript
to me. Well did Sydney Smith, on writing ti say how v y much the
number had pleased him. foresee the promii here was in those
characters Pecksniff and his daughters, and P ,c'.. . re -..dmirabie
—quite first-rate painting, such as no one but 3'our^ . m e:,ecute!'
And let me here at once remark that the notion of tr.kmg Pecksniff
for a type of character v,r. , .-eally the origin of ti- : „ .k; the design
being to sliow. more or less by every person intrc.u.ccd. the number
selfishTiess humours and vices that have their root in

Eighteen hundred and forty-three opened with the most vigorous
prosecution of his Chuzzlewit labour. "I hope the number will be verv
good, he wrote to me of number two (8 January). "I have been
hammering away, and at home all day. Ditto yesterday; except for
two hours in the afternoon, when I ploughed through snow half a
foot deep round about the wilds of Willesden." For the present
however. I shall glance only briefly from time to time at his progress
uith the earlier portions of the story on which he was thus engaged
until the midsummer of 1844. Disappointments arose in connection
h?^ k' ""''''P^''*^'^ ?"^ strange, which had important influence upon
nJTi; 1" I reserve the mention of these for awhile, that I may speak
of the leading incidents of 1843. j' f «^

"I am in a difficulty." he wrote (12 February), "and am coming

down to you sometime to-day or to-night. I couldn't write a line

yesterday; not a word, though I really tried hard. In a kind of despair

Ln^'rlinl"! ^f^-Pf «^^^o w;th my pair of petticoats to Richmond;

and dined there!! Oh what a lovely day it was in those parts." His

pair of petticoats were Mrs. Dickens and her sister Georgina: the

atter ^mce his return from America, having become part of his

household, of which she remained a member until his death; and he

had just reason to be proud of the steadiness, depth, and devotion of

her friendship. In a note-book begun by him in January 1855 where

for the first time in his life he jotted down hints and fancies proposed

to be made available in future writings. I find a character sketched of

^.hlch the most part was applicable to his sister-in-law. if the whole

TffirWi '"^S"'*f^^ by her. ••She-sacrificed to children, and

!o,^ K , ^ f warded. From a child herself, always 'the children' (of

somebody else) to engross her. And so it comes to pass that she is

iievv^r married; never herself has a child; is always devoted •to the

children (of somebody else); and they love her; and she has always

youth dependent on her till her death— and dies quite happily "

hJ/°°",S-^^'' ^""'T^ n'"" ^^ ^ ^°"^§^^ h^ ^e^ted in Finchley; and

Sfnn'f7 ^"^ ^''^ ^^"""^ .'^ *^^ S"^^" ^^"^3 as the midsummer
months were coming on. his intrnrlnction of Mro n ^-,j ^u-

uses to which he should apply that remarkable peTsonagr fir"st

The Life of Charles Dickens

th stronger
; days, and
at he came
aanuscript
r much the
IS in those
''.diairable
eir.ecute!'
\ Pecksniff
the design
lie number
r root in

t vigorous
ill be very
tiave been
except for
o\v half a
e present,
s progress
s engaged
onnection
ence upon
lay speak

n coming
ite a line
of despair
ichmond;
irts." His
gina: the
irt of his
h; and he
:votion of
55, where
proposed
etched of
he whole
ren, and
Idren' (of
lat she is
d 'to the
is always
y." . . .
iley; and
isummer

ige, first

455

occurred to him. In his preface to the book he speaks of her as a fair
representation, at the time it was published, of the hired attendant
on the poor in sickness, but he might have added that the rich were
no bettor off, for Mrs. Gamp's original was in reality a person hired
by a most distinguished friend of his own, a lady, to take charge of an
invalid very dear to her; aid the common habit of this nurse in the
sick-room, among other Gampish peculiarites, was to rub her nose
along the top of the tall fender. Whether or not, on that first mention
of her, I had any doubts whether such a character could be made a
central figure in his story, I do not now remember; but if there were
any at the time, they did not outlive the contents of the packet which
introduced her to me in the flesh a few weeks after our return. "Tell
me," he wrote from Yorkshire, where he had been meanwhile passing
pleasant holiday with a friend, "what you think of Mrs. Gamp?
You'll not find it easy to get through the hundreds o*' misprints in her
conN'ersation, but I want your opinion at once. I think you know
already something of mine. I mean to make a mark with her."
» « * ♦

From October 4 to 6, he was at Manchester, presiding at the open-
ing of its great Athenaeum, when Mr. Cobden and Mr. Disraeli also
"assisted." Here he spoke mainly on a matter always nearest his
heart, the education of the very poor. He protested against the danger
of calling a little learning dangerous; declared his preference for the
very least of the little over none at all; proposed to substitute for
the old a new doggerel.

Though house and lands be never got,
Learning can give what they can not;

tok his listeners of the real and paramount danger we had lately
taken Longfellow to see in the nightly refuges of London, "thousands
of immortal creatures condemned without alternative or choice to
tread, not what our great poet calls the primrose path to the ever-
lasting bonfire, but one of jagged flints and stones laid down by brutal
ignorance"; and contrasted this with the unspeakable consolation
and blessings that a little knowledge had shed on men of the lowest
estate and most hopeless means, "watching the stars with Ferguson
the shepherd's boy, walking the streets with Crabbe, a poor barber
here in Lancashire with Arkwright, a tallow-chandler's son with
Franklin, shoe-making with Bloomfield in his garret, following the
plough with Burns, and high above the noise of loom and hammer,
whispering courage in the ears of workers I could this day name in
Sheffield and in Manchester."

The same spirit impelled him to give eager welcome to the remark-
able institution of Ragged Schools, which, begun by a shoemaker of
Portsmouth and a chimney-sweep of Windsor and carried on by a
peer of the realm, has had results of incalculable importance to
society. The year of which I am writing was its first, as this in which
I write is its last; and in the interval, out of three hundred thousand
children to whom it has given some sort of education, it is computed

456

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also to have given to a tliird of that number the means of honest
employment. "I sent Miss Coutts." he had written (24 September)
a sledge-hammer account of the Ragged Schools; and as I saw her
name for two hundred pounds in the clergy education subscription
list, took pams to show her that religious mysteries and difficult
creeds wouldn't do for such pupils. I told her, too, that it was of
mimense importance they should be washed. She writes back to
know what the rent of some large airy premises would be. and what
the expense of erecting a regular bathing or purifying place; touchin-
which points I am in correspondence with the authorities. I have nS
doubt she will do whatever I ask her in the matter. She is a most
excellent creature. I pr )test to God. and I have a most perfect
affection and respect for her." ...

Active as he had been in the now ending year, and great as were its
varieties of employment; his genius in its highest mood, his energv
unwearied in good work, and his capacity for enjoyment without
limit; xie was able to sirnalise its closing months by an achievement
supremely fortunate, which but for disappointments the year had
also brought might never have been thought of. He had not bec^un
until a week after his return from Manchester, where the fancy first
occurred to him, and before ^he end of November he had finished
his memorable Christmas Carol. It was the work of such odd moments
of leisure as were left^him out of the time taken up by two numbers of
his Chuzzlewtt] and though begun with but the special design of add-
ing something to the Chuzzlewit balance, I can testify to the accuraov
of his own account of what befell him in its composition with wh-t a
strange mastery it seized him for itself, how he wept 'over it and
laughed, and wept again, and excited himself to an extraordinary
degree, and how he walked thinking of it fifteen and twenty m^les
about the black streets of London, many and many a night after all
sober folks had gone to bed. Ard when it was done, as he told oar
American friend Mr. Felton, he let hims.:f loose like a madman
Forster is out again," he added, by way of illustrating our practical
comments on his book-celebration of the jovidi old season "and if
he don't go in again after the manner in which we have been keeping
Christmas, he must be very string indeed. Such dinings such
dancings, such conjurings, such blind-man's buffings, i^uch theatre-
goings, such kissings-out of old years and kissings-in of new ones
never took place in these parts before."

Yet had it been to him, this closing year, a time also of much
anxiety and strange disappointments of which I am now to speak •
and before, with that view, we go back for a while to its earlier
months, one step into the new year may be taken for what marked
It with interest and importance to him. Eighteen hundred and forty-
four was but fifteen days old when a third son (his fifth child which
received the name of its godfather Francis Jeffrey) was born- and
here is an answer sent by him. two days later, to an invitation 'from
Machse. Stanfield, and myself to dine with us at Richmond: "Devon-

The Life of Charles Dickens

457

SHIRE Lodge, Seventeenth of January, 1844, Fellow Countrymen!
The appeal with which you have honoured me, awakens within my
breast emotions that are more easily to be imagined than described.
Heaven bless you. I shall indeed be proud, my friends, to respond to
such a requisition. I had withdrawn from Public Life — I fondly
thought for ever — to pass the evening of my days in hydropathical
pursuits, and the contemplation of virtue. For which latter purpose,
I had bought a looking-glass. — But, my friends, private feeling must
ever yield to a stern sense of public duty. The Man is lost in the
Invited Guc^t. and I comply. Nurses, wet and dry; apothecaries;
mothers-in-law; babies; with all the sweet (and chasle) delights oif
private life; these, my countrymen, are hard to leave. But you have
called me forth, and I will come. Fellow countrymen, your friehd and
faithful servant, Charles Dickens."

CHUZZLEWIT

DISAPPOINTMENTS AND "CHRISTMAS CAROL"

1843-4

"Chuzzlewit" had fallen short of all the expectations formed of it in
regard to sale. By much the most masterly of his writings hitherto,
the public had rallied to it in far less numbers than to any of its pre-
decessors. The primary cause of this, there is little doubt, had been
the ciiange to weekly issues in the form of publication of his last two
stories; for into eveiything in this world mere habit enters more
largely than we are apt to suppose. Nor had the temporary with-
drawal to America been favourable to an immediate resumption by
his readers of their old and intimate relations. This also is to be added,
that the excitement by which a popular reputation is kept up to the
highest selling mark will always be subject to lulls too capricious for
explanation. But whatever the causes, here was the undeniable fact
of a gra\ e depr< ciation of sale in his writings, unaccompanied by any
falling off either in themselves or in the writer's reputation. It was
very temporary; but it was present, and to be dealt with accordingly.
The forty and fifty thousand purchasers of Pickwick and Nicklehy,
the sixty and seventy thousand of the early numbers of the enterprise
in which the Old Curiosity Shop and Barnahy Rudge appeared, had
fallen to little over twenty thousand. They rose somewhat on Martin's
ominous announcement, at the end of the fourth number, that he'd
go to America; but though it was believed that this resolve, which
Dickens adopted as suddenly as his hero, might increase the number
of his readers, that reason influenced him less than the challenge to
make good his Notes which every m

1 1 1--

ilUU

him irom

333'

458

The Life of Charles Dickens

^Wi

unsparing assailants beyond the Atlantic. The substantial effect of
the American episode upon the sale was yet by no means great A
couple of thousand additional purchasers were added, but the high
est number at any time reached before the story closed was twenty-
three thousand. Its sale, since, has ranked next after Pickwick and
Lopperfleld.

We were now. however, to have a truth brought home to us which
few that have had real or varied experience in such matters can have
failed to be impressed by— that publishers are bitter bad judges of an
autnor, and are seldom safe persons to consult in regard to the fate or
fortunes that may probably await him. Describing the agreement for
this book m September 1841. I ^poke of a provision against the im-
probable event of its profits proving inadequate to certain necessar\'
repayments. In this unlikely case, wb .h was to be ascertained by the
proceeds of the first five numbers, the publishers were to have power
to appropriate fifty pounds a month out of the two hundred pounds
payable for authorship in, the expenses of each number; b it though
this had been introduced with my knowledge. I knew also too much of
the antecedent relations of the parties to regard it as other than a
mere form to satisfy the attorneys in the case. The fifth number
which landed Martin and Mark in America, and the sixth, whi^h des-
cribed their first experiences, were published; and on* the eve of the
seventh, in which Mrs. Gamp was to make her first appearance I
X. sard with infinite pain that from Mr. Hall, the younger partner' of
the firm which had enriched itself by Pickwick and Nickleby and a
very kind well-disposed man. there had dropped an inconsiderate
hint to the writer of those books that it might be desirable to put the
clause m force. It had escaped him without his thinking of all that it
involved; certainly the senior partner, whatever amount of as
thoughtless sanction he had at the moment given to it. always much
regretted it. and made endeavours to exhibit his regret; but the mis-
chief was done, and for the time was irreparable.

"I am so irritated," Dickens wrote to me on 28 June "so rubbed

in the tenderest part of my eyelids with bay-salt, by what I told you

yesterday, that a wrong kind of fire is burning in my iiead and I

don't think I can write. Nevertheltess, I am trying In case I'should

succeed, and should not come down to you this r.\orning, shall you

be at the club or elsewhere after dinner^ I am t at or. paying the

money. And before going into the matter ;/ith anyh-. dy ^ should hke

you to propound from me the one prelirninar - question to Bradbury

and Evans. It is more than a year and a ^aii since Clowes wrote to

urge me to give him a hearing, in case I shoi;,d r .-er think of altering

my plans. A printer is better than a bcokselLrr,. and :t is quite as much

the interest of one (if not more) to join me. But whoever it is, or

whatever, I am bent upon paying Chapman ^ud Kail down. And

when I have done that. Mr. Hall shall have a piecv o* my mind "

What he meant by the proposed repayment will be understood by
what formerly was said of his arrangements with those 'zenUemen on

The Life of Charles Dickens

459

the repurchase of his early copyrights. Feehng no surprise at this
announcement, 1 yet prevailed with him to suspend proceedings until
his return from Broadstairs in October; and what then I had to say
led to memorable resolves. Tue communication he had desired me to
make to his printers had taken them too much by surprise to enable
them to form a clear judgment respecting it; and they replied by
suggestions which vv^ere in effect a confession of that want of confi-
dence in themselves. They enlarged upon the great results that would
follow a re-issue of his writings in a cheap form; they strongly urged
such an underta.king; and they offered to invesv to any desired amount
in the establishment of a magazine or other periodical to be edited by
him. The possible dangers, in short, incident to their assumiig the
position of publishers as well as printers of new works from his pen,
seemed at first to be so much greater than on closer examiijiation they
were found to be, that at the outset the> shrank from encountering
them. And hence the remarkable lett- r 1 shall nov.- quote (i Novo i-
ber, 1843).

"Don't be startled by the novelty and extent (-^ iiiy project. Beth
startled me at first; but I am well assured of its wisdom and necessity.
I am afraid of a magazine — juL,t now. I don't think the time a good
one, or the chances favourable. I am afraid of putting myself before
the town as writing tooth and nail for bread, headlong, after the
close of a book taking so much out of one as Chuzzlewit. I am afraid I
could not do it, with justice to myself. I know that whatever we may
say at first, a new magazine, or a new anything, would require so
much propping, that I should he forced (as in the Clock) to put myself
into it, in my old shape. I am afraid of Bradburj'- and Evans's desire
to force on the cheap issue of my books, or any of them, prematurely.
I am sure if it tock place yet awhile, it would damage me and damage
the property, enormously. It is very natural in them to want it; but,
since they do v.-ant it, I have r^o faith in their regarding me in any
other respect than they would regard any other man in a speculation.
I see that this is really yorn- opinion as well; and I don't see what I
gain, in such z. case, by leaving Chapman and Hall. If I had made
money, I should unquestionably fade away from the public eye for a
year, and enlarge my stocic of description ana observation by seeing
countries new to me; wni ■» it is most necessary to me that I should
see, and v/hirb with -'p '-^ creasing family I cux scarcely hope to see at
all, unless I pee then> :kjvv. Already for some time I have had this hope
and intention before me; and, though not having yet made money, I
find or fancy that I can put myself in the position to accomplish it.
And this is the course I have before me. At the close of Chuzzlewit (b/
which time tLe debt will have been materially reduced) I purpose
drawing from Chapman and Hall my share of the subscription — bills,
or money, will do equally well. I design to tell them that it is not likely
I shall do anv-«-.i-ing for a year; that, in the meantime, I make no
arrangem.ent .atever with anyone; and our business matters rest
in stuiu QUO. . le same to Bradburv and Evans. I shall let the house if

460

The Life of Charles Dickens

I can; if not, leave it to be let. I shall take all the family, and two
rj^f ",'''' at most-tosome placewhich I know beforehand to be
CHEAP and in a delightful climate, in Normandy or Brittany to
which I shall go over, first, and where I shall rent some hou^^e fo-^ sS
or eight months. During that time, I shall walk through Switzerland
cross the Alps, travel through France and Italy; take Kate perhaps to
Rome and Venice, but not elsewhere; and in short see everything that
'l*° ^^ '^T'r/!'''^! '^"*^ ""^y descriptions to you from time to time
exactly as I did m America; and you will be able to judge whether or
not a new and attractive book may not be made on such ground \t
the same time 1 shall be able to turn over the story I have in my mind
and which I have a strong notion might be published with great
advantage, firs in Pari,-hv.t that's another matter to be talked over

th'^ frlf.';'''"^.H """^f "f.l^* l'*^^"^' ^^*^^^' ^^^^^t^^^r ^"y book about
the travel, or this, should be the first. 'All very well,' you say 'if vou

had money enough.' Well, but if I can see my way io what would be
necessary without binding myself in any form to anything- without
paying interest or giving any security but one of my Eagle five
thousand pounds; you would give up that objection. And I stand
committed to no bookseller, printer, moneylender, banker, or patron
whatever; and decidedly strengthen my position with my readers
instead of weakening it drop by drop, as 1 otherwise must^Is it noi
vnn h". '" the way before me, plainly this? I infer that in reality
you do yourself think that what I first thought of is not the way? 1

nnrrf.= ^°" "T^ '^^^""^ "^^"^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^ ^ ^^^^^d. I See its great
points, agamst mr prepossessions the other way_as. leaving
England, home, fr ■ everything I am fond of-but it seeilis t^ me^

mv Tf.i r I' f -^^ '^* "'^ "§^^*- ^ blessing on Mr. Mariott

my Italian master. ^ , h,s pupil! . . . If you have any breath left
tell Topping how you are" y ^^^v icit.

I had certainly not much after reading this letter, written amid all

htnd hf °f -^^ ^S •^°'^' ^^'^'^ ^^^^ *^^ ^«^^^ ^"d Chuz^le^ultZ
hand, but such msufficient breath as was left to me I spent against
the project, and in favour of far more consideration than he had given
to It before anything should be settled. "I expected you." he wrote
next cay (2 November), 'to be startled. If I was startled myself
when I hrst got this project of foreign travel into my head mXhs
AGO, how much more must you be. on whom it comes fresh- number-
ing only hours! Still, I am very resolute upon it-very. I am con-
vinced that my expenses abroad would not be more than half of mv
Y^TCl ''"'"'' ^^^^/"«f "-- «f ^^hange and nature ^ po. rie. enormous"^
You know as well as I. tnat I think Chuzzlewit in a :.undred points
immeasurably the best of my stories. That I feel my po r^now

Te'eVh^d Th.T ft ^^%' ] 'r'' I ^^^"^^^ ^°"fi^-^^ - -y-^f tha'n
fh7 .^,nH ? i^ ^'"'"'' '^ ^ ^'^""^ ^^^^*b. I could sustain my place in

Sorrow Rnf 1'^'"^"'^^ "^'^ *^°"^^ ^^'^ ^^"^^^^ started up to-
morrow. But how many readers do not think! Kow many take it

upon trust from knaves and idiots, that one writes too fast, or runs a

The Life of Charles Dickens

461

thing to death! How coldly did this very book go on for months, until
it forced itself up in people's opinion, without forcing itself up in sale!
If I wrote for forty thousand Forsters, or for forty thousand people
who know I write because I can't help it, I should have no need to
leave the scene. But this very book warns me that if I can leave it for
a time, I had better do so, and must do so. Apart from that again, I
feel that longer rest after this story would do me good. You say two
or three months, because you have been used to see me for eight
years never leaving off. But it is not rest enough. It is impossible to
go on working the brain to that extent for ever. The very spirit of
the thing, in doing it, leaves a horrible despondency behind, when it
is done; which must be prejudicial to the mind, so soon renewed and
so seldom let aione. What would poor Scott have given to have gone
abroad, of his own free will, a young man, instead of creeping there, a
driveller, in his miserable decay' I said myself in my note to you —
anticipating what you puc to me — that it was a question what I
should come out with, first. The travel-book, if to be done at all,
would cost me very little trouble; and surely would go very far to pay
charges, whenever published. We have spoken of the baby, and of
leaving it here with Catherine's mother. Moving the children into
France could not, in any ordinary course of things, do them any-
thing but good. And the question is, what it would do to that by
which they live: not what it would do to them. ... I had forgotten
that point in the B. and E. negotiation; but they certainly suggested
instant publication of the reprints, or at all events of some of them;
by which of course I know, and as you point out, I could provide of
myself what is wanted. I take this as putting the thing distinctly as a
matter of trade, and feeling it so. And, as a matter of trade with them
or anybody else, as a matter of trade between me and the public,
should I not be better off a year hence, with the reputation of having
seen so much in the meantime? The reason which induces you to look
upon this scheme with dislike — separation for so long a time— surely
has equal weight with me. I see very little pleasure in it, beyond the
natural desire to have been in those great scenes; I anticipate no en-
joyment at the time. I have come to look upon it as a matter of policy
and duty. I have a thousand other reasons, but shall very soon myself
be with you."

There were difficulties, still to be strongly urged, against taking
any present step to a final resolve; and he gave way a little. But the
pressure was soon renewed. "I have been," he wrote (10 November),
"all day in Chuzzlewit agonies — conceiving only. I hope to bring forth
to-morrow. Will you come here at six? I want to say a word or two
about the cover of the Carol and the advertising, and to consult you
on a nice point in the tale. It will come wonderfully 1 think. Mac will
call here soon after, and we can then o\l three go to Bulwer's together.
And do, my dear fellow, do for God's sake turn over about Chapman
and Hall, and look upon my project as a a settled thing. If you object to

Sec lliClil, i mU"3t WlitV WV/ v.l,JiiX. J.iAJf l.^^^u%>v^aIli\/^/ Vv ^"j ^'*'"'"> ~

^ i

462

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ifl

II 'i

fi A

Change in his publishing arrangements was connected with the little
story which, amid all his troubles and "Chu,,lawit agonies "he was
steadily carrying to its close; and which remains a splend' ci prooTof
the consciousness of power felt by him. and of his confidence^that U
icLT^' M^", ^?^*^' *^^" ^"^^" ^'^ '^^^^'^ ^e^e thus falling oft

acTu lunger nf '"''",t^ '^' 9'"''' '''' Publication on his own
account, under the usual terms of commission, to the firm he had
been so long associated with; and at such a moment to t^ll them
short of absolute necessity, his intention to quit them ahogetheri

^Zf^\f-'^^''' P""^"^ ^" P^"^ °^ '^' ^^tt»^ book's chances He

ii^t'tCKiTer'' '"' ''^ ^^^"^' ^^ -''' ^^ ^-"^' -- ^- ^-

Let disappointments, or annoyances, however, beset him as thev
might, once heartily in his work and all was forgotten His temDera
ment of course coloured everything, cheerful or sad. an? his Sn

tha^htllh' ^'''"?'^ ^^ '"^^S'""^y ^^^^^^ b"* '' ^-^ very certaS
that his labours and successes thus far had enriched others niore than
himself, and while he knew that his mode of living had been sJruDur

riVht . ^^. ^ T.^ inadequate made a change necessary to so up-
right a nature. It was the turning-point of his career- and the issue
though not immediately, ultimately justified him. M^ch of his present
restlessness I was too ready myself to ascribe to that love of change
which was a ways arising from his passionate desire to vary and extend
his observation; but even as to this the result showed him rfght^n
Xf '"f ^^^W'^^^^^ obtain intellectual advantage fro^^ the
effects of such further travel. Here indeed he spoke from experience
for already he had returned from America with wide? vbwsthln

cuities on which he dwelt were also, it is now to be admiffpri „n
questionable. Beyond his own domestic expenL LcesLr'^inc^^^^^^

a^vTurrTers^'no^^^^^^

and im?uTt fnH T T"" ^ '^^^ ^^^^^^b^^ because unreasonable
WtternP.. :> f^ H "^^l n^'^' ^^^^^^^bing to me one such with great
bitterness, a few days followmg the letter last quoted that he thit^

m^fuZt- 'f """^ ^ay(xg November) to V commit I had
made upon it. I was most horribly put out for a little while- for I

to I^'^^Tk ^'^-^ '^ ^°i° ^°^^^' ^"^ ^^^ ^"11 of interest in what I had
to do. But having eased my mind by that note to you and taken a

nTreTt rtK'blaTd '"' ^^-'Z V ^^ '' ^^''^' ^-d -on^^^^^^^^^^
interested that 1 blazed away till 9 last nitrht- onlv sfonnin^ f^r,

mr yesterday, fhe consequence is that I could finish to-dav but am
taking It ea.y. and making myself laugh very much^^' The^'e^ nex^
day. unhappily, there came to himself I repetition of precSelv^milar
trouble m exaggerated form, and to me a fresh reminder of wha^was

then f Lv Taf TT ''"'' "^^'"^- "' ^" ^^^^ serfoul^nd sobS
When 1 say. that x have very grave thoughts of keeping my whole

The Life of Charles Dickens

463

menagerie in Italy three years." . . .

In construction and conduct of story Martin Chuzzlewit is defec-
tive, character and description constituting the chief part of its
strength. But what it lost as a story by the American episode it
gained in the other direction; young Martin, by happy use of a bitter
experience, casting off his slough of selfishness in the poisonous
swamp of Eden. Dickens often confessed, however, the difficulty it
had been to him to have to deal with this gap in the main course of his
narrative. . . .

Thackeray used to say that there was nothing finer in rascaldom
than this ruin of Pecksniff by his son-in-law at the very moment when
the oily hypocrite believes himself to be achieving his masterpiece of
dissembling over the more vulgar avowed ruffian. " 'Jonas!' cried
Mr. Pecksniff much affected, ' I am not a diplomatical character; my
heart is in my hand. By far the greater part of the inconsiderable
savings I have accumulated in the course of — I hope — a not dis-
honourable or useless career, is already given, devised, or bequeathed
(correct me, my dear Jonas, if I am technically wrong), with ex-
pressions of confidence which I will not repeat; and in securities
which it is unnecessary to mention; to a person whom I cannot,
whom I will not, whom I need not name.' Here he gave the hand of his
son-in-law a fervent squeeze, as ii he would have added, 'God bless
you: be very careful of it when you get if "

Certainly Dickens thus far had done nothing of which, as in this
novel, the details were filled in with such incomparable skill; where
the wealth of comic circumstance was lavished in such overflowing
abundance on single types of character; -^r where generally, as
throughout the story, the intensity of his observation of individual
humours and vices had taken so many varieties of imaginative form.
Everything in Chuzzlewit indeed had grown under treatment, as will
be commonly the case in the handling of a man of genius, who never
knows where any given conception may lead him, out of the wealth
of resource in development and incident which it has itself created.
"As to the way," he wrote to me of its two most prominent figures, as
soon as all their capabilities were revealed to him, "as to the way in
in which these characters have opened out, this is to me one of the
most surprising processes of the mind in this sort of invention. Given
what one knows, what one does not know springs up; and I am as
absolutely certain of its being true, as I am of the law of gravitation —
if such a thing be possible, more so." The remark displays exactly
what in all his important characters was the very process of creation
with him. . . .

m i

But this is a chapter of disappointments, and I have now to state,
that as Martin Chuzzlewit' s success was to seem to him at first only
distant and problematical, so even the prodigious immediate success
of the Christmas Carol itself was not to be an unmitigated pleasure.
Never had little book an outset so full of brilliancy of promise.

464

The Life of Charles Dickens

,i;-

Published but a few days before Christmas, it was hailed on every
side with enthusiastic greeting. The first edition of six thousand
copies was sold the first day. and on 3 January. 1844, he wrote to me
that two thousand of the three printed for second and third editions
are already taken by the trade." But a very few weeks were to pass
before the darker side of the picture came. "Such a night as I have
passed! he wrote to le on Saturday morning. 10 February "I
really believed I should never get up again, until I had passed through
all the horrors of a fever. I found the Carol accounts awaiting me and
they were the cause of it. The first six thousand copies show a profit
of ;^23o! And the last four will yield as much more. I had set mv
heart and soul upon a Thousand, clear. What a wonderful thing it is
that such a great success should occasion me such intolerable anxiety
and disappointment! My year's bills, unpaid, are so terrific that all
the energy and determination I can possibly exert will be required to
c ear me before I go abroad; which, if next June come and find me
alive. I shall do. Good Heaven, if I had only taken heart a year a^^o!
Do come soon, as I am very anxious to talk with you. We can send
round to Mac after you arrive, and tell him to join us at Hampstead
or elsewhere. I was so utterly knocked down last night, that I came
up to the contemplation of all these things quite bold this morning If
I can let the house for this season, I will be off to some seaside place as
soon as a tenant offers. I am not afraid, if I reduce my expenses- but
If I do not. I shall be ruined past all mortal hope of redemption '

The ultimate result was that his publishers were changed and the
immediate result that his departure for Italy became a settled thing-
but a word may be said on these Carol accounts before mention is
made of his new publishing arrangements. W^ant of judgment had
been shown m not adjusting the expenses of production with a more
equable regard to the selling price, but even as it was, before the close
of the year, he had received ;^726 from a sale of fifteen thousand
copies; and the difference between this and the amount realised by
the same proportion of the sale of the successor to the Carol un-
doubcedly justified him in the discontent now expressed Of 'that
second sale, as well as of the third and fourth, more than double the
numbers of the Carol were at ouqc sold, and of course there was no
complaint of any want of success; but the truth really was. as to all
the Christmas stories issued in this form, that the price charged
while too large for the public addressed by them, was too little to
remunerate their outlay; and when in later years he put forth similar
fancies for Christmas, charging for them fewer pence than . iO shillings
required for these, he counted his purchasers with fairly corrr spond-
mg gams to himself, not by tens but by hundreds of thousands The
sale of one of those pieces, five years before his death, went up in its
first week to 250,000. ^

It %yas necessary now that negotiations should be resumed with
his printers, but before any step was taken Mess.s. Chapman and
Hall were informed of his intention not to open fresh publishing

The Life of Charles Dickens

465

on every
thousand
ote to me
d editions
re to pass
as I have
ruary. "I
1 through
? me, and
V a profit
d set my
liing it is,
e anxiety
, that all
quired to
I find me
/•ear ago!
can send
mpstead
t I came
>rning. If
; place as
nses; but
ion.

and the
;d thing;
^ntion is
lent had
1 a more
:he close
housand
lised by
irol, un-
Of that
uble the

was no
as to all
charged,
little to
I similar
'hillings
espond-
ds. The
ip m its

3d with
lan and
blishing

relations with them after Chuzzlewit should have closed. Then fol-
lowed deliberations and discussions, many and grave, which settled
themselves at last into the form of an agreement with Messrs. Brad-
bury and Evans executed on i June 1844; by which upon advance
made to him of ;^2,8oo he assigned to them a fourth share in whatever
he might write during the next ensuing eight years, to which the
agreement was to be strictly limited. There were the usual protecting
clauses, but no interest was to be paid, and no obligations were im-
posed as to what works should be written, if any, or the form of them;
the only farther stipulation having reference to the event of a period-
ical being undertaken whereof Dickens might be only partially
editor or author, in which case his proprietorship of copyright and
profits was to be two-thirds inste?.d of three-fourths. There was an
understanding, at the time this agreement was signed, that a suc-
cessor to the Carol would be ready for the Christmas of 1844; but no
other promise was asked or made in regard to any other book, nor had
he himself decided what form to give to his experiences of Italy, if he
should even finally determine to publish them at all.

Between this agreement and his journey six weeks elapsed, and
there were one or two characteristic incidents before his departure:
but mention must first be interposed of the success quite without
alloy that also attended the little book, and carried off in excitement
and delight every trace of doubt or misgiving. "Blessing on your kind
heart," wrote Jeffrey to the author of the Carol. "You should be happy
yourself, for you may be sure you have done more good by this little
publication, fostered more kindly feelings, and prompted more positive
acts of beneficence, than can be traced to all the pulpits and confes-
sionals in Christendom since Christmas 1842." "Who can listen,"
exclaimed Thackeray, "to objections regarding such a book as this?
It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who
reads it a personal kindness." Such praise expressed what men of
genius felt and said: but the small volume had other tributes, less
usual and not less genuine. There poured upon its author daily, all
through that Christmas time, letters from complete strangers to him
which I remember reading with a wonder of pleasure; not literary at
all, but of the simplest domestic kind, of which the general burden was
to tell him, amid many confidences, about their homes, how the Carol
had come to be read aloud there, and was to be kept upon a little
shelf by itself, and was to do them no end of good. Anything more
to be said of it will not add much to this. . . .

466

The Life of Charles Dickens

III

YEAR OF DEPARTURE FOR ITALY
1844

... In the previous February, on the 26th and 28th respectively
he had taken the chair at two great meetings, in Liverpool of the
Mechanics' Institution, and in Birmingham of the Polytechnic Institu-
tion, to which reference is made by him in a letter of the 21st. I quote
the allusion because it shows thus early the sensitive regard to his
position as a man of letters, and his scrupulous consideration for the
feelings as well as interest of the class, which he manifested in many
various and often greatly self-sacrificing ways all through his life
Advise me on the following point. And as I must write to-night
having already lost a post, advise me by bearer. Thi Liverpool
Institution, which is wealthy and has a high grammar school the
masters of which receive in salaries upwards of I2000 a \ ear (indeed
Its extent horrifies me; I am struggling through its papers this morn-
ing), writes me yesterday by its secretary a business letter about the
order of the proceedings on Monday; and it begins thus. "I beg to
send you prefixed, with the best respects of our committee a bank
order for twenty pounds in payment of the expenses contingent on
-our visit to Liverpool.'— And there, sure enough, it is. Now mv
.ipulse was, and ts decidedly to return it. Jwenty p< unds is not of
moment to me; and any sacrifice of independence is worth it twenty
times twenty times told. But haggling in my mind is doubt whether
that would be proper, and not boastful (in an inexplicable way)- and
whether as an author, I have a right to put myself on a basis which
the professors of literature in other forms connected with the Institution
cannot afford to occupy. Don't you see? But of course you do The
case stands thus. The Manchester Institution, being in debt appeals
to me as it were in formd pauperis, and makes no such pro'vision as
I have named. The Birmingham Institution, just struggling into life
with great difficulty, applies to me on the same grounds. But the
Leeds people (thriving) write to me, making the expenses a distinct
matter of business; and the Liverpool, as a point of delicacy say
nothing about it to the last minute, and then send the money Now
what in the name of goodness ought I to do?— I am as much puzzled
with the cheque as Colonel Jack was with his gold. If it w^ould have
settled the matter to put it on the fire yesterday, I should certainly
have done it. Your opinion is requested. I think I shall have grounds
for a very good speech at Brummagem; but I am not sure about
Liverpool; having misgivings of over-gentility." My opinion was
clearly for sending the money back, which accordingly was done

The Life of Charles Dickens

467

Both speeches, duly delivered to enthusiastic hsteners at the places
named, were good, and both, with suitable variations, had the same
theme: telling his popular audience in Birmingham that the principle
of their institute, education comprehensive and unseclarian, was the
only safe one, for that without danger no society could go on punish-
ing men for preferrinf< vice to virtue without giving them the means
of knowing what virtue was; and reminding his genteeler audience in
Liverpool, that if happily they had been themselves well taught, so
much the more should they seek to extend the benefit to all, since,
whatever the precedence due to rank, wealth, or intellect, there was
yet a nobility beyond them, expressed unaffectedly by the poet's
verse aid in the power of education to confer.

Howe'er it be, it seems to me,

'Tis only noble to be good:
True hearts are more than coronets.

And simple faith than Norman blood.

He underwent some suffering, which he might have spared himself,
at his return. "I saw the Carol last night," he wrote to me of a dram-
atic performance of the little story at the Adelphi. "Better than usual,
and Wright seems to enjoy Bob Cratchit, but heart-breaking to me.
Oh Heaven! if any forecast of this was ever in my mind! Yet O. Smith
was drearily better than I expected. It is a great comfort to have that
kind of meat underdone; and his face i (|uite perfect." Of what he
suffered from these adaptations of his books, multiplied remorselessly
at every theatre, I have forborne to speak, but it was the subject of
complaint with him incessantly; and more or less satisfied as he was
with individual performances, such as Mr. Yates's Quilp or Mantalini
and Mrs. Keeley's Smike or Dot, there was only one, that of Barnaby
Rudge by the Miss Fortescue who became afterwards Lady Gardner,
on which I ever heard him dwell with a thorough liking. It is true
that to the dramatisations of his next and other following Christmas
stories he gave help himself; but, even then, all such efforts to assist
special representations were mere attempts to render more tolerable
what he had no power to prevent, and, with a few rare exceptions,
they were never very successful. Anotb- and graver wrong was the
piracy of his writings, every one of wl.ich had been reproduced with
merely such colourable changes of title, incidents, and name of
characters, as were believed to be sufficient to evade the law and
adapt them to "penny" purchasers. So shamelessly had this been
going on every since the days of Pickwick, in so many outrageous
ways and with all but impunity, that a course repeatedly urged by
Talfourd and myself was at last taken in the present year with the
Christmas Carol and the Chuzzlewit pirates. Upon a case of such pe-
culiar fiagrancy, however, that the vice-chancellor would not even hear
Dickens's counsel; and what it cost our dear friend Talfourd to sup-
press his speech exceeded by very much the labour and pains with
which he had prepared it. "The pirates," wrote Dickens to me. after

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468

The Life of Charles Dickens

leaving the court on i8 January, "are beaten flat. They are bruised,
bloody, battered, smashed, squelched, and utterly undone. Knight
Bruce would not hear Talfourd, but instantly gave judgement. He
had interrupted Anderton constantly by asking him to produce a
passage which was not an expanded or contracted idea from my book.
And at every successive passage he cried out, 'That is Mr. Dickens's
case. Fmd another!' He said that there was not a shadow of doubt
upon the matter. That there was no authority which would bear a
construction in their favour; the piracy going beyond all previous
instances. They might mention it again in a week, he said, if they
liked, and mighthave an issue if theypleased; but they would probably
consider it unnecessary after that strong expression of his opinion.
Of course I will stand by what v.e have agreed as to the only terms of
compromise with the printers. I am determined that I will have an
apology for their affidavits. The other men may pay their costs and
get out of it, but I will stick to my friend the author." Two days later
he wrote: "The further affidavits put in by way of extenuation by the
printing rascals are rather strong, and give one a pretty correct idea
of what the men must be who hold on by the heels of literature. Oh'
the agony of Talfourd at Knight Bruce's not hearing him! He had
sat up till three in the morning, he says, preparing his speech; and
would have done all kinds of things with the affidavits. It certainly
was a splendid subject. We have heard nothing from the vagabonds
yet, I once thought of printing the affidavits without a word of
comment, and sewing them up wath Chuzzlewit. Talfourd is strongly
disinclined to compromise with the printers on any terms. In which
case it would be referred to the master to ascertain what profits had
been made by the piracy, and to order the same to be paid to me.
But wear and tear of law is my consideration." The undertaking to
which he had at last to submit was, that upon ample public apology
and payment of all costs, the offenders should be let go: but the real
result was that, after infinite vexation and trouble, he had himself to
pay all the costs incurred on his own behalf; and, a couple of years
later, upon repetition of the wrong he had suffered in so gross a form
that proceedings were again advised by Talfourd and others, he wrote
to me from Switzerland the condition of mind to which his experience

had brought him. "My feeling about the is the feeling common. I

suppose, to three-fourths of the reflecting part of the community in
our happiest of all possible countries; and that is. that it is better to
suffer a great wrong than to have recourse to the much greater wrong
of the law. I shall not easily forget the expense, and anxiety, and
horrible injustice of the Cayol case, wherein, in asserting the plainest
right on earth. I was really treated as if I were the robb. r instead of
therobbed. Uponthe whole. IcertainlywouldmuchratherNOTproceed.
What do you think of sending ii . a grave protest against what has been
done in thijcase. on account of the immense amount of piracy to which
I am daily exposed, and because I have been already met in the Court
of Chancery with the legal doctrine that silence under such wrongs

a corner c

The Life of Charles Dickens

469

barred my remedy: to which Talfourd's written opinion might be
appended as proof that we stopped under no discouragement, It is
useless to affect that I don't know I. have a morbid susceptibility of
exasperation, to which the meanness and badness of the law in such a
matter would be stinging in the last degree. And I know of nothing
that could come, even of a successful action, which would be worth the
mental trouble and disturbance it would cost." . . .

The reader may be amused if I add what he said of the pirates
in those earlier days when grave matters touched him less gravely.
On the eve of the first number of Nicklehy he had issued a proclama-
tion. "Whereas we are the only true and lawful Boz. And whereas
it hath been reported to us, who are commencing a new work,
that some dishonest dullards resident in the by-streets and cellars
of this town impose upon the unwary and credulous, by producing
cheap and wretched imitations of our delectable works. And whereas
we derive but small comfort under this injury from the knowledge
that the dishonest dullards aforesaid cannot, by reason of their mental
smallness, follow near our heels, but are constrained to creep along
by dirty and little-frequented ways, at a most respectful and humble
distance behind. And whereas, in like manner, as some other vermin
are not worth the killing for the sake of their carcases, so these kennel
pirates are not worth the powder and shot of the law, inasmuch as
whatever damages they may commit they are in no condition to pay
any. This is to give notice, that we have at length devised a mode of
execution for them, so summary and terrible, that if any gang or
gangs thereof presume to hoist but one shred of the colours of the
good ship Nickleby,\ve will han^ them on gibbets so loity and endur-
ing that their remains shall be a monument of our just vengeance to
all succeeding ages; and it shall not lie in the power of any lord high
admiral, on earth, to cause them to be taken down again." The last
paragraph of the proclamation informed the potentates of Pater-
noster Row, that from the then ensuing day of the thirtieth of March,
until further notice, "we shall hold our Levees, as heretofore, on the
last evening but one of every month, between the hours of seven and
nine, at our Board of Trade, number one hundred and e hty-six in
the Strand, London; where we again request the attendance (in vast
crowds) of their accredited agents and ambassadors. Gentlemen to
wear knots upon their shoulders; and patent cabs to draw up with
their doors towards the grand entrance, for the convenience of load-
ing."

The preparation for departure [for Italy] was now actively going
forward, and especially his inquiries for two important adjuncts
thereto, a courier and a carriage. As to the latter it occurred to him
that he might perhaps get for little money "some good old shabby
devil of a coach — one of those vast phantoms that hide themselves in
a corner of the Pantechnicon" and exactly such a one he found there;
sitting himself inside it, a perfect Sentimental Traveller, while the
managing man told him its history. "As for comfort — let me see — it

f:,

470

The Life of Charles Dickens

IS about the size of your library; with night-lamps and day-lamps and
pockets and imperials and leathern cellars, and the most extraordin-
ary contrivances. Joking apart, it is a wonderful machine. And when
you see it (if you do see it) you will roar at first, and will then pro-
claim It to be perfectly brilliant, my dear fellow.' " It was marked
sixty pounds; he got it for five-and-forty; and my own emotions
respecting it he had described by anticipation quite correctly In
hndmg a courier he was even more fortunate; and these successes were
followed by a third apparently very promising but in the result less
satisfactory. His house was let to not very careful people.

The tenant having offered herself for Devonshire Terrace unexpect-
edly, during the last week or two of his stay in England he went into
temporary quarters in Osnaburgh Terrace: and here a domestic
difficulty befell of which the mention maybe amusing, when I have dis-
posed of am ncident that preceded it too characteristic for omission
Ihe Mendicity Society's officers had caught a notorious begging-letter
writer, had identified him as an old offender against Dickens of which
proofs were found on his person, and had put matters in train for his
proper punishment; when the wretched creature's wife made such
appeal before the case was heard at the police-court, that Dickens
broke down in his character of prosecutor, and at the last moment
finding what was said of the man's distress at the time to be true'
relented. "When the Mendicity officers themselves told me the man
was in distress, I desi. ed them to suppress what they knew about him
and Slipped out of the bundle (in the police-office) his first letter which
was the greatest lie of all. For he looked wretched, and his wife had
been waiting about the street to see me. all the morning. It was an
exceedingly bad case, however, and the imposition, all through very
great indeed. Insomuch that I could not say anything in his favour
even when I saw him. Yet I was not sorry that the creature found the
loophole for escape. The officers had taken him illegally without any
warrant; and really they messed it all through, quite facetiously "

He \vill himself also best relate the small domestic difficulty into
which he fell m his temporary dwelling upon his unexpectedly
discovering it to be unequal to the strain of a dinner party for which
mvitations had gone out just before the ^sudden "let" of Devonshire
rerrace. The letter is characteristic in other ways, or I should hardly
have gone so far into domesticities here; and it enables me to add that
w'lth the last on its list of guests, Mr. Thomas Chapman, the chairman
ol l.loyd s, he held frequent kindly intercourse, and that few things
more absurd or unfounded have been invented, even of Dickens than
that he found any part of the original of Mr. Dombey i:i the nature
the appearance, or the manners of this excellent and much-valued
c . '..^ '^'^^' ^^^^se," he wrote (9 Osnaburgh Terrace, 28 May
i»44), advise with a distracted man. Investigation below stairs
renders it, as my father would say, 'manifest to any person of ordin-
ary intelligence, if the tenn may be considered allowable.' that the
Saturday s dinner cannot come off here with safety. It would be a

The Life of Charles Dickens

471

toss-up, and might come down heads, but it would put us into an
agony with that kind of people. . . . Now, I feel a difficulty in
dropping it altogether, and really fear that this might have an inde-
finably suspicious and odd appearance. Then said I at breakfast this
morning, I'll send down to the Clarendon. Then says Kate, have it at
Richmond. Then say I that might be inconvenient to the people.
Then she says, how could it be if we dine late enough? Then I am very
mv. h offended without exactly knowing why; and come up here, in a
state of liopeless mystification. . . . What do you think? Ellis would
be quite as dear as anybody else; and unless the weather changes,
the place is objectionable. I must make up my mind to do one thing
or other, for we shall meet Lord Denham at dinner to-day. Could it
be dropped decently? That, I think very doubtful. Could it be done for
a couple of guineas apiece at the Clarendon? ... In a matter of
more importance I could make up my mind. But in a matter of this
kind I bother and bewilder myself, and come to no conclusion
whatever. Advise! Advise! . . . List of the invited. There's Lord
Normanby. And there's Lord Benham. There's Easthope, wife, r d
sister. There's Sydney Smith. There's you and Mac. There's Babbage.
There's a Lady Osborne and her daughter. There's Southwood Smith.
And there's Quin. And there are Thomas Chapman and his wife. So
many of these people have j jver dined with us, that the fix is partic-
ularly tight. Advise! Advise!" My advice was for throwing over the
party altogether, but additional help was obtained and the dinner
went off very pleasantly. . . .

The last incident before Dickens's departure was a farewell dinner
tc him at Greenwich, which took also the form of a celebration for
the completion of Chuzzlewit, or, as the Ballantynes used to call it in
Scott's case, a christening dinner; when Lord Normanby took the
chair, and I remember sitting next the great painter Turner, who
had come with Stanfield, and had enveloped his throat, that sultry
summer day, in a huge red belcher-handkerchief, which nothing
would induce him to remove. He was not otherwise demonstrative,
but enjoyed himself in a quiet silent way, less perhaps at the speeches
than at the changing lights on the river. Carlyle did not come; telling
me in his reply to the invitation that he truly loved Dickens, having
discerned in the inner man of him a real music of the genuine kind,
but that he'd rather testify to this in some other form than that of
dining out in the dog-days.

j gTj'ij^ji i ( ■B . i yw IMMi l iw-

472

The Life of Charles Dickens

IDLENESS AT ALBARO: VILLA BAGNERELLO

1844

The travelling party arrived at Marseilles on the evening of Sunday
14 July. Not being able to get vethtrino horses in Paris, they had conie
on post; paying for nine horses but bringing only four, and thereby
saving a shilling a mile out of what the four would have cost in
England. So great thus far, however, had been the cost of travel, that
"what with distance, caravan, sight-seeing, and everything,'' two
hundred pounds would be nearly swallowed up before they were at
their destination. The success otherwise had been complete The
children had not cried in their worst troubles, the carriage had gone
lightly over abominable roads, and the courier had proved himself a
perfect gem. "Surrounded by strange and perfectly novel circum-
stances," Dickens wrote to me from Marseilles, "I feel as if I had a
new head on side by side with my old one."

To what shrewd and kindly observation the old one had helped
him at every stage of his journey, his published book of travel tells
and of all that there will be nothing here; but a couple of experiences
at his outset, of which he told me afterwards, have enough character
in them to be worth mention.

Shortly before there had been some public interest about the
captain of a Boulogne steamer apprehended on a suspicion of having
stolen specie, but reinstated by his owners after a public apology to
him on their behalf; and Dickens had hardly cet f )t on the boat that
was to carry them across, when he was attract, by the look of its
captain, and discovered him after a minute's talk to be that very
man. "Such an honest, simple, good feljow, I never saw," said
Dickens, as he imitated for me the homely speech in which his con-
fidences were related. The Boulogne people, he said, had given him
a piece of plate, "but Lord bless us ! it took a deal more than that to
get him round again in his own mind; and for weeks and weeks he was
uncommon low to be sure. Newgate, you see ! What a place for a
seafaring man as had held up his head afore the best on 'em, and had
more friends, I mean to say, and I do tell you the daylight truth
than any man on this station— ah ! or any other. I don't care where »''

His first experience in a foreign tongue he made immediately on
landing, when he had gone to the bank for money, and after deliver-
ing with most laborious distinctness a rather long address in French
to the clerk behind the counter, was disconcerted by that function-
ary's cool inquiry in the native-born Lombard Street manner "How

The Life of Charles Dickens

473

would you like to take it, sir?" He took it, as everybody must, in
five-franc pieces, and a most inconvenient coinage he found it; for
he required so much that he had to carry it in a couple of small sacks,
and was always "turning hot about suddenly" taking it into his head
that he had lost them.

The evening of Tuesday, i6 July, saw him in a villa at Albaro,
the suburb of Genoa in which, upon the advice of our Gore House
friends, he had resolved to pass the summer months before taking up
his quarters in the city. His wish was to have had Lord Byron's house
there, but it had fallen into neghict and become the refuge of a third-
rate wineshop. The matter had then been left to Angus Fletcher who
just now lived near Genoa, and he had taken at a rent absurdly
above its value an unpicturesque and uninteresting dwelling, which
at once impressed its new tenant with its likeness to a pink jail.
"It is," he said to me, "the most perfectly lonely, rusty, stagnant old
staggerer of a domain that you can possibly imagine. What would I
give if you could only look round the courtyard ! / look down into it,
whenever I am near that side of the house, for the stable is so full of
'vermin and swarmers' (pardon the quotation from my inimitable
friend) that I always expect to see the carriage going out bodily,
with legions of industrious fleas harnessed to and drawing it off, on
their own account. We have a couple of Italia i work-people in our
establishment; and to hear one or other of them talking away to our
servants with the utmost violence and volubility in Genoese, and our
servants answering with great fluency in English (very loud: as if the
others were only deaf, not Italian), is one of the most ridiculous
things possible. The effect is greatly enhanced by the Genoese
manner, which is exceedingly animated and pantomimic; so that
two friends of the lower class conversing pleasantly in the street,
always seem on the eve of stabbing each other forthwith. And a
stranger is immensely astonished at their not doing it." . . .

A letter sketched for me the story of his travel through France,
and I may at once say that I thus received, from week to week, the
"first sprightly runnings" of every description in his Pictures from
Italy. But my rule as to the American letters must be here observed
yet more strictly; and nothing resembling his printed book, however
distantly, can be admitted into these pages. Even so my difficulty of
rejection will not be less; for as he had not actually decided, until the
very last, to publish his present experiences at all, a larger number of
the letters were left unritled by him. He had no settled plan from the
first, as in the other case. . . .

[In one of his early letters he wrote:] ". . . Good Heavens! Howl
wish you'd come for a week or two, and taste the white wine at a
penny farthing the pint. It is excellent. . . ." Then, after seven
days: "I have got my paper and inkstand and figures now (the box
from Osnaburgh Terrace only came last Thursday), and can think —
I have begun to do so every morning — with a business-like air, of
the Christmas book. My paper is arranged, and my pens are spread

I \

474

The Life of Charles Dickens

out m the usual form. I think you know the form— don't vou? Mv
books have not passed the custom-house yet, and I tremble for some
volumes of Voltau-e. ... I write in the best bedroom. The sun is
oil the corner wmdow at the side of the house by a very little after
twelve; and I can then throw the blinds open, and look up from mv
paper, at the sea. the mountains, the washed-out villas, the vineyards
at the blistering white-hot fort with a sentry on the drawbndee
standing m a bit of shadow no broader than his own musket and at
the sky as often as I like. It is a very peaceful view, and yet a very
cheerful one. Quiet as quiet can be." ^

Not yet. however, had the time for writing come A sharp attack
of Illness befell his youngest little daughter. Kate, and troubled him
much. rhen. after beginning the Italian grammar himself, he had to
call in the help of a master; and his learning of the language took up
time. But he had an aptitude for it, and after a month's application
told nie (24 August) that he could ask in Italian for whatever he
wanted in any shop or coffee-house, and could read it pretty well
I wish you could see me" (16 September), "without my knowing it"
walking about alone here. I am now as bold as a lion in the streets'
Ihe audacity with which one begins to speak when there is no helo
lor it, IS quite astonishing." ... ^

In the middle of August he dined with the French consul-general
^?1* 5^^ ^''" °°?^ ^^ "^^ impropriety in printing his agreeable sketch
of the dinner. There was present, among other Genoese, the Marquis
d! Negri, a very fat and much older Jerdan. with the same thickness
of speech and size of tongue. He was Byron's friend, keeps open house
here, writes poetry, improvises, and is a very good old Blunderbore-
just tne sort of instrument to make an artesian well v/ith. anywhere'
Well, sir, after dmner. the consul proposed my health with a little
French conceit to the effect that I had come to Italy to have personal
experience of its lovely climate, and that there was this similarity
between the Italian sun and its visitor, that the sun shone into the
darkest places and made them bright and happy with its benignant
influence, and that my books had done the like with the breasts of
men. and so forth. Upon which Blunderbore gives his bright-but-
toned blue coat a great rap on the brea^, turns up his fishy eyes
stretches out his arm like the living statue defying the lightning at
Astley's. and delivers four impromptu verses in my honour, at which
everybody is enchanted, and I more than anybody— perhaps with
the best reason, for I didn't understand a word of them. The consul
then takes from his breast a roll of paper, and says, 'I shall read
them!' Blunderbore then says, 'Don't!' But the consul does and
Blunderbore beats time to the music of the verse with his knuckles
on the table; and perpetually ducks forward to look round the cap of
a lady sitting between himself and me to see what I think of them
I exhibit lively emotion. The verses are in French— short line— on
the taking of Tangiers by the Prince de Joinville; and are received
with great applause; especially by a nobleman present who is

The Life of Charles Dickens

475

reported to be unable to read and write. They end in my mind
(rapidly translating them into prose) thus:

The cannon of France

Shake the foundation

Of the wondering sea,

The artillery on the shore

Is put to silence.

Honour to Joinville

And tlie Brave!

The Great Intelligence

Is borne

Upon the wings of Fains

To Paris.

Her national citizens

Excliange caresses

In the streets!

The temples are crowded

With religious patriots

kendering thank>

To Heaven.

The King

And all the Royal Family

Are bathed

In tears.

They call upon the name

Of Joinville!

France also

Weeps, and echoes it.

Joinville is crowned

With Immortality;

And Peace and Joinville,

And the Glory of France,

Diffuse themselves

Conjointly.

If you can figure to yourself the choice absurdity of receiving any-
thing into one's mind in this way, you can imagine the labour I
underwent in my attempts to keep the lower part of my face square,
and to lift up one eye gently, as with admiring attention. But I am
bound to add that this is really pretty literal; for I read them after-
wards." At his French friend's house he afterwards made the acquain-
tance of Lamartine. . . .

The marquis had a splendid house, but Dickens found the grounds
so carved into grottoes and fanciful walks as to remind him of noth-
ing so much as our old White Conduit House, except that he would
have been well pleased, on the present occasion, to have discovered
a waiter crying, "Give your orders, gents!" it being not easy to him
at any time to keep up, the whole night through, on ices and variegated
lamps merely. But the scene for awhile was amusing enough, and not
rendered less so bj^ the delight of the marquis himself, "who was con-
stantly diving out into dark corners and then among the lattice-
work and flower pots, rubbing his hands and going round and round
with explosive chuckles in his huge satisfaction with the entertain-
ment." With horror it occurred to Dickens, however, that four more
hours of this kuid of entertainment would be too much; that the
Genoa gates closed at twelve; and that as the caniage had not been
ordered till the dancing was expected to be over and the gates to
reopen, he must make a sudden bolt if he would himself get back to
Albaro. "I had barely time," he told me, "to reach the gate before
midnight; and was running as hard as J. could go, downhill, over un-
even ground, along a new street, called the Strada Sevra, when I
came to a pole fastened straight across the street, nearly breast-
high, without any light or watchman — quite in the Italian style. I
went over it, headlong, with such force that I rolled myself completely
white in the dust; but although I tore my clothes to shreds, I hardly
r;cratched myself except in one place on the knee. I had no time to

476

The Life of Charles Dickens

think of it then, for I was up directly and off again to save the gate:
but when I got outside the wall and saw the state I was in, I won-
dered I had not broken my neck. I 't -»k it easy' after this, and walked
home, by lonely ways enough, witi.out meeting a single soul. But
there is nothing to be feared, I believe, from midnight walks in this
part of Italy. In other places you incur the danger of being stabbed
by mistake; whereas the people here are quiet ai.d good-tempered,
and very rarely commit any outrage."

Such adventures, nevertheless, are seldom without consequences,
and there followed in this case a short but sharp attack of illness. It
came on with the old " unspeakable and agonising pain in the side,"
for which Bob Fagin had prepared and applied the hot bottles in the
old warehouse time; and it yielded quickly to powerful remedies.
But for a few days he had to content himself with the minor sights
of Albaro. ...

In the second week of September he went to meet his brother
Frederick at Marseilles, and bring him back over the Cornice road to
pass a fortnight's holiday at Genoa: and his description of the first
mn upon the Alps they slept in is too good to be lost. "We lay last
night," he wrote (9 September), "at the first halting-place on this
journey, m an inn which is not entitled, as it ought to be, The house
of call for fleas and vermin in general, but is entitled The grand hotel
of the Post! I hardly know what to compare it to. It seemed some-
thing like a house in Somers Town originally built for a wine-vaults
and never finished, but grown very old. There was nothing to eat in
It and nothing to drink. They had lost the teapot; and when they
found It, they couldn't make out what had become of the lid, which,
turnmg up at last and being fixed on to the teapot, couldn't be got
off again for the pouring-in of more water. Fleas of elephantine dimen-
sions were gambolling boldly in the dirty beds; and the mosquitoes 1
-—But here let me draw a curtain (as I would have done if there had
been any). We had scarcely any sleep, and rose up with hands and
arms hardly human." . . .

WORK IN GENOA: PALAZZO PESCHIERE
1844

. . . The subject for his new Christmas story he had chosen, but he
had not found a title for it, or the machnery to work it with; when,
at the moment of what seemed to be his greatest trouble, both reliefs
came. Sitting down one mornng resolute for work, though against
the gram, his hand being out and everything inviting to idleness,
such a peal of chimes arose from the city as he found to be "madden-

The Lif'. of Charles Dickens

477

ing." All Genoa lay beneath him, and up from it, with some sudden
set of the wind, came in one fell sound the clang and clash of all its
steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating,
discordant, jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas "spin
round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and
giddin-^ss, and dropped down dead." He had never before so suffered,
nor did he again; but this was his description to me next day, and
his excuse for having failed in a promise to send me his title. Only
two days later, however, came a letter in which not a syllable was
written but "We have heard the Chimes at midnight. Master
Shallow!" and I knew he had discovered what he wanted.

Other difficulties were still to be got over. He craved for the London
streets. He so missed his long night-walks before beginning anything
that he seemed, as he said, dumbfounded without them. "I can't help
thinking of the boy in the school-class whose button was cut off by
Walter Scott and his friends. Put me down on Waterloo Bridge at
eight o'clock in the evening, with leave to roam about as long as I
like, and I would come home, as you know, panting to go on. I am
sadly strange as it is, and can't settle. You will have lots of hasty
notes from me while I am at work: but you know your man; and
whatever strikes me, I shall let off upon you as if I were in Devon-
shire Terrace. It's a great thing to have my title, and see my way how
to work the bells. Let them clash upon me now from all the churches
and convents in Genoa, I see nothing but the old London belfry I
have set them in. In my mind's eye, Horatio, I like more and more
my notion of making, in this little book, a great blow for the poor.
Something powerful, I think I can do, but I want to be tender too,
and cheerful; as like the Carol in that respect as may be, and as unlike
it as such a thing can be. The duration of the action will resemble ?'
a little, but I trust to the novelty of the machinery to carry that o^
and if my design be anything at all, it has a grip upon the very throa
of the time." (8 October.)

Thus bent upon his work, for which he never had been in more
earnest mood, he was disturlaed by hearing that he must attend the
levee of the governor, who had unexpectedly arrived in the city, and
who would take it as an affront, his eccentric friend Fletcher told
him, if that courtesy were not immediately paid. "It was the morning
on which I was going to begin, so J wrote round to our consul," —
praying, of course, that excuse should be made for him. Don't bother
yourself, replied that sensible functionary, for all the consuls and
governors alive; but shut yourself up by all means. "So," continues
Dickens telling me the tale, "he went next morning in great state,
and full costume, to present two English gentlemen. 'Where's the
great poet?' said the Governor. 'I want to see the great poet.' 'The
great poet, your excellency,' said the consul, 'is at work, writing a
book, and begged me to make his excuses.' 'Excuses!' said the
Governor, 'I wouldn't interfere with such an occupation for all the
world. Pray tell him that my house is open to the honour of his

i ") !

I 1

; I

»M

¥'

478

The Life of Charles Dickens

presence when it is perfectly convenient for him; but not otherwise.
And let no gentleman,' said the Governor, a surweyin' of his suite
with majestic eye, call upon Signor Dickens till he is understood to
be disengaged.' And he sent somebody with his own cards next day.
Now I do seriously call this, real politeness and pleasant consideration
— not positively American, but still gentlemanly and polished. The
same spirit pervades the inferior depi-rtments; and I have not been
required to observe the usual police regulations, or to put myself
to the slightest trouble about anything." {i8 October.) . . .

He kept his promise that I should hear from him while writing,
and I had frequent letters when he was fairly m his work. "With my
steam very much up, I find it a great trial to be so far off from you,
and consequently to have no one (always excepting Kate and
Georgy) to whom to expatiate on my day's work. And I want a
crowded street to plunge into at night. And I want to be 'on the
spot' as it were. But apart from such things, the life I lead is favour-
able to work." In his next letter: 'I am in regular, ferocious excite-
ment with the Chimes; get up at seven; have a cold bat' before
breakfast; and blaze away, wrathful and red-hot, until three o'clock
or so: when I usually knock off (unless it rains) for the day. ... I
am fierce to finish in a spirit bearing some affinity to those of truth
and mercy, and to shame the cruel and the canting. I have not
forgotten my catechism. 'Yes, verily, and with Gou's help, so I
Willi'"

Within a week he had completed his first part, or quarter. "I send
you to-day" (i8 October), "by mail, the first and longest of the four
divisions. This is great for the first week, which is usually uphill. I
have kept a copy in shorthand in case of accidents. I hope to senrl you
a parcel every Monday until the whole is done. I do not wish to
influence you, but it has a great hold upon me, and has affected me,
in the doing, in divers strong ways, deeply, forcibly. ..."

A visit from him to London was to be expected almost imme-
diately! That all remonstrance would be idle, under the restless
excitement his work had awakened, I well knew. It was not merely
the wish he had, natural enough, to see the last proofs and the wood-
cuts before the day c: publication, which he could not otherwise do;
but it was the stronger and more eager wish, before that final launch,
to have a vivider sense than letters could give him of the effect of
what he had been doing. "If I come, I shall put up at Cuttris's"
(then the Piazza Hotel in Co vent Garden), "that I may be close to
you. Don't say to anybody, except our immediate friends, that I am
coming. Then I shall not be bothered. If I should preserve my
present fierce writing humour, in any pass I may run to V, lice,
Bologna, and Florence, before I turn my face towards Lincoln's Inn
Fields; and come to England by Milan and Turin. But this of course
deptinds in a greac measure on your reply." My reply, dwelling on the
fatigue and cost, had the reception I foresaw. "Notwithstanding
what you say, I am still in the same mind about coming to London.

The Lite of Charles Dickens 479

Not because the proois concern me at all (f should be an ass as well
as a thanklc. ., /agabond if they did), but becaust! of that unspeakable
restless something which would render it almost as impcxssiblc for me
to remain here and not see the thing complete, as it would Ix; for a
full balloon, left to itself, not to go up. I do not intend coming from
here, but by way of Milan and Turin (previously goin|» to Venice),
and so, across the wildest pass of the Alps that may b(; open, to
Strasburg. ... As you dislike the Young ICngland gentleman I
shall knock him out, and replace him by a man (I can dash him in at
your rooms in an hour) who recognises no virtue in anything but the
good old times, and talks of them, parrot-like, whatever the matter
is. A real good old city Tory, in a blue coat and bright buttons and a
white cravat, and with a tendency of blood to the head. File away
at Filer, as you please; but bear in mind t.^at the Westminster
Review considered Scrooge's presentation of the turkey to Bob
Cratchit as grossly incompatible with political economy. I don't
care at all for the skittle-v^laying." These were among things I iiad
objected to.

But the close of his lettei revealed more than its ;jening of the
reason, not at once so frankly confessed, for the long wini.er-journey
he was about to make; and -f it be thought that, in printing the
passage, I take a liberty with my friend, it will be found that equal
liberty is taken with myself, whom it good-naturedly caricatures; so
that the reader can enjoy h'^j laugh at either or both. "Shall I confess
to you, I particularly want Carlyle above all to see it before the rest of
the world, when it is done; and I should like to inflict the little stor^-
on him and on dear old gallant Macready with my own lips, and to
have Stanny and the other Mac sitting by. Now, if you was a real
gent, you'd get up a little circle for me, one wet evening, v/hen I
come tc town: and would say, 'My boy (sir, will you have the good-
ness to leave those books alone and go downstairs — What the devil
are you doing! And mind, sir, I can see nobody — Do you hear.?
Nobody. I am particularly engaged with a gentleman from Asia) —
My boy, would you give us that little Christmas book (a little
Christmas book of Dickens's, Macready, which I'm anxious you
should hear); and don't slur it, now or be too fast, Dickens, please !' —
I say, if you was a real gent, sometiiing to this effect might happen. I
shall be under sailing orders the moment I have finished. And I
shall produce myself (please God) in London on the very day you
name. For one week: to the hour."

The wish was complied with, of course; and that night in Lincoln's
Inn Fields led to rather memorable issues. His next letter told me
the little tale was done. "Third of November, 1844. Half-past t\vo,
afternoon. Thank God ! I have finished the Chimes. This moment. I
take up my pen again to-day, to say only that much; and to add that
I have had what women call 'a real good cry.' " Very genuine all
this, it is hardly necessary to say. The little book thus completed was
not one of his greater successes, and it raised him up some objectors;

48o

The Life of Charles Dickens

ii.f.

but there was that in it which more than repaid the suffering its
writing cost him. and the enmity its opinions provoked; and in his
own heart i+ had a cherished corner to the last. . . .

ITALIAN TRAVEL
1844

So it all fell out accordingly. He parted from his disconsolate wife as
he told me in his first letter from Ferrara. on Wednesday. 6 Novem!
ber: le t her shut up nrher palace like a baron's lady in the time of the
Crusades; and had his first real experience of the wonders of Ttalv He

lTf^t.T^'H wT^'-^"^°^"^ ^^^''^'^' ^^"^^^' Verona, and Mantua
As tc all which the impressions conveyed to me in his letters have
been more or less given in his published Pictures

On Sunday the 17th. he was at Lodi, from which he wrote to me
that J.e had been, ike Leigh Hunt's pig. up "all manner of streets''
since he left his palazzo; that with one exception he had not on anv
night given up more than five hours to rest; that all the davs excedt
tjvo had been bad ("the last two foggy as Blackfriars Bridge on LoS
Mayor s Day"); and that the cold had been dismal. But what cheerful
keen, observant eyes he carried everywhere; and, in the midst of new
ana unaccustomed scenes, and of objects and remains of art for
which no previous study had prepared him. with what a delicate
play of imagination and fancy the accuracy of his ordinary vision was
exalted and refined. 1 think strikingly shown by the few unstudld
passages I am preserving from the^i friendly letters

"I am alr-Pdy brim-full of cant about pictures* and shall be
happy to enlighten you on the subject of the different schools at anv
length you please. It seems to me that the preposterous exaggeration
in which our countrymen delight in reference to this Italf harcUv
extends to the really good things. Perhaps it is in its nat^ure that
there it snould fall short. I have never yet seen any praise of Titian^s
great picture of the 'Assumption of the Virgin' at Venice Sh
soared half as high as the beautiful and amafing reality .Tt i^per
fection. Tintoretto's picture too, of the 'Assembly of the Blest 'at
Venice also, with all the lines in it (it is of immense size and the
figures are countless) tending majestically and dutifully to Almightv
God in the centre is grand and noble in the extreme. There are some
wonderful portraits there, besides; and some confused, and hurriS
and slaughterous battle pieces, in which the surprising ar? thai
presents the generals to your eye, so that it is almost impossible you
T.!!!!ff !^T 'V ^^^^^ though they are in the thick of it, is verv

.^^4. 4.^ J— _ii - „ - --"-o ^j «xv. XII I.I.C LiucK oi It, IS verv

ocxx. .V. dwell upon. 1 nave seen some delightful pictures; and

some (at ^

to laugh a

rum 'uns

are clear

slavishly i

day after

turning re

have a gi

becomes <

who were

priests. p<

see, in pic

the paint

convent s

inmates o

all the lai

that in si

the vanit

canvas a1

In the

quite a i

Italian in

England;

which is (

than you

tual; and

a beast n

The wind

(a cat C01

mand of 1

positivel3

like leave

hearth w

only kno

and an aj

an uncon

strictly i

painted (

dinner; a

the chara

amiably (

English,

pleasure

Of the

instances

publishe*

essential

may prei

334

The Life of Charles Dickens

481

some (at Verona and Mantua) really too absurd and ridiculous even
to laugh at. Hampton Court is a fool to 'em— and oh there are some
rum 'uns there, my friend. Some werry rum 'uns. . . . Two things
are clear to me already. One is, that the rules of art are much too-
slavishly followed; making it a pain to you, when you go into galleries
day after day, to be so very precisely sure where this figure will be
turning round, and that figure will be lying down, ?»nd that other will
have a great lot of drapery twined about him, and so forth. This
becomes' a perfect nightmare. The second is, that these great men,
who were of necessity very much in the hands of the monks and
priests, painted monks and priests a vast deal too often. I constantly
see, in pictures of tremendous power, heads quite below the story and
the painter; and I invariably observe that those heads are of the
convent stamp, and have their counterparts, exactly, in the convent
inmates of this hour. I see the portraits of monks I know at Genoa, in
all the lame parts of strong paintings: so I have settled with myself
that in such cases the lameness was not with the painter, but with
the vanity and ignorance of his employers, who would be apostles on
canvas at all events."

In the same letter he described the Inns. "It is a great thing —
quite a matter of course — with English travellers, to decry the
Italian inns. Of course you have no comforts that you are used to in
England; and travelling alone, you dine in your bedroom always;
which is opposed to our habits. But they are immeasurably better
than you would suppose. The attendants are very quick; very punc-
tual; and so obliging, if you s )eak to thern politely, that you would be
a beast not to look cheerful, and take everything pleasantly. . . .
The windows won't open, and the doors won't shut; and these latter
(a cat could get in, between them and the floor) have a windy com-
mand of a colonnade which is open to the night, so that my slippers
positively blow off my feet, and make little circuits in the room —
like leaves. There is a very ashy wood-fire, burning on an immense
hearth which has no fender (there is no such thing in Italy); and it
only knows two extremes — an agony of heat when wood is put on,
and an agony of cold when it has been on two minutes. There is also
an uncomfortable stain in the wall, where the fifth door (not being
strictly indispensable) was walled up a year or two ago, and never
painted over. But the bed is clean; and I have had an excellent
dinner; and without being obsequious or servile, which is not at all
the characteristic of the people in the north of Italy, the waiters are so
amiably disposed to invent little attentions which they suppose to be
English, and are so lighthearted and good-natured, that it is a
pleasure to have to do with them. ...

Of the help his courier continued to be to him I had whimsical
instances in almost every letter, but he appears too often in the
published book to require such celebration here. He is, however, an
essential figure to two little scenes sketched for me at Lodi, and I
may prefac'e them by saying that Louis Roche, a native of Avignon.

334

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The Life of Charles Dickens

justified to the close his master's high opinion. He was again engaged
for nearly a year in Switzerland, and soon after, poor fellow, though
with a jovial robustness of look and breadth of chest that promised
unusual length of days, was killed by heart-disease. "The brave C.
continues to be a prodigy. He puts out my clothes at every inn as if
I were going to stay there twelve months; calls me to the instant
every morning; lights the fire before I get up; gets hold of roast fowls
and produces them in coaches at a distance from all other help, in
hungry moments; and is invaluable to me. He is such a good fellow,
too, that little rewards don't spoil him. I always give him, after I
have dined, a tumbler of Sauterne or Hermitage or whatever 1 may
have; sometimes (as yesterday) when we have come to a public-
house at about eleven o'clock, very cold, having started before
daybreak and had nothing, I make him take his breakfast with me;
and this renders him only more anxious than ever, by redoubling
attentions, to show me that he thinks he has got a good master.
... I didn't tell you that the day before I left Genoa, we had a
dinner-party— our English consul and his wife; the banker; Sir George
Crawford and his wife; the De la Rues; Mr. Curry; and some others,
fourteen in all. At about nine in the morning, two men in immense
paper caps inquired at the door for the brave C, who presently
introduced them in triumph as the governor's cooks, his private
friends, who had come to dress the dinner! Jane wouldn't stand this,
however; so we were obliged to decline. Then there came, at half-
hourly intervals, six gentlemen having the appearance of English
clergymen, being other private friends who had come to wait. . . .
We accepted their services; and you never saw anything so nicely and
quietly done. He had asked, as a special distinction, to be allowed the
supreme control of the dessert; and he had ices made like fruit, had
pieces of crockery turned upside-down so as to look like other pieces
of crockery non-existent in this part of Europe, and carried a case of
toothpicks in his pocket. Then his delight was, to get behind Kate
at one end of the table, to look at me at the other, and to say to
Georgy in a low voice whenever he handed her anything, "What
does master think of datter 'rangement? Is he content?' ... If
you could see what these fellows of couriers are when their families
are not upon the move, you would feel what a prize he is. I can't
make out whether he was ever a smuggler, but nothing will induce
him to give the custom-house officers anything: in consequence of
which that portmanteau of mine has been unnecessarily opened
twenty times. Two of them will come to the coach-door, at the gate
of a town. 'Is there anything contraband in this carriage, signore?'
'No, no. There's nothing here. I am an Englishman, and this is my
servant.' 'A buono mano signore?' 'Roche' (in English), 'give him
something, and get rid of him.' He sits unmoved. 'A buono mano
signore?' 'Go along with you!' says the brave C. 'Signore, I am a
custom-house officer!' 'Well, then, more shame for you!' — he always
makes the same answer. And then he turns to me and says in English:

while the

in the coa

told to hi

greatest ti

that I car

include tl

the old bl

He clos

her sister

couple of

London.

am still b

walked ti

write to

enhance

so wide !'

There

but to wr

flashed u

before I c

It is alm(

ing. Han

the visit

form for

day, 2 I

aloud. .

He wr

see Macr

English

Fields. T

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before t<

Madam

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swollen 1

Helef

did not ]

days an

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manage(

As he w(

traveller

blarmcd

Five Ah

The Life of Charles Dickens

483

while the custom-house officer s face is a portrait of anguish framed
in the coach window, from his intense desire to know what is being
told to his disparagement: 'Datter chip,' shaking his fist at him, 'is
greatest tief — and you know it you rascal — as never did en-razh me so,
that I cannot bear myself!' I suppose chip to mean chap, but it may
include the custom-house officer's father and have some reference to
the old block, for anything I distinctly know."

He closed his Lodi letter next day at Milan, whither his wife and
her sister had made an eighty miles' journey from Genoa, to pass a
couple of days with him in Prospero's old dukedom before he left for
London. "We shall go our several ways on Thursday morning, and I
am still bent on appearing at Cuttris's on Sunday the first, as if I had
walked thither from Devonshire Terrace. In the meantime I shall not
write to you again ... to enhance the pleasure (if anything can
enhance the pleasure) of our meeting. . . . I am opening my arms

so wide!" ...

There was certainly no want of animation when we met. I have
but to write the words to bring back the eager face and figure, as they
flashed upon me so suddenly this wintry Saturday night that almost
before I could be conscious of his presence I felt the grasp of his hand.
It is almost all I find it possible to remember of the brief, bright meet-
ing. Hardly did he seem to have come when he was gone. But all that
the visit proposed he accomplished. He saw his little book in its final
form for publication; and, to a select few brought together on Mon-
day, 2 December, at my house, had the opportunity of reading it

aloud. ... , . , 1 .

He wrote from Paris, at which he had stopped on his way back to
see Macready, whom an engagement to act there with Mr. Mitchell's
English company had prevented from joining us in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. There had been no such frost and snow since 1829, and he gave
dismai report of the city. With Macready he had gone two nights
before to the Odeon to see Alexander Dumas' Christme played by
Madam St. George, "once Napoleon's mistress; now of an immense
size, from dropsy I suppose; and with little weak legs which she can't
stand upon Her age, withal, somewhere about 80 or 90. I never in
my life beheld such a sight. Every stage conventionality she ever
picked up (and she had them all) has got the dropsy too, and is
swollen and bloated hideously. ...

He left Paris on the night of the i3tn with the tnalle paste, whicn
did not reach Marseilles till fifteen hours behind its time, after three
days and three nights travelling over horrible roads. Then, ma
confusion between the two rival packets for Genoa, he unwillingly
detained one of them more than an hour from sailing; and only
managed at last to get to her just as she was moving out of harbour.
As he went up the side, he saw a strange sensation among the angry
travellers whom he had detained so long; heard a voice exclaim "I am

_'„»iT^.^. ,»,».,, I" ^-nA t^4-r^r-kA in fhr* r*>r)frp nf a. crnii'D of

Diarmca oi ii uiii ii-ri'-r,.r^N =

Five Americans^. But the pleasantest part of the story is that they

484

The Life of Charles Dickens

were, one and all, glad to see him; that their chief man, or leader, who
had met him in New York, at once introduced them all round with
the remark, "Personally our countrymen, and you, can fix it friendly,
sir, I do expectuate," and that, through the stormy passage to
Genoa which followed, they were excellent friends. For the greater
part of the time, it is true, Dickens had to keep to his cabin; but he
contrived to get enjoyment out of them nevertheless. . . .

ill

VII

LAST MONTHS IN ITALY
1845

On 22 December he had resumed his ordinary Genoa life. . . .
A journey southward began on 20 January, and five days later I
had a letter written from La Scala, at a little'inn, "supported on low
brick arches like a British ha^/stack," the bed in their room "like a
mangle," the ceiling without lath or plaster, nothing to speak of
available for comfort or decency, and nothing particular to eat or
drink. "But for all this I have become attached to the country and I
don't care who knows it."

Before Radicofani was reached, there were disturbing rumours of
bandits and even uncomfortable whispers as to their night's lodging-
place : "Can you imagine" (he named a first-rate bore, for whose
name I shall substitute) "M. F. G. in a very frowsy brown cloak con-
cealing his whole figure, and with very white hair and a very white
beard, darting out of this place with a long staff in his hand, and
bp'-ging? There he was, whether you can or not; out of breath with
the rapidity of his dive, and staying with his staff all the Radicofani
boys, that he might fight it out with me alone. It was very v/et, and
so was I: for I had kept, according tg custom, my box-seat. It was
blowing so hard that I could scarcely stand; and there was a custom-
house on the spot, besides. Over and above all this, I had no small
money; and the brave C. never has, when I want it for a beggar.
When I had excused myself several times, he suddenly drew himself
up and said, with a wizard look (fancy the aggravation of M. F. G. as
a wizard !), 'Do you know what you are doing, my lord? Do you mean
to go on to-day.?' 'Yes,' I said, 'I do.' 'My lord,' he said, 'do you
know that your vetturino is unacquainted with this part of the
country; that there is a wind raging on the mountain, which will
sweep you away; that the courier, the coach, and all the passengers,
were blown from the road last year; and that the danger is great and
almost certain?' 'No,' I said, 'i don't.^ My lord, you don't under-
stand me, I think?' 'Yes, I do, d you!' nettled by this (you feel

The Life of Charles Dickens

ader, who
)und with
b friendly,
assage to
le greater
in; but he

485

ys later I
3d on low
n "like a
speak of
to eat or
try and I

mours of
; lodging-
or whose
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sry white
and, and
ath with
idicofani
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t. It was
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no small
beggar.
r himself
F. G. as
ou mean
'do you
t of the
lich will
isengers,
reat and
t under-
you feel

it? I confess it). 'Speak to my servant. It's his business. Not mine' —
for he really was too like M. F. G. to be borne. If you could have seen
him! — 'Santa Maria, these English lords! It's not their business if
they're killed ! They leave it to their servants I' He drew off the boys;
whispered them to keep away from the heretic; and ran up the hill
again, almost as fast as he had come down. He stopped at a little
distance as we moved on; and pointing to Roche with his long staff
cried loudly after me, 'It's his business if you're killed, is it, my
lord? Ha! ha! ha! whose business is it when the English lords are
born ! Ha ! ha ! ha !' The boys taking it up in a shrill yell, I left the joke
and them at this point. But I must confess that I thought he had the
best of it. And he had so far reason for what he urged, that when we
got on the mountain pass the wjnd became terrific, so that we were
obliged to take Kate out of the carriage lest she should be blown over,
carriage and all. and had ourselves to hang on to it, on the windy
side, to prevent its going Heaven knows where !"

The first impression of Rome was disappointing. It was the evening
of 30 January, and the cloudy sky, dull cold rain and muddy foot-
ways, he was prepared for; but he was not prepared for the long streets
of commonplace shops and houses like Paris or any other capital, the
busy people, the equipages, the ordinary walkers up and down. "It
was no more my Rome, degraded and fallen and lying asleep in the
sun among a heap of ruins, than Lincoln's Inn Fields is. So I really
went to bed in a very indifferent humour." That all this yielded to
later and worthier impressions I need hardly say; and he had never
in his life, he told me afterwards, been so moved or overcome by any
sight as by that of the Coliseum, "except perhaps by the first con-
templation of the Falls of Niagara." . . .

Two more months were to finish his Italian holiday, and I do not
think he enjoyed any part of it so much as its close. He had formed a
real friendship for Genoa, was greatly attached to the social circle
he had drawn round him there, and liked rest after his travel all the
more for the little excitement of living its activities over again, week
by week, in these letters to me. Of incidents during these remaining
weeks there were few, but such as he mentioned had in them points of
humour or character still worth remembering. Two men were hanged
in the city; and two ladies of quality, he told me, agreed to keep up
for a time a prayer for the souls of these two miserable creatures so
incessant that Heaven should never for a moment be left alone: to
which end "they relieved each other" after such wise, that, for the
whole of the stated time, one of them was always on her knees in the
cathedral church of San Lorenzo. From which he inferred that "a
morbid sympathy for criminals is not wholly peculiar to England,
though it affects more people in that country perhaps than in any
other." . . .

Another little incident is also characteristic. An English ship of
war, the Fantome, appeared in the harbour; and from her commander,
Sir Frederick Nicolson, Dickens received, among attentions very

f j
I I

1 t

486

The Life of Charles Dickens

pleasant to him, an invitation to lunch on board and bring his wife,
for whom, at a time appointed, a boat was to be sent to the Ponte
Reale (the royal bridge). But no boat being there at the time, Dickens
sent off his servant in another boat to the ship to say he feared some
mistake. "While we were walking up and down a neighbouring
piazza in his absence, a brilliant fellow in a dark blue shirt with a
white hem to it all round the collar, regular corkscrew curls, and a
face as brown as a berry, comes up to me and says, 'Beg your pardon
sir, Mr. Dickens?' 'Yes.' 'Beg your pardon ^r, but I'm one of the
ship's company of the Phaniom sir, cox'en of the cap'en's gig r.ir, she's
a- lying off the pint sir — been there half an hour.' Well but my good
fellow,' I said, 'you're at the wrong place!' 'Beg your pardon sir, I
was afeerd it was the wrong place sir, but I've asked them Genoese
here, sir, twenty times if it was Port Real; and they knows no more
than a dead jackasGi' — Isn't it a good thing to have made a regular
Portsmouth name of it?" . . .

His last letter from Genoa was written on 7 June, not from the
Peschiere, but from a neighbouring palace, "Brignole Rosso," into
which he had fled from the miseries of moving. "They are all at sixes
and sevens up at the Peschiere, as you may suppose; and Roche is in a
condition of tremendous excitement, engaged in settling the inventory
with the house-agent, who has just told me he is the devil himself. I
had been appealed to, an 1 had contented myself with this expression
of opinion, 'Signor Noli, you are an old impostor!' 'Illustrissimo,'
said Signor Noli in reply, 'your servant is the devil himself: sent on
earth to torture me.' I look occasionally towards the Peschiere (it is
visible from this room), expecting to see one of them flying out of a
window. . . .

' II

BOOK FIFTH

LONDON. LAUSANNE AND PARIS

1845-7. ^T. 33-5

I. Again in England.
IL Retreat to Switzerland.

III. Swiss People and Scenery.

IV. Sketches chiefly Personal.
V. Three Months in Paris.

Ill

I ri*j

487

(

His firsi

revived ;

changed

agreeme

with hiri

a period

receive

populari

one, for

' <

much in

weekly;

notices c

of all ba(

of humh

time of

beaming

call it, s

"Now

would c

that she

at peop]

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and in a

■!

would a

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from al]

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chirp, c

we]

33^

AGAIN IN ENGLAND

1845-6

His first letter after again taking possession of Devonshire Terrace
revived a subject on which opinions had been from time to time inter-
changed during his absence, and to which there was allusion in the
agreement executed before his departure. The desire was still as strong
with him as when he started Master Humphrey's Clock to establish
a periodical, that, while relieving his own pen by enabling him to
receive frequent help from other writers, might retain always the
popularity of his name. "I really think I have an idea, and not a bad
one, for the periodical. I have turned it over, the last two days, very
much in my mind: and think it positively good. I incline still to
weekly; price three-halfpence, if possible; partly original, partly select;
notices of books, notices of theatres, notices of all good things, notices
of all bad ones; Carol philosophy, chee-^'ul views, sharp anatomisation
of humbug, jolly good temper; papers always in season, pat to the
time of year; and a vein of glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful,
beaming reference in everything to Home and Fireside. And I would
call it, sir:

THE CRICKET
A cheerful creature that churnips on the Hearth.

Natural History.

"Now, don't decide hastily till you've heard what I would do. I
would come out, sir, with a prospectus on the subject of the Cricket
that should put everybody in a good temper, and make such a dash
at people's fenders and arm-chairs as hasn't been made for many a
long day. I could approach them in a difEerent mode under this name,
and in a more winning and immediate way, than under any other. I
would at once sit down upon their very hobs; and take a personal and
confidential position with them which should separate me, instantly,
from all other periodicals periodically published, and supply a dis-
tinct and sufiicient reason for my coming into existence. And I would
chirp, chirp, chirp away in every number until I chirped it up to
well, you shall 1 how many hundred thousand ! . . . '*

334 489

J :

i s

ill

490 The Life of Charles Dickens

My objection, incident more or less to every such scheme, was
the risk of losing its general advantage by making it too specially
dependent on individual characteristics; but there was much in favour
of the present notion, and its plan had l)ecn modified so far, in the
discussions that followed, as *^o involve less absolute jiersonal iden-
tification with Dickens,— when discussion, project, everything was
swept away by a larger scIumuc, in its extent and its danger more
suitable to the wild and hazardous ent'^prisos of that prodigious
year (1845) of e>:citen\ent and disaster. In this more tremendous
adventure, already hinted at on a previous page, we all brcame in-
volved; and the chirp of the Cricket, delayed in conscnpu nee imtil
Christmas, was heard then in circumstances quite other than those
first intended. The change he thus announced to mc about half way
through the summer, in the same letter which told me the success of
d'Orsay's kind exertion to procure a fresh engagement for his courier
Roche. "What do you think o'i a notion that has occurred to mo in
connection with our abiindoned little weekly? It would be a delicate
and beautiful fancy for a Christmas book, making the Cricket a little
household god— silent in the wrong and sorrow of the tale, and loud
again when all went well and happy." The reader will not need to be
told that thus originated the story of the Crichfit on the Hearth, a
Fairy Tale of Home, which had a great popularity in the Chri.stmas
days of 1845. Its sale at the outset doubled that of both its prede-
cessors.

But as yet the larger adventure had not made itself known, and the
interval was occupied with the private play of which the notion had
been started between us at his visit in December, and which led to his
disclosure of a pas.sagc in his early career belonging to that interval
between his school-days and start in life when he had iu pass nearly
two weary years as a reporter for one of the oflices in Doctors'
Commons, from which he sought relief by an attempt to get upon
the stage. I had asked him, alter his return to Genoa, whether he
continued to think that we should have the play; and his reply be-
gan thus: "Are we to have that play? ? ? Have I spoken of it, ever
since I came home from London, as a settled thing! I do not know
if I have ever told you seriou.sly, but 1 have often thought, that I
should certainly have been as successful on the boards as 1 have been
between them. I assure you, when I was on the stage vt Montreal
(not having played for years) I was as much astonished at the reality
and ease, to myself, of what I did as if I had been another man. See
how oddly things come about!" ...

Graver things now claim a notice which need not be proportioned
to their gravity, because, though they had an immediate effect on
Dickens's fortunes, they do not otherwise form part of his story. But
first let me say, he was at Broadstairs for three weeks in the autumn;
we had the private play on his return; and a month later, on 28
October, a sixth child and fourth son, named Alfred Tennyson aiter
his godfathers d'Orsay and Tennyson, was born in Devonshire

'vj''

The Life of Charles Dickens

49t

Tcrraco a do.ith in tho fnniilv followed, tho oldrr and motv RifteM oT

Jrrav ens having inaul^ iho .am. illicit tanto for pnttv and paint

which ha I l>oon fatal to his pmlcoe.sor. Voracity M\^d »»m. «« Jt

Wk<l ScottVHn aioa unoxpoctodly l^^forc the kitchen-fire. He

kept hi, ey^^ to the last upon the meat as it ro«Hte<l. «m» «;''';»;';>y

tun ed oveT on his back with a sepulchral cry of ( uckr^or he letter

wS tohl tne this (,t October) announced to me also that he was at

a eadlock m his Christmas story: "Sick, bothered and depressed.

Visims of Brighton come upon me; and I have a great mtnd to gB

thereto finish mv second part. .>r t.) Hampstond. I have a desperate

oug of "lack Straw's; I nevn- was in such bad wr.tuig cue as I

Vm this week in all my life." The reason was n«)t far to seek. In

?he nrAmratk;n for the proposed new Daily I'aper he was novv

activ^\7as^sHng! ^id had all V>ut consented to the publication of

^''VciZtaine^l at this time, for more than one powerful reason, the
greatest misgiving of his intended share in the adventure. It was not
fuUv revealed uniil later on what dilhcult terms, physical as well as
meUarmkeiiB heM the tenure of his imaginative life; but a ready I
l^^^ew enough to .ioubt the wisdom of what he was at present under-
Hki^R n all intellectual labour, his will prevailed so s rongly when he
xecUt n any object of desire, thai what else its attainment might
cx'ict w s ne7er duly measure ... and this led to frequent strain and
untmictois waste of what no man could less aiTord to spare, lo the
3dS\cnedbyhiswork.itspn)ducticMimig1itnlwayshavefleemed

ouite a^^ e^^^^^^ its enjoyment! but it may be doubted If ever any
man's mentJl effort cost him more. His habits were robust, but not

s hea th that secret had been disclosed to me before he went to
Amedca an(l to the last he dccide.lly refused lo admit the enormous
pr^e he ha P^ Ms triumphsandsuccesses. The morningafter his

ast note 1 I card again. "1 have been so very unwell this morning,
witli gidcl ness and headache, and botheration of one sort or other,
U at 1 n't get up till noon: and. shunning Fleet Street ( Ij^ on.ce
of he pr posed new paper), "am now going for a country walk, in the
cour^e^of which you will find me. if you feel disposed to come away in
the c irriaee that goes to you with this. U is to call for a pull of the
ft St p^^^^^^^ Te Cricket, L\ will bring you. if you ike. by way o
ilaUsiead to me. and subsequently to dinner. There is much I should
like to discuss, if you can manage it. It's the loss of my walks I
suppose but 1 am as giddy as if I were drunk, and can hardly see^ I
pave hir from sufhcient importance at the time to the frecpiency of com-
Xin ts o this kind, or ti the recurrence, at almost regular periods
a ter the year following the present of those spasms in the side of
which he has recorded an instance in the recollections of his childhood.

UK of w^^^^^^ «n attack in Genoa; but though tiot conscious

it to Us full extent, this consideration was among tho e that influ-

or It to Its lu '^^^. ^^ ntnrlppvniir to tum him from what

could n^t but be regarded as full of peril. His health, however, had no

[*;

■^ i
■ i

1
1

■'1
1,1

492

The Life of Charles Dickens

real prominence in my letter; and it is strange now to observe that it
appears as an argument in his reply. I had simp'y put before him, in
the strongest form, all the considerations d-awn from his genius and
fame that should deter him from the labour and responsibility of a
daily paper, not less than from the party and political involvements
incident to it; and here was the material part of the answer made:
"Many thanks for your affectionate letter, which is full of generous
truth. These considerations weigh with me, heavily: but 1 think I
descry in these times, greater stimulants to such an effort; greater
chance of some fair recognition of it, greater means of preserving in it,
or retiring from it unscratched by any weapon one should care for;
than at any other period. And most of all I have, sometimes, t).at
possibility of failing health or fading popularity before me, which
beckons me to such a venture when it comes within my reach. At the
worst, I have written to little purpose, if 1 cannot write my^Uf right
in people's minds, in such a case as this."

And so it went on: but it does not fall within my plan to describe
more than the issue, which was to be accounted so far at least fortu-
nate that it established a journal which has advocated steadily im-
provements in the condition of all classes, rich as well a^ poor, and
has been able, during late momentous occurrences, to give wider
scope to its influence by its enterprise and liberaltv. To that result, the
great writer whose name gave its earliest att action to the Daily
News was not enabled to contribute much; but from him it certainly
received the first impress of the opinions it has since consistently-
maintained. Its prospectus is before me in his handwriting, but it
bears upon itself sufficiently the character of his hand and mind. The
paper would be kept free, it said, from personal influence or party
bias; and would be devoted to the advocacy of all rational and honest
means by which wrong might be redressed, just rights maintained,
and the happiness and welfare of society promoted.

The day for the appearance of its first number was that which was
to follow Peel's speech for the repeal of the Corn Laws; but, brief
as my allusions to the subject are, the remark should be made that
even before this day came there were interruptions to the work of
preparation, at one time very grave, whicu threw such "changes of
vexation" on Dickens's personal relations ' , th'^ v :iture as went far
to destroy both his faith and his pleasure lu it. No opinion need be
offered as to where most of the blame lay, and it would be useless now
to apportion the share that might possibly have belonged to himself;
but, owing to this cause, his editorial work began with such dimin-
ished ardour that its brief continuance could not but be looked for.
A 'ittle note written "before going home" at six o'clock in the morn-
iiig ot Wednesday, 21 January, 1846, to tell me they had "been at
press i hree-quarters of an hour, and were out before The Times,"
marks the beginning; and a note written m .he night of Monday, '9

-J ..,v« I.-.. vi--tt.vix Kiivt --j^Liii-w -.Tf^in uui., Lu aay mm. no haci

■just resigned his editorial functions, describes the end. I had not been

The Life of Charles Dickens

493

unprepared. A week before (Friday. 30 January) he had written:
"I want a long talk with you. I was obliged to come down here in a
hurry to give out a travelling letter I meant to have given out last
night, and could not call upon yt,u. Will you dine with us to-morrow
at six sharp? 1 tiave been revolving plans in my mind this morning
for quitting the paper and going abroad again to write a new book
in shilling numbers. Shall we go to Rochester to-morrow week (my
birthday) if the weather be, as it surely must be, better?" To Roch-
ester accordingly we had gone, he and Mrs. Dickens and her sister,
with Maclise and Jerrold and myself; going over the old Castle!
Watts's Charity, and Chatham fortifications on the Saturday, passing'
Sunday in Cobham church and Cobham Park; having our quarters
both days at the "Bull" Inn made famous in Pickwick; and thus,
by indulgence of the desire which was always strangely urgent in him!
associating his new resolve in life with those earliest scenes of his
youthful time. On one point our feeling had been in thorough agree-
ment. If long continuance with the paper was not likely, the earliest
possible departure from it was desirable. But as the letters descriptive
of his Italian travel (turned afterwards into Pictures from Italy) had
begun with its first number, his name could not at once be withdrawn;
and. for the time durirr; which they were still to appear he consented
to contribute other occasional letters on important social questions.
Public executions and Ragged Schools were among the subjects
chosen by him, and all were handled with conspicuous ability, But
the interval they covered was a short one.

To the supreme control which he had quitted, I succeeded, retain-
ing it very reluctantly for the greater part of that weary, anxious,
laborious year; but in little more than four months from the day the
paper started, the whole of Dickens's connection with the Daily
News, even that of contributing letters with his signature, had ceased.
As he said in the preface to the republished Pictures, it was a mistake,
in so departing from his old pursuits, to have disturbed the old rela-
tions between himself and his readers. It had, however, been "a brief
mistake"; the departure had been only "for a moment"; and now
those pursuits were "joyfully" to be resumed in Switzerland

RETREAT TO SWITZERLAND
18^6

Very pleasant were the earliest impressions of Switzerland with
b his fuse letter closed. "The country is delightful in the
extreme— as leafy, green, and shady, as England; full of deep glens

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494

The Life of Charles Dickens

and branchy places (rather a Leigh Huntish expression), and bright
with all sorts of flowers in profusion. It abounds in singing birds be-
sides—very pleasant after Italy; and the moonlight on the lake is
noble. Prodigious mountains rise up from its opposite shore (it is eight
or nine miles across, at this point), and the Simplon, the St. Gothard,
Mon : Blanc and all the Alpine wonders are piled there, in tremendous
grandeur. The cultivation is uncommonly rich and profuse. There are
all manner of walks, vineyard, green lanes, cornfields, and pastures
full of hay. The general neatness is as remarkable as in England.
There are no priests or monks in the streets, and the people appear to
be industrious and thriving. French (and very intelligible and pleas-
ant French) seems to be the universal language. I never saw so many
booksellers' shops crammed within the same space, as in the steep
up-and-down streets of L.ausanne." . . .

In the heart of these things he was now to live 9nd work for at least
six months; and, as the love of nature was as much a passion with
him in his intervals of leisure, as the craving fo.- crowds and streets
when he was busy with the creatures of his fancy, no man was better
qualified to enjoy what was thus open to him from his little farm

Regular evening walks of nine or ten miles were named in the
next letter (22 June) as having been begun; and thoughts of his
books were already stirring in him. "An odd shadowy undefined idea
is at work within me, that I could connect a great battlefield some-
how with my little Christmas story. Shapeless visions of the repose
and peace pervading it in after-time; with the corn and grass growing
over the slain, and people singing at the plough; are so perpetually
floating before me, that I cannot but think there may turn out to be
something good in them when I see them more plainly. ... I want
to get Four Numbers of the monthly book done here, and the Christ-
mas book. If all goes well, and nothing changes, and I can accomplish
this by the end of November, I shall run over to you in England for a
few days with a light heart, and leave Roche to move the caravan to
Paris in the meanwhile. It will be just the very point in the story
when the life and crowd of that extraordinary place will come vividly
to my assistance in writing." Such was his design and, though
difficulties not now seen started up which he had a hard fight o get
through, he managed to accomplish it. . . .

Only a couple of weeks, themselves not idle ones, had passed over
him when he made a dash at the beginning of his work; from which
indeed he had only been detained so long by the non-arrival of a box
despatched from London before his own departure, containing not
his proper writing materials only, but certain quaint little bronze
figures that thus early stood upon his desk, and were as much needed
for the easy flow of his writing as blue ink or quill pens. "I have not
been idle (28th of June) since I have been here, though at first I was
'kept out' of the big box as you know. I had a good deal to write for
I^rd John about the Ragged Schools. I set to work and did that. A
good deal for Miss Coutts, in reference to her charitable projects. I

The Life of Charles Dickens

495

set to work and did that. Half of the children's New Testament to
write, or pretty nearly. I set to work and did that. Next I cleared off
the greater part of such correspondence as I had rashly pledged
myself to; and then ...

BEGAN DOMBEy!

I performed this feat yesterday — only wrote the first slip — but there
it is, and it is a plunge straight over head and ears into the story.
. . . Besides all this, I have really gone with great vigour at the
French, where I find myself greatly assisted by the Italian; and
am subject to two descriptions of mental fits in reference to the
Christmas book: one, of the suddenest and wildest enthusiasm; one,
of solitary and anxious consideration. ... By the way, as I was
unpacking the big box I took hold of a book, and said to 'Them,'—
'Now, whatever passage my thumb rests on, I shall take as having
reference to my work.' It was Tristram Shandy, and opened at
these words, 'What a work it is likely to turn out! Let us begin it!' "

The same letter told me that he still inclined strongly to "the field
of battle notion" for his Christmas volume, but was not as yet
advanced in it; being curious first to see whether its capacity seemed
to strike me at all. My only objection was to his adventure of opening
two stories at once, of which he did not yet see the full danger;
but for the moment the Christmas fancy was laid aside, and not
resumed, except in passing allusions, until after the close of August,
when the first two numbers of Domhey were done. The interval
supplied fresh illustration of his life in his new home, not without
much interest; and as I have shown what a pleasant social circle,
"wonderfully friendly and hospitable to the last, already had
grouped itself round him m Lausanne, and how full of matter to be
heard and learned he found such institutions as its prison and blind
school, the picture will receive attractive touches if I borrow from
his letters written during this outset of Dombey some further notices
as well as of general progress of his work, as of what was specially
interesting and amusing to him at the time and of how the country
and the people impressed him. In all of these his character will be
found strongly marked.

496

The Life of Charles Dickens

4 ,

f i

4 i.

Ill

SWISS PEOPLE AND SCENERY
1846

. . .Of the ordinary Swiss people he formed from the first a
high opinion which everything during his stay among them con-
firmed. He thought it the greatest injustice to call them "the
Americans of th. Continent." In his first letters he said of the
peasantry aU about Lausanne that they were as pleasant a people
as need be. He never passed, on any of the roads, man. woman o?
Child, without a salutation; and anything churlish or disigreeaWe he
never noticed in them. "They have not," he continued, ''the sweet!
ness and grace of the Italians, or the agreeable manners of the better
specimens of French peasantry, but they are admirably educated
the schools of this canton are extraordinarily good in every Httle
village), and always prepared to give a civil and pleasant Answer
1 here is no greater mistake. ... ^ ^ «- answer.

A letter of a little later date, describing a marriage on the farm
gave some further comical illustration of the rifle-firing propensS
of the Swiss, and had otherwise also whimsical touches of cKcer
h?rZ^ ^u ^^"^'M People-a sister. I think-was married from
here the other day It is wonderful to see how naturally the smalleS
girls are interested m marriages. Katey and Mamey were asTxcited
as If they were eighteen. Ine fondness of the Swiss for gunpowder on
intereslmg occasions, is one of the drollest things. For three davs
before, the farmer himself, in the midst of his virions agrLuUural
duties plunged out of a little door near my windows, about onceTn
every hour, and fired off a rifle. I thought he was shooting rats who
were spoiling the vines; but he wac merely relieving hi! m nd it
seemed on the subject of the approaching nuptials. All night a t'er-
wards, he and a small circle of friends k?pt perpetually fttirV off
guns under the casement of the bridaL chamber. A Bride is a\LZ
drest here in black silk; but this bride wore merino of that cl/r
observing to her mother when she bought it (the old lady is 82 and
works on the farm), 'You know, mother. I am sure to wa/t mourning
for you. soon; and the same gown will do.' " "mourning

Meanwhile, day by day. he was steadily moving on with his first
number; feeling sometimes the want of streets in an "extraordinarv
nervousness it would be hardly possible to describe." that would
come upon him after he had been writing all day; but ^11 otherThnes
findmg the repose of the place very favourable to industry "I am
writing slowly at first of course" (5 July), "but I hope I shall hav^
fimshed the first number in the course of a fortnight at ZiLTr
nave done the first chapter, and begun another. ... '" """ "

The Life of Charles Dickens

497

le first a
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... But when the fourth chapter yet was incomplete, _ 2 could
repress no longer the desire to write to me of what he was doing
(18 July). "I think the general idea of Dombey is interesting and new,
and has great material in it. But I don't like to discuss it with you
till you have read number one, for fear I should spoil its effect When
done— about Wednesday or Thursday, please God— I will send it in
two days' posts, seven letters each day. If you have it set at once (I
am afraid you couldn't read it, otherwise than in print) I know you
will impress on B. & E. the necessity of the closest secrecy. The very
name getting out, would be ruinous. The points for illustration, and
the enormous care required, make me excessively anxious.' The
man for Dombe> , if Browne could see him, the class man to a T, is

Sir A E , of D 's. Great pains will be necessary with Miss

Tox. The Toodle Family should not be too much caricatured, because
of Polly. I should like Browne to think of Susan Nipper, who will not
be wanted in the first number. After the second number, they will all
be nine or ten years older; but this will not involve much change in
the characters, except in the children and Miss Nipper. What a
brilliant thing to be telling you all these names so familiarly, when
you know nothing about 'em ! I quite enjoy it. By the by, I hope you
may like the introduction of Solomon Gills. I think he lives in a good
sort of house. ..."

His letter (2 August) described his own first real experience of
mountain travel. "I begin my letter to-night, but only begin, for we
returned from Chamonix in time for dinner just now, and are pretty
considerably done up. We went by a mountian pass not often crossed
by ladies, called the Col de Balme, where your imagination may
picture Kate and Georgy on mules /or ten hotirs at a stretch -iding up
and down the most frightful precipices. . . . You may suppose
that the mule-travelling is pretty primitive. Each person takes a
carpet-bag strapped on the mule behind himself or herself: and that
is all the baggage that can be carried. A guide, a thorough-bred
moun':aineer, walks all the way, leading the lady's mule; I say lady's
par excellence, in compliment to Kate; and all the rest struggle on as
they please. The cavalcade stops at a lone hut for an hour and a half
in the middk of the day, and lunches brilliantly on whatever it can
get. Going by that Col de Balme pass, you climb up and up and up for
five hours and more, and look — from a mere unguarded ledge of path
on the side of the precipice — into such awful valleys, that at last you
are firm in the belief that j'-ou have got everything in the world, and
that there can be nothing earthly overhead. ... I was very
anxious to make the expedition to what is called 'The Garden': a
green spot covered with wild flowers, lying across the Mer de Glace,
and among the most awful mountains: but I could find no Englishman
at the hotels who was similarly disposed, and the Brave [i.e. Roche,
his servant] wouldn't ^o. No, sir! He gave in point blank (having
been horribly blown in a climbing excursion the day before), and
couldn't stand it. He is too heavy for such work, unquestionably. In

: f» .il

498

The Life of Charles Dickens

:>i i

■ > t
I* ^ '

i I

all other respects. I think he has exceeded himself on this journey
and if you could have seen him riding a very small mule up a road
exactly like the broken stairs of Rochester Castle, with a brandy
bottle slung over his shoulder, a small pie in his hat, a roast fowl
lookmg out of his pocket, and a mountain staff of six feet long
carried crosswise on the saddle before him, you'd have said so He
was (next to me) the admiration of Chamonix, but he utterly
quenched me on the road." ^

On the road as they returned there had been a small adventure the
day before this letter was written. Dickens was jingling slowly up
the Tete Noire pass (his mule having thirty-seven bells on its head)
riding at the moment quite alone, when— "an Englishman came
bolting out of a little chaletain, a most inaccessible and extraordinary
place, and said with great glee, "There has been an accident here sir i'
I had been thinking of anything else you please! and, having no
reason to suppose him an Englishman except his language which
went for nothing in the confusion, stammered out a reply in French
and stared at him, in a very damp shirt and trousers, as he stared at
me in a similar costume. On his repeating the announcement I began
to have a glimmering of common sense; and so arrived at a know-
ledge of the fact that a German lady had been thrown from her mule
and had broken her leg, at a short distance off, and had found her way
in great pain to that cottage, where the Englishman, a Prussian and
a Frenchman, had presently come up; and the Frenchman by
extraordinary good fortune, was a surgeon! They were all from
Chamonix, and the three latter were walking in company It was
quite charming to see how attentive they were. The lady was from
Lausanne; where she had come from Frankfort to make excursions
with her two boys, who are at the college here, during the vacation
bhe had no other attendants, and the boys were crying and very
frightened. The Englishman was in the full glee of having just cut
up one white dress, two chemises, and three pocket-handkerchiefs
for bandages; the Frenchman had just set the leg skilfully the
Prussian had scoured a neighbouring wood for some men to carry her
forward; and they were all at it, behind the hut, making a sort of
hand-barrow on which to bear her. Wheij it was constructed she was
strapped upon it; had her poor head covered over with a handker-
chief, and was carried away; and we all went on in company: Kate and
Georgy consoling and tending the sufferer, who was very cheerful
but had lost her husband only a year." With the same delightfui
observation, and missing no touch of kindly character that might
give each actor his place in the little scene, the sequel is described-
but It does not need to add more. It was hoped that by means of
relays of men at Martigny the poor lady might have been carried on
some twenty miles, m the cooler evening, to the head of the lake and
sr have been got into the steamer; but she was too exhausted to be
borne beyond the inn, and there she had to remain until joined bv
relatives from Frankfort. ... ■* ..

The Life of Charles Dickens

499

SKETCHES CHIEFLY PERSONAL

1846

Some sketches from the life in his pleasantest vein now claim to be
taken from the same series of letters; and I will prefix one or two less
important notices, for the most part personal also, that have char-
acteristic mention of his opinions in them: — "I am very sorry to hear
of Haydon's death. If any subscription be proposed, put me down for
five pounds." An unfortunate son of Leigh Hunt died also just at
this time, and I preserve the allusion to him for the opportunity of
explaining it. "I quite shuddered at John Hunt's having applied to
that generous duke. It went against the grain with me, sorely, after
the story of the two hundred pounds. I don't know v/hat I should
have done, if I had been Hunt." The duke was the lat'^ Duke of
Devonshire; and the story was this. During the delay of the promised
production of Leigh Hunt's first play, he asked the duke for ;^20o as a
loan for two years; and the duke replied by taking the money himself
to Hunt's house in Edwardes Square. On the last day of the second
year within which repayment was promised, Hunt sent back the
^200; and was startled, the morning after, by another visit from the
duke, who pressed upon him its reacceptance as a gift. He added that
there would be no obligation, for he was himself Hunt's debtor. He
was ill when he asked for the loan, and it had done him good to
comply with the request. Never but once before had borrowed
money ever come back to him, and he should always retain the sense
of pleasure which its return had occasioned. "He remained grateful."
It is a charming story, and hard to say who shows in it to the greatest
advantage. Hunt or the duke. ...

[In another letter] "... There are two old ladies (English)
living here who may serve me for a few lines of gossip — as I have
intended they should, over and over again, but I have always for-
gotten it. There were originally four old ladies, sisters, but two of
them have faded away in the course of eighteen years, and withered
by the side of John Kemble in the cemetery. They are very little and
very skinny; and each of them wears a row of false curls, like little
rolling-pins, so low upon her brow, that there is no forehead; nothing
above the eyebrows but a deep horizontal wrinkle, and then the
curls. They live upon some small annuity. For thirteen years they
have wanted very much to move to Italy, as the eldest old lady says
the climate of this part of Switzerland doesn't agree with her, and
preys upon her spirits; but they have never been able to go, because
of the difficulty of moving 'the books.' This tremendous library

500

The Life of Charles D.ckens

■t.

r •;

belonged once upon a time to the father of these old ladies and
comprises about fifty volumes. I have never been able to see ' /.at
they are because one of the old ladies ahva.s sits before th'nr but
they look, outside, like very old backganmon boar£ 'Ke two
deceased sis ers died in the firm persu- .^ion that this p^ecio^s
property could never be got overtheSimpIon without some giSr?Mc

sisters live and will die also, in the same belief. I met the eldest
(evicenly drooping) yesterday, and recommended her to try Genoa
She looked shrewdly at the snow that closes up the mountain pros^
pect just now, and said when the spring was quite setT andThe

trv thnt ' V" -IT'' ^""^^ V^^ ^"^''^ ^^" «P^" «^^- woula'cer" ainl^
try that place, if they could devise any plan, in the course of the
winter, for moving 'the books.' The whole library wiH be sr?ld by
auction here, when they are both dead, for about a napoleon and

"""tUu^A Tr^'" '? " ""'W ^°"^" ^^ t^° J°"^"^y« with a bask '•
The ast letter sent me before he fell upon his self-appointed • c-k
for Christmas conrained a delightful account of the trip to he o'^elt
St. Bernard. It was dated on 6 September.

th7crZ''f!'%''^''^''^'^''^I clearing, we started off last Tuesday for
the Great St. Bernard, returning here on Friday afternoon The
party consisted of eleven people and two servants-Haldimand Mr

Tavl^/^K 7^"^""^ ^"' ''V'^''''' ^''- ^"d ^^^^- "^'^'^on, two Ladies
cWrfnl ; ^'"'^r- ""''i ^- ^^^" ^^^^^ wonderfully unanimous and

tion IwhnT '"'T ^'""^ ^"'? ^y '^^" ''''■'''''' f«""d at its destina-
tion a whole omnibus provided by the Brave (who went on in advance
everywhere ; rode therein to Bex; found two large carriages ready to
take us to Martigny; slept there; and proceeded up the mountaiifon
mules next day. Although the St. Bernard convent is. as I da?e say
you know, the highest inhabited spot but one in the world the asceS
IS extremely gradual and uncommonly easy: really presenting no
thfont^'' 1 "'^ until within the last league,\vhen t^e'^Lscent Tying
through a place called the valley of desolation, is very awf d and

Sfnf sn:;:■"Tho^"'' ";^"'^^^'' '°^^^°"^^ by ^cattei-yrocks and
melting snow. The convent is a most extraordinary place, full of

great vaulted passages, divided from each other with iVon gratings

and presentmg a series of the most astonishing little dormitories'

where the windows are so small (on account of the cold and sno"v '

that it is as much as one can do to get one's head out of them Here

we sdept: supping, thirty strong, in a rambling room with a great

wood-fire in it set apart for that purpose; with a grim monk ^[n a

high black sugar-loaf hat with a great knob at the top of it carv^g

the dishes At five o'clock in the morning the chapel bell rang in SI

dismallest way for matins: and I, lying in%ed closj to the chape" and

bemg awakened by the solemn organ and the chaunting. thought for

a momenr I had died in the night and passed into the unknownVorld

1 wish to God you could see that olace. A preat bollo"' -n '-^c

top oi a range of dreadful mountains; fenced in by riven 'ro^cks of

dies, and
see a'-iEt
hem; but
The two

precious
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cmaining
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y Genoa,
ain pros-

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a great
ik, in a
:arving
I in the
»el, and
ght for
world,
on the
)cks of

The Life of Charles Dickens

501

everysLap^ r.nd colour: and in the midst, a black lake, with phantom
clouds perpetually stalking over it. Peaks, and points, and plains of
eternal ice c..:d snow, bounding the view, and shutting out the world
on every s.de: the Jake reflecting nothing: and no human figure in
the scene. Ttc '.ir so fine, that it is difficult to breathe without feeling
out of oreath; ;-.nd tho cold so exquisitely thin and sharp that it is
not [-J be c.escnoed. Nothing of life or living interest in the picture,
but the grc 7 dull walls of the convent. No vegetation of any sort or
kind. Nothing growing, nothing stirring. Everything iron-bound, and
frozen up. Beside the convent, in a little outhouse with a grated iron
door which you may unbolt for yourself, are the bodies of people
found in the snow who have never been claimed and are withering
away— not laid down, or stretched out, but standing up, in corners
and against walls; some erect and horribly human, with distinct
expressions on the faces; some sunk down on their knees; some drop-
ping over on one side; some tumbled down altogether, and presenting
a heap of skulls and fibrous dust. There is no other decay in that
atmosphere; and there they remain during the short days and the
long nights, the only human company out of doors, withering away
by grains, and holding ghastly possession of the mountain where
they died.

"It is the most distinct and individual place I have seen, even in
this transcendent country. But, for the Saint Jiernard holy fathers
and convent in themselves, I am sorry to say that they are a piece of
as sheer humbug as we ever learnt to believe in, in our young days.
Trashy French sentiment and the dogs (of which, by the by, there
are only three remaining) have done it all. They are a lazy'set of
fellows; not over fond of going out themselves; employing servants
to clear the road (which has not been important or much used as a
pass these hundred years); rich; and driving a good trade in Innkeep-
mg: the convent being a common tavern in everything but the sign.
No charge is made for their hospitality, to be sure; but you are shown
to a box in the chapel, where everybody puts in more than could,
with any show of face, be charged for the entertainment; and from
this the establishment derives a right good income. As to the self-
sacrifice of living up there, they are obliged to go there young, it is
true, to be inured to the climate: but it is an infinitely more exciting
and various life than any other convent can offer; with constant
change and company through the v^rhole summer; with a hospital for
invalids down in the valley, which affords another change; and with
an annual begging-journey to Geneva and this place and all the places
round for one brother or other, which affords further change. The
brother who carved at our supper could speak some English, and
had just had Pickwick given him !— what a humbug he will think me
when he tries to understand it ! If I had had any other book of mine
with me, I would have given it him, that I might have had some
chance of being intelligible. ..."

502

The Life of Charles Dickens

[After working for some time at Lausanne, Dickens proceeded to
Geneva.]

He found it to be a very good place; pleasantly reporting himself
as quite dismayed at first by the sight of gas in it, and as trembling at
the noise in its streets, which he pronounced to be fully equal to the
uproar of Richmond in Surrey; but deriving from it some soit of
benefit both in health and in writing. So far his trip had been suc-
cessful, though he had to leave the place hurriedly to welcome his
English visitors to Rosemont.

One social and very novel experience he had in his hotel, however,
the jiight before he left, which may be told before he hastens back to
Lausanne; for it could hardly now offend anyone even if the names
were given. "And now, sir, I will describe, modestly, tamely, literally,
the visit to the r,mall select circle which I promised should make your
hair stand on e.id. In our hotel were a Mother and a Daughter, who
came to the Peschiere shortly before we left it, and who have a deep
admiration for your humble servant the inimitable B. They are both
very clever. Daughter, extremely well-informed in languages living
and dead, books, and gossip; very pretty; with two little children, and
not yet five and twenty. Mother, plump, fresh, and rosy; matronly,
both full of spirits and good looks. Nothing would serve them but we
must dine with them; and accordingly, on Friday at six, we went
down to their room. I knew them to be rather odd. For instance, I
have knovm the Mother, /«// dressed, walk alone through the streets'of
Genoa, the squalid Italian by-streets, to the Governor's soiree; and
announce herself at the palace of state, by knocking at the door. I
have also met the Daughter full dressed, without any cap or bonnet,
walking a mile to the opera, with all sorts of jingling jewels about
her, beside a sedan chair in which sat enthroned her mama. Conse-
quently, I was not surprised at such little sparkles in the conversa-
tion (from the young lady) as 'Oh God what a sermon we had here
last Sunday!' 'And did you ever read such infernal trash as Mrs.
Gore's?' — and the like. Still, but for Kate and Georgy (who were
decidedly in the way, as we agreed afterwards), I should have thought
it all very funny; and, as it was, I threw the ball back again, was
mighty free and easy, made some rather broad jokes, and was highly
applauded. 'You smoke, don't you?' said the young ladv. in a pause
of this kind of conversation. 'Yes,' I said, 'I generally take a cigar after
dinner when I am alone.' 'I'll give you a good 'un,' said she, 'when we
go upstairs.' Well sir, in due course we went jpstairs, and there we
were joined by an American lady residing in the same hotel, who
looked like what we call in old England 'a reg'lar Bunter' — fluffy face
(rouged); considerable development of figure; one gvoggy eye; blue
satin dress made low with short sleeves, and shoes of the same. Also
a daughter; face likewise fluffy; figure likewise developed; dress like-
wise low, with short sleeves, and shoes of the same; and one eye not
y«?v vv!^t««ixjf £^iV55j-, t^uL oOiiig Lu uc. xi.uii;iicaii lauy raamea at six-
teen; American daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for sisters, etc.

The Life of Charles Dickens

503

ceded to

I himself
nbling at
lal to the
} SOit of

)een suc-
;ome his

lowever,
1 back to
e names
literally,
ike your
ter, who
e a deep
ire both
es living
ren, and
atronly,
1 but we
ive went
tance, I
treets of
ree; and
door. I
bonnet,
Is about
. Conse-
)nversa-
lad here
as Mrs.
tio were
thought
lin, was
s highly
a pause
far after
v^hen we
here we
el, who
iffy face
/e; blue
le. Also
3ss like-
eye not
i at six-
ers, etc.

When that was over, the younger of our entertainers brought out a
cigar box. and gave me a cigar, made of negrohead she said, which
would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The box was full of cigarettes —
good large ones, made of pretty strong tobacco; I always smoke them
here, and used to smoke them at Genoa, and I knew them well. When
I lighted my cigar. Daughter lighted hers at mine; leaned against the
mantelpiece, in conversation with me; put out her stomach, folded her
arms, and with her pretty face cocked up sideways and her cigarette
smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill, laughed, and talked, and
smoked, in the most gentlemanly manner I ever beheld. Mother
immediately lighted her cigar; American lady immediately lighted
hers; and in five minutes the room was a cloud of smoke, with us' four
in the centre pulling away bravely, while American lady related
stories of her 'Hookah' upstairs, and described different kinds of
pipes. But even this was not all. For presently two Frenchmen came
in, with whom, and the American lady, Daughter sat down to whist.
The Frenchmen smoked of course (they were really modest gentlemen
and seemed dismayed), and Daughter played for the next hour or
two with a cigar continually in her mouth — ^never out of it. She
certainly smoked six or eight. Mother gave in soon — I think she only
did it out of vanity. American lady had been smoking all the morning.
I took no more; and Daughter and the Frenchmen had it all to them-
selves.

"Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants,
but half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out ! I showed no
atom of surprise, but I nevi. . was so surprised, so ridiculously taken
aback, in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and
another, I never saw a woman — not a basket woman or a gipsy —
smoke, before!" He lived to have larger and wider experience, but
there was enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene des-
cribed.

But now Saturday is come; he has hurried back for the friends who
are on their way to his cottage; and on his arrival, even before they
have appeared, he writes to tell me his better news of himself and his
work.

"In the breathless interval" (Rosemont, 3 October) "between our
return from Geneva and the arrival of the Talfourds (expected in
an hour or two), I cannot do better than write to you. For I think
you will be well pleased if I anticipate my promise, and Monday, at
the same time. I have been greatly better at Geneva, though I am
still made uneasy by occasional giddiness and headache: attributable,
I have not the least doubt, to the absence of streets. There is an
idea here, too, that people are occasionally made despondent and
sluggish in their spirits by this great mass of still water, Lake
Leman. At any rate I have been very uncomfortable: at any rate I
am, I hope, greatly better: and (lastly) at any rate I hope and trust,
now, the Christmas book will come in due course!! I have had three
very good days' work at Geneva, and I trust I may finish the second

;■: -i

504

The Life of Charles Dickens

part (the third is the shortest) by this day week. Whenever I finish
It. I will send you Lhe first two together. I do not think they can begin
to Illustrate it. until the third arrives; for it is a single-minded ston,-
as It were, and an artist shoukl know the end: which I don't think
very hkely. unless he reads it." Then, aftrr relating a superhuman
I A^ i^? ^^ makmg to lodge his visitors in his doll's house ("I
didn t like the idea of turning them out at night. It is so dark in these
lanes and groves, when the moon's not bright"), he sketched for me
what he possibly might, and really did, accomplish. He would bv
great efifort finish the small book on the 20th: would fly to Geneva
lor a week to work a little at Domhey, if he felt "pretty sound" in
any case would finish his numb.-^r three by the loth of November-
and on that day would start for Paris: "so that, instead of resting
unprcfitably here. I shall be using my interval of idleness to make
the journey and get into a new house, and shall hope so to put a
pmch of Palt on the tail of the sliding number in advance. . I am
horrified at the idea of getting the blues (and bloodshots) again "
1 hough I did not then know how gravely ill he had been. I was fain
to remind him that it was bad economy to make business out of rest
Itself; but I received prompt confirmation that all was falling out as
he wished. The Talfourds stayed two days: "and I think they were
very happy. He was in his best aspect; the manner so well known to
us, not the less lovable for being laughable; and if you could have
seen him going round and round the coach that brought them as a
preliminary to paying the voiturier to whom he couldn't speak' in a
currency he didn't understand, you never would have forgotteA it "
His iriends left Lausanne on the 5th; and five days later he sent me
two-thirds of the manuscript of his Christmas book.

THREE MONTHS IH PARIS
1846-7

He had begun his third number of Dombey on 26 October on the
4th of the following month he was half through it. on the 7th he was
m "the agonies" of its last chapter, and on the 9th, one day before
that proposed for its com-letion, all was done. This was marvellously
rapid work, after what else he had undergone; but within a week
Monday the iGth being the day for departure, they were to strike'
their tents, and troubled and sad were the few days thus left him for
preparation and farewell. He included in his leave-taking his deaf

dumb, and blind friends- and fo uqf i-*'-^ ^-..r., >,^-~.^i i *

yet more terribly down in the mouth' ' at taking leave of his hearing

The Life of Charles Dickens

505

speaking, and seeing friends. "I ihall see you soon, please God, and
that sets all to rights. But I don't believe *here are inany dots on
the map of the world where we shall have left such affectionate
remembrances behind us, as in Lausanne. It was quite miserable
this last night, when we left them at Haldimand's.''

He shall himself describe how they travelled post to Paris, occu-
pying five days. "We got through the jcirney charmingly, though
not quite so quickly as ,ve hoped. The children as good as usual, and
even Skittles jolly to the last. That name has long superseded Samp-
son Brass, by the by. I call him so, from something skittle-playing
and public-housey in his countenance. We have been up at five
every morning, and on the road before seven. We were three carriages:
a sort of waggon, with a cabriolet attached, for the luggage; a ram-
shackle villainous old swing upon wheels (hired at Geneva), for the
children; and for ourselves, that travelling chariot which I was so
kind as to bring here for sale. It was very cold indeed crossing the
Jura nothing but fog and frost; but when we were out of Switzer-
land and across the French frontier, it became warmer, and con-
tinued so. We stopped at between six and seven each evening; had
two rather queer inns, wild French country inns; but the rest good.
They were three hours and a half examining the luggage at the fron-
tier custom-house — atop of a mountain, in a hard and biting frost;
where Anne and Roche had sharp work I assure you, and the latter
insisted on volunteering the most astonishing and unnecessary lies
about my books, for the mere pleasure of deceiving the officials.
When we were out of the mountain country, we came at a good pace,
but were a day late in getting to our hotel here."

They were in Paris when that was written; at the Hotel Brighton;
which they had reached in the evening of Friday, 20 November.

No man enjoyed brief residence in a hotel more than Dickens, but
''several tons of luggage, other tons of servants, and other tons of
children" are not desirable accompaniments to this kind of life; and
his first day in Paris did not close before he had offered for an
"eligible mansion." That same Saturday night he took a "colossal"
walk about the city, of which the brilliancy and brightness almost
frightened him; and among other things that attracted his notice
was "rather a good book announced in a bookseller's window as
Les Mystdres de Londres par Sir TroUopp. Do you know him?" A
countryman better known had given him earlier greeting. "The first
man who took hold of me in the street, immediately outside this door,
was Bruffum in his check trousers, and without the proper number of
buttons on his shirt, who was going away this morning, he told me,
but coming back .n two months, when we would go and dine — at
some place known to him and fame."

Next day he took another long walk about the streets, and lost
himself fifty times. This was Sunday, and he hardly knew what to
say of it, as he saw it there and then. The bitter observance of that
day he always sharply resisted, believing a little rational enjoyment

5o6

The Life of Charles Dickens

to be not opposed to either rest or religion; but here was another
matter. "The dirty churches, and the clattering c. rts and waggons,
and the open shops (I don't think I passed fifty shut up, in all my
strollings in and out), and the work-a-day dresses and drudgeries, are
not comfortable. Open theatres and so forth I am well used to, of
course, by this time; but so much toil and sweat on what one would
like to see, apart from religious observances, a sensible holiday, is
painful."

The date of his letter was 22 November, and it had three post-
scripts. The first, "Monday afternoon," told me a house was taken;
that, unless the agreement should break off or any unforeseen fight
between Roche and the agent ("a French Mrs. Gamp"), I was to
address him at No. 48 Rue de Courcelles, Faubourg, St. Honor6; and
that he would merely then advert to the premises as in his belief the
"most ridiculous, extraordinary, unparalleled, and preposterous" in
the whole world; being something between a baby-house, a "shades."
a haunted castle, and a mad kind of clock. "They belong to a Mar-
quis Castellan, and you will be ready to die of laughing when you go
over them." The second P.S. declared that his lips should be scaled
till I beheld for myself. "By Heaven it is not to be imagined by the
mind of man!" The third P.S. closed the letter. "One room is a tent.
Another room is a grove Another room is a scene at the Victoria.
The upstairs rooms are like fanlights over street-doors. The nurseries
— but no, no, no, no more! . . ."

His following letter nevertheless sent more, even in the form of an
additional protestation that never till I saw it should the place be
described. "I will merely observe that it .3 fifty yards long, and eigh-
teen feet high, and that the bedrooms are exactly like opera-boxes.
It has its little courtyard and garden, and porter's house and cordon
to open the door, and so forth: and is a Paris inansion in little. There
is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room. Being a gentleman's house,
and not one furnished to let, it has some very curious things in it;
some of the '^ddest things you ever beheld in your life; and an infinity
of easy chairs and sofas. . . . Bad weather. It is snowing hard. There
is not a door or window here — but that's nothing I there's not a door
or window in all Paris — that shuts; not a chink in all the billions of
trillions of chinks in the city that can be stopped to keep the wind
out. And the cold ! — but you shall judge for yourself; and also of this
preposterous dining-room. The invention, sir. of Henry Bulwer, who
when he had executed it (he used to live here), got frightened at
what he had done, as well he might, and went away. . . . The Brave
called me aside on Saturday night, and showed me an improvement
he had effected in the decorative way. 'Which,' he said, 'will very
much s'prise Mis'r Fors'er when he come.' You are to be deluded into
the belief that there is a perspective of chambers twenty miles in
length, opening from the drawing-room. ..."

I had frequent rcporfc of his progress with his famous fifth number,
on the completion of which I was to join him. The day at one time

The Life of Charles Dickens

507

seemed doubtful. "It would be miserable to have to work while you
were here. Still I make such sudden starts, and am so possessed of
what I am going to do, that the fear may prove to be quite ground-
less, and if any alteration would trouble you, let the 13th stand at
all hazards." The cold he described as so intense, and the price of fuel
so enormous, that though the house was not half warmed ("as you'll
say, when you feel it"), it cost him very near a pound a day. Begging-
letter writers had found out "Monsieur Dickens, le romancier
c616bre," and waylaid him at the door and in the street as numerously
as in London: their distinguishing peculiarity being that they were
nearly all of them "Chevaliers de la Garde Imp6riale de sa Majest6
Napol6on le Grand," and that their letters bore immense seals with
coats of arms as large as five-shilling pieces. His friends the Wat-
sons passed New Year's Day with him on their way to Rockingham
from Lausanne, leaving that country covered with snow and the
Bise blowing cruelly over it, but describing it as nothing to the cold
of Paris. On the day that closed the old year he had gone into the
Morgue and seen an old man with grey head lying there. "It seemed
the strangest thing in the world that it should have been necessary
to take any trouble to stop such a feeble, spent, exhausted morsel of
life. It was just dusk, when I went in; the place was empty; and he
lay there, all alone, like an impersonation of the wintry eigliteen
hundred and forty-six. ... I find I am getting inimitable, so I'll

stop."

The time for my visit [to him at Paris] having come, I had grateful
proof of the minute and thoughtful provision characteristic of him in
everything. Dinner had been ordered to the second at Boulogne, a
place in the walle-poste taken, and these and other services annouiiccd
in a letter, which, by way of doing its part also in the kindly work of
preparation, broke out into French. He never spoke that language
very well, his accent being somehow defective; but he practised him-
self into writing it with remarkable ease and fluency. "I have written
to the Hotel des Bains at Boulogne to send on to Calais and take your
place in the malle-poste. ... Of course you know that you'll be assailed
with frightful shouts all along the two lines of ropes, from all the
touters in Boulogne, and of course you'll pass on like the princess
who went up the mountain after the talking bird; but don't forget
quietly to single out the Hotel des Bains commissionnaire. The follow-
ing circumstances will then occur. My experience is more recent than

yo'urs, and I will throw them into a dramatic form You are filtered

into the little office, where there are some soldiers; and a gentleman
with a black beard and a pen and ink sitting behind a counter. Barbe
Noire (to the lord of L. L F.). Monsieur, votre passeport. Monsieur.
Monsieur, le voici ! Barbe Noire. Ou allez-vous, monsieur? Monsieur.
Monsieur, je vais k Paris. Barbe Noire. Quand allez-vous partir,
monsieur? Monsieur. Monsieur, je vais partir aujourd'hui. Avec la
malle-postc. Barbe Noire. C'est bien. (To Gendarme.) Laissez sortir
monsieur ! Gendarme. Par ici, monsieur, s'il vous plait. Le gendarme

5o8

The Life of Chailes Dickens

ouvert une trds petite porte. Monsieur se trouve subitement entourd
tous les gamms, agents, commissionnaires, portcurs, et polissons
en g6n6ral. de Boulogne, qui s'elancent sur lui, en poussant des oris
epouvantables. Monsieur esc, pour le moment, tout-4-fait effray6
boulevers6. Mais monsieur reprend ses forces et dit, de L .ute voix'
Le Commissionnaire de I'Hotel des Bains!' Un petit homme (s'avan-
<;ant rapidejnent, et en souriant doucement). Me voici monsieur
Monsieur Fors Tair, nest-ce pas? . . . Mors . . . Mors monsieur se
prom^ne k I'Hotel des Bams, ou monsieur trouvera qu'un petit salon
particuher, en haut, est deja prepare pour sa reception, et que son
diner est dej^i commande. grace aux soins du brave Courier, a midi
et denu .... Monsieur mangera son diner prds du feu, avec beaucoup
de plaisir, et i' boirera de vin rouge k la sante de Monsieur de Boze et
sa famille interessante et aimable. La malle-poste arrivera au bureau
de la poste aux lettres a deux heures ou peut-etrc un peu plus tard.
Mais monsieur chargera le commissionnaire d'y I'accompagner de
bonne heure, car c'est beaucoup mieux de I'attendre que de la perdre.
La malle-poste arrivce, monsieur prendra sa place, aussi comfortable-
ment qu'il le pourra, et il y restera jusqu'a son arrivee au bureau de
a poste aux lettres a Paris. Parceque. le convoi {train) n'est pas
1 affaire de monsieur, qui gardera sa place dans la malle-poste, sur
le chemm de fer, et apres le chemin de fer, jusqu'il se trouve k la basse-
cour du bureau de la poste aux lettres a Paris, ou il trouvera une voi-
ture qui a 6te depeche de la Rue de Courcelles, quarante-huit Mais
monsieur aura la bont6 d'observer— Si le convoi arriverait k Amiens
aprds le depart du convoi a miniit, il faudrait y rester jusqu'a
1 arnvee d'un autre convoi a trois heures moins un quart. En attend-
ant, monsieur pent rester au buffet {yefreshment room), ou Ton peut
toujours trouver un bon feu, et du cafe rhaud, et de tr^s bonnes choses
a boire et k manger, pendant toute la nuit.— Est-ce que monsieur
comprend parfaitement toutes ces rdgles?— Vive le Roi des Francaisi
Roi de la nation la plus grande, et la plus noble, et la plus extra-
ordmau-ement merveilleuse, du monde ! A bas les Anglais !

" Charles Dickens,
"Fran9ais naturalise, et Citoyen de Paris."

We passed a fortnight together, and cro\v'dcd into it more than
might seem possible to such a narrow space. One day we visited in the
Rue du Bac the sick and ailing Chateaubriand, whom we thought
like Basil Montagu; found ourselves at the other extreme of opinion
m the sculpture-room of David d'Angers; and closed that day at the
house of Victor Hugo, by whom Dickens was received with infinite
courtesy and grace. The great writer then occupied a floor in a noble
corner-house in the Place Royale, the old quarter of Ninon I'Enclos
and the people of the Regency, of whom the gorgeous tapestries, the
painted ceilings, the wonderful carvings and old golden furniture,
mc.iidmg a canopy of state out of some palace of the middle age,
quamtly and grandly reminded us. He was, himself, however, the best

The Life of Charles Dickens

509

thing we saw; and I find it difficult to associate the attitudes and aspect
in which the world has lately wondered at him, with the sober grace
and self-possessed quiet gravity of that night of twenty-five years ago.
Just then Louis Philippe had ennobled him, but the man's nature
was written noble. Rather under the middle size, of compact close-
buttoned-up figure, with ample dark hair falling loosely over his
close-shaven face, I never saw upon any features so keenly intellectual
such a soft and sweet gentility, and certainly never heard the French
language spoken with the picturesque distinctness given to it by
Victor Hugo. He talked of his childhood in Spain, and of his father
having been Governor of the Tagus in Napoleon's wars; spoke warmly
of the English people and their literature; declared his preference for
melody and simplicity over the music then fashionable at the Con-
servatoire; referred kindly to Ponsard, laughed at the actors who had
murdered his tragedy at the Odeon, and sympathised with the
dramatic venture of Dumas. To Dickens he addressed very charming
flattery, in the best taste; and my friend long remembered the enjoy-
ment of that evening. . . .

Our last talk before I quitted Paris, after dinner at the Embassy,
was of the danger underlying all this, and of the signs also visible
everywhere of the Napoleon-worship which the Orleanists themselves
had most favoured. Accident brought Dickens to England a fortnight
later, when again v/e met together, at Gore House, the self-contained
reticent man whose doubtful inheritance was thus rapidly preparing
to fail to him.

The accident was the having underwritten his number of Dombey
by two pages, which there was not time to supply otherwise than by
coming to London to write them. This was done accordingly; but
another, greater trouble followed. He had hardly returned to Paris
when his eldest son, whom I had brought to England with me and
placed in the house of Doctor Major, then headmaster of King's
College School, was attacked by scarlet fever; and this closed prenia-
turely Dickens's residence in Paris. But though he and his wife at
once came over, and were folIoM^ed after some days by the children
and their aunt, the isolation of the little invalid could not so soon be
broken through. His father at last saw him, nearly a month before
the rest, in a lodging in Albany Street, where his grandmother, Mrs.
Hogarth, had devoted herself to the charge of him; and an incident
of the visit, which amused us all very much, will not unfitly introduce
the subject that waits me in my next chapter.

An elderly charwoman employed about the place had shown so
much sympathy in the family trouble, that Mrs. Hogarth specially
told her of the approaching visit, and who it was that was coming
to the sick-room. "Lawk ma'am !" she said. "Is the young gentleman
upstairs the son of the man that put together Dombey V Reassured
upon this point, she explained her question by declaring that she
never thought there was a man that could have put together Dombey.
Being pressed further as to what her notion was of this mystery of a

I'i

510

The Life of Charles Dickens

Dombey (for it was known she could not read), it turned out that she
lodged at a snuff-shop kept by a person named Douglas, where there
were several other lodgers; and that on the first Monday of every
month there was a Tea, and the landlord read the month's number of
Dombey, those only of the lodgers who subscribed to the tea partaking
of that luxury, but all having the benefit of the reading; and the
impression produced on the old charwoman revealed itself in the
remark with which she closed her account of it. "Lawk ma'am! I
thought that three or four men must have put together Dombey V
Dickens thought there was something of a compliment in this, and
was not ungrateful.

III

V
VI

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there
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ber of
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id the
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ibeyV
3, and

BOOK SIXTH

AT THE SUMMIT
1847-52. ^T. 35-40

I. Splendid Strolling.

II. Seaside Holidays.

III. Christmas Books closed and " Household Words

IV. In Aid of Literature and Art.

V. Last Years in Devonshire Terrace.
VI. "David Copperfield."

begun.

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SPLENDID STROLLING

1847-52

Devonshire Terrace remaining still in possession of Sir James
Duke, a house was taken in Chester Place, Regent's Park, where, on
18 April, Dickens's fifth son, to whom he gave the name of Sydney
Smith Haldimand, was born. Exactly a month before, he had attended
the funeral at Highgate of his publisher Mr. William Hall, his old
regard for whom had survived the recent temporary cloud, and with
whom he had the association as well of his first success, as of much
kindly intercourse not forgotten at this sad time. Of the summer
months that followed, the greater part was passed by him at Brighton
or Broadstairs; and the chief employment of his leisure, in the
intervals of Dombey, was the management of an enterprise originating
in the success of our private play, of which the design was to benefit
a great man of letters.

The purpose and name had hardly been announced, when, with the
statesman-like attention to literature and its followers for which Lord
John Russell has been eccentric among English politicians, a civil-
list pension of two hundred a year was granted to Leigh Hunt; but
though this modified our plan so far as to strike out of it performances
meant to be given in London, so much was still thought necessary
as might clear off past liabilities, and enable a delightful writer better
to enjoy the easier fuic.*e that had at last been opened to him. Reserv-
ing therefore anything realised beyond a certain sum for a dramatic
author of merit, Mr. John Poole, to whom help had become also
important, it was proposed to give, on Leigh Hunt's behalf, two
representations of Ben Jonson's comedy, one at Manchester and the
other at Liverpool, to be varied by different farces in each place; and
with a prologue of Talfourd's which Dickens was to deliver in Man-
chester, while a similar address by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was
to be spoken by me in Liverpool. Among the artists and writers
associated in the scheme were Mr. Frank Stone, Mr. Augustus Egg,
Mr. John Leech, and Mr. George Cruikshank; Mr. Douglas Jerrold,
IVIr. Mark Lemon, Mr. Dudley Costello, and Mr. George Henry
Lewes; the general management and supreme control being given to
Dickens.

Leading men in both cities contributed largely to the design, and
my friend Mr. Alexander Ireland of Manchester has lately sent me
some letters not more characteristic of the energy of Dickens in regard

335

513

514

The Life of Charles Dickens

■If

to it than ot the eagerness of everyone addressed to give what help
they could. Making personal mention of his fellow-sharers in the enter-
prise he describes the troop, in one of those letters, as "the most
easily governable company of actors on earth"; and to this he had
doubtless brought them, but not very easily. One or two of his
managerial troubles at rehearsals remain on record in letters to my-
self, and may give amusement still. Comedy and farces are referred to
indiscriminately, but the farces were the most recurring plague.
"Good Heaven! I find that A. hasn't twelve words, and 1 am in hourly
expectation of rebellion!" — "You were right about the green baize,
that it would certainly tn .^fflc the voices; and some of our actors, by
Jove, haven't too mu. of that commodity at the best." — "B.
shocked me so much the other night by a restless, stupid movement
of his hands in his first scene with you, that 1 took a turn of an hour
with him yesterday morning, and 1 hope quieted his nerves a little."
— "I made a desperate effort to get C. to give up his part. Yet in spite
of all the trouble he gives me I am sorry for him, he is so evidently
hurt by his own sense of not doing well. He clutched the part, how-
ever, tenaciously; and three weary times we drii<;ged through it last
night." — "That infernal E. forgets everything." — "1 plainly see that
F. when nervous, which 1 ^ is sure to be, loses his memory. Moreover,
his asides are inaudible, even at Miss Kelly's; and as regularly as I
stop him to say them again, he exclaims (with a face of agon}'^) that
'he'll speak loud on the night,' as if anybody ever did without doing
it always!" — "G. not born for it at all, and too innately conceited,
I much fear, to do anything well. I thought him better last night, but
£ would as soon laugh at a kitchen poker." — "Fancy H., ten days
after the casting of that farce, wanting F.'s part therein! Having him-
self an excellent old man in it already, and a quite admirable part in
the other farce." From which it will appear that my friend's office was
not a sinecure, and that he was not, as few amateur-managers have
€ver been, without the experiences of Peter Quince. Fewer still, I
suspect, have fought through them with such perfect success, for the
company turned out at last would have done credit to any enterprise.
They deserved the term applied to them by Maclise, who had invented
it first for Macready, on his being driven to "star" in the provinces
when his managements in London closed. They were "splendid
strollers."

On Monday, 26 July, we played at Manchester, and on Wednesday
the 28th at Liverpool; the comedy being followed on the first night by
A Good Night's Rest and Turning the Tables, and on the second by
Comfortable Lodgings, or Paris in .T750; and the receipts being, on the
first night £440 12s., and on the second, £^6;^ 8s. 6d. But though
the married members of the company who took their wives defrayed
that part of the cost, and every one who acted paid three pounds ten
to the benefit fund for his hotel charges, the expenses were necessarily

handsomely as this realised the design, expectations had been raised

iff*

what help
itheenter-
'the most
lis he had
wo of his
ers to my-
ref erred to
ig plague.
I in hourly
een baize,
actors, by
ist."-— "B.
iiovement
3f an hour
s a little."
ot in spite
evidently
)art, how-
agh it last
y see that
Moreover,
ilarly as I
[on}'') that
out doing
:onceited,
tiight, but
ten days
,ving him-
)le part in
office was
gers have
er still, I
ss, for the
nterprise.
I invented
provinces
"splendid

ednesday
t night by
lecond by
ig, on the
it though
defrayed
aunds ten
ecessarily

;en raised

The Life of Charles Dickens

515

to five hundred. There was just that shade of disappointment, there-
fore, when, shortly after we came back and Dickens had returned to
Broadstairs, I was startled by a letter from him. On 3 August he had
written: "All well. Children" (who had been going through whooping
cough) "immensely improved. Business arising out of the late blaze
of triumph, worse than ever." Then came what startled me, the very
next day. As if his business were not enough, it had occurred to him
that he might add the much longed-for hundred pounds to the benefit
fund by a little jeu d'esprit in form of a history of the trip, to be
published witli illustrations from the artists; and his notion was to
write It in the charac "^Irs. Gamp. It was to be, in the phra.se-

ology of that notorious v ..x. i», anew "Piljians Projiss"; and was to
bear upon the title-page its description as an Account of a late Expedi-
tion into the North, for an Amateur Theatrical Benefit, written by
Mrs. Gamp (who was an eyewitness). Inscribed to Mrs. Harris,
Edited by Charles Dickens, and published, with illustrations on wood
by so and so in aid of the benefit fund. "What do you think of this idea
for it? The argument would be, that Mrs. Gamp, being on the eve of
an excursion to Margate as a relief from her professional fatigues,
comes to the knowledge of the intended excursion of our party; hears
that several of the ladies concerned are in an interesting situation;
and decides to accompany the party unbeknown, in a second-class
carriage — 'in case.' There, she finds a gentleman from the Strand in a
checked suit, who is going down with the wigs" — the theatrical hair-
dresser employed on these occasions, Mr. Wilson, had eccentric points
of character that were a fund of infinite mirth to Dickens — "and to
his politeness Mrs. Gamp is indebted for much support and counten-
ance during the excursion. She will describe the whole thing in her
own manner: sitting, in each place of performance, in the orchestra,
next the gentleman who plays the hettle-drums. She gives her critical
opinion of Ben Jonson as a literary character, and refers to the
different members of the party, in the course of her description of the
trip: having always an invincible animosity towards Jerrold, for
Caudle reasons. She addresses herself, generally, to Mrs. Harris, to
whom the book is dedicated — but is discursive. Amount of matter,
haif a sheet of Dombey: may be a page or so more, but not less." Alas!
it never arrived at even that small s'-^.e, but perished prematurely,
as I feared it would, from failure of the artists to furnish needful
nourishment. Of course it could not live alone. Without suitable
illustration it must have lost it'- oint and pleasantry, "Mac will make
a little garland of the ladies for the title-page. Egg and Stone will
themselves originate something fanciful, and I will settle with Cruik-
shank and Leech. I have no doubt the little thing will be droll and
attractive." So it certainly would have been, if the Thanes of art
had not fallen from him; but on their desertion it had to be abandoned

posal then; and, though the little jest had lost much of its flavour now,
I cannot find it in my heart to omit them here. There are so many

1.J 1 1
I

5i6

The Life of Charles Dickens

friends ol Mrs, Gamp who will rejoice at this unexpected visit from
her!

"I. Mrs Gamp's Account or her Connexion with

THIS Affair

"Which Mrs. Harris's own words to me, was these: 'Sairey Gamp '
she says, 'why not go to Margate? Srimps,' says that dear creetur, "is
to your liking, Sairey; why not go to Margate for a week, bring your
constitootion up with srimps, and come back to them loving arts as
knows and wallies of you, blooming? Sairev,' Mrs. Harris says 'you
are but poorly. Don't denige it, Mrs. Gamp, for books is in your
looks. You must have rest. Your mind,' slie says, 'is too strong
for you; it gets you down and treads upon you, Sairey. It is useless
to disguige the fact — the blade is a wearing out the sheets.' 'Mrs
Harris,' I says to her, 'I could not undertake to say, and I will not
deceive you ma'am, that I am the woman I could wish to be. The time
of worrit as I had with Mrs. Colliber, the baker's lady, which was so
bad in her mind with her first, that she would not so much as look at
bottled stout, and kept to gruel through the month, has agued me
Mrs. Harris. But ma'am,' I ?• s to her, 'talk not of Margate, for if I
do go anywheres, it is elsewxieres and not there.' 'Sairey,' says Mrs.
Harris, solemn, 'whence this mystery? If I have ever deceived the
hardest-working, soberest, and best of women, ,^hich her name is well
beknown is S. Gamp Midwife Kingsgate Street High Holborn, men-
tion It. If not,' says Mrs. Harris, with the tears a standing in her eyes
'reweal your intentions.' 'Yes, Mrs. Harris,' I says, 'L will. Well 1
knows you Mrs. Harris; well you knows me; well we both knows wot
the characters of one another is. Mrs. Harris then,' I says. '1 have
heard as there is a expedition going down to Manjestir and Liverspool,
a play-acting. If I goes anywheres for change it is along with that.'
Mrs Harris cla.sps her hands, and drops into a chair, as if her time was
come— which I know'd it couldn't be, by rights, for six weeks odd
•And have I lived to hear,' she says, 'of Sairey Gamp, as always kept
herself respectable, in company with play-actors!' 'Mrs. Harris,' I
says to her, 'be not alarmed— not rfeg'lar play-actors— hammertoors '
'Thank Evans!' says Mrs. Harris, and bustiges into a flood of tears. "
"When the sweet creetur had compoged hersef (which a sip of
brandy and warm water, and sugared pleasant, with a little nutmeg
did It), I proceeds in these words. 'Mrs Harris, I am told as these
Hammertoors are litter'ry and artistickle.' 'Sairey,' says that best of
wimmin, with a shiver and a slight relasp, 'go on, it might be worse '
♦I likewise hears," I says to her, 'that they're agoin play-acting for
the benefit of two litter'ry men; one as has had his wrongs a long time
ago and has got his rights at last, and one as has made a many
people merry m his time, but is very dull and sick and lonelv his own
sei indeed.* 'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, 'you're an Inglish woman'
and that's no business of you'rn.' '

I visit from

VITH

rey Gamp, '
creetur, "is
bring your
'ing arts as
i says, 'you
i is in your
too strong
'.t is useless
leets.' 'Mrs
1 I will not
e. The time
lich was so
1 as look at
agued me,
ite, for if I
' says Mrs.
iceived the
ame is well
3orn, men-
n her eyes,
ill. \^'ell 1
knows wot
ys. '1 have
^iverspool,
ivith that.'
r time was
veeks odd.
ways kept
Harris,' I
mertoors.'
of tears.
h a sip of
le nutmeg
d as these
lat best of
be worse.'
icting, for
. long time
e a many
ly his own
h woman.

The Life oi Charles Dickens

517

No, Mrs. Harris,' I says, that's very true; I hope I knows my
dooty and my country. But,' I says. *I am informed as there is Ladies
m this party, and that half a dozen of 'em if not more, is in various
stages of a interesting state. Mrs. Harris, you and me well knows what
Ingeins often does. If I accompanies this expedition, unbeknown and
second cladge, may I not combine my calling, with change of air, and
prove a service to my feller creeturs?' 'Sairey.' was Mrs. Harris's
reply, ' you was born to be a blessing to your sex. and bring 'em through
it. Good go with you! But keep your distance tiU called in. Lord bless
you Mrs. Gamp; for people is known by the company they keeps
and htterary and artistickle society might be the ruin of you before
you was aware, with your best customers, both sick and monthly if
they took a pride in themselves."

"11. Mrs. Gamp is Descriptive
"The number of the cab had a seven in it 1 think, and a ought 1
know— and if this should meet his eye (which it was a black 'un, new
done, that h -aw with; the other was tied up), I give him a warning
that he'd better take that umbreller and patten to the Hackney
Coach Office before he repents it. He was a young man in a weskit with
sleeves to it and strings behind, and needn't flatter himsef with a
suppogition of escape, as I gave this description of him to the Police
the moment I found he had drove off with my property; and if he
thinks there an't laws enough he's much mistook— I tell him that.
"I do assure you Mrs. Harris, when I stood in the raihvays office
that morning with my bundle on my arm and one patten in my hand,
you might have knocked me down with a feather, far less pork-
mangers which was a lumping against me, continual and sewere all
round. I was drove about like a brute animal and almost worrited into
fits, when a gentleman with a large shirt-collar and a hook nose, and a
eye like one of Mr. Sweedlepipes's hawks, and long locks of hair, and
wiskers that I wouldn't have round no lady as I was engaged to meet
suddenly a turning round a corner, for any sum of money you could
offer me, says, laughing, 'Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are you up to!'
I didn't know him from a man (except by his clothes); but I says
faintly, 'If you're a Christian man, show me where to get a second-
cladge ticket for Manjestir, and have me put in a carriage, or I shall
drop!' Which he kindly did, in a cheerful kind of a way, skipping
about in the strangest manner as ever I see, making all kinds of actions
and looking and vinking at me from under the brim of his hat (which
was a good deal turned up) , to that extent, that I should have thought
he meant something but for being so flurried as not to have no thoughts
at all until I was put into a carriage along with a individgle — the
politest as ever I did see— in a shepherd's plaid suit with a long gold
watch-guard hanging round his neck, and his hand a trembling
through nervousness worse than a aspian leaf,

" 'I'm wery appy, ma'am,' he says— the politest vice as ever I

"ii

1 4
I

lil

518 The Life of Charles Dickens

heerd! — 'to go down with a lady belonging to our party.'

" 'Our party, sir!' I says.

" 'Yes, ma'am,' he says, 'I'm Mr. Wilson. I'm going down with the
wigs.'

"Mrs. Harris, wen he said he was agoing down with the wigs, such
was my state of confugion and worrit that I though t he must be
connected with the Government in some ways or another, but directly
moment he explains himsef, for he says:

" 'There's not a theatre in London worth mentioning that I don't
attend punctually. There's five-and -twenty wigs in these boxes,
ma'am,' he says, a pinting towards c. cap of luggage, 'as was worn
at the Queen's Fancy Ball. There's a black wig, ma'am,' he says, 'as
was worn by Garrick; there's a red one, ma'am,' he says, 'as was worn
by Kean; there's a brown one, ma'am,' he says, 'as was worn by
Kemble; there's a yellow one, ma'am,' he says, 'as was made for Cooke;
there's a grey one, ma'am,' he .cays, 'as I measured Mr. Young for,
myself: and there's a white one, ma'am, that Mr. Macready went mad
in. There's a flaxen one as was got up express for Jenny Lind the night
she came out at the Italian Opera. It was very much applauded was
that wig, ma'am, through the evening. It had a great reception.
The audience broke out the moment they see it.'

" 'Are you inMr. Sweedlepipes's line, sir?' I says.

" 'Which is that, ma'am?' he says — the softest and genteelest vice
I ever heerd, I do declare, Mrs. Harris!

" 'Hair-dressing,' I says.

" 'Yes, ma'am,' he replies, 'I have that honour. Do you see this,
ma'am?' he says, holding up his right hand.

" 'I never see such a trembling,' I says to him. And I never did!

" 'All along of Her Majesty's Costume Ball ma'am,' he says. 'The
excitement did it. Two hundred ar.d fifty-seven ladies of the first
rank and fashion had their heads got jp on that occasion by this hand,
and my t'other one. I was at it eight-and-forty hours on my feet,
ma'am, without rest. It was a Powder ball, ma'am. We have a
Powder piece at Liverpool. Have I not the pleasure,' he says, looking
at me curious, 'of addressing Mrs. Gamp!'

" 'Gamp I am, sir,' I replies. 'Both by name and natur.'

Would you like to see your beeographer's moustache and wiskers,
ma'am?' he says. 'I've got 'em in this box.'

" 'Drat my beeograffer, sir,' I says, 'he has given me no region to
wish to know anythink about him.'

" 'Oh, Missus Gamp, I ask your parden' — I never see such a polite
man, Mrs. Harris! 'P'raps,' he says, 'if you're not of the party, you
don't know who it was that assisted you into this carriage!'

'' 'No, sir,' I says. 'I don't, indeed.'

" 'Why, ma'am,' he says, a wisperin', 'that was George, ma'am.'

" 'What George, sir? I don't know no George,' says I.

'Thft PTPat Gpnrrrp ma 'rim ' ca\rc Ko 'TVio Prn'-'lrohqr'Vo *

"If you'll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turns my head, and see the

n with the

wigs, such
e must be
at directly

at 1 don't
!se boxes,
was worn
e says, 'as
was worn
; worn by
for Cooke;
'oung for,
went mad
I the night
luded was
reception.

3elest vice

1 see this,

/er did !
5ays. 'The
[ the first
this hand,
my feet,
e have a
s, looking

d wiskers,

region to

h a polite
arty, you

la'am.'

d see the

The Life of Charles Dickens

519

wery man a making picturs of me on his thumb nail, at the winder!
while anothei- of 'em — a tall, slim, melancolly gent, with dark hair
and a bage vice — looks over his shoulder, with his head o' one side as
if he understood the subject, and coolly says, 'I've draw'd her several
times — in Punch,' he says too! The owdacious wretch!

" 'Which 1 never touches, Mr. Wilson,' I remarks out loud — I
couldn't have helped it, Mrs. Harris, if you had took my life for it! —
'which I never touches, Mr. Wilson, on account of the lemon!'

" Hush!' says Mr. Wilson, 'There he is!'

"I only see a fat gentleman with curly black hair and a merry face,
a standing on the platform rubbing his two hands over one another,
as if he was washing of 'em, and shaking his head and shoulders wery
much; and I was a wondering wot Mr. Wilson meant, wen he says
'There's Dougladge, Mrs. Gamp!' he says. 'There's him as wrote the
life of Mrs. Caudle!'

"Mrs. Harris, wen I see that little willain bodily before me, it give
me such a turn that I was all in a tremble. If I hadn't lost my
umbreller in the cab, I must have done him a injury with it! Oh the
bragian little traitor! right among the ladies, Mrs. Harris; looking his
wickedest and deceitfullest of eyes while he was a talking to 'em;
laughing at his own jokes as loud a you please; holding his hat in
one hand to cool his-sef, and to.ssing back his iron-grey mop of a
head of hair with the other, as if it was so much shavings — there,
Mrs. Harris, I see him gettin encouragement from the pretty delooded
crteturs, which never know'd that sweet saint, Mrs. C., as I did, and
being treated with as much confidence as if he'd never wdolated none
oi the domestic ties, and never showed up nothing! Oh the aggrawa-
tion of that Dougladge! Mrs. Harris, if I hadn't apologiged to Mr.
Wilson, and put a little bottle to my lips which was i" my pocket for
the journey, and which it is very rare indeed I have about me, I
could not have abared the sight of him — there, Mrs. Harris! 1 could
not! — I must have tore him, or have give way and fainted.

"While the bell was a ringing, and the luggage of the hammer-toors
in great confusion — all a litter'ry indeed — was handled up, Mr.
Wilson demeens his-sef politer than ever. 'That,' he says, 'Mrs.
Gamp,' a pinting to a officer- ^ooking gentleman, that a lady with a
little basket was a taking (;are on, 'is another of our party. He's a
author too — continivally going up the walley of the Muses, Mrs.
Gamp. There,' he says, alluding to a fine looking, portly gentleman,
with a face like a amiable full moon, and a short mild gent, with a
pleasant smile, 'is two more of our astists, Mrs. G., well beknowed at
the Royal Academy, as sure as stones is stones, and eggs is eggs.
This resolute gent,' he says, 'a coming along here as is aperrently
going to take the railway s by storm — him with the tight legs, and his
weskit very much buttoned, and his mouth very much shut, and his
coat a flying open, and his heels a-giving it to the jplatform, is a
cricket and beeografier, and our principal tragegian.* '±5ut who,' says
I, when the bell had left off, and the train had begun to move, 'who.

520

The Life of Charles Dickens

Mr. Wilson, is the wild gent in the prespiration, that's been a-tearing
up and down all this time with a great box of papers under his arm,
a-talking to everybody wery indistinct, and exciting of himself dread-
ful?' 'Why?' says Mr, Wilson, with a smile. 'Because, sir,' 1 says,
"he's being left behind.' 'Good God!' cries Mr. Wilson, turning pale
and putting out his head, 'it's yo^vr becograffer — the Manager— and
he has got the money, Mrs. Gamp!' Hous'ever, someone chucked him
into the train and we went off. At the first shreek of the whistle,
Mrs. Harris, I turned white, for I had took notice of some of them
dear creeturs as was the cause of my being in company, and 1 1- ow'd
the danger that — but Mr. Wilson, which is a married man, puts his
hand on mine, and says, 'Mrs. Gamp, calm yourself; it's only the
Ingein.' "

Of those of the party with whom these humorous liberties were
taken, there arc only two now living to complain of their friendly
caricaturist; and Mr. Cruikshank will perhaps join me in a frank
forgiveness not the less heartily for the kind words about himself
that reached me from Broadstairs not many days after Mrs. Gamp.
"At Canterbury yesterday" (2 September) "I bought George Cruik-
shank's Bottle. I think it very powerful indeed; the two last plates
most admirable, except that the boy and girl in the very last are
too young, and the girl more like a circus phenomenon than that no-
phenomenon she is intended to represent. I question, however,
whether anybody else living could have done it so well. There is a
woman in the last plate but one, garrulous about the murder, with a
child in her arms, that is as good as Hogarth. Also, the man who is
stooping down, loolang at the body. The philosophy of the thing, as a
great lesson, I think all wrong; because to be striking, and original
too, the drinking should have begun in sorrow, or poverty, or ignor-
ance — Ine three things in which, in its awful aspect, it does begin.
The design would then have been a double-handed sword — but too
'radical' for good old George, I suppose."

The same letter made mention of other matters of interest. His
accounts for the first half-year of Dombey were so much in excess of
what had been expected from the new publishing arrangements, that
from this date all embarrassments connected with money were
brought to a close. His future profits varied of course with his varying
sales, but there was always enough, and savings were now to begin.
"The profits of the half-year are brilliant. Deducting the hundred
pounds a month paid six times, I have still to receive two thousand,
two hundred and twenty pounds, which I think is tidy. Ddn't
you? ..."

Devonshire Terrace meanwhile had been quitted by his tenant;
and coming up joyfully himself to take possession, he brought for
completion in his old home an important chapter of Dombev. On the
way he lost his portmanteau, but ' ' Thank God ! the MS. of th ^ chapter
v,asn't in it. Whenever I travel, and have anything of that valuable

aracie, x aiways carry it in my pocket." He had begun at this time

The Life of Charles Dickens 521

to find difficulties in writing at Broaa.,tairs, of which he told me on
his return. "Vagrant music is getting to that height here, and is so
impossible to be escaped from, that I fear Broadstairs and I must
part company in time to come. Unless it pours of rain. I cannot write
half-an-hour without the most excruciating organs, fiddles, bells o*
glee-smgers. There is a violin of the most torturing kind under the
window now (time, ten in the morning) and an Italian box of music
on the steps-both in full blast." He closed with a mention of im-
provements in the Margate theatre since his memorable last visit
In the past two years it had bc^n managed by a son of the great
comedian, Dowton, with whose name it is pleasant to connect this
note. "We went to the manager's benefit on Wednesday" ( lo Septem-
ber): "As You Like It really very well done, and a most excellent
house. Mr Dowton delivered a sensiblt and modest kind of speech
on the occasion, setting fortji his convi-tion that a means of instruc-
tion and entertainment possessing si a literature as the stage in
England, could not pass away; and i what inspired great minds
and delighted great men, two thousan years ago. and did the same
m Shakespeare's day, must have within itself a principle of life
superior to the whim and fashion of the hour. And with that, and
with cheers, he retired. He really seems a most respectable man', and
he has cleared out this dust-hole of a theatre into something like
decency." ...

SEASIDE HOLIDAY.S
1848-51

The portion of Dickens's life over which his adventures of strolling
extended was in other respects not without interest; and this chapter
wil^. deal with some of his seaside holidays before I pass to the publica-
tion in 1848 of the scory of The Haunted Man, and to the establish-
ment in 1850 of the Periodical which had been in his thoughts for
half a dozen years before, and has had foreshadowings neariy as
frequent in my pages.

Among the incidents of 1848 before the holiday season came were
the dethronement of Louis Philippe, a..d birth of the second French
republic: on which I ventured to predict that a Gore House friend
of ours, and his friend, would m three days be on the scene of action
The three days passed, and I had this letter. "Mardi, Fevrier 29
1848. MoN Cher. Vous etes homme de la plus grande penetration'
Ah, mon Dieu, que vous etcs absolument magnifique! Vous prevoyez
pxcsquc toutes ies choses qui out arriver; et aux choses qui viennent
335*

H ^

522

The Life of Charles Dickens

d'arriver vous etes merveilleusement au-fait. Ah, cher enfant, quelle
id^e sublime vous vous aviez k la tSte quand vous prevites si claire-
ment que M. le Comte Alfred d'Orsay se rendrait au pays de sa
naissance! Quel magicien! Mais— c'est tout egal, mais— il n'est pas
parti. II reste k Gore House, ou, avant-hier, il y avait un grand diner
l. tout le monde. Mais quel homme, quel ange, nianmoins! Mon Ami,
je trouve que j'aime tant la Republrque, qu'il me faut renoncer ma

langue et ecrire seulement le langage de la Republique de France

langage des Dieux et des Anges— langage, en un mot, des Fran9ais!
Hier au soir je rencontrai k 1' Athenaeum Monsieur Mack Leese, qui me
dit que MM. les Commissionnaires des Beaux Arts 'ui avaient ecrit,
par leur secretaire, un billet de remerciements a propos de s^i tableau
dans la CHambre des Deputes, et qu'ils lui avaient prie de faire I'autre
tableau en fresque, dont on y a besoin. Ce qa'il a promis. Voici des
nouvelles pour les champs de Lincoln's Inn! Vive la gloire de France!
Vive la Republique! Vive le Peuple! Plus de Royaut6! Plus de
Bourbons! Plus de Guizot! Mort aux traitres! Faisons couler le sang
pou- ^a liberte, la justice, la cause populaire! Jusqu'a cinq heures et
demie, adieu, mon brave! Recevez I'assurance de ma consideration
distinguee, et croyez-moi, concitoyen! votre tout devoue, Citoyen
Charles Dickens." I proved to be not quite so wrong, nevertheless,
as my friend supposed.

Somewhat earlier than usual this summer, on the close of the
Shakespeare House performances, he tried Broadstairs once more,
having no important writing in hand: but in the brief interval before
leaving he saw a thing of celebrity in those days, the Chinese junk;
and I had all the details in so good a description that I could not
resist the temptation of using some parts of it at the time. "Drive
down to the Blackwall railway," he wrote to me, "and for a matter
of eighteen-peiice you are at the Chinese Empire in no time. In half
a score of minutes, the tiles and chimney-pots, backs of squalid
houses, frowsy pieces of waste ground, narrow courts and streets,
swamps, ditches, masts of ships, gardens of duckweed, and unwhole-
some little bowers of scarlet beans, whirl away in a flying dream, and
nothing is left but China. How the flowery region ever came into this
latitude and longitude is the first thing one asks; and it is not cer-
tainly the least of the marvel. As Aladdin's palace was transported
hither and thither by the rubbing of a lamp, so the crew of Chinamen
aboard the Keying devoutly believed that their good ship would turn
up, quite safe, at the desired port, if they only tied red rags enough
upon the mast, rudder, and cable. Somehow they did not succeed.
Perhaps they ran short of rag; at any rate they hadn't enough oti
board to keep them above water; and to the bottom they v/ould
undoubtedly have gone but for the skill and coolness of a dozen
English sailors, who brought them over the ocean in safety. Well,
if there be any one thing in the world that this extraordinary craft
is not at all like, that thing is a ship nf any kind. So narrow, 30 long,
so grotesque; so low in the middle, so high at each end, like a China

The Life of Charles Dickens

523

pen-tray; with no rigging, with nowhere to go to aloft; with mats for
saiL, great warped cigars for masts, gaudy dragons and sea-monster .
disporting themselves from stem to stern,, and on the stern a gigantic
cock of impossible aspect, defying the world (as well he may) to
produce his equal— it would look more at home at the top of a public
building, or at the top of a mountain, or in an avenue of trees, or down
in a mine, than afloat on the water. As for the Chinese lounging on
the deck, the most extravagant imagination would never dare to
suppose them to be mariners. Imagine a ship's crew, without a pro-
file among them, in gauze pinafores and plaited hair; wearing stiff
clogs a quarter of a foot thick in the sole; and lying at night in little
scented boxes, like back-gammon men or chess-pieces, or mother-
of-pearl counters! But by Jove! even this is nothing to your surprise
wher. you go down into the cabin. There you get a torture of per-
plexity. As, what became of all those lanterns hanging to the roof
when the Junk was out at sea? Whether they dangled there, banging
and beating against each other, like so many jesters' baubles.?
Whether the idol Chin Tee, of the eighteen arms, enshrined in a
celestial Punch's Show, in the place of honour, ever tumbled out in
heavy weather.? Whether the incense and the joss-stick still burnt
before her, with a faint perfume and a little thread of smoke, while
the mighty waves were roaring all around.? Whether that preposterous
tissue-paper umbrella in the corner was always spread, as being a
convenient maritime instrument for walking about the decks with
in a storm? Whether all the cool and shiny little chairs and tables
were continually sliding about and bruising each other, and if not why
not? "'nether anybrcly on the voyage ever read those two books
prir . r.i characters like bird-cages and fly-traps? Whether the
■V m passenger, He Sing, who had never been ten miles from home
in ' • -Ife before, lying sick on a bamboo couch in a private china
clo..t;t of his own (where he is now perpetually writing autographs for
inquisitive barbar.ans), ever began to doubt the potency of the
Goddess of the Sea. whose counterfeit presentment, like a flowery
monthly nurse, occupies the sailors' joss-house in the second gallery?
Whether it is possible that the said Mandarin, or the artist of the ship,
Sam Sing, Esquire, R.A. of Canton, can ever go ashor*^ without a
walking-staff of cinnamon, agreeably to the usage of their likenesses
in British tea-shops? Above all, whether the hoarse old ocean could
ever have been seriously in earnest with this floating toy-shop- or
had merely played with it in lightness of spirit— roughly, but meaning
no harm— as the bull did with another kind of china-shop on St.
Patrick's Day in the morning." ...

Other letters of the summer from Broadstairs will complete what
he wrote from the same place last year on Mr. Cruikshank's efforts
in the cause of temperance, and will enable me to say, what I know
he wished to be remembered in his story, that there was no subject
on which through his whole life he felt more strongly than this. No
man advocated temj^erance, even as far as possible its legislative

'<■ i.

524

The Life of Charles Dickens

enforcement, with greater earnestness; but he made important
reservations. Not thinking drunkenness to be a vice inborn, or
incident to the poor more than to other people, he never would agree
that the existence of a gin-shop was the alpha and omega of it.
Believing it to be the "national horror," he also believed that many
operative causes had to do with having made it so; and his objection
to the temperance agitation was that these were left out of account
altogether. He thought the gin-shop not fairly to be rendered the
exclusive object of attack until, in connection with the classes who
mostly made it their resort, the temptations that led to it, physical
and moral, should have been more bravely dealt with. Among the
former he counted foul smells, disgusting habitations, bad work-
shop-customs, scarcity of light, air, and water, in short the absence
of all easy means of decency and health; and among the latter, the
mental weariness and languor so induced, the desire of wholesome
relaxation, the craving for some stimulus and excitement, not less
needful than the sun itself to lives so passed, and last, and inclusive
of all the rest, ignorance, and the want of rational mental training
generally applied. This was consistently Dickens's "platform"
throughout the years he was known to me; and holding it to be
within the reach as well as the scope of legislation, which even our
political magnates have been discovering lately, he thought intem-
perance to be but the one result that, out of all of those arising from
the absence of legislation, was the most wretched. For him, drunken-
ness had a teeming and reproachful history anterior to the drunken
stage; and he thought it the first duty of the moralist bent upon
annihilating the gin-shop, to "strike deep and spare not" at those
previous remediable evils. Certainly this was not the way of Mr.
Cruikshank, any more than it is that of the many excellent people
who take part in temperance agitations. His former tale of the Bottle,
as told by his admirable pencil, was that of a decent working man,'
father of a boy and a girl, living in comfort and good esteem until
near the middle age, when happening unluckily to have a goose for
dinner one day in the bosom of his thriving family, he jocularly sends
out for a bottle of gin, persuades his wife, until then a picture of
neatness, and good housewifery, to take a little drop after the stuffing,
and the whole family from that moment drink themselves to des-
truction. The sequel, of which Dickens now wrote to me, traced the
lives of the boy and girl after the wretched deaths of their drunken
parents, through gin-shop, beer-shop, and dancing-rooms, up to their
trial for robbery: when the boy is convicted, dying aboard the hulks;
and the girl desolate and mad after her acquittal, flings herself frorn
London Bridge into the night darkened river.

"I think," said Dickens, "the power of that closing scene quite
extraordinary. It haunts the remembrance like an awful reality. It
is full of passion and terror, and I doubt very much whether any
hand but his could so have rendered it. There are other fine things
too. The death-bed scene on board the hulks; the convict who is

fit

The Life of Charles Dickens

525

composmg the face, and the other who is drawing the screen round
the bed's head; seem to mo masterpieces worthy of the greatest
pamter. The reality of the place and the fidelity with which everv
minute object illustrative of it is presented, are surprising. I think
myself no bad judge of this feature, and it is remarkable throughout
In the trial scene at the Old Bailey, the eye may wander round the
Court, and observe everything that is a part of the place. The verv
light and atmosphere are faithfully reproduced. So. in the gin-shop
and the beer-shop. An inferior hand would indicate a fragment of
the fact, and slur it over; but here every shred is honestly made out
\ !u"^ u" behind the bar in the gin-shop, is as real as the convicts
at the hulks, or the barrister-^ round the table in the Old Bailey I
found It quite curious, as I c. jed the book, to recall the number of
faces. I had seen of individual identity, and to think what a chance
they have of living, as the Spanish friar said to Wilkie. when the
living have passed away. But it only makes more exasperating to
me the obstinate one-sidedness of the thing. When a man shows so
forcibly the side of the medal on which th people in their faults and
crimes are stamped, he is the more bound to help us to a glance at
that other side on which the faults and vices of the governments
placed over the people are not less gravely impressed."

This led to some remark on Hogarth's method in such matters,
and I am glad to be able to preserve a masterly criticism of that
great Englishman, by a writer who closely resembled him in genius-
as another generation will be probably more apt than our own to
discover. "Hogarth avoided the Drunkard's Progress. I conceive
precisely because the causes of drunkenness among the poor were so
numerous and widely spread, and lurked so sorrowfully deep and
far down m all human misery, neglect, and despair, that even his
pencil could not bring them fairly and justly into the light. It was.
never his plan to be content with only showing the effect. In the
death of the miser-father, his shoes new-soled with the binding of
his Bible, before the young Rake begins his career; in the worldly
father, listless daughter, impoverished young lord, and crafty lawyer
of the first plate of Marriage-a-la-mode; in the detestable advances,
through the stages of Cruelty; and in the progress downward of
Thomas Idle; you see the effects indeed, but also the causes. He was.
never disposed to spare the kind of drunkenness that was of more
'respectable' engenderment. as one sees in his Midnight Modern
Conversation, the election plates, and crowds of stupid aldermen
and other guzzlers. But after one immortal journey down Gin I>ane
he turned away in pity and sorrow— perhaps in hope of better things'
one day, from better laws and schools and poor men's homes— and
went back no more. The scene of Gin Lane, you know, is that just
cleared away for the extension of Oxford Street, which we were
looking at the other dav- and T thinlr if q. romai-Vr.Ki'- +'-'>if -' "-
garth s picture, that, while it exhibits drunkenness in the most
appalling forms, it also forces on attention a most neglected wretched

'"if

526

The Life of Charles Dickens

■ ( 1
• 1

neighbourhood and an unwholesome, indecent abject condition of
lile that might be put as frontispiece to our sanitary report of a hun-
dred years later date. I have always myself thought tae purpose of
this hne piece to be not adequately stated even by Charles Lamb,
i he very houses seem absolutely reeling' it is true; but beside that
wonderful picture of what follows intoxication, we have indication
quite as powerful of what leads to it among the neglected classes.
Ihere is no evidence that any of the actors in the dreary scene have
ever been much better than we see them there. The best are pawning
the commonest necessaries, and tools of their trades; and the worst
are homeless vagrants who give us no clue to their having been
otherwise in bygone days. All are living and dying miserably
Nobody IS interfering for prevention or for cure, in the generation
going out before us, or the generation coming in. The beadle is the
only sober man in the composition except the pawnbroker, and he
IS mightily indifferent to the orphan-child crying beside its parent's
coltin Ine little charity-girls are not so well taught or looked after
but that they can take to dram-drinking already. The church indeed
is very prominent and handsome; but as, quite passive in the picture
It coldly s^urveys these things in progress under shadow of its tower'
1 cannot but bethink me that it was not until this year of grace 1848
tnat a Bishop of London first came out respecting something wron^^
in poor men's social accommodations, and I am confirmed in m?
suspicions that Hogarth had manv meanings which have not grown
obsolete in a century." ..." fe ^

Of what otherwise occupied him at Broadstairs in 1848 there is
not much to mention until the close of his holiday. He used to say
that he never went for more than a couple of days from his own home
without something befalling him that never happened to anyone else
and his Broadstairs adventure of the present summer verged closer on
tragedy than comedy. Returning there one day in August after
bringing up his boys to school, it had been arranged that his wife
should meet him at Margate; but he had walked impatiently far
beyond the place for meeting when at last he caught sight of her
not in a small chaise but in a large carriage and pair followed by an
excited crowd, and with the youth th^t should have been driving
the little pony bruised and bandaged on the box behind the two
prancing horses. "You may faintly imagine my amazement at
encountering this carriage, and the strange people, and Kate, and the
crowd, and the bandaged one. and all the rest of it." And then in
a line or two 1 had the story. "At the top of a steep hill on the road
with a ditch on each side, the pony bolted, whereupon what does
John do but jump out ! He says he was thrown out. but it cannot be
The reins immediately became entangled in the wheels, and away
went the pony down the hill madly, with Kate inside rending the
Isle of Thanet with her screams. The accident might have been a
fcanui one. u the pony had not. thank Heaven, on getting to the
bottom, pitched over the side; breaking the shaft and cutting her

'T?

The Life of Charles Dickens

527

hind legs, but in the most extraordinary manner smashing her own
way apart. She tumbled down, a bundle of legs with her head tucked
underneath, and left the chaise standing on the bank! A Captain
Devaynes and his wife where passing in their carriage at the moment,
saw the accident with no power of preventing it, got Kate out, laid
her on the grass, and behaved with infinite kindness. All's well that
ends well, and I think she's really none the worse for the fright.
John is in bed a good deal bruised, but without any broken bone, and
likely soon to come right; though for the present plastered all over,
and, like Squeers, a brown-paper parcel chock-full of nothing but
groans. The women generally have no sympathy for him whatever,
and the nurse says, with indignation. How could he go and leave a
unprotected female in the shay!" . . .

Not till the close of September I heard of work intruding itself,
in a letter twitting me for a broken promise in not joining him:
*'We are reasonably jolly, but rnrally so; going to bed o' nights at
ten, and bathing o' mornings at half-past seven; and not drugging
ourselves with those dirty and spoiled waters of Lethe that flow
round the base of the great pyramid." Then, after mention of the
friends who had left him. Sheriff Gordon, the Leeches, Lemon, Egg
and Stone: "reflection and pensiveness are coming. I have not

* — seen Fancy write
With a pencil of light
On the blotter so solid, commanding the seal'

but I shouldn't wonder if she were to do it, one of these days. Dim
visions of divers things are floating around me; and I must go to work,
head foremost, when I get home. I am glad, after all, that I have not
been at it here, for I am all the better for my idleness, no doubt. . . .
Roche was very ill last night, and looks like one with his face turned
to the other world, this morning. When are you coming? Oh what
days and nights there have been here, this week past!" . . .

His first seaside holiday in 1849 was at Brighton, where he passed
some weeks in February; and not, I am bound to add, without the
tmusual adventure to signalise his visit. He had not been a week in
his lodgings, where Leech and his wife joined him, when both his
landlord and the daughter of his landlord went raving mad, and the
lodgers were driven away to the Bedford Hotel. "If you could have
heard the cursing and crying of the two; could have seen the physi-
cian and nurse quoited out into the passage by the madman at the
hazard of their lives; could have seen Leech and me flying to tiie doc-
tor's rescue; could have seen our wives pulling us back; could have
seen the M.D. faint with fear; could have seen three other M.D.'s
come to his aid; with an atmosphere of Mrs. Gamp's strait- waistcoats,
struggling friends and servants, surrounding the whole; you would
have said it was quite worthy of me. and quite in keeping with my
usual proceedings." The lecter ended with a word on what then his
thoughts were full of, but for which no name had yet been found.

i f

528

The Life of Charles Dickens

A ^ea-fog to-day. but yesterday inexpressibly delicious. My mind
runnmg, like a high sea. on names— not satisfied yet. though "
VV hen he next wrote from the seaside, in the beginning of July, he
had found the name; had started his book; and was "rushing to
Broadstaurs" to write the fourth number of David Copperfield.

In this came the childish experiences which had left so deep an
impression upon him. and over which he had some difficulty in
throwing the needful disguises. "Fourteen miles to-day in the coun-
^•u 1, ^ •? written to me on 21 June, "revolving number four!"
w^till he did not quite see his way. Three days later he wrote- "On
leaving you last night. I found myself summoned on a special jury
m the Queen's Bench to-day. I have taken no notice of the document
and hourly expect to be dragged forth to a dungeon for contempt of
court. I think I should rather like it. It might help me with a new
notion or two m my difficulties. Meanwhile I shall take a stroll to-
night in the green fields from seven to ten if you feel inclined to

He had taken a house at Bonchurch. attracted there by the friend
who had made it a place of interest for him during the last few
years, the Rev. James White, with whose name and its associations
my mind connects inseparably many of Dickens's happiest hours.
To pay him fitting tribute would not be easy, if here it were caUed
for In the kindly shrewd Scotch face, a keen sensitiveness to pleasure
and pam was the first thing that struck any common observer.
Cheerfulness and gloom coursed over it so rapidly that no one could
question the tale they told. But the relish of his life had outlived
Its more than usual share of sorrows; and quaint sly humour, love of
jest and merriment, capital knowledge of books and sagacious quips
at men. made his companionship delightful. Like his life, his genius
was made up of alternations of mirth and melancholy. He would be
immersed, at one time, in those darkest Scottish annals from which
he drevv .us tragedies; and overflowing, at another, into Sir Frizzle
Pumpkin s exuberant farce. The tragic histories may probably
perish with the actor's perishable art; but three little abstracts of
history written at a later time in prose, with a sunny clearness of
narration and a glow of picturesque interest to my knowledge
unequalled m books of such small pretension, will find I hope a
lasting place in literature. They are filled with felicities' of phrase
with breadth of understanding and judgment, with manful honesty'
quiet sagacity, and a constant cheerful piety, valuable for all and
priceless for the young. Another word I permit myself to add With
Dickens, White was popular supremely for his eager good fellowship-
and few men brought him more of what he always liked to conceive
But he brought nothing so good as his wife. "He is excellent, but
she IS better, is the pithy remark of his first Bonchurch letter- and
the^true affection and respect that followed is happily still borne her
by iiis uauj^ixtcra. . . .

After a few more days 1 heard of progress with his writing in spite

her

The Life of Charles Dickens 529

of all festivities. "I have made it a rule that the Inimitable is invisible
until two every day. I shall have half the number done, please God
to-morrow. I have not worked quickly here yet, but I don't know
what I may do. Divers cogitations have occupied my mind at inter-
vals, respecting the dim design." The design was the weekly periodi-
cal so often in his thoughts, of which more will appear in niy next
chapter. His letter closed with intimations of discomfort in his health-
of an obstinate cough; and of a determination he had formed to
mount daily to the top of the downs. "It makes a great difference in
tne climate to get a blow -there and come down again." Then I heard
of the doctor "stethoscoping" him. of his hope that all was right in
that quarter, and of rubbings "k la St. John Long" being ordered
for his chest. But the mirth still went on. "There has been a Doctor
l^nkester at Sandown. a very good merry fellow, who has made
one at the picnics, and whom I went over and dined with, alon-
with Danby {I remember your hking for Danby, and don't wonde?
at It). Leech, and White." A letter towards the close of August
resumed yet more of his ordinary tone. "We had games and forfeits
last night at White's. Davy Roberts's pretty little daughter is there
for a week, with her husband. Bicknell's son. There was a dinner
hrst to say good-bye to Danby, who goes to other clergyman's duty
and we were very merry. Mrs. White unchanging; White comicallv
various in his moods. Talfourd comes down next Tuesday.^d w^
thmk of going over to Ryde on Monday visiting the play, sleeping
there (I don't mean at the play) and bringing the Judge S
Browne is coming down when he has done his month's work Should
you like to go to Alum Bay. while you are here? It would involve a
night out but I thmk would be very pleasant; and if you think so
too. I wil arrange it sub rosa. so that we may not be. like Bobadil
oppressed by numbers/ I mean to take a fly over from ShanWin to
meet you at Ryde; so that we can walk back from Shanklin over the
landslip, where the scenery is wonderfully beautiful. Stone and E<^s
are coming next month, and we hope to see Jerrold before we go""
Such notices from his letters may be thought hardly worth pre-
serving: but a wonderful vitality in every circumstance, as lonfas
life under any conditions remained to the writer, is the picture thev
contribute to; nor would it be complete without the addition that
fond as he was. m the intervals of his work, of this abundance and
variety of enjoyments, to no man were so essential also those quieter

numLrs.'' :'^ '' '"^ *'^^' "°' "^'"^""^^^ "^^^ "oppresid by
When he next wrote there was news very welcome to me for the
pleasure to himself it involved. "Browne has sketched an uncom!
monly chaiactenstic and capital Mr. Micawber for the next numhZ
I hope the present number is a good one. I hear nothing but pleasant
accounts of the general satisfactio: ."' Thr ' ' • - " ^ '^^'^"'^

..« i_j.i. .

intention to go to BroaStaTrr-put aswTby'dm;^?! ™'^jfts
sanitary condition; but it will be seen presently that Th^rewal

' r^l

'ill

,; ki

I 1

ill:

-i> !

^ fl'

530

The Life of Charles Dickens

III'

^^B'-

> ij X

another graver interruption. With his work well off his hands, how-
ever, he had been getting on better where he was; and they had all
been very merry, "Yes," he said, writing after a couple of days
(23 September), "we have been sufficiently rollicking since I finished
the number; and have had great games at rounders every afternoon,
with all Bonchurch looking on; but I begin to long for a little peace
and solitude. And now for my less pleasing piece of news. The sea has
been running very high, and Leech, while bathing, was knocked over
by a bad blow from a great wave on the forehead. He is in bed, and
had twenty of his namesakes on his temples this morning. When I
heard of him just now, he was asleep — which he had not been all
night." He closed his letter hopefully, but next day (24 September)
I had a less favourable report. "Leech has been very ill with con-
gestion of the brain ever since I wrote, and being still in excessive
pain has had ice to his head continuously, and been bled in the arm
besides. Beard and I sat up there, all night." On the 26th he wrote.
"My plans are all unsettled by Leech's illness; as of course I do not
like to leave this place while I can be of any service to him and his
good little wife. But all visitors are gone to-day, and Winterbourne
once more left to the engaging family of the inimitable B. Ever since
I wrote to you Leech has been seriously worse, and again very
heavily bled. The night before last he was in such an alarming state of
restlessness, which nothing could relieve, that I proposed to Mrs.
Leech to try magnetism. Accordingly in the middle of the night I
fell to; and, after a very fatiguing bout of it, put him to sleep for an
hour and thirty-five minutes. A change came on in the sleep, nd he
is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded little Mrs. Leech across
him, when he was asleep, as if he had been a truss of hay. . . . What
do you think of my setting up in the magnetic line with a large
brass plate? 'Terms, twenty-five guineas per nap.' " When he wrote
on the 30th, he had completed his sixth number; and his friend was
so clearly on the way to recovery that he was himself next day to
leave for Broadstairs with his wife, her sister, and the two little girls.
"I will merely add that I entreat to be kindly remembered to
Thackeray" (who had a dangerous illness at this time); "that I think
I have, without a doubt, got the PQriodical notion; and that I am
writing under the depressing and discomfortmg influence of paying
off the tribe of bills that pour in upon an unfortunate family-young
man on the eve of a residence like this. So no more at present from
the disgusted, though still inimitable, and always affectionate B."
He stayed at Broadstairs till he had finished his number seven,
and what else chiefly occupied him were thoughts about the Periodi-
cal of which account will presently be given. "Such a night and day
of rain," ran his first letter, "I should think the oldest inhabitant
never saw ! and yet, in the ould formiliar Broadstairs, I somehow or
other don't mind it much. The change has done Mamey a world of
good, and I have begun to sleep again. As for news, you might as
well ask me for dolphins. Nobody in Broadstairs — to speak of.

ds, how-
j had all

of days

finished
ternoon,
tie peace
e sea has
ked over
bed, and

When I
been all
Jtember)
dth con-
!xcessive

the arm
le wrote.
I do not
L and his
^rbourne
ver since
lin very
\ state of

to Mrs.
; night I
;p for an
), nd he
:h across

. What

I a large
he wrote
lend was
t day to
:tle girls,
bered to

I I think
lat I am
f paying
ly-young
snt from
late B."
IX seven,

Periodi-
and day
habitant
lehow or
world of
might as
peak of.

The Life of Charles Dickens

4 i

531

Certainly nobody in Ballard's. We are in the part, which is the house
next door to the hotel itself, that we once had for three years running,
and just as quiet and snug now as it was then. I don't think I shall
return before the 20th or so, when the number is done; but I may,
in some inconstant freak, run up to you before. Preliminary des-
patches and advices shall be forwarded in any case to the fragrant
neighbourhood of Clare Market and the Portugal Street burying-
ground." Such was his polite designation of my whereabouts: for
which nevertheless he had secret likings. "On the Portsmouth
railway, coming here, encountered Kenyon. On the ditto ditto at
Reigate, encountered young Dilke, and took him in tow to Canter-
bur>'. On the ditto ditto at ditto (meaning Reigate), encountered
Fox, M.P. for Oldham, and his daughter. All within an hour. Young
Dilke great about the proposed Exposition under the direction of
H.R.H. Prince Albert, and evincing, very pleasantly to me, un-
bounded faith in our old friend his father." There was one more
letter, taking a rather gloomy view of public affairs in connection with
an inflated pastoral from Doctor Wiseman "given out of the Flamin-
ian Gate," and speaking dolefully of some family matters; which
was subscribed, each word forming a separate line, "Yours Des-
pondently, And Disgustedly, Wilkins Micawber."

His visit to the little watering-place in the following year was
signalised by his completion of the most famous of his novels, and
his letters otherwise were occupied by elaborate managerial prepara-
tion for the private performances at Knebworth. But again the
plague of itinerant music flung him into such fevers of irritation, that
he finally resolved against any renewed attempt to carry on import-
ant work here; and the summer of 1851, when he was busy with
miscellaneous writing only, was the last of his regular residences in
the place. He then let his London house for the brief remainder of
its term; running away at the end of May, when some grave family
sorrows had befallen him, from the crowds and excitements of the
Great Exliibition; and I will only add generally of these seaside
residences that his reading was considerable and very various at
such intervals of labour. One of them, as I remember, took in all the
minor tales as well as the plays of Voltaire, several of the novels
(old favourites with him) of Paul de Kock, Ruskin's Lamps of
Architecture, and a surprising number of books of African and other
travel for which he had insatiable relish: but there was never much
notice of his reading in his letters. "By the by, I observe, reading
that wonderful book the French Revolution again for the 500th time,
that Carlyle, who knows everything, don't know what Mumbo
Jumbo is. It is not an Idol. It is a secnjt preserved among the men of
certain African tribes, and never revealed by any of them, for the
punishment of their women. Mumbo Jumbo comes in hideous form
out of the forest, or the mud, or the river, or where not, and flogs
some woman who has been backbiting, or scolding, or with some
other domestic mischief disturbing the general peace. Carlyle's seems

iff

'^\

fill

532

The Life of Charles Dickens

to confound him with the common Fetish; but he is quite another
thing. He is a disguised man; and all about him is u freemasons'
secret among the men." — "I finished the Scarlet Letter yesterday.
It falls off sadly after that fine opening scene. The psychological
part of the story is very much overdone, and not truly done I think.
Their suddenness of meeting and agreeing to go away together after
all those years, is very poor. INIr. Chillingworth ditto. The child out
of nature altogether. And Mr. Dimmisdale certainly never could
have begotten her." In INIr. Hawthorne's earlier books he had taken
especial pleasure; his Mosses from and Old Manse having been the
first book he placed in my hands on his return from America, with
reiterated injunctions to read it. . . ,

III

CHRISTMAS BOOKS CLOSED AND "HOUSEHOLD WORDS BEGUN
\ 1848-50

It has been seen that his fancy for his Christmas book of 1848 first
arose to him at Lausanne in the summer of 1846, and that, after
writing its opening pages in the autumn of the following year, he
laid it aside under the pressure of his Donibey. These lines were in
the letter that closed his 1848 Broadstairs hoUday. "At last I am a
mentally matooring of the Christmas book — or, as poor Macrone
used to write, 'booke,' 'boke,' 'buke,' etc." It was the first labour to
which he applied himself at his return.

In London it soon came to maturity; was published duly as
The Haunted Man, or the Ghost's Bargain; sold largely, beginning
with a subscription of twenty thousand; and had a great success on
the Adelphi stage, to which it was rather cleverly adapted by Lemon.
He had placed on its title-page originally four lines from Tennyson's
Departure. ""

And o'er the hills, and far away

Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Bevond the night, across the day,

Tliro' all the world it followed him;

but they were less applicable to the close than to the opening of the
tale, and were dropped before publication. . . .

The design for his much-thought-of new Periodical was still
"dim," as we have seen, when tne first cogitation of it at Bonchurch
occupiea nim; l?ul tne e.-vpcuicnv^y 01 iiia.tvij.ig iv. vivaivi --cmi^- j\joii
after with a visit from Mr. Evans, who brought his half-year's
accounts of sales, and some small disappointment for him in those of

The Life of Charles Dickens

533

; another
eniusoiis'
esterday.
;hological
D I think.
thcT after
child out
fCT could
lad taken
been the
:ica, with

BEGUN

1848 first
lat, after

year, he
3 were in
it I am a

Macrone
labour to

duly as
)eginning
access on
»;' Lemon,
innyson's

ng of the

was still
Dnchurch

ilf-year's
I those of

Copperfield. "The accounts are rather shy, after Dombey, and what
you said comes true after all. I am not sorry I cannot bring myself
to care much for what opinions people may form; and I have a strong
belief, that, if any of my books are read years hence, Dombey will be
remembered as among the best of them: but passing influences are
important for the time, and as Chuzzlewit with its small sale sent me
up, Dombey's large sale has tumbled me down. Not very much,
however, in real truth. These accounts only include the first three
numbers, have of course been burdened with all the heavy expenses
of number one, and ought not in reason to be complained of. But it
is clear to me that the Periodical must be set a-going in the spring;
and I have already been busy, at odd half-hours, in shadowing forth
a name and an idea. Evans says they have but one opinion repeated
to them of Copperfield, and they feel very confident about it. A steady
twenty-five thousand, which it is now on the verge of, will do very
well. The back numbers are always going off. Read the enclosed." . . .

The week before he left Bonchurch I again had news of the old
and often recurring fancy. "The old notion of the Periodical, which
had been agitating itself in my mind for so long, I really think is at
last gradually growing into form." ... It was to be a weekly mis-
cellany of general literature; and its stated objects were to be, to
contribute to the entertainment and instruction of all classes of
readers, and to help in the discussion of the more important social
questions of the time: It was to comprise short stories by others as
well as himself; matters of passing interest in the liveliest form that
could be given to them; subjects suggested by books that might
most be attracting attention; and poetry in every number if possible,
but in any ca'^e something of romantic fancy. This was to be a
cardinal point. There was to be no more utilitarian spirit; with all
familiar things, but especially those repellent on the surface, some-
thing was to be connected that should be fanciful or kindly; and the
hardest workers were to be taught that their lot is not necessarily
excluded from the sympathies and graces of imagination. This was
all finally settled by the close of 1849, when a general announcement
of the intended adventure was made. There remained only a title
and an assistant-editor; and I am happy now to remember that for
the latter important duty Mr. Wills was chosen at my suggestion.
He discharged its duties with admirable patience and ability for
twenty years, and Dickens's later life had no more intimate friend.

The title took some time and occupied many letters. One of the
first thought-of has now the curious interest of having fore-shadowed,
by the motto proposed to accompany it, the title of the series of
All the Year Round which he was led to sulsstitute for the older series
in 1859. "The Robin. With this motto from Goldsmith. The redbreast,
celebrated for its affection to mankind, continues with us, the year round."
That however was rejected. Then came: "Mankind. This I think
very good." It foiiowed the other neverthelf>ss. After it came: "And
here a strange idea, but with decided advantages. 'Charles Dickens.

hi:

534 The Life of Charles Dickens

A weekly journal designed for the instruction and entertainment of
all classes of readers. Conducted by Himself.' " Still something was
wanting in that also. Next day there arrived: "I really think if there
be anything wanting in the other name, that this i" very pretty, and
just supplies it. The Household Voice. I have thought of many
others, as— The Household Guest. The Household Face.
The Comrade. The Microscope, The Highway of Life. The
Lever. The Rolling Years. The Holly Tree (with two lines
from Southey for a motto). Everything. But I rather think the
Voice is it." It was near indeed; but the following day came,
"Household Words. This is a very pretty name": and the choice
was made.

The first number appeared on Saturday, 30 March, 1850, and
contained among other things the beginning of a story by a very
original writer, Mrs. Gaskell, for whose powers he had a high admira-
tion, and with whom he had friendly intercourse during many years.
Other opportunities will arise for mention of those with whom this
new labour brought him into personal communication, but I may
"t once say that of all the writers, before unknown, whom his journal
nelped to make familiar to a wide world of readers, he had the
strongest personal interest in Mr. Sala, and placed at once in the high-
est rank his capabilities of help in such an enterprise. An illustrative
trait of what I have named as its cardinal point to him will fitly
close my account of its establishment. Its first number, still unpub-
lished, had not seemed to him quite to fulfil his promise, "tenderly
to cherish the light of fancy inherent in all breasts"; and, as soon as
he received the proof of the second, I heard from him. "Looking
over the suggested contents of Dumber two at breakfast this morning"
(Bri£,hton: 14 March, 1850) "I felt an uneasy sense of there being a
want of something tender, which would apply to some universal
household knowledge. Coming down in the railroad the other night
(always a wonderfully suggestive place to me when I am alone) I
was looking at the stars, and revolving a little idea about them.
Putting now these two things together, I wrote the enclosed little
paper, straightway; and should like you to read it before you send it
to the printers (it will not take you five minutes), and let me have a
proof by return." This was the cliild's "dream of a star," which
opened his second number; it appears among his reprinted pieces. . . .

His sister Fanny and himself, he told me long before this paper
was written, used to wander at night about a churchyard near their
house, looking up at the stars; and her early death, of which I am
shortly to speak, had vividly reawakened all the childish associations
which made Y r memory dear to him.

iment of
hingwas
: if there
tty, and
af many
) Face.
?E. The
wo lines
link the
y came,
e choice

550, and
^ a very
admira-
ly years.
10m this
t I may
3 journal
had the
the high-
astrative
will fitly
1 unpub-
tenderly
5 soon as
Looking
lorning"
3 being a
iniversal
ler night
alone) I
nt them,
sed little
u send it
le have a
," which
•ieces. . . .
lis paper
ear their
ich I am
Delations

The Life of Charles Dickens

535

IN AID OF LITERATURE AND ART
1850-2

In the year of the establishment of Household Words Dickens re-
sumed what I have called his splendid strolling on behalf of a scheme
for the advantage of men of letteri, to which a great brother-author
had given the sanction of his genius and name. In November 1850,
in the hall of Lord Lytton's old family seat in Knebworth Park,
there were three privat*^ performances by the original actors in Ben
Jonson's Every Man in His Hmaour, of which all the circumstances
and surroundings were very brilliant; some of the gentlemen of tho
country played both in comedy and farces; our geieiou. host was
profuse of all noble encouragement; and amid the gexieral pleasure
and excitement hopes rose high. Recent; experience had shown what
the public interest in this kind of amusement might place within
reach of its providers; and ^.here came to be discussed the possibility
of making permanent such help as had been aftordfvd to fellow
writers, by means of an endowment that should not be mere charity,
but should combine something of both pension-list and colle^'e-
lectureship, without the drawbacks ot either. It was nrY. enough
considered that schemes for selt-help, to be successful, require from
those they are meant to benefit, not only a general asf>ent to their
desirability, but zealous co-operation. Too readily assuming what
should have had more thorough investigation, the enterprise was
set on foot, and the "Guild of Literature and Art" Oji inated at
Knebworth. A five-act comedy was to be written by bir Edward
Lytton; and, when a certain sum of monjv h^id been obtained by
public representations of it, the details of the scheme v/ere to be
drawn up, and appeal made to thr- e whom it add'.essca more
especially. In a very few months everything was leady, except a
farce which Dickens was to have written to follov/ the comedy, and
which unexpected cares of management and preparation were held
to absolve him from. There were other reasons. "I have written the
first scene,*' he told me (23 March, 18^1), 'and it has droll points in
it, 'more farcical points than you commonly find in farces.' really
better. Yet I am constantly striving, for niy reputation's sake, to get
into it a meaning that is impossible in a farce; constantly thinking of
it, therefore, against the grain; and constantly impressed with a con-
viction that I could never act in it myself with that wild abandon-
ment which can alone carry a farce oil. Wherefore I have confessed
to Bulwer Lytton and asked for absolution.' There was substituted a

i li

536

The Life of Charles Dickens

new farce of Lemon's, to which, however, Dickens soon contributed
so many jokes and so much Gampish and other fun of his own, that
it came to be in effect a joint piece of authorship; and Gabblewigg,
which the manager took to himself, was one of those personation
parts requiring five or six changes of face, voice, and gait in the
course of it, from which, as we have seen, he derived all the early
theatrical ambition that the elder Mathews had awakened in him.
"You have no idea," he continued, "of the immensity of the work as
the time advances, for the Duke even throws the whole of the
audience on us, or he would get (he says) into all manner of
scrapes."

"The Duke" was the Duke of Devonshire, of whose love of letters
and interest for men of that calling I have given one cf the many
instarces that adorned a life which alone perhaps in England was
genumely and completely that of the Grand Seigneur. Well-read and
very accomplished, he had the pleasing manners which proceed fiom
a kind nature; and splendid in his mode of living beyond any other
English noble, his magnificence, by the ease and elegance that
accompanied it, was relieved from all offence of ostentation. He had
offered his house in Piccadilly for the first rci resentations, and in his
princely way discharged all the expenses attending them. A movable
theatre was built and set up in the great drawing-room, the library
was turned into a green-room, and here Lytton's comedy was
presented. . . .

The design nevertheless did not prosper, and both the great writers
who had associated themselves with it are now passed away. Since
it first was mentioned on this page. Lord Lytton has himself been
borne to the Abbey where Dickens is laid, and which never opeixed
to receive a more varied genius, a more gallant spirit, a man more
constant to his friends, more true to any cause he represented, or
whose name will hereafter be found entitled to a more honoured
place in the history of his time. The Guild design failed because the
support indispensable to success was not, as Dickens too sanguinely
hoped, given to it by literary men themselves. . . •

The Life of Charles Dickens

5d>7

LAST YEARS IN DEVONSHIRE TERRACE
X848-51

Excepting always the haunts and associations of his childhood
Dickens had no particular sentiment of locality, and any special
regard for houses he had lived in was not a thing noticeable in him
But he cared most for Devonshire Terrace, perhaps for the bit of
ground attached to it; and it was wit! egret he suddenly discovered
at the close of 1847, that he should nave to resign it "next Lady
Day three years. I had thought the lease two years more." To that
brief remaining time belong some incidents of which I have still to
give account; and I connect them with the house in which he lived
during the progress of what is generally thought his greatest book
and of what I think were his happiest years.

We had never had such intimate confidences as in the interval
since his return from Paris; but these have been used in my narrative
of the childhood and boyish experiences, and what remain are inci-
dental only. Of the fragment of autobiogi-aphy there also given, the
origin has been told: but the intention of leaving such a record 'had
been also in his mind at an earlier date; and it was the very depth
of our interest in the opening of his fragment that led to the larger
design in which it became absorbed. "I hardly know why I write
this," was his own comment on one of his personal revelations, "but
the more than friendship which has grown between us seems to force
it on me in my present mood. We shall speak of it all, you and I,
Heaven grant, wisely and wonderingly many and many a time in
after years. In the meanwhile I am more at rest for having opened all
my heart and mind to you. . . . This day eleven years, poor dear
Mary died." That was written on 7 May, 1848. . . .

In all the later part of the year Dickens's thoughts were turning
much to the form his next book should assume. A suggestion that he
should write it in the first person, by way of change, had been thrown
out by me, which he took at once very gravel v; and this, with other
things, though as yet not dreaming of any public use of hid early
personal trials, conspurtd to bring about the resolve xo use them. His
determination once taken, with what a singular truthfulness he con-
trived to blend the fact with the fiction may be shown by a small
occurrence of this time. It has been inferred, from the vividness of
the boy-impress'>.ns of Yarmouth in David's earliest experiences,
that the place must have been familiar to his own bovhood: but the
truth was that at the close of 1848 he first saw that celebrated seaport.

1'^

i •! I

538

The Life of Charles Dickens

One of its earlier months had been signalised by an adventure in
which Leech, Lemon, and myself took part with him, when, obtain-
ing horses from Salisbury, we passed the whole of a March day in
riding over every part of the Plain; visiting Stonehenge, and explor-
ing Hazlitt's "hut" at Winterslow, birthplace of some of his finest
essays; altogether with so brilliant a success that now (13 November)
he proposed to ' 'repeat the Salisbury Plain idea in a new direction in
midwinter, to wit, Blackgang Chine in the Isle of Wight, with dark
winter cliffs and roaring oceans." But mid-winter brought with it too
nuch dreariness of its own, to render these stormy accompaniments
to it very palatable; and on the last day of the year he bethought
him "it would be better to make an outburst to some old cathedral
city we don't know, and what do you say to Norwich and Stanfield
Hall?" Thither accordingly the three friends went, illness at the last
aisabling me; and of the result I heard {12 January, 1849) that Stan-
field Hall, the scene of a recent frightful tragedy, had nothing attrac-
tive unless the term might be applied to "a. murderous look that
seemed to invite such a crime. We arrived," continued Dickens,
"between the Hall and Potass farm, as the search was going on for
the pistol in a manner so consummately stupid, that there was nothing
on earth to prevent any of Rush's labourers from accepting five
pounds from Rush junior to find the weapon and give it to him.
Norwich, a disappointment" (one pleasant face "transformeth a
city," but he was unable yet to connect it with our delightful friend
Elwin); "all save its place of execution, which we found fit for a
gigantic scoundrel's exit. But the success of the trip, for me, was to
come. Yarmouth, sir, where we went afterwards, is the strangest
place in the wide world: one hundred and forty-six miles of
hill-less marsh between it and London. More when we meet. I
shall certainly try my hand at it." He made it the home of his
"little Em'ly."

Everything now was taking that direction with him; and soon, to
give his own account of it, his mind was upon names "running like
a high sea." Four days after the date of the last-quoted letter ("all
over happily, thank God, by four o'clock this morning") there came
the birth of his eighth child and sixth son; whom at first h'=! meant to
call by Oliver Goldsmith's name, but settled afterwards into that of
Henry Fielding; and to whom that early friend Ainsworth who had
first made us known to each other, welcome and pleasant companion
always, was asked to be godfather. Telling me of the change in the
name of the little fellow, which he had made in a kind of homage to
the style of work he was now so bent on beginning, he added, "What
should you think of this for a notion of a character.? 'Yes, that is very
true; but now, What's his motive?' I fancy I could make something
like it into a kind of amusing and more innocent Pecksniff, 'Weil
now, yes — no doubt that was a fine thing to do! But now, stop a
moment, let us see — What's his motive?' " Here again was but one
of the many ou-ward signs of fancy and fertility that accompanied

A _

The Life of Charles Dickens

539

the outset of all his more important books; though, as in their cases
also, other moods of the mind incident to such beginnings were less
favourable. "Deepest despondency, as usual, in commencing, besets
me;" is the opening of the letter in which he speaks of what of course
was always one of his first anxieties, the selection of a name. In this
particular instance he had been undergoing doubts and misgivings to
more than the usual degree. It was not until 23 February he got to
anything like the shape of a feasible title. "I should like to know how
the enclosed (one of those I have been thinking of) strikes you, on a
first acquaintance with it. It is odd, I think, and new: but it may
have A's. difficulty of being 'too comic, my boy.' I suppose I should
have to add, though, by way of motto, 'And in short it led to the very
Mag's Diversions. Old Saying.'' Or would it be better, there being
equal authority for either, 'And in short they all played Mag's
Diversions. Old Saying' V

"Mag^s Diversions.

Being the personal history of

Mr. Thomas Mag the Younger,

Of Blunderstone House."

This was hardly satisfactory, I thought; and it soon became
apparent that he thought so too, although within the next three
days I had it in three other forms. "Mag's Diversions, being the
Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of Mr.
David Mag the Younger, of Blunderstone House," The second
omitted Adventures, and called his hero Mr. David Mag the Younger,
of Copperfield House. The third made nearer approach to what the
destinies were leading him to, and transformed Mr. David Mag into
Mr. David Copperfield the Younger and his great-aunt Margaret;
retaining still as his leading title, Mag's Diversions. It is singular that
it should never have occurred to him, while the name was thus
strangely as by accident bringing itself together, that the initials
were but his own reversed. He was much startled when I pointed this
out, and protested it was just in keeping with the fates and
chances which were always befalling him, "Why else," he said,
"should I so obstinately have kept to that name when once it
turned up?"

It was quite true that he did so, as I had curious proof foiu ving
close upon the heels of his third proposal. "I wish," he wrote on 25
February, "you would look over carefully the titles now enclosed,
and tell me to which you most incline. You will see that they give up
Mag altogether, and refer exclusively to one name — that which I

1*-»o+- o£kT*4* ■«Tr\ii T /^r\iiV\*i- txrln/i'f Viof T r»/-»iil/l ori ■4*V|o ^irHo^'Ck rr^4' q Vk^4-4-/**-

name.

i^: Ifi

540

The Life of Charles Dickens

'i. The Copper field Disclosures. Being
the perbonal history, experience,
and observation, of Mr. David
Copperfield the Younger, of
Blunderstone House.

'2. The Copperfield Records. Being the
personal history, experience, and
observation, of Mr. David
Copperfield the Younger, of
Copperfield Cottage.

'3. The Last Living Speech and
Confession of David Copperfield,
Junior, of Blunderstone Lodge,
who was never executed at the
Old Bailey, being his personal
history found among his papers.

The Copperfield Survey of the World
as it Rolled. Being the personal
historj', experience, and obser-
vation of David Copperfield the
Younger, of Blunderstone Rook-
ery.

The Last Will and Testament of
Mr. David Copperfield. Being his
personal history left as a legacy.

Copperfield, Complete. Being the
whole personal history and
experience of Mr. David Copper-
field of Blunderstone House,
which he never meant to be
published on any account.

Or, the opening words of No. 6 might be Copperfield' s Entire; and
The Copperfield Confessions might open Nos. i and 2. Now, what

SAY YOU?"

What I said is to h*^ inferred from what he wrote back on the 28th.
"The Survey has been my favourite from the first. Kate picked it out
from the rest, without my saying anything about it, Georgy too.
You hit upon it, on the first glance. Therefore I have no doubt that
it is indisputably the best title; and I will stick to it." There was a
change nevertheless. His completion of the second chapter defined to
himself, more clearly than before, the character of the book; and the
propriety of rejecting everything not strictly personal from the name
given to it. The words proposed, therefore, became ultimately these
only: "The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observa-
tion of David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery,
which he never meant to be published on any account." And the
letter which told me that with this name it was finally to be launched
on I May, told me also (19 April) the difi&culties that still beset him
at the opening. "My hand is out in the matter of Copperfield. To-day
and yesterday I have done nothing". Though I know what I want to
do, I am lumbering on like a stage-waggon. I can't even dine at the
Temple to-day, I feel it so important to stick at it this evening, and
make some head. I am quite aground; quite a literary Benedict, as he
appeared when his heels wouldn't stay upon the carpet; and the long
Copperfieldian perspective looks snowy and thick, this fine morning."
The allusion was to a dinner at his house the night before; when not
only Rogers had to be borne out, having fallen sick at the table, but,
as we rose soon after to quit the dining-room, Mr. Jules Benedict had
quite suddenly followed the poet's lead, and fallen prostrate on the
carpel iu the midst of us. Amid the general consternation there seemed
a want of proper attendance on the sick: the distinguished musician

the World
personal
d obser-
rfiekl tlie
ne Rook-

ament of
Being his
a legacy.

teing the
ary and
i Copper-
5 House,
it to be
mt.

ire; and

V, WHAT

he 28th.
2d it out
rgy too.
abt that
re was a
jfined to
and the
he name
ily these
)bserva-
{.ookery,
And the
aunched
eset him
. To-day
want to
le at the
ing, and
ict, as he
the long
orning."
vhen not
.ble, but,
idict had
:e on the
e seeined
musician

The Life of Charles Dickens

541

fanng m this respect hardly so well as the famous bard, by whose
protracted sufferings in the library, whither he had been removed,
the sanitary help available on the establishment was citill absorbed:
and as Dickens had been eloquent during dinner on the atrocities of a
pauper-farming case at Tooting which was then exciting a fury of
indignation, Fonblanque now declared him to be no better himself
than a second Drouet. reducing his guests to a lamentable state by
the food he had given them, and aggravating their sad condition by
absence of all proper nursing. The joke was well kept up by Quin and
Edwm Landseer, Lord Strangford joining in with a tragic sympathy
for his friend the poet; and the banquet so dolefully interrupted
elided m uproarious mirth. For nothing really serious had happened.
Benedict went laughing away with his wife, and I helped Rogers
on with his over-shoes for his usual night-walk home. "Do you
know how many waistcoats I wear?" asked the poet of me. as I
was doing him this service. I professed my inability to guess.
"Five" he said: "and here they are!" Upon which he opened them,
in the manner of the grave-digger in Hamlet, and showed me every
one. That dinner was in the April 1849. . . .

The month of May was that of the start of David Copperfield,
and to one more dinner (on the 12th) I may especially refer for those
who were present at it. Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle came, Thackeray
and Rogers, Mrs. Gaskell and Kenyon, Jerrold and Hablot Browne,
with Mr. and Mrs. Tagart; and it was a delight to see the enjoyment
of Dickens at Carlyle's laughing reply to questions about his health,
that he was. in the language of Mr. Peggotty's housekeeper, a lorn
lone creature and everything went contrairy with him. Things were
not hkely to go better, I thought, as I saw the great writer— kindest
as well as wisest of men. but not very patient under sentimental
philosophies— seated next the good Mr. Tagart, who soon was heard
launching at him various metaphysical questions in regard to heaven
and such like; and the relief was great when Thackeray introduced,
with quaint whimsicality, a story which he and I had just heard
Macready relate in talking to us about his boyish days, of a country
actor who had supported himself for six months on his judicious,
treatment of the "tag" to the Castle Spectre. In the original it stands
that you are to do away with suspicion, banish vile mistrust, and.
almost in the words we had just heard from the minister to the
philosopher. "Believe there is a heaven, nor doubt that heaven is
just!" in place of which Macready's friend, observing that the drop
fell for the most part quite coldly, substituted one night the more
telling appeal, "And give us your Applause, for that is always
JUST !" which brought down the house with rapture. . ,

Some incidents that belong specially to the three years that closed
his residence in the home thus associated with not the least interest-
ing pui t oi liis career, will further show what now were his occupa-
tions and ways of life. In the summer of 1849 he came up from Broad-
stairs to attend a Mansion House dinner, which the lord mayor of

1 r.

542

The Life of Charles Dickens

l'J!j

that day had been moved by a laudable ambition to give to " litera-
ture and art," which he supposed would be adequately represented
by the Royal Academy, the contributors to Punch, Dickens, and one
or two newspaper men. On the whole the result was not cheering; the
worthy chief magistrate, no doubt quite undesignedly, expressing too
much surprise at the unaccustomed faces around him to be altogether
complimentary. In general (this was the tone) we are in the habit of
having princes, dukes, ministers, and what not for our guests, but
what a delight, all the greater for being unusual, to see gentlemen like
you! In other words, what could possibly be pleasanter than for
people satiated with greatness to get for a while by way of change
into the butler's pantry? This in substance was Dickens's account to
me next day, and his reason for having been very careful in his
acknowledgment of the toast of "The Novelists." He was nettled not
a little therefore by a jesting allusion to himself in the Daily News in
connection with the proceedings, and asked me to fonvard a remon-
strance. Having a strong dislike to all such displays of sensitiveness,
I suppressed the letter; but it is perhaps worth printing now. Its date
is Broadstairs, Wednesday, ii July, 1849. "I have no other interest
in, or concern with, a most facetious article on last Saturday's dinner
at the Mansion House, which appeared in your paper of yesterday,
and found its way here to-day, than that it misrepresents me in what
I said on the occasion. If you shoukl not think it at all damaging to
the wit of that satire to state what I did say, I shall be much obliged
to you. It was this. . . . That I considered the compliment of a
recognition of Literature by the citizens of London the more accept-
able to us because it was unusual in that hall, and likely to be an
advantage and benefit to them in proportion as it became in future
less unusual. That, on behalf of the novelists, I accepted the tribute
as an appropriate one; inasmuch as we had sometimes reason to hope
that our imaginary worlds afEorded an occasional refuge to men busily
•engaged in the toils of life, from which they came forth none the
worse to a renewal of its strivings; and certainly that the chief
magistrate of the greatest city in the world might be fitly regarded
as the representative of that class of our readers."

Of an incident towards the close of the year, though it had import-
ant practical results, brief mention will here suffice. We saw the
Mannings executed on the walls of Horsemonger Lane Gaol; and with
the letter which Dickens wrote next day to The Times descriptive of
what we had witnessed on that memorable morning, there began an
active agitation against public executions which never ceased until
"the salutary change was effected whv' 11 has worked so well, . . .

The chief occupation of the past and present year, David Copper-
field, win have a section to itself, and in this may be touched but
lightly. Once fairly in it, the story bore him irresistibly along; cer-
tainly with less trouble to himself in the composition, beyond that
ardent sympathy with the creatures of the fancy which always made
;so absolutely real to him their sufferings or sorrows; and he was

" litera-
resented
and one
•ing; the
ising too
together
habit of
sts, but
[nen like
;han for
■ change
:ount to
il in his
tied not
News in
, remon-
iveness,
Its date
interest
s dinner
sterday,
in what
aging to
I obliged
jnt of a
i accept-
:o be an
n future
; tribute
to hope
in busily
tone the
he chief
egarded

import-
saw the
ind with
iptive of
»egan an
ed until

Copper-
hed but
>ng; cer-
ind that
ys made
he was

The Life of Charles Dickens

543

probably never less harassed by interruptions or breaks in his
invention. His princii.il hesitation occurred in connection with the
child-wife Dora, who had become a great favourite as he went on;
and It was shortly after her fate had been decided, in the early
autumn of 1850, but I jfore she bren^hed her last, that a third
daughter was born to him, to whom he gave his dying little heroine's
name. On these ; id c ,ner points, without forestalling what waits to
be said of the composition of this fine story, a few illustrative words
from his letters will properly find a place here. "Copperfield half
done," he wrote of the second number on 6 June. "I feel, thank God,
quite confident in the story. I have a move in it ready for this
month; another for next; and another for the next." "I think it is
necessary" (15 Novcmbc.) "to decide against the special pleader.
Yor reasons quite suftice. I am not sure but that the banking house
mignt do. X will consider it in a walk." "Banking business impractic-
able" (17 November) "on account of the confinement: which would
stop the story, I foresee. I have taken, for the present at all events,
the proctor. I am wonderfully in harness, and nothing galls or frets."
''Copperfield done" (.:o November) "after two days' very hard work
indeed; and I think a smashing number. His first dissipation I hope
will be found worthy of attention, as a piece of grotesque truth." "I
feel a great hope" (23 January. 1850) "that I shall be remembered by
little Em'ly, a good many years to come." "I begin to have my
doubts of being able to join you" (20 February), "for Copperfield runs
high, and must be done to-morrow. But I'll do it if possible, and strain
every nerve. Some beautiful comic love, I hope, in the number."
"Still undecided about Dora" (7 May), "but must decide to-day."
"I have been" (Tuesday. 20 August) "very hard at work these three
days, and have still Dora to kill. But with good luck, I may do it
to-morrow. Obliged to go to Shepherd's Bush to-day, and can con-
sequently do little this morning. Am eschewing all sorts of things that
present themselves to my fancy — coming in such crowds!" "Work in
a very decent state of advancement" (13 August) "domesticity not-
withstanding. I hope I shall have a splendid number. I feel the story
to its minutest point." "Mrs, Micawber is still" (15 August). "I regret
to say, in statu quo. Ever yours, Wilkins Micawber." The little girl
was born the next day. the i6th. and received the name of Dora
Annie. The most part of what remained of the year was passed away
from home.

The year following did not open with favourable omen, both the
child and its mother having severe illness. The former rallied, how-
ever, and "little Dora is getting on bravely, thank God!" was his
bulletin of the early part of February. Soon after, it was resolved to
make trial of Great Malvern for Mrs. Dickens; and lodgings were
taken there in March. Dickens and her sister accompanying her, and
the children being left in London. "It is a most beautiful place," he
wrote to me (15 March). "O Heaven, to meet the Cold Waterers (as
I did this morning when I went out for a shower-bath) dashing down

'.\

544

The Life of Charles Dickens

the hills, with severe expressions on their countenances, like men
doing matches and not exactly winning! Then, a young lady in a
grey polka going up the hills, regardless of legs; and meeting a
young gentleman (a bad case, I should say) with a light black silk
cap on under his hat, and the pimples of I don't know how many
douches under that. Likewise an old man who ran over a milk-child,
rather than stop! — with no neckcloth, on principle; and with his
mouth wide open to catch the morning air," He had to return to
London after the middle of March, for business connected with a
charitable Home established at Shepherd's Bush by Miss Coutts in
the benevolent hope of rescuing fallen women by testing their fitness
for emigration, frequently mentioned in his letters, and which largely
and regularly occupied his time for several years. On this occasion his
stay was prolonged by the illness of his father, whose health had been
failing latterly and graver symptoms were now spoken of. "I saw my
poor father twice yesterday," he v^Tote to me on the 27th, "the
second time between ten and eleven at night. In the morning I
thought him not so well. At night, as well as anyone in surh a
situation could be." Next day he was so much better tnat his son
went back to Malvern: but the end came suddenly. We were expecting
him at Knebworth, and I supposed that some accident had detained
him in Malvern; but at my return this letter waited me. "Devonshire
Terrace, Monday, thirty-first of March, 1851. . . . My poor father
died this morning at five and twenty minutes to six. They had sent
for me to Malvern, but I passed John on the railway. . . . Arrived
at eleven last night, and was in Keppel Street at a quarter past
eleven. He did not know me, nor anyone. He began tc sink at about
noon yesterday, and never rallied afterwards. I remained there until
he died — O so quietly. ... I hardly know what to do. I am going up
to Highgate to get the ground. Perhaps you may like to go, and I
should like it if you do. I will not leave h'^re before two o'clock, but I
must go down to Malvern again, at night. . . ." Mr. John Dickens
was laid in Highgate Cemetery on 5 April; and the stone placed over
him by the son who has made his name a famous one in England, bore
tribute to his "zealous, useful, cheerful spirit." What more is to be
said of him will be mc i becomingly said in speaking of David Copper-
fijsld. While the book was in course of being written, all that had been
best in him came more and more vividly back to its author's memory;
as time wore on, nothing else was remembered; and five years before
his own death, after using in one of his letters to me a phrase rather
out of the common with him, this was added: "I find this looks
like my poor father, whom I regard as a better man the longer
I live."

He was at this time under promise to take the chair at the General
Theatrical Fund on 14 April. Great efforts were made to relieve him
from the promise: but such special importance was attached to his
being present, ana the Fund so sorely then required help, that, no
change of day being found po isible for the actors who desired to

i h

The Life of Charles Dickens

545

ike men
idy in a
eeting a
lack silk
w many
Ik-child,
with his
eturn to
I with a
^outts in
ir fitness
[1 largely
ision his
lad been

saw my
th, "the
jrning I

su'-h a
; his son
xpecting
detained
vonshire
»r father
iiad sent
Arrived
ter past
at about
ere until
^oing up
o, and I
:k, but I
Dickens
ced over
nd, bore
is to be
Copper-
lad been
nemory;
s before
;e rather
lis looks
5 longer

General
eve him
d to his
that, no
sired to

attend, he yielded to the pressure put upon him; of which the
r^eult was to throw upon me a sad responsibility. The reader
will understand why, even at this distance of time, my allusion to
it is brief.

The train from Malvern brought him up only five minutes short of
the hour appointed for the dinner, and we first met that day at the
London Tavern. I never heard him to greater advantage than in the
speech that followed. His liking for this Fund was the fact of its not
confining its benefits to any special or exclusive body of actors, but
opening them undoubtingly to all; and he gave a description of the
kind of actor, going down to the innnitesimally small, not omitted
from such kind help, which had a half-pathetic humour in it that
makes it charming still. "In our Fund," he said, "the word exclusive-
ness is not known. We include every actor, whether he be Hamlet or
Benedict: the ghost, the bandit, or the court physician; or, in his one
person, the whole king's army. He may do the light business, or the
heavy, or the comic, or the eccentric. He may be the captain who
courts the young lady, whose uncle still unaccountably persists in
dressing himself in a costume one hundred years older than his time.
Or he may be the young lady's brother in the white gloves and
inexpressibles, whose duty in the family appears to be to listen to the
female members of it whenever they sing, and to shake hands with
everybody between all the verses. Or he may be the baron who gives
the fdte, and wi>o sits uneasily on the sofa under a canopy with the
baroness while the fete is going on. Or he may be the peasant at the
fete who conies on to the stage to swell the drinking chorus, and who,
it may hd observed, always turns his glass upside down before he
begins to drink out of it. Or he may be the clown who takes away the
doorstep of the house where the evening party is going on. Or he may
be the gentleman who issues out of the house on the faJse alarm, and
is precipitated into the area. Or, if an actress, she may be the fairy
who resides for ever in a revolving star with an occasional visit to a
bower or a palace. Or again, if an actor, he may be the armed head
of the witch's cauldron; or even that extraordinary witch concerning
whom I have observed in country places, that he is much less like
the notion formed from the description of Hopkins than the Malcolm
or Donalbain of the previous scenes. This society, in short, says,
' Be you what you may, be you actor or actress, be your path in your
profession never so high or never so low, never so haughty or never so
humble, we offer you the means of doing good to yourselves, and of
doing good to your brethren.' "

Half an hour before he rose to speak I had been called out of the
room. It was the servant from Devonshire Terrace to tell me his child
Dora was suddenly dead. She had not been strong from her birth;
but there was just at this time no cause for special fear, when un-
expected convulsions came, and the frail little life nassed awav. Mv
decision had to be formed at once; and I satisfied myself that it would
be best to permit his part of the proceedings to close before the truth

33^

' ^1

. r

!',,

546

The Life of Charles Dickens

was told to him. But as he went on, after the sentences I have quoted,
to speak of actors having to come from scenes and sickness, of
suffering, aye, even of death itself, to play their parts before us, my
part was very difficult. "Yet how often is it with all of us," he pro-
ceeded to nay, and I remember to this hour with what anguish I
listened t-* w<n<!., that had for myself alone, in all the crowded room,
thtir full 'ir ificance: "how often is it with all of us, that in our
several spheres we have to do violence to our feelings, and to hide our
hearts in carrying on this fight of life, if we would bravely discharge
in it our duties and responsibilities." In the disclosure that followed
when he left the chair, Mr. Lemon, who was present, assisted me; and
I left this good frici ) iili him next day, when I went myself to
Malvern and brought back Mrs. Dickens and her sister. The little child
lies in a grave at Highgate near that of Mr. and Mrs. John Dickens;
and on the stone which covers her is now written also her father's
name, and those of two of her brothers.

One more public discussion he took part in, before quitting London
for the rest of the summer; and what he said (it was a meeting, with
Lord Carlisle in the chair, in aid of Sanitary reform) very pregnantlv
illustrates what was remarked by me on a former page. He declared
his belief that neither education nor religion could do anything really
useful in social improvement until the way had been paved for their
ministrations by cleanliness and decency. He spoke warmly of the
services of Lord Ashley in connection with ragged schools, but he put
the case of a miserable child tempted into one of those schools out
of the noisome places in which his life was passed, and he asked what
a few hours' teaching could effect against the ever-renewed lesson of
a whole existence. "But give him, and his, a glimpse of heaven
through a little of its light and air; give them water; help them to be
clean; lighten the heavy atmosphere in which their spirits flag, and
which makes them the callous things they are; take the body of the
dead relative from the room where the living live with it, and where
such loathsome familiarity deprives death itself of awe; and then, but
not before, they will be brought willingly to hear of Him whose
thoughts were so much with the wretched, and who had compassion
for all human sorrow." He closed hy proposing Lord Ashley's health
as having preferred the higher ambition of labouring for the poor to
that of pursuing the career open to him In the service of the State;
and as having also had "the courage on all occasions to face the cant
which is the worst and commonest of all, the cant about the cant of
philanthropy." Lord Shaftesbury first dined with him in the following
year at Tavistock House.

Shortly after the Sanitary meeting, came the first Guild perform-
ances; and then Dickens left Devonshire Terrace, never to return to
it. With intervals of absence, chiefly at the Guild representations, he
stayed in his favourite Fort House by the sea until October, when
he took possession of Tavistock House. ...

It was not until the end of November, when he had settled himself

! quoted,
cness, of
e us, my
' he pro-
nguish I
sd room,
t in our
hide our
lischarge
followed
me; and
lyself to
:tle child
Dickens;
father's

London
ng, with
jgnantly
declared
ig really
for their
y of the
it he put
ools out
:ed what
[esson of
heaven
jm to be
lag, and
ly of the
id where
hen, but
n whose
apassion
s health
! poor to
le State;
the cant
; cant of
ollowing

jerform-
eturn to
tions, he
;r. when

o
«

u
•-< •

» o

H
O

u
<

Q
h)

•-•
fa
Ci«
M

a o

§a
5|
q5

2 :

(A
O

■

I himself

inh
hap
ace;
thii
Cof
I

pag
mr;
ann

Die
Cof
in s
moi
abo
defi
Chv
var
wit!
intc
aut
pas
Oct
stra
Oh,
me
insi
Sha
1
moi
dis^
no"v
was
Fie
as :J
self

!___

tree
fan

The Life of Charles Dickens

549

in his new London abode, that the book was begun (and as generally
happeued with the more important incidents of his life, though always
accidentally, begun on a Friday); but precedence is due, before any-
thing nt>re is said of Bleak House, to what remains to be said of
Cop ' ./'jtV.

It vas '.he last book written in Devonshire Terrace; and on the
page o^3i.'te is engraved a drawing by Maclise of this house where so
mr uy <. ' ' .ckens's masterpieces were composed, do e on the first
anriiverfiiy of the day when his daughter Kate was bom.

"david copperfield"

1850

Dickens never stood so high in reputation as at the completion of
Copperfield. From the first it had surpassed in popularity, though not
in sale, all his previous books excepting Pickwick. "You gratify me
more than I can tell you," he wrote to Lytton, "by what you say
about Copperfield, because I hope myself that some heretofore
deficient qualities are there." If the power was not greater than in
Chuzzlewit, the subject had more attractiveness; there was more
variety of incident, with a freer play of character; and there was
withal a suspicion, which though" general and vague had sharpened
interest not a little, that underneath the fiction lay something of the
author's life. How much was not known by the world until he had
passed away. When engaged upon its close he had written thus (21
October, 1850): "I am within three pages of the shore; and am
strangely divided, as usual in such cases, between sorrow and joy.
Oh, my dear Forster, if I were to say half of what Copperfield makes
me feel to-night, how strangely, even to you, I should be turned
inside-out! I seem to be sending some part of myself into the
Shadowy World."

To be acquainted with English literature is to know that into its
most famous prose fiction autobiography has entered largely in
disguise, and that the characters most familiar to us in the English
novel had originals in actual life. Smollett never wrote a story that
was not in some degree a recollection of his own adventures; and
Fielding, who put something of his wife into all his heroines, had been
as fortunate in finding, not Trulliber only, but Parson Adams him-
self, among his living experiences. To come later down, there was

tixTjiixijxj xiau. nuX

% ■

treasured up something to give minuter reality to the people of his
fancy; and we know exactly whom to look for in Dandie Dinmont

I-* *i

-I?

550 The Life of Charles Dickens

and Jcnathar. Oldbuck, in the office of Alan Fairford and the sick-
room of Crystal Croftangry. We are to observe also that it is never
anything complete that is thus taken from life by a genuine writer,
but only leading traits, or such as may give greater finish; that the
fine artist will embody in his portraiture of one person his experiences
cf fifty; and that this would have been Fielding's answer to Trulliber
if he had objected to the pigsty, and to Adams if he had sought to
make a case of scandal out of the affair in Mrs. Slipslop's bedroom
Such questioning befell Dickens repeatedly in the course of his
\vritmgs. where he freely followed, as we have seen, the method thus
common to the masters in his art; but there was an instance of alleged
wrong m the course of Copperfield where he felt his vindication to be
hardly complete, and what he did thereupon was characteristic.

"I have had the queerest adventure this morning," he wrote {28
December, 1849) on the eve of his tenth number, "the receipt of the
enclosed from Miss Moucher! It is serio-comic, but there is no doubt
one IS wrong in being tempted to such a use of power." Thinking a
grotesque little oddity among hib acquaintance to be safe from
recognition he had done what Smollett did sometimes, but never
Fielding, and give" way, in the first outburst of fun that had broken
out around the fancy, to the temptation of copying too closely
peculiarities of figure and face amounting in effect to deformity He
was shocked at discovering the pain he had given, and a copy is
before me of the assurances by way of reply which he at once sent
to the complainant. That he was grieved and surprised beyond
meas.2re. That he had not intended her altogether. That all his
characters, being made up out of many people, were composite and
never individual. That the chair (for table) and other matters were
uncoubtedly from her, but that other traits were not hers at all- and
that m Miss Moucher's "Ain't I volatile " his friends had quite cor-
rectly recognised the favourite utterance of a different person, '^hat
he felt nevertheless he had done wrong, and would now do anything
to repair it. That he had intended to employ the character in an
unpleasant way, but he would, whatever the risk or inconvenience,
change it all, so that nothing but an agreeable impression should be
left. The reader will remember how this was managed, and that the
thirty-second chapter went far to undo what the twenty-second had

dt^:e , .

In the book that followed Copperfield, characters appeared having
resemblances in manner and speech to distinguished writers too vivid
to be mistaken by their personal friends. To Lawrence JSoythorn
under whom Landor figured, no objection was made; but Harold
Skimpole, recognisable for Leigh Hunt, led to much remark; the
difference being, that ludicrous traits were employed in the first to
enrich without impairing an attractive person in the tale, whereas to
the last was assigned a part in the plot which no fascinating foibles or
gaieties of speech could redeem from contempt. Though a want cf
consideration was thus shown to the friend "

•UrVlQ|Y»

•M ■*,

The Life of Charles Dickens

551

I I

^hat

would be likely to recall to many readers, it is nevertheless very cer-
tain that the intention of Dickens was not at first, or at ariy tinij*, an
unkind one. He erred from thoughtlessness only. What led him to the
subject at all, he has himself stated. Hunt's philosophy of moneyed
obligations, always, though loudly, half jocosely proclaimed, and his
ostentations wilfulness in the humouring of that or any other theme
on which he cared for the time to expatiate, had so often seemed to
Dickens to be whimsical and attractive, that, wanting an "airy
quality" for the man he invented, this of Hunt occurred to him; and
"partly for that reason, and partly, he hts since often grieved to
think, for the pleasure it afforded to find « ielightful manner repro-
ducing itself under his hand, he yielded to the temptation of too often
making the character speak like his old friend." This apology was
made after Hunt's death,* and mentioned a revision of the first
sketch, so as to render it less like, at the suggestion of two oth^r
friends of Hunt. The friends were Procter (Barry Cornwall) and
myself; the feeling having been mine from the first that the likeness
was too like. Procter did not immediately think so, but a little
reflection brought him to that opinion. "You will see from the en-
closed," Dickens wrote (17 March, 1852), "that Procter is much of
my mind. I will nevertheless go through the character again in the
course of the afternoon, and soften down words here and there."
But before the day closed Procter had again written to him, and
next morning this was the result. "I have again gone over every part
of it very carefully, and I think I have made it much less like. I have
also changed Leonard to Harold. I have no right to give Hunt pain,
and I am so bent upon not doing it that I wish you would look at all
the proof once more, and indicate any particular place in which you
feel it particularly like. Whereupon I will alter the place."

Upon the whole the alterations were considerable, but the radical
wrong remained. The pleasant sparkling airy talk, which could not
be mistaken, identified with odious qualities a friend only known to
the writer by attractive ones; and for this there was no excuse. Per-
haps the only person acquainted with the original who failed to
recognise the copy, was the original himself (a common case); but
good-natured friends in time told Hunt everything, and painful
explanations followed, where notiiing was possible to Dickens but
what amounted to a friendly evasion of the points really at issue.
The time for redress had gone. I yet well remember with wh£.v eager
earnestness, on one of these occasions, he strove to set Hunt up again
in his own esteem. "Separate in your own mind," he said to him,
' ' what you see of yourself from what other people tell you that they
see. As it has given you so much pain, 1 take it at its worst, and say 1
am deeply sorry, and that I fee) I did wrong in doing it. I should
otherwise have taken it at its best, and ridden off upon what I
strongly feel to be the truth, that there is nothing in it that should

1 ?

In a paper m All the Ysut Rouui,

552

The Life of Charles Dickens

ii '

have given you pain. Everyone in writing must speak from points of
his experience, and so I of mine with you: but when I have felt it was
going too close I stopped myself, and the most blotted parts of my
MS. are those in which I have been striving hard to make the im-
pression I was writing from, Mwlike you. The diary-writing I took
from Haydon, not from you. I now first learn from yourself that you
ever set anything to music, and I could not have copied that from
you. The character is not you, for there are traits in it common to
fifty thousand people besides, and I did not fancy you would ever
recognise it. Under similar disguises my own father and mother are in
my books, and you might as well see your likeness in Micawber."
The distinction is that the foibles of Mr. Micawber and of Mrs. Nickle-
by, however laughable, make neither of them in speech or character
less lovable; and that this is not to be said of Skimpole's. The kindly
or unkindly impression makes all the difference where liberties are
taken with a friend; and even this entirely favourable condition will
rot excuse the practice to many, where near relatives are concerned.

For what formerly was said of the Micawber resemblances, Dickens
has been sharply criticised; and in like manner it was thought objec-
tionable in Scott that for the closing scenes of Crystal Croftangry he
should have found the original of his fretful patient at the death-bed
of his own father. Lockhart, who tells us this, adds with a sad sig-
nificance that he himself lived to see the curtain fall at Abbotsford
upon even such another scene, bat to no purpose will such objections
still be made. All great novelists will continue to use their experiences
of nature and fact, whencesoever derivable; and a remark made to
Lockhart by Scott himself suggests their vindication. "If a man will
paint from nature, he will be most likely to interest and amuse those
who are daily looking at it."

The Micawber offence otherwise was not grave. We have seen in
what way Dickens was moved or inspired by the rough lessons of his
boyhood, and the groundwork of the character was then undoubtedly
laid; but the rhetorical exuberance impressed itself upon him later,
and from this, as it expanded and developed in a thousand amusing
ways, the full-length figure took its great charm. Better illustration
of it could not perhaps be given than by passages from letters of
Dickens, written long before Micawber was thought of, in which this
peculiarity of his father found frequent and always agreeable
expression. Several such have been given in this work from time to
time, and one or two more may here be added. It is proper to preface
them by saying that no one could know the elder Dickens without
secretly liking him the better for these flourishes of speech, which
adapted themselves so readily to his gloom as well as to his cheerful-
ness, that it was difficult not to fancy they had helped him consider-
ably in both, and had rendered more tolerable to him, if also more
possible, the shade and sunshine of his chequered life. "If you should
have an opportunity, pendente lite, as my fathf r would observe —
indeed did on some memorable ancient occasions when he informed

The Life of Charles Dickens

553

me that the ban-dogs would shortly have him at bay"— Dickens
wrote m December 1847. "I have a letter from my father" (May
1841) "lamenting the fine weather, invoking congenial tempests, and
mformmg me that it will not be possible for him to stay Tiore than
another year in Devonshire, as he must then proceed to Paris to con-
solidate Augustus's French." "There has arrived." he writes from the
Peschiere m September 1844, "a characteristic letter for Kate from
my father. He dates it Manchester, and says he has reason to believe
that he will be in town with the pheasants, on or about the first of
October. He has been with Fanny in the Isle of Man for nearly two
months: finding there, as he goes on to observe, troops of friends, and
every description of continental luxury at a cheap rate." Describing
in the same year the departure from Genoa of an English physician
and acquaintance, he adds: "We are very sorry to lose the bei.sfit
of his advice— or, as my father would say, to be deprived, to a
certain extent, of the concomitant advantages, whatever they m?^'
be. resulting from his medical skill, such as it is, and his professional
attendance, in so far as it may be so considered." Thus also it
delighted Dickens to remember that it was of one of his connections
his father wrote a celebrated sentence; "And I must express my
tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the least of it)
extremely problematical": and that it was to another, who had been
insisting somewhat obtrusively on dissenting and nonconformist
superiorities, he addressed wordiP which deserve to be no less cele-
brated; "The Supreme Being must be an entirely different individual
from what I have every reason to believe Him to be, if He would care
in the least for the society of your relations." There was a laugh in the
enjoyment of all this, no doubt, but with it much personal fondness;
and the feeling of the creator of Micawber, as be thus humoured and
remembered the foibles of his original, found its counterpart in that
of his readers for the creation itself, as its part was played ou+ in the
story. Nobody likes Micawber less for his follies; and D.ckens liked his
father more, the more he recalled his whimsical qualities. "The longer
I live, the better man I think him," he exc):iimed afterwards. The
fact and the fancy had united whatever was most grateful to him in
both.

it is a tribute to the generally healthful and manly tone 01 the
story of ^ypper field that such should be the outcome o^ the eccentrici-
ties 01 mis leading personage in it; and the juperirr:. in this respect
of Micawber over Skimpole is one of the many indications of the
inferiority of Bleak House to its predecessor. With leading resem-
^•lancc 3 that make it difficult to say which characi. ■ best represents
the principle or no principle of imp-cuniosity, there cannot be any
doubt which has the advantage in moral and intellectual development .
I:. IS grnuine humour against personal satire. Between the worldly cir-
c -imstances of the two, there is nothing to chons- • but as vO everything
els<> xt Is the difference be tv\ een shabbiness ' greatness. Skimpole's
sunny talk might be exoected to olease s much

€*t3 iTJLaVCt TT L^lwl. i.

f' ? f-

j II

If!

33!

554

The Life of Charles Dickens

gorgeous speech, the design of both being to take the edge off poverty
But in the one we have no relief from attendant meanness or distress,
and we drop down from the airiest fancies into sordidness and pain;
whereas in the other nothing pitiful or merely selfish ever touches us.
At its lowest depth of what is worst, we never doubt that something
better must turn up; and of a man who sells his bedstead that he may
entertain his friend, we altogether refuse to think nothing but badly.
This is throughout the free and cheery style of Copperfield. The
masterpieces of Dickens s humour are not in it; but he has nowhere
given such variety of play to his invention, and the book is un-
approached among his writings for its completeness of effect and
uniform pleasantness of tone.

What has to be said hereafter of those writings generally, will
properly restrict what is said here, as in previous instances, mainly to
personal illustration. The Copperfield disclosures formerly made will
for ever connect the book with the author's individual story; but too
much has been assumed, from those revelations, of a full identity of
Dickens with his hero, and of a supposed intention that his own
character as well as parts of his career should be expressed in the
narrative. It is right to warn the reader as to this. He can judge for
himself how far the childish experiences are likely to have given the
turn to Dickens's genius; whether their bitterness had so burnt into
his nature, as, in the hatred of oppression, the revolt against abuse
of power, and the war with injustice under every form displayed in
his earliest books, to have reproduced itself only; and to what extent
mere compassion for his own childhood may ac^ nt for the strange
fascination always exerted over him by child ■ -ing and sorrow.
But, many as are the resemblances in Copp 's adventures to

portions of those of Dickens, and often as re£e<v ns occur to David
which no one intimate with Dickens could fail to recognise as but the
reproduction of his, it would be the greatest mista ke to imagine any-
thing like a complete identity of the fictitious novelist with the real
one, beyond the Hungerford scenes; or to suppose that the youth,
who then received his first harsh schooling in life, came out of it as
little harmed or hardened as David did. The language of the fiction
reflects only faintly the narrative of the actual fact; and the man
whose character it helped to form was expressed not less faintly in
the impulsive impressionable youth, incapable of resisting*the leading
of others, and only disciplined into self-control by the later griefs
of his entrance . into manhood. Here was but another proof how
thoroughly Dickens understood his calling, and that to weave fact
\ h fiction unskilfully would be only to make truth less true.

The character of the hero of the novel finds indeed his right place
in the story he is supposed to tell, rather by unlikeness than by
likeness to Dickens, even where intentional resemblance might seem
to be prominent. Take autobiography as a design to show that any
man's life may be as a mirror of existence to all men, and the
iidividual career becomes altogether secondary to the variety of

f poverty
r distress,
and pain;
)uches us.
lomething
it he may
mt badly.
field. The
; nowhere
ok is un-
;fiect and

•ally, will
mainly to
made will
■f, but too
ientity of
: his own
ed in the
judge for
given the
>urnt into
nst abuse
played in
lat extent
le strange
d sorrow,
ntures to
to David
13 but the
gine any-
ti the real
le youth,
it of it as
he fiction

the man
faintly in
le leading
iter griefs
•roof how
eave fact
rue.
ght place

than by

ight seem

that any

and the
'ariety of

The Life of Charles Dickens

555

experiences received and rendered back in it. This particular form in
imaginative literature has too often led to the indulgence of mental
analysis, metaphysics, and sentiment, all in excess: but Dickens was
carried safely over these allurements by a healthy judgment and
sleepless creative fancy; and even the method of his narrative is
more simple here than it generally is in his books. His imaginative
growths have less luxuriance of underwood, and the crowds of
external images always rising so vividly before him are more within
control.

Consider Copperfield thus in his proper place in the story, and
sequence as well as connection v/ill be given to the varieties of its
childish adventure. The first warm nest of love in which his vain
fond mother, and her quaint kind servant, cherish him; the quick-
following contrast of hard dependence and servile treatment; the
escape from that premature and dwarfed maturity by natural relapse
into a more perfect childhood; the then leisurely growth of emotions
and faculties into manhood; these are component parts of a character
consistently drawn. The sum of its achievement is to be a successful
cultivation of letters; and often as such imaginary discipline has been
the theme of fiction, there are not many happier conceptions of it.
The ideal and real parts of the boy's nature receive development in
the proportions which contribute best to the end desired; the readiness
for impulsive attachments that had put him into the leading of
others, has underneath it a base of truthfulness on which at last he
rests in safety; the practical man is the outcome of the fanciful youth;
and a more than equivalent for the graces of his visionary days, is
found in the active sympathies that life has opened to him. Many
experiences have come within its range, and his heart has had room
for all. Our interest in him cannot but be increased by knowing how
much he expresses of what the author had himself gone through; but
David includes far less than this, and infinitely more.

That the incidents arise easily, and to the very end connect them-
selves naturally and unobtrusively with the characters of which they
are apar*:, is to be said perhaps more truly of this than of any other of
Dickens's novels. There is a profusion of distinct and distinguishable
people, and a prodigal wealth of detail; but unity of drift or purpose
is apparent always, and the tone is uniformly right. By the course of
the events we learn the value of self-denial and patience, quiet
endurance of unavoidable iWs, strenuous effort against ills remediable;
and everything in the fortunes of the actors warns us, to strengthen
on? generous emotions and to guard the purities of home. It is easy
t- us to account for the supreme popularity of Copperfield, without
the addi ■'>n that it can hardly have had a reader, man or lad, who did
not discover that he was something of a Copperfield himself. Child-
hood and youth live again for all of us in its raarveWous boy-expe-
riences. Mr. Micawber's presence must not prevent my saying that it
does not take the lead of the other novels in humorous creation; but in

the usfi of hiimonr to brinor nnf r«rr»minATTfltr +Vio 1ii/4i^f^iio in ««,,
■ - ■■" any

I m

V 1'

( ^^ ♦

556

The Life of Charles Dickens

,i'

object or incident without excluding or weakening its most enchant-
ing sentiment, it stands decidedly first. It is the perfection of English
mirth. We are apt to resent the exhibition of too much goodness, but
it is here so qualified by oddity as to become not merely palatable but
attractive; and even pathos is heightened by what in other hands
would only make it comical. That there are also faults in the book is
certain, but none that are incompatible with the most masterly
qualities; and a book becomes everlasting by the fact, not that faults
are not in it, but that genius nevertheless is there.

Of its method, and its author's generally, in the delineation ot
character, something will have to be said on a later page. The author's
own favourite people in it, I think, were the Peggotty group; and
perhaps he was not far wrong. It has been their fate, as with all the
leading figures of his invention, to pass their names into the language,
and become types; and he has nowhere given happier embodiment to
that purity of homely goodness, which, by the kindly and all-
reconciling influences of humour, may exalt into comeliness and even
grandeur the clumsiest forms of humanity. What has been indicated
in the style of the book as its greatest charm is here felt most strongly.
The ludicrous so helps the pathos, and the humour so uplifts and
refines the sentiment, that mere rude affection and simple manliness
in these Yarmouth boatmen, passed through the fires of unmerited
suffering and heroic endurance, take forms half-chivalrous, half-
sublime. It is one of the cants of critical superiority to make super-
cilious mention of the serious passages in this great v/riter; but the
storm and shipwreck at the close of Copperfield, when the body of the
seducer is flung dead upon the shore amid the ruins of the home he
has wasted and by the side of the man whose heart he has broken,
the one,as unconscious of what he had failed to reach as the other of
what he has perished to save, is a description that may compare with
the most impressive in the language. And to those who, knowing
Dickens best, know what realities his books were to him, the ex-
pression of his sense of suffering in composing such passages, will have
in it not a grain of pretence or affectation. "I have been tremendously
at work these two days" (15 September), "eight hours at a stretch
yesterday, and si>: hours and a half to-day, with the Ham and Steer-
forth chapter, which has completely knocked me over — utterly
defeated me." . . .

Of the heroines who divide so equally between them the impulse,
easily swayed, not disloyal but sorely distracted affections of the
hero, the spoilt f oolishm ss and tenderness of the loving little child-
wife, Dora, is more attrav tive than the too unfailing wisdom and self-
sacrificing goodness of the angel- wife, Agnes. The scenes of the
courtship and housekeeping are matchless; and the glimpses of
Doctors' Commons, opening those views, by Mr. Spenlow, of man's
vanity of expectation and inconsistency of conduct in neglecting the
sacred duty of making a will, on which he largely moralises the day

form a backsTouTid hi^^hl'"'

enchant-
f English
ness, but
table but
er hands
e book is
masterlj-
lat faults

sation ot
author's
3up; and
:h all the
anguage.
iment to
and all-
md even
ndicated
strongly,
lifts and
lanliness
imerited
us, half-
ce super-

but the
dy of the
home he
I broken,

other of
)are with
knowing

the ex-
will have
sndously
1 stretch
id Steer-
— utterly

impulse,
is of the
tie child-
and self-
s of the
npses of
of man's
Dting the
1 the day

The Life of Charles Dickens

557

David's domesticities. This was among the reproductions of personal
experience in the book; but it was a sadder knowledge that came
with the conviction some years later, that David's contrasts in his
earliest married life between his happiness enjoyed and his happiness
once anticipated, the "vague unhappy loss or want of something"
of which he so frequently complains, reflected also a personal expe-
rience which had not been supplied in fact so successfully as in
fiction.

; r 111

! ;;

BOOK SEVENTH

CONTINENT REVISITED

1852-6. mj. 40-43

I. "Bleak House" and "Hard Times."
II. Home Incidents.

III. In Switzerland and Italy.

IV. Three Summers at Boulogne.
V. Residence in Paris.

■Itii

f i 'I
I

.i , ,,.

559

'Mk

"bleak house" and "hard times"
1852-6

These books were written between i 851 and 1854, when for a portion
of the time the authc^r was living abroad; and, reserving to another
section the home life that filled the same interval, some account of
both novels will be given here. Little Dornt, though begun in Paris,
was not finished until some time after the continental residence had
closed, <nd belongs therefore to a later division. David Copperfield
had be( i written between the opening of 1849 and October 1850, its
publication covering that time; and its sale, which has since taken
the 1' id of all his books but Pickwick, never then exceeding twenty-
five thousand. But though it remained thus steady for the time, the
popularity of the book added largely to the sale of its successor.
Bleak House was begun in his new abode of Tavistock House at the
end of November 185 1; was carried on, amid the excitements of the
Guild performances, through the following year; was finished at
Boulogne in the August of 1853; and was dedicated to "his friends
and companions in the Guild of Literature and Art." Hard Times was
planned and begun in the winter of 1853, amid the busy preparation
of Christmas theatricals for his children to be presently described;
was finished at Boulogne in the summer of 1854; and was dedicated to
Carlyle.

The autobiographical form of Copperfield was in some respect con-
tinued in Bleak House by means of extracts from the personal
relation of its heroine. But the distinction between the narrative
of David and the diary of Esther, like that between Micawber and
Skimpole, marks the superiority of the first to its successor. . . .

What in one sense is a merit, however, may in others be a defect,
and this book has suffered by the very completeness with which its
Chancery moral is worked out. The didactic in Dickens's earlier
novels derived its strength from being merely incidental to interest
of a higher and more permanent kind, and not in a small degree from
the playful sportiveness and fancy that lighted up its graver illus-
trations. Here it is of sterner stuff, too little relieved, and all-
pervading. The fog so marvellously painted in the opening chapter
has ha'-dly cleared away when there arises, in Jarndyce v. Jarndyce,
as bad an atmosphere to breathe in; and thenceforward to the end,
clinging round the people of the story as thev come or »q, in dreary
mist or in h.avy cloud, it is rarely absent. Dickens°has himself

561

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(716) 873-4503

L1>^

562

The Life of Charles Dickens

described his purpose to have been to dwell on the romantic side of
familiar things. But it is the romance of discontent and misery, with
a very restless dissatisfied moral, and is too much brought about by
agencies disagreeable and sordid. The Guppys, Wee vies, Snagsbys,
Chadbands, Krooks, and Smallweeds, even the Kenges, Vholeses, and
Tulkinghorns, are much too real to be pleasant; and the necessity
becomes urgent for the reliefs and contrasts of a finer humanity.
These last are not wanting; yet it must be said that we hardly escape,
even with them, into the old freedom and freshness of the author's
imaginative worMs, and that the too conscious unconsciousness of
Esther flings something of a shade on the radiant goodness of John
Jarndyce himself. Nevertheless there are very fine delineations in the
story. The crazed little Chancery lunatic, Miss Flite; the loud-voiced
tender-souled Chancery victim, Gridley; the poor good-hearted youth,
Richard, broken up in life and character by the suspense of the
Chancery suit on whose success he is to "begin the world," believin^
himself to be saving money when he is stopped from squandering it!
and thinking that having saved it he is entitled to fling it away;
trooper George, with the Bagnets and their household, where the
most ludicrous points are more forcible for the pathetic touches
underlying them; the Jellyby interior, and its philanthropic strong-
minded mistress, placid and smiling amid a household muddle out-
muddling Chancery itself; the model of deportment, Turveydrop the
elder, whose relations to the young people, whom he so superbly
patronises by being dependent on them for everything, touch de*-
lightfuUy some subtle points of truth; the inscrutable Tulkinghorn,
and the immortal Bucket; all these, and especially the last, have
been added by this book to the list of people more intimately and
permanently known to us than the scores of actual familiar acquaint-
ance whom we see around us living and dying. . . .

. . . Dickens was encouraged and strengthened in his design of
assailing Chancery abuses and delays by receiving, a few days after
the appearance of his first number, a striking pamphlet on the subject
containing details so apposite that he took from them, withr t change
in any material point, the memorable case related in hib fifteenth
chapter. Anyone who examines the tract will see how exactly true is
the reference to it made by Dickens in his preface. "The case of
Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made
public by a disinterested person who was professionally acquainted
with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end." The
suit, of which all particulars are given, affected a single farm, in value
not more than ;^i2oo, but all that its owner possessed in the world,
against which a bill had been filed for a ;^3oo legacy left in the will
bequeathing the farm. In reality there was only one defendant, but
in the bill, by the rule of the Court, there were seventeen; and, after
two years had been occupied over the seventeen answers, everything
had to begin over again because an eighteenth had been accidentally
omitted. "What a mockery ol justice this is," says Mr. Challinor,

glad

The Life of Charles Dickens

:ic side of
lery, with
about by
Jnagsbys,
leses, and
necessity
umanity.
[y escape,

author's
usness of
s of John
ms in the
id-voiced
id youth,
je of the
belie vin^
dering it,
it away;
'here the

touches
c strong-
idle out-
drop the
superbly
ouch de-
linghorn,
Lst, have
tely and
.cquaint-

iesign of
ays after
B subject
t change
fifteenth
y true is
! case of
ce, made
juainted
>d." The
in value
e world,
the will
ant, but
ad, after
jrything
dentally
tiallinor,

563

"the facts speak for themselves, and I can personally vouch for their
accuracy. The costs already incurred in reference to this ;^30o legacy
are not less than from ;^8oo to ;{9oo, and the parties are no forwarder.
Already near live years nave passed by, and the plaintiff would be
glad to give up his chance of the legacy if he could escape from his
liability to costs, while the defendants who own the little farm left
by the testator, have scarce any other prospect before them than
ruin."

HOME INCIDENTS
1853-4-5

The first number of Bleak House had appeared in March 1852, and
its sale was mentioned in the same letter from Tavistock House
( 7 March) which told of his troubles in the tale at its outset, and of
other anxieties incident to the common lot and inseparable equally
from its joys and sorrows, through which his life was passing at the
time. "My Highgate journey yesterday was a sad one. Sad to think
how all journeys tend that way. I went up to the cemetery to look
for a piece of ground. In no hope of a Government bill, and in a foolish
dislike to leaving the little child shut up in a vault there, I think of
pitching a tent under the sky. . . . Nothing has taken place here:
but I believe, "every hour, that it must next hour. Wild ideas are upon
me of going to Paris — Rouen — Switzerland — somewhere — and writ-
ing the remaining two-thirds of the next No. aloft in some queer inn
room. I have been hanging over it, and have got restless. Want a
change I think. Stupid. We were at 30,000 when I last heard. ... I
am sorry to say that after all kinds of evasions, I am obliged to dine
at ^ ansdowne House to-morrow. But maybe the affair will come off
to-night and give me an excuse! 1 enclose proofs of No. 2. Browne
has done Skimpole, and helped to make him singularly unlike the
great original. Look it over, and say what occurs to you. . . . Don't
you think Mrs. Gaskell charming? With one ill-considered thing that
looks like a want of natural perception, I think it masterly." His last
allusion is to the story by a delightful writer then appearing in
Household V/ords; and of the others it only needs to say that the
family affair which might have excused his absence at the Lansdowne
dinner did not come off until four days later. On 13 March his last
child was born; and the boy, his seventh son, bears his godfather's
distinguished name, Edward Bulwer Lytton.

The inability to "grind sparks out of this dull blade," as he
characterised his present labour at Bleak House, still fretting him, he

Ti! i

564

The Life of Charles Dickens

struck out a scheme for Paris. "I could not get to Switzerland very
well at this time of year. The Jura would be covered with snow. And
if I went to Geneva I don't know where I might not go to." It ended
at last in a flight to Dover; but he found time before he left, amid
many occupations and some anxieties, for a good-natured journey to
Walworth to see a youth rehearse who was supposed to have talents
for the stage, and he was able to gladden Mr. Toole's friends by
thin] ing favourably of his chances of success. "I remember what I
once myself wanted in that way," he said, "and I should like to
serve him." . . .

Before the year closed, the time to which his publishing arrange-
ments with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans were limited had expu-ed,
but at his suggestion the fourth share in such books as he might write,
which they had now received for eight years, was continued to them
on the understanding that the publishers' percentage should no
longer be charged in the partnership accounts, and with a power
reserved to himself to withdraw when he pleased. In the new year his
first adventure was an ovation in Birmingham, where a silver-gilL
salver and a diamond ring were presented to him, as well for eloquent
service specially rendered to the Institution, as in general testimony
of "varied literary acquirem<-nts, genial philosophy, and high moral
teaching." A great banquet allowed on Twelfth Night, made memor-
able by an offer to give a couple of readings from his books at the
following Christmas, in aid of the new Midland Institute. It might
seem to have been drawn from him as a grateful return for the
enthusiastic gieeting of his entertainers, but it was in his mind before
he left London. It was his first formal undertaking to read in public.
His eldest son had now left Eton, and the boy's wishes pointing at
the time to a mercantile career, he was sent to Leipzig for completion
of his education. At this date it seemed to me that the overstrain of
attempting too much, brought upon him by the necessities of his
weekly periodical, became first apparent in Dickens. Not unfrequently
a complaint strange upon his lips fell from him. " Hypochondriacal
whisperings tell me that I am rather overworked. The spring does
not seem to fly back again directly,, as it always did when I put my
own work aside, and had nothing else to do. Yet I have everything
to keep me going with a brave heart. Heaven knows !" Courage and
hopefulness he might well derive from the increasing sale of Bleak
House, which had risen to nearly forty th-^usand; but he could no
longer bear easily what he carried so lightly of old, and enjoyments
with work, were too much for him. "What with Bleak House and
Household Words and Child's History" (he dictated from week to
week the papers which formed that little book, and cannot be said
to have quite hit the mark with it), "and Miss Coutts's Home, and
the invitations to feasts and festivals, I really feel as if my head would
split like a fired shell if I remained here." He tried Brighton first, but
did not find it answer and retui-ned. A few days of unalloyed enjoy-
ment were afterwards given to the visit of his excellent American

erland very
snow. And
." It ended
i left, amid
. journey to
lave talents
friends by
ber what I
luld like to

ig arrange-
id expired,
light write,
ed to them
should no
bh a power
ew year his
L silver-gi1 .
3r eloquent
. testimony
high moral
de memor-
)oks at the
3. It might
rn for the
lind before

I in public,
pointing at
:ompletion
erstrain of
ities of his
frequently
hondriacal
pring does

I I put my
everything
)urage and
e of Bleah
3 could no
njoyments
House and
a week to
lOt be said
3ome, and
ead would
Q first, but
^ed enjoy-

American

The Life of Charles Dickens

II |l:

565

friend Felton; and on 13 June he was again in Boulogne, thankin-r
heaven for escape from a breakdown. " If I had substituted anybody '1
knowledge of myself for my own, and lingered in London, I never
could have goi through." . . .

He completed Bleak House by the third week of August, and it was
resolved to celebrate the event by a two months' trip to Italy in
company with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg. The start
was to be made from Boulogne in the middle of October, when he
would send his family home; and he described the intervening weeks
as a fearful "reaction and prostration of laziness " only broken by
the Child's History. At the end of September he wrote: "I finished the
little History yesterday, and am trying to think of something for the
Christmas number. After which I shall knock off; having had quite
enough to do, small as it would have seemed to me at any other time
since I finished Bleak House." He added, a week before his departure'
"I get letters from Genoa and Lausanne as if I were going to stay in
each place at least a month. If I were to measure my deserts by
people's remembrance of me, I should be a prodigy of intolerability
Have recovered my Italian, which I had all but forgotten, and am
one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness."

From this trip, of which the incidents have an interest independent
of my ordinary narrative, Dickens was home again in the middle of
December 1853, and kept his promise to his Birmingham friends by
reading in their Town Hall his Christmas Carol on the 27th, and his
Cricket on the Hearth on the 29th. The enthusiasm was great, and he
consented to read his Carol a second time, on Friday the 30th, if
seats were reserved for working men at prices within their means.
The result was an addition of between four and five hundred pounds
to the funds for establishment of the new Institute; and a prettily
worked flower-basket in silver, presented to Mrs. Dickens, com-
memorated these first public readings "to nearly six thousand people,"
and the design they had generously helped. Other applications then

followed to such extent that limits to compliance had to be put.
He nevertheless soon found the question rising again with the same
importunity; his own position to it being always that of a man assent-
ing against his will that it should rest in abeyance. But nothing
further was resolved on yet. The readings mentioned came o£E as
promised, in aid of public objects; and besides others two years later
for the family of a friend, he had given the like liberal help to institutes
in Folkestone, Chatham, and again in Birmingham, Peterborough.
Sheffield, Coventry, and Edinburgh, before the question settled itselt
finally in the announcement for paid public readings issued by him
in 1858. ...

Then came the beginning of Nobody's Fault, as Little Dorrit con-
tinued to be called by him up to the eve of its publication; a flight to
Folkestone, to help his sluggish fancy; and his return to London in
October, to preside at a dinner to Thackeray on his going to lecture
in America. ...

\ I

i ii

566

The Life of Charles Dickens

Dickens went to Paris early in October, and at its close was brought
again to London by the sudden death of a friend, much deplored by
himself, and still more so by a distinguished lady who had his loyal
service at all times. An incident before his return to France is worth
brief relation. He had sallied out for one of his night walks, full of
thoughts of his story, one wintry rainy evening (8 November), and
"pulled himself up," outside the door of Whitechapel Workhouse, at
a strange sight which arrested him there. Against the dreary en-
closure of the house were leaning, in the midst of the down-pouring
rain and storm, what seemed to be seven heaps of rags: "dumb, wet,
silent horrors," he described them, "sphinxes set up against that dead
wall, and no one likely to be at the pains of solving them until the
General Overthrow." He sent in his card to the Master. Against him
there was no ground of complaint; he gave prompt personal attention;
but the casual ward was full, and there was no help. The rag-heaps
were all girls, and Dickens gave each a shilling. One girl, "twenty or
so," had been without food a day and night. "Look at me," she said,
as she clutched the shilling, and without thanks shuffled off. So with
the rest. There was not a single "thank you." A crowd meanwhile,
only less poor than these objects of misery, had gathered round the
scene; but though they saw the seven shillings given away they asked
for no relief to themselves, they recognised in t heir sad wild way the
other greater wretchedness, and made room in silence for Dickens to
walk on.

Not mote tolerant of the way in which laws meant to be most
humane are too often administered in England, he left in a day or
two to resume his Little Dorrit in Paris. But before his life there is
described, some sketches from his holiday trip to Italy with Mr.
Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg, and from his three summer
visits to Boulogne, claim to themselves two intervening chapters.

iir

IN SWITZERLAND AND ITALY
1853

Before October closed, the travellers had reached Genoa, having
been thirty-one consecutive hours on the road from Milan. They
arrived in somewhat damaged condition, and took up their lodging
in the top rooms of the Croce di Malta, "overlooking the port and
sea pleasantly and airily enough, but it was no joke to get so high,
and the apartment is rather vast and faded."* The warmth of personal
greefting that here awaited Dickens was given no less to the friends
who accompanied him, and though the reader may not share in such

The Life of Charles Dickens

kvas brought
deplored by
ad his loyal
ace is worth
aiks, full of
smber), and
jrkhouse, at
dreary en-
>wn-pouring
dumb, wet,
st that dead
m until the
\gainst him
il attention;
le rag-heaps
"twenty or
3," she said,
off. So with
meanwhile,
1 round the
' they asked
ild way the
■ Dickens to

to be most
in a day or
life there is
y with Mr.
ree summer
chapters.

567

loa, having
[ilan. They
leir lodging
le port and
jet so high,
of personal
the friends
tare in such

private confidences as would show the sensation created by his
reappearance, and the jovial hours that were passed among old
associates, he will perhaps be interested to know how far the inter-
vening years had changed the aspect of things and places made
pleasantly familiar to us in his former letters. The voyage thence
to Naples, written from the latter place, is too capital a description
to be lost. The steamer in which they embarked was "the new express
English ship," but they found her to be already more than full of
passengers from Marseilles (among them an old friend. Sir Emerson
Tennent, with his family), and everything in confusion. There were
no places at the captain's table, dinner had to be taken on deck, no
berth or sleeping accommodation was available, and heavy first-class
fares had to be paid. Thus they made their way to Leghorn, where
worse awaited them. The authorities proved to be not favourable to
the "crack" English-officered vessel (she had just been started for
the India mail); and her papers not being examined in time, it was
too late to steam away again that day, and she Jiad to lie all night
long off the lighthouse. "The scene on board beggars description.
Ladies on the tables; gentlemen under the tables; bedroom appliances
not usually beheld in public airing themselves in positions where
soup-tureens had been lately developing themselves; and ladies and
gentlemen lying indiscriminately on the open deck, arranged like
spoons on a sideboard. No mattresses, no blankets, nothing. Towards
midnight attempts were made, by means of awning and flags, to
make this latter scene remotely approach an Australian encampment;
and we three (Collins, Egg, and self) lay together on the bare planks
covered with our coats. We were all gradually dozing off, when a
perfectly tropical rain fell, and in a moment drowned the whole ship.
The rest of the n ^^ht we 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
extraordinary. . . . There were excellent officers aboard, and, in
the morning, the first mate lent me his cabin to wash in — ^which I
afterwards lent to Egg and Collins. Then we, the Emerson Tennents,
the captain, the doctor, and the second officer, went off on a jaunt
together to Pisa, as the ship was to lie all day at Leghorn. The captain
was a capital fellow, but I led him, facetiously, such a life the whole
day, that I got most things altered at night. Emerson Tennent's son,
with the greatest amiability, insisted on turning out of his state-
room for me, and I got a good bed there. The store-room down by
the hold was opened for Collins and Egg; 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 a friend
of ours 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 armchair, and all-night-long fell head
foremost, once every five minutes, on Egg, who slept on the counter

iil

I I ,

' ■ Hi

568

The Life of Charles Dickens

I!,!; .,;;

SilH

>r dresser. Last night, I had the steward'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, all 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 200 people — provided with boats, at the utmost
sf retch, for one hundred perhaps. I could not help thinking what
would happen if we met with any accident: the crew being chiefly
Maltese, and evidently fellov/s who would cut off alone in the largest
boat, on the least alarm; the speed very high; and the running, thro'
all the narrow rocky channels. Thank God, however, here we are."
A whimsical postscript closed the an.asing narrative. "We towed
from Civita Vecchia, the entire Greek navy, I believe; consisting of
a little brig-of-war with no guns, fitted as a steamer, but disabled by
having burnt the bottoms of her boilers out, 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 ou board to put those valuables away, if he
hadn't worn them — which he consequently did, all night. Whenever
anything was wanted to be done, as slackening the tow-rope or any-
thing of that sort, our officers roared at this miserable potentate, in
violent English, through a speaking trumpet; of which he couldn't
have understood a word in the most fa\ ourable circumstances. So
he did all the wrong things first, and the right thing always last.
The absence of any knowledge of anything but English on the part
of the officers and stewards was most ridiculous. I met an Italian
gentleman on the cabin steps yesterday morning, vainly endeavour-
ing to explain that he wanted a cup of tea for his sick wife. And when
we were coming out of the harbour at Genoa, and it was necessarv
to order away that boat of music you remember, the chief officer
(called 'aft' for the purpose, as 'knowing something of Italian')
delivered himself in this explicit and clear Italian to the principal
performer — 'Now Signora, if you don't sheer off you'll be run down,
so you had better trice up that guitar of yours and put about.' "

At Naples some days were passed very merrily; going up Vesuvius
and into the buried cities, with Layard who had joined them, and
with the Tennents. Here a small adventure befell Dickens specially,
in itself extremely unimportant, but told by him with delightful
humour in a letter to his sister-in-law. The old idle Frenchman, to
whom all things are possible, with his snuff-box and dusty umbrella
and all the delicate and kindly observation, would have enchanted
Leigh Hunt, and made his way to the heart of Charles Lamb. After
mentioning Mr. Lowther, then English charge d'affaires in Naples,
as a very agreeable fellow who had been at the Rockingham play,
he alludes to a meeting at his house. "We had an exceedingly pleasant
dinner of eight, preparatory to which I was near having the ridiculous
adventure of not being able to find the house and coming back dinner-
less. I went in an open carriage from the hotel in all state, and the

opening on
•me desolate
e or no sea,
I any I have
; were, with
the utmost
nking what
►eing chiefly
1 the largest
nning, thro'
ire we are."
"We towed
consisting of
disabled by
un. She was
• so; but the
never would
away, if he
:. Whenever
ope or any-
otentate, in
he couldn't
istances. So
always last,
on the part
t an Italian
endeavour-
5. And when
IS necessary
chief officer
of Italian')
le principal
3 run down,
about.' "
ip Vesuvius
[ them, and
IS specially,
1 delightful
nchman, to
ty umbrella
; enchanted
.amb. After
; in Naples,
gham play,
jly pleasant
e ridiculous
lack dinner -
i,te, and the

The Life of Charles Dickens

569

coachman to my surprise pulled up at the end of the Chiaja. 'Behold
the house,' says he, 'of II Signor Larthoor!'— at the same time
pointmg with his whip into the ssventh heaven where the early stars
were shining. 'But the Signor Larthorr,' says I, 'lives at Pausilippo.'
'It is true,' says the coachman (still pointing to the evening star),
'but he lives high up the Salita Sant' Antonio where no carriage ever
yet ascended, and that :;s the house' (evening star as aforesaid) 'and
one must go on foot. Behold the Salita Sant' Antonio!' I went up it.
a mile and a half T should think. I got into the strangest places among
the wildest Neapolitans; kitchens, washing-places, archways, stables,
vineyards; was baited by dogs, and answered, in profoundly un-
intelligible language, from behind lonely locked doors in cracked
female voices, quaking with fear; but could hear of no such English-
man, nor any Englishman. By and by, I came upon a polentashop
in the clouds, where an old Frenchman with an umbrella like a faded
tropical leaf (it had not rained in Naples for six weeks) was staring
at nothing at all, with a snuff-box in his hand. To hun I appealed
concerning the Signor Larthoor. 'Sir,' said he, with the sweetest
politeness, 'can you speak French?' 'Sir,' said I, 'a little.' Sir,' said
he, 'I presume the Signor Loothere' — you will observe that he
changed the name according to the custom of his country— 'is an
Englishman?' I admitted that he v/as the victim of circumstances
and had that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. Has he a
servant with a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I
know? I should think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the
Frenchman, 'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always
possible.' 'Sir,' said I — you may imagine my condition and dismal
sense of my own absurdity by this time— 'that is true.' He then took
an immense pinch of snuff, wiped the dust off his umbrella, led me
to an arch commanding a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, and
pointed deep into the earth from which I had mounted. 'Below there,
near the lamp, one finds an Englishman with a servant with a wooden
leg. It is always possible that he is the Signor Loothere.' I had been
asked at six o'clock, and it was now getting on for seven. I went back
in a state of perspiration and misery not to be describ<;d, and without
the faintest hope of finding the spot. But as I was going farther
down to the lamp, I saw the strangest staurcase up a dark corner,
with a man in a white waistcoat (evidently hired) standing on the
top of it fuming. I dashed in at a venture, found it was the house,
made the most of the whole story, and achieved much popularity.'
The best of it was that as nobody ever did nnd the place, Lowther
had put a servant at the bottom of the Sahta to wait 'for an English
gentleman'; but the servant (as he presently pleaded), deceived by
the moustache, had allowed the English gentleman to pass un-
challenged."

^ From Naples they went to Rome, where they found Lockhart,

fearfully weak and broken, yet hopeful of himself too" (he died the

following year); smoked and drank punch with David Roberts, then

i t

( ■

570 The Life of Charles Dickens

painting every day with Louis Haghe in St. Peter's; and took the old
walks. The Coliseum, Appian Way, and Streets of Tombs, seemed
desolate and grand as ever; but generally, Dickens adds, "I dis-
covered the Roman antiquities to be smaller than my imagination
in nine years had made them. The Electric Telegraph now goes like
a sunbeam through the cruel old heart of the Coliseum — a suggestive
thing to think about, I fancied. The Pantheon I thought even nobler
than of yore." The amusements were of course an attraction; and
nothing at the Opera amused the party of three English more, than
another party of four Americans who s 't behind them in the pit.
"All the seats are numbered arm-chairs, and you buy your number
at tho pay-place, and go to it with the easiest direction on the ticket
itself. We were early, and the four places of the Americans were on
the next row behind us— all together. After looking about them for
some time, and seeing the greater part of the seats empty (because
the audience generally wait in a caffd which is part of the theatre),
one of them said 'Waal I dunno — I expect we ain't no call to set so
nigh to one another neither — will you scatter Kernel, will you
scatter sir?' — Upon this the Kernel 'scattered* some twenty benches
off; and they distributed themselves (for no earthly reason apparently
but to get rid of one another) all over the pit. As soon as the overture
began, in came the audience in a mass. Then the people who had
got the numbers into which they had 'scattered,' had to get them
out; and as they understood nothing that was said to them, and
could make no reply but 'A-mericani,' you may imagine the number
of cocked hats it took to dislodge them. At last they were all got
back into their right places, except one. About an hour afterwards
when Moses {Moses in Egypt was the opera) was invoking the dark-
ness, and there was a dead silence all over the house, unwonted
sounds of disturbance broke out from a distant corner of the pit and
here and there a beard got up to look. 'What is it neow, sir?' said
one of the Americans to another; 'some person seems to be getting
along, again streeem.' 'Waal sir' he replied 'I dunno. But I xpect 'tis
the Kernel sir, a holdin on.' So it was. The Kernel was ignominiously
escorted back to his right place, not in the least disconcerted, and
in perfectly good spirits and temper." The opera was excellently
done, and the price of the stalls one and threepence English. At
Milan, on the other hand, the Scala was fallen from its old estate,
dirty, gloomy, dull, and the performance execrable.

Another theatre of the smallest pretension Dickens sougl t out
with avidity in Rome, and eagerly enjoyed. He had heard it said in
his old time in Genoa that the finest Marionetti were here; and now,
after great difficulty, he discovered the company in a sort of stable
attached to a decayed palace. "It was a wet night, and there was no
audience but a party of French officers and ourselves. We all sat
together. I never saw anything more amazing than the performance
— altogether only an hour long, but managed by as many as ten
people, for we saw them all go behind, at the ringing of a bell. The

took the old
nbs, seemed
dds. "I dis-
imagination
ow goes like
a suggestive
even nobler
paction; and
I more, than
I in the pit.
our number
m the ticket
ans were on
)ut them for
5ty (because
the theatre),
:all to set so
el, will you
snty benches

I apparently
the overture
pie who had
to get them
> them, and

the number
were all got
r afterwards
ng the dark-
i, unwonted
the pit and
w, sir?' said
o be getting

I I xpect 'tis
nominiously
icerted, and
i excellently

English. At
s old estate,

sought out
ird it said in
re; and now,
ort of stable
there was no
. We all sat
performance
nany as ten
f a bell. The

The Life of Charles Dickens 571

saving of a young lady by a good fairy from the machinations of an
enchanter, coupled with the comic business of her servant PuJcinella
(the Roman Punch) formed the plot of the first piece. A scolding old
peasant woman, who always leaned forward to scold and put her
hands m the pockets of her apron, was incredibly natural. Pulcinella
so airy, so merry, so life-like, so graceful, he was irresistible. To see
him carrymg an umbrella over his mistress's head in a storm, talking
to a prodigious giant whom he met in the forest, and going to bed
with a poiAy were things never to be forgotten. And so delicr.te are
the hand" of the people who move them, that every puppet was an
Italian, and did exactly what an Italian does. It he pointed at any
object, if he saluted anybody, if he laughed, if he cried, he did it as
never Englishman did it since Britain first at Heaven's command
arose— arose— arose, etc. There was a ballet afterwards, on the same
scale, and we came away realiy quite enchanted with the delicate
drollery of the thing. French ofificers more than ditto.*' . .

From Rome they posted to Florence, and the last place visited
was lunn. where the travellers arrived on 5 December. .

THREE SUMMERS AT BOULOGNE

1853, 1854. and 1856

'^.NS was in Boulogne, in 1853, from the middle of June to the
September, and for the next three months, as we have seen
witzerland and Italy. In the following year he went again
gne in June, and stayed, after finishing Hard Times, until
October. In February of 1855 he was for a fortnight in Paris
with Mr. Wilkie Collins; not taking up his more prolonged residence
there until the winter, ."rom November 1855 to the end of April 1856
he made the French capital his home, working at Little Dmrii during
all those months. Then, after a month's interval in Dover and Lon-
don, he took up his third summer residence in Boulogne, whither his
younger children had gone direct from Paris; and stayed unfi!
September, finishing Little Dorrit in London in the spring of 1857.

Of the first of thc^e visits, a few lively notes of humour and charac-
ter out of his letters will tell the story sufficiently. The second and
third had points of more attractiveness. Those were the years of the
French-English alliance, of the great exposition of English paintings
of the return of the troops from the Crimea, and of the visit of the
i nnce Consort to the Emperor; such interest as Dickens took in
these several matters appearing in his letters with the usual \''vidness,
and the story of his continental life coming out with amusing dis-

• !

IhMi VI

"f ■

}!l

572 The Life of Charles Dickens

tinctnes:. :■ the successive pictures they paint with so much warmt'
and colour. Another chapter will be given tc Pakia. This deals only
with Boulogne.

For his first summer residence, in June 1853, he had taken a house
on the high ground near the Calais road; an odd Fionch place with
the strangest little rooms and halls, but standing in the midat of a
large garden, with wood and waterlail, a conservatory opening on a
great bank of roses, and paths and gates on one side to the ramparts,
on the other to the sea. Above all there was a capital proprietor and
landlord, by whom the cost ol keeping up gardens and wood (which
he called a forest) was defrayed, while he gave his tenant the whole
range of both and all the flowers for nothing, rsold him the garden
produce as it was v^^anted, and kept a cow m the estate to supply
the family milk. . . .

Then came a letter with his description of his landlord, lightly
sketched by him in print as M. Loyal-Devasseur, but here filled in
with the most altractiv touches his loving hard could give. "But
the landlord — M. Beauco.^rt — is wonderful. Every^ My here has two
surnames (I cannot concei>'e why), and M. Beaucourt, p.s he is always
called, is by rights M. Beavicourt-Mutuel. He is a portly jolly fellow
with a fine open face; lives on the hill behind, just outside the top
of the garden; and was a linen draper in the town, where he still has
a shop, but is supposed to have mortgaged his business and to be in
difficulties — all along ot this place, which he has planted with his
own hands; which he cultivates all day; and which he never on any
consideration speaks of but as "the property." He is extraordir :ily
popular in Boulogne (the people in the shops invariably brightening
up at the mention of his name, and congratulating us on being his
tenants), and really seems to deserve it. He is such a liberal fellow
that I can't bear to ask him for anything, since he instantly supplies
it whatever it is. The things he has done in respect of unreasonable
bedsteads and washing-stands, I blush to think of. I observed the
other day in one of the side gardens — there are gardens at each side
of the house too — a place where I thought the Comic Countryman"
(a name he was giving just then to'his youngest boy) "must infallibly
trip over, and make a little descent of a dozen feet. So I said 'M.
Beaucourt' — who instantly pulled off his cap and stood bareheaded —
'there are some spare pieces of wood lying by the cow-house, if you
would have the kindness to have one laid across here I think it would
be safer.' 'Ah, mon Dieu sir,' said M. Beaucourt, 'it must be iron.
This is not a portion of the property where you would like to see
wood.' 'But iron is so expensive,' said I, 'and it really is not worth

while ' 'Sir, pardon me a thousand times,' said M. Beaucourt,

'it shall be iron. Assuredly and perfectly it shall be iron.' 'Then 'A.
Beaucourt,' said I, 'I shall be glad to pay a moiety of ths cost.' 'Sir,'
said M. Beaucourt, 'Never!' Then to change the subject, he slided
from his firmness and gravity into a graceful conversational tone,
and said, 'In the moonlight last night, the flowers on the property

appe£
propt

hML n

nuch warmt'
lis deals only

;aken a house
:h placo with
\e mid3t of a
opening on a
;he ramparts,
roprietor and
wood (which
tnt the whole
n the garden
ite to supply

ilord, lightly
here filled in
d give. "But
here has two
s he is always
y jolly fellow
tside the top
re he still has
1 and to be in
ited with his
never on any
;traordir :ily
/ brightening
on being his
liberal fellow
^ntly supplies
unreasonable
observed the
> at each side
;)ountryman"
lust infallibly
30 I said 'M.
)areheaded —
house, if you
hink it would
nust be iron,
d like to see
is not worth
;. Beaucourt,
)n.' 'Then A.
IS cost.' 'Sir,'
5ct, he slided
ational tone,
the property

T.h^ Life of Charles Dicksns 573

appeared, O hea^^ be bathing thenuehts in tfie sky. \ou like the

property?' 'M. Piaucourt.' said I, 'I am enchanted with it; I am more
than satisfied wiih everything,' 'And I sir,' said ^■.. Beaucourt, layine
hi3 cap upon nis breast, and kissing his hand— 'I cqualbM' Yesterdav
two blacksmiths came for a day's work, and put up'a good solid
liandsome bit of iron-railing, mortised into the stone parapet
1 f the extraordinary things in the ho ^.e defv description, the amazing
phenomena in the gardens never could have been dreamed of bv
anybody but a Frenchman bent upon one idea. E sides a portrait of
the house in the dining-room, there is a plan of the property in the
hall. It looks about the size of Irebnd; and to every one of the extra-
ordinary objects there is a reference v;ith some portentous name
I here are fitty-one such references, including the Cottage of Tom
Inumb. the Bridge of Austerlitz, the Bridge of Jena, the Hermitage,
the Bower of the Old Guard, the Labyrinth (I have no idea which is
which); and there ^s guidance to every room in the house as if it
wore a place on that stupendous scale that without such a clue you
must infallibly lose your way, and perhaps perish of starvation
between bedroom and bedroom."

On 3 Ju':, t'lere came a fresh trait of the good fellow of a landlord
"Fancy w.K . Beaucourt told me last night. When he 'conceived the
inspiration' of planting the property ten years ago, he wert over to
England to buy the trees, took a small cottage in the market-gardens
at Putney, lived there three months, held a symposium everv nig^t
attended by the principal gardeners of Fulham, Putney Kew an
Hammersmith (which he calls Hamsterdam), and wound up with a
supper at which the market-gardeners rose, clinked their glasses and
exclaimed with one accord (I quote him exactly) Vive Beaucourt'
He was a captain in the National Guard, and Cavaignac his general"
Brave Capitame Beaucourt! said Cavaignac, you must receive a
decoration. My General, said Beaucourt, No! It ::. enough for me
that I have done my duty. I go to lay the first stone of a house
upon a Property I have— that house shall be my decoration (Regard
that house!)" Addition to the picture came in a letter of 24 fuly
With a droll glimpse of Shakespeare at the theatre, and of the
Saturday's pig-market. . . .

"We went to the theatre last night, to see the Midsummer Night's
Dream— oi the Op^ra Comique. It is a beautiful little theatre now
with a very good company; and the nonsense of the piece was done
with a sense quite confounding in that connection. Willy Am Shay
Kes Peer; Sirzhon Foil Stayffe; Lor Lattimeer; and that celebrated
Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, Meees Oleevesir- w-re the
principal characters.

"Outside the old to vn. aii army of workmen are (and have been
for a week or so, already) employed upon an immense building which
I supposed might be a Fort, or a xvlonastery. or a Barrack or other
something designed to last for ages. I find it is for the annual fair
which begins on the 5th of August and lasts a fortright. Almost

; ■*

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574

The Life of Charles Dickens

every Sunday we have a ffite, where there is dancing in the open air,
and where immense men with prodigious beards revolve on little
wooden horses like Italian irons, in what we islanders call a round-
about, by the hour together. But really the good humour and cheer-
fulness are very delightful. Among the other sights of the place, there
is a pig-market every Saturday, perfectly insupportable in its
absurdity. An excited French peasant, male or female, with a deter-
mined young pig, is the most amazing spectacle. I saw a little Drama
enacted yesterday week, the drollery of which was perfect. Dram.
Pers. I. A pretty young woman with short petticoats and trim blue
stockings, riding a donkey with two baskets and a pig in each.
2. An ancient farmer in a blouse, driving four pigs, his four in hand,
with an enormous whip — and being drawn against walls and irtto
smoking shops by any one of the four. 3. A cart, with an old pig
(manacled) looking out of it, and terrifying six hundred and fifty
young pigs in the market by his terrific grunts. 4. Collector of Octroi
in an immense cocked hat, with a stream of young pigs running, night
and day, between his military boots and rendering accounts im-
possible. 5. Inimitable, confronted by a radiation of elderly pigs,
fastened each by one leg to a bunch of stakes in the ground. 6. John
Edmund Reade, poet, expressing eternal devotion to and admiration
of Landor, unconscious of approaching pig recently escaped from
barrow. 7. Priests, peasants, soldiers, etc." . . .

When leaving Paris for his third visit to Boulogne, at the beginning
of June 1S56, he had not written a word of the ninth number of his
new book, and did not expect for another month to "see land from
the running sea of Little Dorrit." He had resumed the house he first
occupied, the cottage or villa "des Moulineaux," and after dawdling
about his garden for a few days with surprising industry in a French
farmer garb of blue blouse, leathern belt, and military cap, which he
had mounted as "the only one for complete comfort," he wrote to
me that he was getting "Now to work again — ^to work! The story lies
before me, I hope, strong and clear. Not to be easily told; but nothing
of that sort is to be easUy done that / know of." At work it became
his habit to sit late, and then, putting off his usual walk until night,
to lie down among the roses reading until after tea ("middle-aged
Love in a blouse and belt"), when he went down to the pier. . . .

His own household had got into a small war, of which the com-
mander-in-chief was his man-servant "French," the bulk of the
forces engaged being his children, and the invaders two cats. Busi-
ness brought him to London on the hostilities breaking out, and on
his return after a few days the story of the war was told. "Dick," it
should be said, was a canary very dear both to Dickens and his eldest
daughter, who had so tamed to her loving hand its wild little heart
that it was become the most docile of companions. "The only thing
new in this garden is that war is raging against two particularly
tigerish and fearful cats (from the mill, I suppose), whicii are always
glaring in dark corners, after our wonderful little Dick. Keeping the

The Life of Charles Dickens

the open air,
Ive on little
all a round-
r and cheer-
place, there
table in its
irith a deter-
little Drama
:fect. Dram.
id trim blue
)ig in each,
our in hand,
Us and iilto
I an old pig
ed and fifty
:or of Octroi
nning, night
ccounts ini-
tlderly pigs,
md. 6. John
[ admiration
jcaped from

le beginning
imber of his
e land from
ouse he first
:er dawdling
in a French
ip, which he
he wrote to
he story lies
but nothing
k it became
until night,
middle-aged
pier. . . .
:h the com-
t)ulk of the
> cats. Busi-
out, and on
,. "Dick," it
id his eldest
little heart
J only thing
particularly
I are always
[keeping the

575

house open at all points, it is impossible to shut them out, and they
hide themselves in the most terrific manner; hanging themselves up
behind draperies, like bats, and tumbling out in the dead of night
with frightful caterwaulings. Hereupon French borrows Beaucourt's
gun, loads the same to the muzzle, discharges it twice in vain and
throws himself over with the recoil, exactly like a clown. But at last
(while I was in town) he aims at the more ami-ble cat of the two
and shoots that animal dead. Insufferably elated by this victory he
IS now engaged from morning to night in hiding behind bushes to get
aim at the other. He does nothing else whatever. All the boys
encourage him and watch for the enemy— on whose appearance they
give an alarm which immediately serves as a warning to the creature
who runs awa> They are at this moment (ready dressed for church)
all lying on their stomachs in various parts of the garden. Horrible
whistles give notice to the gun what point it is to approach. I am
afraid to go out. lest I should be shot. Mr. Ploriiish says his prayers
at night in a wnisper, lest the cat should overhear him and take
offence. The tradesmen cry out as they come up the avenue, 'Me
voici! C'est moi— boulanger— ne tirez pas, Monsieur Franche!''lt is
like living in a state of siege; and the wonderful manner in which the
cat preserves the character of being the only person not much put
out by the intensity of this monomania, is most ridiculous." (6 July )
. . . "About four pounds of powder and half a ton of shot have
been" ( 13 July) "fired off at the cat (and the public in general) during
the week. The finest thing is that immediately after I have heard
the noble sportsman blazing away at her in the garden in front. I
look out of my room door into the drawing-room, and am pretty sure
to see her coming in after the birds, in the calmest manner, by the
back window. Intelligence has been brought to me from a source on
which I can rely, that French has newly conceived the atrocious pro-
ject of tempting her into the coach-house by meat and kindness, and
there, from an elevated portmanteau, blowing her head off. This I
mean sternly to interdict, and to do so to-day as a work of piety."

An epidemic broke out in the town, affecting the children of severai
families known to Dickens, among them that of his friend Mr.
Gilbert A'Beckett; who, upon arriving from Paris, and finding a
favourite little son stricken dangerously, sank himself under an illness
from which he had been suffering, and died two days after the boy.
"He had for three days shown symptoms of rallying, and we had
some hope of his recovery; but he sank and died, and never even
knew that the child had gone before him. A sad, sad story." Dickens
meanwhile had sent his own children home with his wife, and the
rest soon followed. Poor M. Beaucourt was inconsolable. "The desola-
tion of the place is wretched. When Mamey and Katey went, Beau-
court came in and wept. He really is almost broken-hearted about it.
He had planted all manner of flowers for next month, and had thrown
down the spade and left off weeding the garden, so that it looks some-
thing like a dreary bird-cage with all manner of grasses and chicic-

■ 1 %\

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576

The Life of Charles Dickens

weeds sticking through the bars and lying in the sand. 'Such a lost,
too, he says, 'for Monsieur Dickens!' Then he looks in at the kitchen
window (which seems to be his only relief), and sighs himself up the
hill home." ... ^

The interval of residence in Paris between these two last visits to
Boulogne is now to be described.

-Ml

RESIDENCE IN PARIS
1855-6

In Paris Dickens's life was passed among artists, and in the exercise
of his own art. His associates were writers, painters, actors, or
musicians, and when he wanted relief from any strain of work he
found it at the theatre. The years since his last residence in the great
city had made him better known, and the increased attentions
pleased him. He had to he^p in preparing for a translation of his books
into French; and this, with continued labour at the story he had in
hand, occupied him as long as he remained. It will be all best to)
by extracts from his letters; in which the people he met, the theatr
he visited, and the incidents, public or private, that seemed to h .
worthy of mention, reappear with the old force and liveliness.

Nor is anything better worth preserving from them than cho
bits of description of an actor or a drama, for this perishable enjo ,
ment has only so much as may survive out of such recollections tc
witness for itself to another generation; and an unusually high place
may be challenged for the subtlety and delicacy of what is said in
these letters of things theatrical, when the writer was especia /
attracted by a performer or a play. Frederic Lemaltre has never had
a higher tribute than Dickens paid to him during his few days' earlier
stay at Paris in the spring.

"Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw, I saw last night at
the Ambigu. They have revived that old piece, once immensely
popular in London under the n 'ne of Thirty Years of a Gambler's
Life. Old Lemaltre plays his famous character, and never did I see
anything, in art, so exaltedly horrible and awful. In the earlier acts
he was so well made up, and so light and active, that he really looked
sufficiently young. But in the last two, when he had grown old and
miserable, he did the finest things, I really believe, that are within
the power of acting. Two or three tinios a great cry of horror went
all round the house. When he met, in the inn yard, the traveller
whom he murders, and first saw his money, the manner in which the
crime came into his head— and eyes— was as truthful as it was
terrific." . , .

nd. 'Such a losb
n at the kitchen
s himself up the

wo last visits to

I in the exercise
ters, actors, or
ain of work he
nee in the great
ised attentions
ion of his books
story he had in
be all best to)
et, the theatr
seemed to h .
liveliness,
jm than cho
irishable enjo^
recollections tc
lally high place
what is said in
was especia y
; has never had
3w days' earlier

V last night at
nee immensely
of a Gambler's
lever did I see
the earlier acts
le really looked
grown old and
hat are within
of horror went
'., the traveller
jr in which the
iful as it was

The Life of Charles Dickens

577

That was at the close of February. In October, Dickens's longer
residence began. He betook himself with his family, after two un-
successful attempts in the new region of the Rue Balzac and Rue
Lord Byron, to an apartment in the Avenue des Champs Elys6es.
Over him was an English bachelor with an establishment consisting
of an English groom and five English horses. "The concierge and his
wife told us that his name was Six, which drove me nearly mad until
we discovered it to be Sykes." . . .

At the first play he went to, the performance was stopped while
the news of th last Crimean engagement, just issued in a supplement
to the Moniteur, was read from the stage. "It made not the faintest
effect upon the audience; and even the hired claqueurs, who had been
absurdly loud during the piece, seemed to consider the war not at all
within their contract, and were as stagnant as ditc^ vater. The
theatre was full. It is quite impossible to see such apathy, and
suppose the war to be popular, whatever may be asserted to the
contrary." . . .

A piece of honest farce is a relief. "An uncommonly droll piece
with an original comic idea in it has been in course of representation
here. It is called Les Cheveux de wa Femme. A man who is dotingly
fond of his -wife, and who wishes to know whether she loved anybody
else before they were married, cuts off a lock of her hair by stealth,
^and takes it to a great mesmeriser, who submits it to a clairvoyante
AVho never was wrong. It is discovered that the owner of this hair
' iks been up to the most frightful dissipations, insomuch that the
o.lairvoyante can't mention half of them. The distracted husband
^joes home to reproach his wife, and she then reveals that she wears
%. wig, and takes it off." . . .

' At the house of that great artist, Madame Viardot, the sister
of Malibran, Dickens dined to meet George Sand, that lady having
appointed the day and hour for the interesting festival, which came
off duly on lo January. "I suppose it to be impossible to imagine
anybody more unlike my preconceptions than the illustrious Sand.
Just the kind of woman in appearance whom you might suppose to
be the Queen's monthly nurse. Chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-
eyed. Nothing of the blue-stocking about her, except a little final
way of settling all your opinions with hers, which I take to have been
acquired in the country, where she lives, and in the domination of a
small circle. A singularly ordinary woman in appearance and manner.
The dinner was very good and remarkably unpretending. Ourselves,
Madame and her son, the Scheffers, the Sartorises, and some Lady
somebody (from the Crimea last) who wore a species of paletot, and
smoked. The Viardots have a house away in the new part of Paris,
which looks exactly as if they had moved into it last week and were
going away next. Notwithstanding which, they had lived in it eight

j-CdiO. JL UC \J^J\Ji.a. 5,ll'_ Ti-ijr !?.«■„••.- ^ jj --■- J ••

with the family. Piano not even opened. Her husband is an extremely
good fellow, and she is as natural as it is possible to be."

337

• i

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-i

I *

■I

578

The Life of Charles Dickens

>
11'-'

III

n,Sli^^^ .^'"'^^? ^^^ "'^^ *^ *^^^ f^^^ "measure of Madame

Dudevant in meeting her thus. He was not familiar with her writings

^^^J^!:- T ""V 'PfJ^^^ "''^"S ^°^ «"^^ °f them as he knew. But no
disappo ntment, nothing but amazement, awaited him at a dinner
that followed soon after. Emile de Girardin gave a banquet in his
honour. His description of it. which he declare! to be strictly prosak
sounds a little Oriental, but not inappropriately so. "No i^an unl
o^?^^'^ "^l^u"^^ determination never to embellish or fancify such
accounts, could believe in the description I shall let off when we meet
w'thTrf f.' ^"'"S Girardin's-of the three gorgeous draw^n^!r?oms
SnhJ ron^''"'?"^ ^^^ f'^^^"^ ^^ ^^°^^"^ «^°"^^«' terminating in a
t^^nZr^r^^L "T^'S^""*"^ magnificence with two enoSnous
fnti J [ P^te^^^^s doors m it. looking (across an ante-chamber
f ul of clean plates) straight into the kitchen, with the cooks in Seir
The tphi^^K ^^P«,^ishing the dinner. From his seat in the midst of
the table, the host (like a Giant in a Fairy story) beholds the kitchen
and the snow-white tables, and the profound order ai^dsUenS there
prevailing^ Forth from the plate-glass doors issues the Banquet~the
?rnfflri^''/"^ !"^'* "r" *^'*"^ ^y "^^^^^ ^t the present price of

pounds On^thf^^^^^^ ^'''"" '°'i'"f (^°^ '''^^' P^°Pl^) ^t leL five
laden wiSfh^fi^ ^'^ ground glass jugs of peculiar construction.
llT^y^A ^ ^^^?* ^'■'"'^^h ^^ Champagne and the coolest ice. With
«?.f! ^^.l''"'"'^ '!'''"^^ ^°^ W^"^ (previously unheard of in a good
state on ^iis continent . which would fetch two guineas a bottl^at
any sale. The dinner done. Oriental flowers in vasel of golden cobweb
are placed upon the board. With the ice is issued Brandy buried for
loo years. To that succeeds Coffee, brought by the broiher of one
of the convives from the remotest East, in exchange for an eaua!
quantity of Californian gold dust. The company befng returned to
the drawing-room-tables roll in by unseen agency laden with

?if^K *ff ^'J""^ *^^ ^^"^^"^ «f the Saltan, and with cool drSikTn
vvhich the flavour of the Lemon arrived yesterday from ALeria

from Lisbon. That period past, and the guests reposing on Divans
worked with many-coloured blosspms. big table rolls in heavy with
massive furniture of silver, and breathing incense in ?he form o a
little present of Tea direct from China-tlble and aH. I behe^- bu?
cannot swear to it, and am resolved to be prosaic. All this tlm^ the
host perpetually repeats 'Ce petit d!ner-ci n 'est que pour fS^^^
connaissance de Monsieur Dickens; il ne compte pas ce n'est rien '
And even now I have forgotten to set down half oHt-L pafticuTar

at'chrktm.^. 'f '^'^'' ""'T ?".^^^"^ ^^^" '^'^ ^^^ «-«- in'^LglanJ
nra^ K, ^'"'^' f '^^"^ "^'th a celestial sauce in colour likl the
hltS^S f'^'^f °"'' ^?^ '^ substance like the blossom powdered and
bathed in dew. and called in the carte (carte in a gold frame like a
httle fish-slice_to be handed about) 'Homma^e a rillustrTS^rT^air
rnT-^^^T^'"'' ' ^S* ^^^^^trious man staggered out at the last drawing^
room door, speechless with wonder, finally; and even at that moment

The Life of Charles Dickens

i of Madame
her writings,
cnew. But no
1 at a dinner
inquet in his
ictly prosaic,
No man un-
• fancify such
hen we meet,
a wing-rooms
linating in a

enormous
nte-chamber
ooks in their
the midst of
the kitchen,
silence there
anquet — the
sent price of
It least five
onstruction,
ist ice. With
of in a good

1 a bottle at
den cobweb
', buried for
ther of one
or an equal
returned to
laden with
3l drinks in
)ra Algeria,
iiis morning

on Divans
heavy with
i form of a
)elieve; but
is time the
•ur faire la
n'est rien.'

particular
in England
iir like the
dered and
ame like a
'e ecrivain
t drawing-
it moment

579

his host, holding to his lips a chalice set with precious stones and
containing nectar distilled from the air that blew over the fields of
beans in bloom for fifteen summers, remarked 'Le diner que nous
avons eu, mon cher, n'est rien — il ne compte pas — il a 6t6 tout-i-fait
en famille — il faut diner (eu v6rite, diner) bientdt. Au plaisirl Au
re voir! Au diner!' "

The second dinner came, wonderful as the first; amoiig the com-
pany were Regnier, Jules Sandeau, and the new Director of the
Fran9ais; and his host again played LucuUus in the same style, with
success even more consummate. The only absolutely new incident
however was that "After dinner he asked me if I would come into
another room and smoke a cigar? and on my saying Yes, coolly
opened a drawer, containing about 5000 inestimable cigars in
prodigious bundles — just as the Captain of the Robbers in AH Baba
might have gone to a comer of the cave for bales of brocade. A little
man dined who was blacking shoes 8 years ago, and is now enor-
mously rich — the richest man in Paris — having ascended with
rapidity up the usual ladder of the Bourse. By merely observing that
perhaps he might come down again, I clouded so many faces as to
render it very clear to me that everybody present was at the same game
for some stake or other!" He returned to that subject in a letter a
few days later. "If you were to see the steps of the Bourse at about 4
in the afternoon, and the crowd of blouses and patches among the
speculators there assembled, all howling and haggard with specula-
tion, you would stand aghast at the consideration of what must be
going on. Concierges and peopie like that perpetually blow their
brains out, or fly into the Seine, '4 cause des pertes r la Bourse.'
I hardly ever take up a French paper without ligh ,-iig on such a
paragraph. On the other hand, thoroughbred horses without enc,
and red velvet carriages with white kid harness on jet black horses,
go by here all day long, and the pedestrians who turn to look at
them, laugh, and say, ' C'est la Bourse ! ' Such crashes must be staved
off every week as have not been seen since Law's time." . . .

Before Dickens left Paris in May he had completed the arrange-
ments for a published translation of all his books, and had sent over
two descriptions that the reader most anxious to follow him to a new
scene would perhaps be sorry to lose. A Duchess was murdered in the
Champs Elysees. "The murder over the way (the third or fourth
event of that nature in the Champs Elysees since we have been here)
seems to disclose the strangest state of things. The Duchess who is
murdered lived alone in a great house which was always shut up,
and passed her time entirely in the dark. In a little lodge outside
lived a coachman (the murderer), and there had been a long succes-
sion of coachmen who had been unable to stay there, and upon
whom, whenever they asked for their wages, she plunged out with an

never had anything to do, for the coach hadn't been driven out for
years; neither would she ever allow the horses to be taken out for

ill >i

iffilBlli

580 The Lite of Charles Dickens

exercise. Between the lodge and the house, is a miserable bit of
f^f^^' ?i 'O'^^^^^^^ ^"h long rank grass, weeds, and nettles; and
m this the horses used to be taken out to swim— in a dead ween
Xlf i^^to^' "Pi° *?^^ liaunches. On the day of the murder there

™® ^f ^"^r ^""^ ^f'^o"' ^^°"^ she ^^as separated), and rings at the
^n^.' Sh P ""? °?^'' ?® «^^*^- '^'es* ^^^i ^o^<^'' says the Duke.
sif^J^^T ^t ^"^hf s« «'est plusP'-'C'est tro/ vrai. Monl
+^ f^! ~Z T^,^t °^»^"x/ says the Duke, and walks off deliberately,
to the great satisfaction of the assemblage."

The second description relates an occurrence in England of onlv
H/c?.^^^''^•J?''^'''T?^'^^*®' belonging to that wildly improbable
firf J , ?^'*'^^ ^^I""^. ^'^^^"^ ^^^^ys held, with Fielding, to be
(properly) closed to fiction. Only, he would add. critics should not be

^o„M^^^ K ^^^"""u *^^* "^^^t h^^ "^^^^ happened to themselves
could not. by any human possibility, ever be supposed to have hap-
pened to anybody else. "B. was with me the other day. and, among
other things that he told me. described an extraordinary adventurt
n ?'t,, lu^* ^ P^^''^ "^o* ^ thousand miles from my 'property' at
Oadshill. three years ago. He lived at the tavern and was sketching
one day when art open carriage came by with a gentleman and lad?
m It. He was sitting in the same place working at the same sketch,
next day. when it came by again. So, another day, when the gentle-
man got out and mt-oduced himself. Fond of art; lived at the great
house yonder. whicL perhaps he knew; was an Oxford man and a
Devonshire squire, but not resident on his estate, for domestic
reasons; would be glad to see him to dinner to-morrow. He went and

Sl!??htT"^ °*^^' *?'°^l^ r^^ ^^^ ^ib^^^y- 'At your disposition.'
said the Squire, to whom he had now described himself and his pur-
suits. Use It for your writing and drawing. Nobody else uses it.' He
stayed in the house six months. The lady was a mistress, aged five-
and-twenty, and very beautiful, drinking her life away. The Squire
was drunken and utterly depraved and wicked; but an excellent
scholar, an admirable linguist, and a great theologian. Two other
mad visitors stayed the six months. One. a man well known in Paris
here who goes about the world with a crimson silk stocking in his
breast pocket, containing a tooth-brush .-.nd an immense quantity of
ready money The other, a college chum of the Squire's, now ruined-
"^'^L^"" /nsatiate thirst for drink; who constantly got up in the
middle of the night, crept down to the dining-room, and emptied all
the decanters. . B stayed on in the place, under a sort of
devihsh fascmation to discover what might come of it. . Tea or
coffee never seen in the house, and very seldom water. Beer, cham-
pa^e, and brandy, were the three drinkables. Breakfast: leg of
mutton, champagne, beer, and brandy. Lunch: shoulder of mutton
cnampagne, beer, and brandv. Dinnpr- A^r^^r,, ^«r,^^;..»ui_ j:_u
vbquure s income. ;^7ooo a year), champagne, beer, and brandy. The
oquire had married a woman of the town from whom he was now

jrable bit of

nettles; and

I dead green

aurder there

p comes the

rings at the

s the Duke,

vrai, Mon-

ieliberately,

and of only
improbable
Iding, to be
lould not be
themselves
o have hap-
and, among
Y adventure
)roperty' at
IS sketching
m and lady
ime sketch,
the gentle-
it the great
man and a
•r domestic
e went, and
lisposition,'
nd his pur-
uses it.' He
, aged five-
The Squire
n excellent
Two other
ivn in Paris
king in his
quantity of
low ruined;
up in the
jmptied all
a sort of
. . Tea or
eer, cham-
ist: leg of
3f mutton,

andy. The
3 was now

The Life of Charles Dickens

581

separated, but by whom he had a daughter. The mother, to spite the
father, had bred the daughter in every conceivable vice. Daughter,
then 13, came from school once a month. Intensely coarse in talk,'
and always drunk. As they drove about the country in two open
carriages, the drunken mistress would be perpetually tumbling out
of one, and the drunken daughter perpetually tumbling out of the
other. At last the drunken mistress drank her stomach away, and
began to die on the sofa. Got worse and worse, and was always raving
about Somebody's where she had once been a lodger, and perpetually
shrieking that she would cut somebody else's heart out. At last she
died on the sofa, and, after the funeral, the party broke up. A few
months ago, B. met the man with the crimson silk stocking at
Brighton, who told him that the Squire was dead 'of a broken heart';
that the chum was dead of delirium tremens; and that the daughter-
was heiress to the fortune. He told me all this, which I fully believe
to be true, without any embellishment— just in the off-hand way in
which I have told it to you."

Dickens left Paris at the end of April, and, after the summer in
Boulogne, which has been described, passed the winter in London,
giving to his theatrical enterprise nearly all the time that Little
Dorrit did not claim from htm. His book was finished in the following
sprmg; was inscribed to Clarkson Stanfield; and now claims to have
something said about it. The theatrical enterprise to be at the same
time related, with what it led to, will be found to open a new phase
in the life of Dickens.

tin

BOOK EIGHTH

PUBLIC READER

1856-67. MT. 44-55

I. "Little Dorrit," and a Lazy Tour.

n. What Happened at this Time.

III. Gadshill Place.

IV. First Paid Readings.

V. "All the Year Round" and "Uncommercial Traveller."
VI. Second Series of Readings.
VII. Third Series of Readings.

■5 I

583

i !

I'! f

"little dorrit," and a lazy tour

1855-7

Between Hard Times and Little Dorrit, Dickens's principal literary
work had been the contribution to Household Words oi two tales fS
Christmas (1854 and 1855) which his readings af^rwards made
wide^ popular, the Story of Richard Doubledick,* and BooTsa?
the Holly free Inn In the latter was related, with a charmine
naturalness and spirit the elopement, to gcc married at Gretna
Green, of two little children of the mature respective ages of eieht
and seven At Christmas 1855 came out the first number of Little
Dorrit, and m April 1857 the last. . .

The first number appeared in December 1855. and on its sale there

T.I^°/m ^rt''* ''^*^- ^'"^' ^"^''^ ^^^« ^^t^" even Bleak House out
of the field It IS a most tremendous start, and I am overjoyed at it"-
to which he added, writing from Paris on the 6th of the month
foJlowmg. Jiou know that they had sold 35.000 of number two on
new years' day." He was stOl in Paris on the day of the appearance
of that por ion of the tale by which it will always be most vividlv
remembered, and thus wrote on 30 January, 1856: "I have a erim
pleasure upon me to-night in thinking that the Circumlocution Office
sees the light, and m wondering what effect it will make But mv
head really stings with the visions of the book, and I am soins as
we French say to disembarrass it by plunging out into some of the
strange places I glide into of nights in these latitudes." The Cu-cumlo-
cution heroes led to the Society scenes, the Hampton Court dowager-
sketches, and Mr. Gowan; all parts of one satire levelled against ore-
vailing political and social vices. Aim had been taken, in the course
of It, at some living originals, disguised sufiiciently from recognition

* The framework for this sketch was a graphic description, also done bv
Dickens, of the celebrated Charity at Rochester founded in the sixteenth r^nfMr,^
by Richard Watts, "for six poor'travellers, who, nofbeSg ^^Jes Jr PrSt^
may receive gratis for one night, lodging, entertainment, trd fourpence Sch^'
A quaint monument to Watts is the most prominent object on thTwaU of th*^
south-west Jansept of the cathedral, and unierneath it k iow placed a bras^thSs
nLT^r Tl!u''^?^ Dickens. Bom at Portsmouth, seventh of FebnSt 1812
Died at Gadshill Place by Rochester, th of June 1870. Buried in wStminste;
Abbey. To connect his memory with the scenes in which his earHest and hff latest
years were passed, and with the associations of Rochester Cathedral an^ .•fc^Ijfu
Douiiioou which extended over ail his hie, this Tablet, with the sanction of the
Dean and Cnapter, is placed by his Executors." «»"vnuu oi me

i '■

337*

585

586

The Life of Charles Dickens

to enable him to make his thrust more sure; but there was one excep-
tion self-revealed. "I had the general idea," he wrote while engaged
on the sixth number, "of the Society business before the Sadleir
affair, but I shaped Mr. Merdie himself out of that precious rascality.
Society, the Circumlocution Office, and Mr, Gowan, are of course
three parts of one idea and design. Mr. Merdle's complaint, which
you will find in the end to be fraud and forgery, came into my mind
as the last drop in the silver cream-jug on Hampstead Heath. I shall
beg, when you have read the present number, to inquire whether you
consider 'Bar' an instance, in reference to K F, of a suggested likeness
in not many touches?" The likeness no one could mistake; and,
though that particular Bar has since been moved into a higher and
happier sphere, Westminster Hall is in no danger of losing "the
insinuating Jury-droop, and persuasive double eye-glass," by which
this keen observer could express a type of character in half a dozen
words.

Of the other portions of the book that had a strong personal
interest for him I have spoken on a former page, and I will now only
add an allusion of his own. "There are some things in Flora in
number seven that seem to me to be extraordinarily droll, with
something serious at the bottom of them after all. Ah, well I was
there not something very serious in it once? I am glad to think cf
being in the country with the long summer mornings as I approach
number ten, where I have finally resolved to make Dorrit rich.
It should be a very fine point in the story. . . . Nothing in Flora
made me laugh so much as the confusion of ideas between gout
flying upwards, and its soaring with Mr. F. to another sphere"
(7 April). . . .

Shortly after the date of his letter he was in L-ondon on business
connected with the purchase of Gadshill Place, and he went over to
the Borough to see what traces were left of the prison of which his
first impression was taken in his boyhood, which had played so
important a part in this latest novel, and every brick and stone of
which he had been able to rebuild in his book by the mere vividness
of his marvellous memory. "Went to the Borough yesterday morning
before going to Gadshill, to see if I could find any ruins of the
Marshalsea. Found a great part of the original building — now
'Marshalsea Place.' Found the rooms that have been in my mind's
eye in the story. Found, nursing a very big boy, a very small boy,
who, seeing me standing on the Marshalsea pavement, looking about,
told me how it ail used to be. God knows how he learned it (for he
kvas a world too young to know anything about it), but he was right
enough. , . . There is a room there — still standing, to my amaze-
ment — that I think of taking! It is the room through which the
ever-memorable signers of Captain Porter's petition filed ofi in
my boyhood." "The spikes are gone, and the wall is lowered, and
anybody can go out now who likes to go, and is not bed-ridden;
and I said to the boy, 'Who lives there?' and he said, Jack Fithick.'

The Life of Charles Dickens

587

me exccp-
e engaged
le Sadleir

rascality.

of course
nt, which

my mind
th. I shall
lether you
id likeness
ake; and,
ligher and
ising "the

by which
If a dozen

J personal
1 now only
I Flora in
Iroll, with
well! was

think cf
approach

arrit rich.

1 in Flora
veen gout
r sphere"

n business
nt over to
which his
played so
d stone of

vividness
y morning
ins of the
ling — now
ny mind's
5mall boy,
ing about,
. it (for he

was right
ly amaze-
which the
led ofi in
vered, and
ed-ridden;
k Pithick.'

'Who is Jack Pithick?' I asked him. And he said. 'Joe Pithkk's
uncle ' " . . .

Kia book was finished soon after at Gadshill Place, to be presently
described, which he had purchased the previous year, and takek
possession of in February; subscribing him«jeli, in the letter announc-
ing the fact, as "the Kentish Freeholder on his native heath, his name
Protection." The new abode occupied him in variou-- ^ays in the
early part of the summer; and Hans Andersen the L -ris had just
arrived upon a visit to him there, when Douglas Jerrold's unexpected
death befell. It was a shock to everyone, and an especial grief to
Dickens. Jerrold's wit, and the bright shrewd intellect that had so
many triumphs, need no celebration from me; but the keenest of
satirists was one of the kindliest of men, and Dickens had a fondness
for Jerrold as genuine as his admiration for him. . . .

A plan for a theatrical performance and a reading by Dickens, on
behalf of Jerrold's dependent, was carried to its close with vigour,
promptitude, and success. In addition to the performances named,
there were others in the country also organised by Dickens, in whkh
he took active personal part; and the result did not fall short of his
expectations. The sum was invested ultimately for our friend's
unmarried daughter who now receives, under direction of the Court
of Chancery, the income of it until lately paid by myself, the last
surviving trustee.

So passed the greater part of +^^ summer, and when the country
performances were over at the e ^ of August I had this intimation.
"I have arranged with Collins that he and I will start next Monday
on a ten or twelve days' expedition to out-of-the-way places, to do
(in inns and coast-comers) a little tour in search of an article and in
avoidance of railroads. I must get a good name for it, and I propose
it in five articles, one for the beginning of every number in the
October part." Next day: "Our decision is for a foray upon the fells
of Cumberland; I having discovered in the books some promising
moors and bleak places thereabout." Into the lake-country they went
accordingly; and The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, contributed
to Household Words, related the trip. But his letters had descriptive
touches, and some whimsical experiences, not in the published account-
Looking over the Beauties of England and Wales before he left
London, his ambition was fired by mention of Carrick Fell, "a gloomy
old mountain 1500 feet high," which he secretly resolved to go up.
"We came straight to it yesterday" (9 September). "Nobody goes
up. Guides have f rgotten it. Master of a little inn, excellent north-
countryman, volunteered. Went up, in a tremendous rain. C. D. beat
Mr. Porter (name of landlord) in half a mile. Mr. P. done up in no
time. Three neve^heless went m. Mr. P. again leading; C. D. and C."
(Mr. Wilkie Collins) "following. Rain terrific, black mists, darkness
of night. Mr. P. agitated. C. D. confident. C. (a long way down in
perspective) submissive All wet through. No poles. Not so much as

ix waiiCing-stiCiC iii the paiLy.

xvciiuu uiu s>uiriuii( 'AX aDOur one m lCc

588

The Life of Charles Dickens

day. Dead darkness as of night. Mr. P. (excellent fellow to the last)
uneasy. C. D. produces compass from pocket. Mr. P. reassured
Farm-house where dog-cart was left, N.N.W. Mr. P. complimentary'
Descent commenced. C. D. with compass triumphant, until compass
with the heat and wet of C. D.'s pocket, breaks. Mr. P. (who never
had a compass), inconsolable, confesses he has not been on Carrick
Fell for twenty years, and he don't know the way down. Darker and
darker. Nobody discernible, two yards off, by the other two. Mr P
makes suggestions, but not way. It becomes clear to C. D. and to C.
that Mr. P. is going round and round the mountain, and never
commg down. Mr. P. sits on angular granite, and says he is 'just fairly
doon. C. D. revives Mr. P. with laughter, the only restorative in the
company, Mr. P. again complimentary. Descent tried once more
Mr. P. worse and worse. Council of war. Proposals from C. D. to go
slap down.' Seconded by C. Mr. P. objects, on account of precipice
called The Black Arches, and terror of the countryside. More
wandering. Mr. P. terror-stricken, but game. Watercourse, thunder-
ing and roaring, reached. C. D. suggests that it must run to the river
and had best be followed, subject to all gymnastic hazards. Mr p'
opposes, but gives in. Watercourse followed accordingly Leaps
splashes, and tumbles, for two hours. C. lost. C. D. whoops. Cries for
assistance, from behind. C. D. returns. C. with horribly sprained
ankle, lying in rivulet !"

All the danger was over when Dickens sent his description- but
great had been the trouble in binding up the sufferer's ankle and
getting him painfully on. shoving, shouldering, carrying alternately
till terra firma was reached. "We got down at last in the wildest
place, preposterously out of the course; and, propping up C against
stones, sent Mr. P. to the other side of Cumberland for dog-cart so
got back to his mu. and clinnged. Shoe or stocking on the bad foot
out of the question. Foot bundled up in a flannel waistcoast C D
carrying. C. melodramatically (Wardour to the life!) everywhere*
into and out of carriages; up and down stairs; to bed; every step'
And so to Wigton. got doctor, and here we are!! A pretty business
we flatter ourselves!" ... ^ j

On their way home the friends were at Doncaster, and this was
Dickens s first experience of the St. Leger and its saturnalia. His com-
panion had by this time so far recovered as to be able, doubled-up to
walk with a thick stick; in which condition, "being exactly like the
gputy admural in a comedy I have given him that name." The impres-
sions received from the race-week were not favourable. It was noise
and turmoil all day long, and a gathering of vagabonds from all parts
of the racing earth. Every bad face that had ever caught wickedness
from an innocent horse had its representative in the streets; and as
Dickens, like Gulliver looking down upon his fellow-men after coming
Irom the horse-country, looked down into Doncaster High Street from
his iiiu -Window, he seemed to see everywhere a then notorious per-
sonage who had jugt poisoned his betting-companion. "Everywhere I

The Life of Charles Dickens

:o the last)
reassured.
limentarj\
1 compass,
who never
on Carrick
)arker and
ivo. Mr. P.
. and to C.
and never
'just fairly
tive in the
nee more.
'. D. to go
f precipice
ide. More
, thunder-
> the river,
ds. Mr. P.
ly. Leaps,
i. Cries for
' sprained

ption; but
ankle and
ternately,
le wildest
C. against
>g-cart, so
! bad foot
ast. C. D.
srywhere;
/ery step,
business,

this was
His com-
led-up, to
y like the
le impres-
was noise
I all parts
ickedness
s; and as
;r coming
reet from
ious per-
ywhere I

589

see the late Mr. Palmer with his betting-book in his hand. Mr. Palmer
sits next me at the theatre; Mr. Palmer goes before me down the
street; Mr. Palmer follows rae into the chemist's shop where I go
to buy rose-water after breakfast, and says to the chemist 'Give us
soom sal volatile or soom damned thing o' that soort, in wather — my
head's bad !' And I look at the back of his bad head repeated in long,
long lines on the race course, and in the betting-stand and outside the
betting-rooms in the town, and I vow to God that I can see nothing
in it but cruelty, covetousness, calculation, insensibility, and low
wickedness."

Even a half-appalling kind of luck was not absent from my friend's
experiences at the race course, when, what he called a "wonderful,
paralysing, coincidence" befell him. He bought the card; facetiously
wrote down three names for the winners of the three chief races (never
in his life having heard or thought of any of the horses, except that
the winner of the Derby, who proved to be nowhere, had been men-
tioned to him); "and, if you can believe it without your hair standing
on end, those three races were won, one after another, by those three
horses! ! !" That was the St. I^eger Day, of which he also thought it
noticeable, that, though the losses were enormous, nobody had won,
for there was nothing but grinding of teeth and blaspheming of ill-
luck. Nor had matters mended on the Cup-day, after which celebra-
tion "a groaning phantom " lay in the doorway of his bedroom and
howled all night. The landlord came up in the morning to apologise,
' 'and said it was a gentleman who had lost ;^i5oo or ;^2ooo; and he had
drunk a deal afterwards; and then they put him to bed, and then he —
took the 'orrors, and got up, and yelled till morning." Dickens might
well believe, as he declared at the end of his letter, that if a boy with
any good in him, but with a dawning propensity to sporting and
betting, were but brought to the Doncaster races soon enough, it
would cure him.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THIS TIME
1857-8

An unsettled feeling greatly in exces" f what was usual with Dickens,
more or less observable since his first residence at Boulogne, became
ai :his time almost habitual, and the satisfactions which home should
have supplied, and which indeed were essential requirements of his
nature, he had failed to find in his home= He had not the alternative
that under this disappointment some can discover in what is called
society. It did not suit him, and he set no store by it. No man was

I S

'I i

V n

590

The Life of Charles Dickens

11*84

better fitted to adorn any circle he entered, but beyond that of f-'^nds
and equals he rarely passed. He would take as much pains to keep
©ut of the houses of the great as others take to get into them. Not
always wisely, it may be admitted. Mere contempt for toadyism and
fliunkeyism was not at all times the prevailing motive with him which
he supposed it to be. Beneath his horror of those vices of Englishmen
in his own rank of life, there was a still stronger resentment at the
social inequalities that engender them, of which he was not so
conscious and to which he owned less freely. Not the less it served
secretly to justify what he might otherwise have had no mind to.
To say he was not a gentleman would be as true as to say he was not
a writer; but if anyone should assert his occasional preference for
what was even beneath his level over that which was above it, this
would be difficult of disproof. It was among those defects of tempera-
ment for which his early trials and his early successes were account-
able in perhaps equal measure. He was sensitive in a passionate
degree to praise and blame, which yet he made for the most part a
point of pride to assume indifference to; the inequalities of rank which
he secretly resented took more galling as well as glaring prominence
from the contrast of the necessities he had gone through with the
fame that had come to him; and when the forces he most affected to
despise assumed the form of barriers he could not easily overlap, he
was led to appear frequently intolerant (for he very seldom was really
so) in opinions and language. His early sufferings brought with them
the healing powers of energy, will, and persistence, and taught him
the inexpressible value of a determined resolve to live down difficul-
ties; but the habit, in small as in great things, of renunciation and
self-sacrifice, they did not teach; and, by his sudden leap into a
world-wide popularity and influence, he became master of everything
that might seem to be attainable in life, before he had mastered what
a man must undergo to be equal to its hardest trials.

Nothing of all this has yet presented itself to notice, except in
occasion.- 1 forms of restlessness and desire of change of place, which
were themselves, when his books were in progress, so incident as well
to the active requirements of his fancy as to call, thus far, for no other
explanation. Uj io the date of the' completion of Copper field he had
felt himself to be in possession of an all-sufficient resource. Against
whatever might befall he had a set-off in his imaginative creations, a
compensation derived from his art that never failed him, because
there he was supreme. It was the world he could bend to his will, and
make subserve to all his desires. He had otherwise, underneath his
exterior of a singular precision, method, and strictly orderly arrange-
ment in all things, and notwithstanding a temperament to which
home and home interests were really a necessity, something in com-
mon with those eager, impetuous, somewhat overbearing natures,
that rush at existence without heeding the cost of it, and are not more
ready to accept and make the most of its enjoyments than to be
easily and quickly overthrown by its burdens. But the world he had

The Life of Charles Dickens

591

,tof f-'^nds
ins to keep
them. Not
idyism and
him which
englishmen
lent at the
i^as not so
ivS it served
o mind to.
he was not
ference for
ove it, this
)f tempera-
■e account-
passionate
lost part a
rank which
)rominence
h with the
affected to
jverlap, he
. was really
with them
aught him
vn diflficul-
iation and
sap into a
everything
tered what

except in
ace, which
ent as well
Dr no other
leld he had
;e. Against
reations, a
n, because
is will, and
;rneath his
ly arrange-
: to which
ng in com-
ig natures,
e not tnoTP.
;han to be
)rld he had

called into being had thus far borne him safely through these perils.
He had his own creations always by his side. They were living,
speaking companions. With them only he was everywhere
thoroughly identified. He laughed and wept with them; was as
much elated by their fun as cast down by their grief; and brought to
the consideration of them a belief in their reality as well as in the
influences they were meant to exercise, which in every circumstance
sustained him.

It was during the composition of Little Dorrit that I think he firsl
fblc a certain strain upon his invention which brought with it other
misgivings. In a modified form this was present during the later
portions of Bleak House, of which not a few of the defects might be
traced to the acting excitements amid which it was written; but the
succeeding book made it plainer to him; and it is remarkable that ia
the interval between them he resorted for the first and only time in
his life to a practice, which he abandoned at the close of his next and
last story published in the twenty-number form, of putting down
written "Memoranda" of suggestions for characters or incidents by
way of resource to him in his writing. Never before had his teeming
fancy seemed to want such help; the need being less to contribute to
its fulness than to check its overflowing; but it is another proof that
he had been secretly bringing before himself, at least, the possibility
that what had ever been his great support might some day desert
him. It was strange that he should have had such doubt, and he
would hardly have confessed it openly; but apart from that wonder-
ful world of his books, the range of his thoughts was not always pro-
portioned to the width and largeness of his nature. His ordinary circle
of activity, whether in likings or thinkings, was full of such surprising
animation, that one was apt to believe it more comprehensive than it
really was; and again and again, when a wide horizon might seem to
be ahead of him he would pull up suddenly and stop short, as though
nothing lay beyond. For the tine, though each had its term and
change, he was very much a man of one idea, each having its turn of
absolute predominance; and this was one of the secrets of the
thoroughness with which everything he took in hand w s done. As to
the matter of his writings, the actual truth was that his creative
genius never really failed him. Not a few of his inventions of character
and humour, up to the very close of his life, his Marigolds, Lirripers,
Gargerys, Pips, Sapseas and many others, were as fresh and fine as in
his greatest day. He had however lost the free and fertile method of
the earlier time. He could no longer fill a wide-spread canvas with the
same facility and certainty as of old; and he had frequently a quite
unfounded apprehension of some possible breakdown, of which the
end might be at any moment beginning. There can accordingly,
from time to time, intervals of unusual impatience aud restlessness,
strange to me in connection with his home; his old pursuits were too
often laid aside for other excitements and occupations; he joined a
public political agitation, set on foot by administrative reformers; h§

■L>-1

592

The Life of Charles Dickens

got up various quasi-public private theatricals, in which he took the
leading place; and though it was but part of his always generous devo-
tion in any friendly duty to organise the series of performances on his
friend Jerrold's death, yet the eagerness with which he flung himself
into them, so arranging them as to assume an amount of labour in
acting and travelling that might have appalled an experienced
comedian, and carrying them on week after week unceasingly in
London and the provinces, expressed but the craving which still had
possession of him to get by some means at some change that
should make existence easier. What was highest in his nature had
ceased for the time to be highest in his life, and he had put himself
at the mercy of lower accidents and conditions. The mere effect of
the strolling wandering ways into which this acting led him could
not be other than unfavourable. But remonstrance as yet was
unavailing.

To one very earnestly made in the early autumn of 1857, in which
opportunity was taken to compare his recent rush up Carrick Fell
to his rush into other difficulties, here was the reply. "Too late to say,
put the curb on, and don't rush at hills- -the wrong man to say it to.
T have now no relief but in action. I am become incapable of rest. I
am quite confident I should rust, break, and die, if I spar, i myself.
Much better to die, doing. What I am in that way, nature made me
first, and my way of life has of late, alas ! confirmed. I must accept the
drawback — since it is one — with the powers I have; and I must hold
upon the tenure prescribed to me." Something of the same sad feeling,
it is right to say, had been expressed from time to time, in connection
also with home dissatisfactions and misgivings, through the three
years preceding; but I attributed it to other causes, and gave little
attention to it. During his absences abroad for the greater part of
1854, '55, and '56, while the elder of his children were growing out of
childhood, and his books were less easy to him than in his earlier man-
hood, evidences presented themselves in his letters of the old "un-
happy loss or want of something" to which he had given a pervading
prominence in Copperfield. In the first of those years he made express
allusion to the kind of experience which had been one of his descrip-
tions in that favourite book, and', mentioning the drawbacks of his
present life, had first identified it with his own: "the so happy and
yet so unhappy existence which seeks its realities in unrealities, and
finds its dangerous comfort in a perpetual escape from the disappoint-
ment of heart around it."

JLater in the same year he thus wrote from Boulogne: "I have had
dreadful thoughts of getting away somewhere altogether by myself.
If I could have managed it, I think possibly I might have gone to the
P)a'eennees (you know what I mean that word for, so I won't
rewrite it) for six months ! I have put the idea into the perspective of
.six months but have not abandoned it. I have visions of livinsy for
half a year or so, in all sorts of inaccessible places, and opening a new
book therein. A floating idea of going up above the snow-line in

The Life of Charles Dickens

593

he took the
erous devo-
inces on his
ling himself
)f labour in
jxperienced
easingly in
ch still had
liange that
nature had
put himself
sre effect of
I him could
,s yet was

17, in which
Warrick Fell
late to say,
to say it to.
le of rest. I
n J myself,
re made me
t accept the
[ must hold
sad feeling,
connection
ti the three
gave little
iter part of
wing out of
earlier man-
le old "un-
1 pervading
ade express
his descrip-
)acks of his
happy and
jalities, and
disappoint-

'I have had
• by myself,
gone to the
so I won't
rspective of
3f livinp' for
ening a new
now-line in

Switzerland, and living in some astonishing convent, hovers about
me. If Household Words could be got into a good train, in short, I
don't know in what strange place, or at what remote elevation above
the level of the sea, I might fall to work next. Restlessness, you will
say. Whatever it is, it is always driving me, and I cannot help it. I
have rested nine or ten weeks, and sometimes feel as if it had been a
year — though I had the strangest nervous miseries before I stopped.
If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish."
Again, four months later he wrote: "You will hear of me in Paris,
probably next Sunday, and I may go on to Bordeaux. Have general
ideas of emigrating in the summer to th«f» mountain-ground between
France and Spain. Am altogether in & . .hevslled state of mind —
motes of new books in the dirty air, miseries of older growth, threaten-
ing to close upon me. Why is it, that as with poor David, a sense
comes always crushing on me now, when I fall into low spirits, as of
one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and companion
I have never made?"

Early in 1856 (20 January) the notion revisited him of writing a
book on solitude. "Again I am beset by my former notions of a book
whereof the whole story shall be on the top of the Great St. Bernard.
As I accept and reject ideas for Little Dorrit, it perpetually comes back
to me. Two or three years hence, perhaps you'll find me living with
he Monks and the Dogs a whole winter — among the blinding snows
that fall about that monastery I have a serious idea that I shall do
it, if I live." He was at this date in Paris; and during the visit to him
of Macready in the following April, the self-revelations were resumed.
The great actor was then living in retirement at Sherborne, to
which he had gone on quitting the stage; and Dickens gave
favourable report of his enjoyment of the change to his little holiday
at Paris. . . .

It would be unjust and uncandid not to admit that these and othej
similar passages in the letters th?.t extended over the years while he
lived abroad, had served in some degree as a preparation for what
came after his return to England in the following year. It came with
a great shock nevertheless; because it told plainly what before had
never been avowed, but only hinted at more or less obscurely. The
opening reference is to the reply which had been made to a previous
expression of his wish for some confidences as in the old time. I give
only what is strictly necessary to account for what followed, and even
this with deep reluctance. "Your ' tter of yesterday was so kind and
hearty, and sounded so gently tJae many chords we have touched
together, that I cannot leave it unanswered, though I have not much
(to any purpose) to say. My reference to 'confidences' was merely
to the relief of saying a word of what has long been pent up in my
mind. Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is
no help for it= It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy,
but that I make her so too — and much more so. She is exactly what
you know, in the way of being amiable and complying; but we are

'J:

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The Life of Charles Dickens

I) f^ g J

strangely ill-assorted for the bond there is between us. God knows she
would have been a thousand times happier if she had married another
kmd of man, and that her avoidance of this destiny would have been
at least equally good for us both. I am often cut to the heart by think-
ing what a pity it is, for her own sake, that I ever fell in her way; and
if I were sick or disabled to-morrow, I know how sorry she would be
and how deeply grievec myself, to think how we had lost each other!
But exactly the same incompatibility would arise, the moment I was
well again; and nothing on earth could make her understand me, or
suit us to each other. Her temperament will not go with mine.' It
mattered not so much when we had only ourselves to consider, but
reasons hav« been growing since which make it all but hopeless'that
we should even try to struggle on. What is now befalling me I have
seen steadily coming, ever since the days you remember when Mary
was born; and I know too well that you cannot, and no one can, help
me. Why I have e\^en written I hardly know; but it is a miserable sort
of comfort that you should be clearly aware how matters stand. The
mere mention of the fact, without any complaint or blame of any
sort, is a relief to my present state of spirits— and I can get this only
from you, because I can speak of it to no one else." In the same tone
was his rejoinder to my reply. "To the most part of what you say—
Amen ! You are not so tolerant as perhaps you might be of the way-
ward and unsettled feeling which is part (I suppose) of the tenure on
which one holds an imaginative life, and which I have, as you ought
to know well, often only kept down by riding over it like a dragoon-
but let that go by. I make no maudlin complaint. I agree with you
as to the very possible incidents, even not less bearable than mine,
that might and must often occur to the married condition when it is
entered into very young. I am always deeply sensible of the wonderful
exercise I have of life and its highest sensations, and have said to my-
self for years, and have honestly and truly felt. This is the drawback
to such a career, and is not to be complained of. I say it and feel it
now as strongly as ever I did; and. as I told you in my last, I do not
with that view put all this forward. But the years have not made it
easier to bear for either of us; and, for her sake as well as mine, the
wish will force itself upon me that something might be done. I know
too well it is impossible. There is the fact, and that is all one can say.
Nor are you to suppose that I disguise from myself what might be
urged on the other side. I clajm no immunity from blame. There is
plenty of fault on my side. I dare say, in the way of a thousand
uncertainties, caprices, and difficulties of disposition; but only
one thing will alter all that, and that is, the end which alters
everjrthing."

It will not seem to most people that there was anything here which
in happier circumstances might not have been susceptible of consider-
ate adjustment; but all the circumstances were unfavourable, and the
moderate middle course which the admissions in that letter might
wisely have prompted and wholly justified, was unfortunately not

od knows she
tried another
lid have been
art by think-
her way; and
ihe would be,
it each other,
loment I was
stand me, or
dth mine. It
consider, but
lopeless that
ig me I have
r when Mary
)ne can, help
liserable sort
s stand. The
lame of any
get this only
le same tone
it you say —
! of the way-
he tenure on
is you ought
a dragoon —
■ee with you
i than mine,
)D when it is
le wonderful
J said to my-
le drawback
t and feel it
ist, I do not
not made it
as mine, the
one. I know
one can say.
at might be
ne. There is
a thousand
; but only
vhich alters

I here which
of consider-
,ble, and the
letter might
unately not

awTTiTrii'ii

BiMitaaai^KwJ

The Life of Charles Dickens

595

taken. Compare what before was said of his temperament, with what
is there said by himself of its defects, and the explanation will not be
difficult. Every counteracting influence against '■he one idea which
now predominated over him had been so weakei.od as to be almost
powerless. His elder children were no longer children; his books had
lost for the time the importance they formerly had over every other
consideration in his life; and he had not in himself the resource that
such a man, judging him from the surface, might be expected to have
had. Not his genius only, but his whole nature, was too exclusively
made up of sympathy for, and with, the real in its most intense form,
to be sufficiently provided against failure in the realities around him.
There was for him no " city of the mind " against outward ills, for
inner consolation and shelter. It was in and from the actual he still
stretched forward to find the freedom and satisfaction of an ideal, and
by his very attempts to escape the world he was driven back into the
thick of it. But what he would have sought there, it supplies to none;
and to get the infinite out of anything so finite, has broken many a
stout heart.

At the close of that last letter from Gadshill (5 September) was
this question — "What do you think of my paying for this place, by
reviving that old idea of some readings from my books. I am strongly
tempted. Think of it." The reasons against it had great force, and
took, in my judgment, greater from the time at which it was again
proposed. The old ground of opposition remained. It was a substitu-
tion of lower for higher aims; a change to commonplace from more
elevated pursuits; and it had so much of the character of a public
exhibition for money as to raise, in the question of respect for his
calling as a writer, a question also of respect for himself as a gentle-
man. This opinion, now strongly reiterated, was referred ultimately
to two distinguished ladies of his acquaintance, who decided against
it. Yet not without such momentary misgiving in the direction of
"the stage," as pointed strongly to the danger, which, by those who
took the opposite view, was most of all thought incident to the
particular time of the proposal. It might be a wild exaggeration to
fear that he was in danger of being led to adopt the stage as a calling,
but he was certainly about to place himself within reach of not a
few of its drawbacks and disadvantages. To the full extent he per-
haps did not himself know, how much his eager present wish to
become a public reader was but the outcome of the restless domestic
discontents of the last four years; and that to indulge it, and the
unsettled habits inseparable from it, was to abandon every hope of
resettling his disordered home. There is nothing, in its application
to so divine a genius as Shakespeare, more affecting than his expressed
dislike to a profession, which, in the jealous self-watchfulness of his
noble nature, he feared might hurt his mind. The long subsequent

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and generous associations of the histrionic art, have not weakened
the testimony of its greatest name against its less favourable

!■• 1

■ri

596

The Life of Charles Dickens

r ! 1

influences; against the laxity of habits it may encourage; and its
public manners, bred of public means, not always compatible with
home feUcities and duties. But, freely open as Dickens was to counsel
in regard of his books, he was, for reasons formerly stated, less
accessible to it on points of personal conduct; and when he had
neither self-distrust nor self-denial to hold him back, he would push
persistently forward to whatever object he had in view.

An occurrence of the time hastened the decision in this case. An
enterprise had been set on foot for establishment of a hospital for
sick children; a large old-fashioned mansion in Great Ormond Street,
with spacious garden, had been fitted up with more than thirty
beds; during the four or five years of its existence, outdoor and
indoor relief had been afforded by it to nearly fifty thousand children,
of whom thirty thousand were under five years of age; but, want of
funds having threatened to arrest the merciful work, it was resolved
to try a public dinner by way of charitable appeal, and for president
the happy choice was made of one who had enchanted everybody
with the joys and sorrows of little children. Dickens threw himself
into the service heart and soul. There was a simple pathos in his
address from the chair quite startling in its effect at such a meeting;
and he probably never moved any audience so much as by the strong
personal feeling with which he referred to the sacrifices made for the
Hospital by the very poor themselves: from whom a subscription
of fifty pounds, contributed in single pennies, had come to the
treasurer during almost every year it had been open. The whole
speech, indeed, is the best oi "he kind spoken by him; and two little
pictures from i-^, one of the misery he had witnessed, the other of
the remedy he had found, should not be absent from the picture of
his own life.

"Some years ago, being in Scotland, I went with one of the most
humane members of the most humane of professions, on a morning
tour among some of the worst lodged inhabitants of the old town of
Edinburgh. In the closes and wynds of that picturesque place (I am
sorry to remind you what fast friends picturesqueness and typhus
often are) , we saw more poverty and sickness in an hour than many
people would believe in, in a lifeV Our way lay from one to another
of the most wretched dwellings, reeking with horrible odours; shut
out from the sky and from the air, mere pits and dens. In a room in
one of these places, where there was an empty porridge-pot on the
cold hearth, a ragged woman and some ragged children crouching
on the bare ground near it — and, I remember as I speak, where the
very light, refracted from a high damp-stained wall outside, came in
trembling, as if the fever which had shaken everything else had
shaken even it — there lay, in an old egg-box which the mother had
begged from a shop, a little feeble, wan, sick child. With his little
wasted face, and his little hot worn hands folded over his breast, and
his little bright attentive eyes, I can see him now, as I have seen him
for several years, looking steadily at us. There he lay in his small

ige; and its
patible with
IS to counsel
stated, less
tien he had
would push

[lis case. An
hospital for
lond Street,
than thirty
mtdoor and
nd children,
)ut, want of
v^as resolved
or president
I everybody
rew himself
ithos in his
I a meeting;
y the strong
lade for the
subscription
jme to the
The whole
id two little
:he other of
e picture of

of the most
1 a morning
old town of
place (I am
and typhus
than many
I to another
dours; shut
n a room in
-pot on the
1 crouching
:, where the
de, came in
ig else had
mother had
th his little
breast, and
ve seen him
n his small

The Life of Charles Dickens

597

(rail box, which was not at all a bad emblem of the small body Irora
which he was slowly parting— there he lay, quite quiet, quite patient,
saying never a word. He seldom cried, the mother said; he seldom
complained; 'he lay there, seemin' to woonder w' at it was a' aboot.'
(}od knows, I thought, as I stood 'coking at hJm, he had his reasons
for wondering . . . Many a poor child, sick and neglected, I have
seen since that time in London; many have I also seen most affection-
ately tended, in unwholesome houses and hard circumstances where
recovery was impossible: but at all such times I have seen my little
drooping friend in his egg-box, and he has always addressed his
dumb wonder to me what it meant, and why, in the name of a gracious
God, such things should be! . . . But, ladies and gentlemen,"
Dickons added, "such things need not be, and will not be, if this
company, which is a drop of the life-blood of the great compassionate
public heart, will only accept the means of rescue and prevention
which it is mine to offer. Within a quarter of a mile of this place where
I speak, stands a once courtly old house, where blooming children
were bom, and grew up to be men and women, and married, and
brought their own blooming children back to patter up the old oak
staircase which stood but the other day, and to wonder at the old
oak carvings on the chimney-pieces. In the airy wards into which the
old state drawing-rooms and family bedchambers of that house are
now converted, are lodged such small patients that the attendant
nurses look like reclaimed giantesses, and the kind medical practi-
tioner like an amiable Christian ogre. Grouped about the little lov/
tables in the centre of the rooms, are such tiny convalescents that
they seem to be playing at having been ill. On the doll's beds are
such diminutive creatures that each poor sufferer is supplied with its
trays of toys; and, looking round, you may see how the little tired
flushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on its way
into the ark ; or how one little dimpled arm has mowed down (as I
saw myself) the whole tin soldiery of Europe. On the walls of these
rooms are graceful, pleasant, bright, childish pictures. At the beds'
heads, hang representations of the figure of Him who was once a
child Himself, and a poor one. But alas! reckoning up the number of
beds that are there, the '"^sitor to this Child's Hospital will find
himself perforce obliged to stop at very little over thirty; and will
learn, with sorrow and surprise, that even that small number, so
forlornly, so miserably diminutive compared with this vast London,
cannot possibly be maintained unless the Hospital be made better
known. I limit myself to saying better known, because I will not be-
liev. -^pt in a Christian community of fathers and mothers, and
broth- rs and sisters, it can fail, being better Jaiown, to be well and
richly endowed." It was a brave and true prediction. The Child's
Hospital has never since known want. That night alone added greatly
more than three thousand pounds to its funds, and Dickens put the
crown to his good work by reading on its behalf, shortly afterwards,
his Christmas Carol; when the sum realised, and the urgent demand

I 'I

598

The Life of Charles Dickens

that followed for a repetition of the pleasure given by the reading,
bore down further opposition to the project of his engaging publicly
in such readings for himself.

The Child's Hospital night was 9 February, its reading was
appointed for 15 April, and, nearly a month before, renewed efforts
at remonstrance had been made. "Your view of the reading matter,"
Dickens replied, "I still think is unconsciously taken from your own
particular point. You don't seem to me to jet out of yourself in con-
sidering it. A word more upon it. You are not to think I have made up
my mind. If I had, why should I rot say so? I find very great diffi-
culty in doing so because of what you urge, because I know the
question to be a balance of doubts, and because I most honestly feel
in my innermost heart, in this matter (as in all others for years and
years), the honour of the calling by which I have always stood most
conscientiously. But do you quite consider that the public exhibition
of oneself takes place equally, whosoever may get the money.^ And
have you any idea that at this moment — this very time — half the
publix. at least supposes me to be paid? My dear F., out of the twenty
or five-andr twenty letters a week that I get about readings, twenty
will ask at what price, or on what terms, it can be done. The only
exceptions, in truth, are when the correspondent is a clergyman,
or a banker, or the member for the place in question. Why at this
very time half Scotland believes that I am paid for going to Edin-
burgh! — Here is Greenock writes to me, and asks could it be done
for a hundred pounds? There is Aberdeen writes, and states the capa-
city of its hall, and says, though far less profitable than the very large
hall in Edinburgh, is it not enough to come on for? W. answers such
letters continually. ( — At this place enter Beale. He called here yester-
day morning, and then wrote to ask if I would see him to-day. I
replied 'Yes,' so here he came in. With long preface called to know
whether it was possible to arrange anything in the way of readings
for this autumn — say six months. Large capital at command. Could
produce partners, in such an enterprise, also with large capital.
Represented such. Returns would be enormous. Would I name a
sum? a minimum sum that I required to have, in any case? Would
I look at it as a Fortune, and in^no other point of view? I shook my
head, and said, my tongue was tied on the subject for the present; I
might be more communicative at another time. Exit Beale in con-
fusion and disappointment.) — You will be happy to hear that at one
on Friday, the Lord Provost, Dean of Guild, Magistrates, and Council
of the ancient city of Edinburgh will wait (in procession) on their
brother freeman, at the Music Hall, to give him hospitable welcome.
Their brother freeman has been cursing their stars and his own, ever
since tlie solemn notification to this effect." But very grateful, when
it came, was the enthusiasm of the greetmg, and welcome the gift
of the silver wassail-bowl which followed the reading of the Carol.
"i had no opportunity of asking anyone's advice in Edinburgh," he
wrote on his return. "The crowd was too enormous, and the excite-

•asa

11 —""

The Life of Charles Dickens

the reading,
ging publicly

reading was
levved efforts
iing matter,"
am your own
urself in con-
lave made up
■y great difti-

I know the
honestly feel
"or years and
s stood most
lie exhibition
money? And
ne — half the
if the twenty
ings, twenty
le. The only
I clergyman,
Why at this
ing to Edin-
d it be done
tes the capa-
he very large
mswers such
1 here yester-
im to-day. I
lied to know
T of readings
mand. Could
irge capital.
Id I name a
case? Would

I shook my
he present; I
Jeale in con-
r that at one
, and Council
on) on their
ble welcome,
lis own, ever
ateful, when
9me the gift
)f the Carol.
nburgh," he
d the excite-

599

ment in it much too great. But my determination is all but taken.
I must do something, or I shall wear my heart away. I can see no
better thing to do that is half so hopeful in itself, or half so well
suited to my restless state."

What is pointed at in those last words had been taken as a ground
of objection, and thus he turned it into an argument the other way.
During all these months many sorrowful misunderstandings had
continued in his home, and the relief sought from the misery- had but
the effect of making desperate any hope of a better understanding.
"It becomes necessary," he wrote at the end of March, "with a view
to the arrangements that would have to be begun next month if I
decided on the readings, to consider and settle the question of the
Plunge. Quite dismiss fiom your mind any reference whatever to
present circumstances, at home. Nothing can put them right, until
we are all dead and buried and risen. It is not, with me, a matter of
will or trial, or sufferance, or good humour, or making the best of it,
or making the worst of it, any longer. It is all despairingly over.
Have no lingering hope of, or for, me in this association. A dismal
failure has to be borne, and there an end. Will you then try to think
of this reading project (as I do) apart from all personal likings and dis-
likings, and solely with a view to its effect on that particular relation
(personally affectionate and like no other man's) which subsists
Detween me and the public? I want your most careful consideration.
If you would like, when you have gone over it in your mind, to dis-
cuss the matter with me and Arthur Smith (who would manage the
whole of the Business, which I should never touch); we will make an
appointment. But I ougnt to add that Arthur Smith plainly says,
'Of the immense return in money, I have no doubt. Of the Dash into
the new position, however, I am not so good a judge.' I enclose you a
rough note of my project, as it stands in my mind."

Mr. Arthur Smith, a man possessed of many qualities that justified
the confidence Dickens placed in him, might not have been a good
judge of the "Dash" into the new position, but no man knevv better
every disadvantage incident to it, or was less likely to be disconcerted
by any. His exact fitness to manage the scheme successfully, made
him an unsafe counsellor respecting it. Within a week from this time
the reading for the Charity was to be given. "They have let," Dickens
wrote on g April, "five hundred stalls for the Hospital night; and as
people come every day for more, and it is out of the question tp
make more, they cannot be restrained at St. Martin's Hall from
taking down names for other readings." This closed the attempt at
further objection. Exactly a fortnight after the reading for the
children's hospital, on Thursday, 29 April, came the first public
reading, for his own benefit; and before the next month was over,
this launch into a new life had been followed by a change in his old
home. Thenceforward he and his wife lived apart. The eldest son
went with his mother, Dickens at o. e giving effect to her expressed
wish in this respect; and the other children remained with himself.

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The Life of Charles Dickens

their intercourse with Mrs. Dickens being left entirely to themselves.
It was thus far an arrangement of a strictly private natur*?, and no
decent person could have had excuse for regarding it in any other
light, if pubic attention had not been unexpectedly invited to it by
a printed statement in Household Words. Dickens was stung into
this by some miserable gossip at which in ordinary circumstances no
man would more determinedly have been silent; but he had now
publicly to show himself, at stated times, as a public entertainer,
and this, with his name even so aspersed, he found to be impossible.
All he would concede to my strenuous resistance against such a
publication, was an offer to suppress it, if, upon reference to the opin-
ion of a certain distinguished man (still living), that opinion should
prove to be in agreement with mine. Unhappily it fell in with his own,
and the publication went on. It was followed by another statement,
a letter subscribed with his name, which got into print without his
sanction; nothing publicly being known of it (I was not among those
who had read it privately) until it appeared in the New York Tribune.
It had been addressed and given to Mr. Arthur Smith as an authority
for correction of false rumours and scandals, and Mr. Smith had given
a copy of it, with like intention, to the Tribune correspondent in
London. Its writer referred to it always afterwards as his "violated
letter."

The course taken by the author of this book at the time of these
occurrences, will not be departed from here. Such illustration of
grave defects in Dickens's character as the passage in his life affords,
I have not shrunk from placing side by side with such excuses in
regard to it as he had unquestionable right to claim should be put
forward also. How far what remained of his story took tone or colour
from it, and especially from the altered career on which at the same
time he entered, will thus be sufficiently explained; and with any-
thing else the public have nothing to do.

Ill

GADSHILL PLACE
1856-70

"I WAS better pleased with Gadshill Place last Saturday," he wrote
to me from Paris on 13 February, 1856, "on going down there,
even than I had prepared myself to be. The country, against every
disadvantage of season, is beautiful; and the house is so old-fashioned,
cheerful, and comfortable, that it is really pleasant to look at. The

twenty ycara, so i
have not the heart to turn him out. He is to remain till Lady Day

) themselves,
tur*?, and no
in any other
ited to it by
s stung into
imstances no
he had now
entertainer,
impossible,
^inst such a
i to the opin-
•inion should
Arith his own,
!r statement.
; without his
among those
^ork Tribune.
an authority
th had given
jspondent in
lis "violated

ime of these
lustration of
s life affords,
h excuses in
lould be put
)ne or col<v;:.
at the saaiu
d with any-

The Life of Charles Dickens

6oi

/," he wrote
down there,
gainst every
d-fashioned,
look at. The
y years, so I
11 Lady Day

next year, when I shall go in, please God; make my alterations;
furnish the house; and keep it for myself that summer." Returning
to England through the Kentish country with Mr. Wilkie Collins m
July, other advantages occurred to him. "A railroad opened from
Rochester to Maidstone, which connects Gadshill at once with the
whole sea coast, is certainly an addition to the place, and an enhance-
ment of its value. By and by we shall have the London, Chatham and
Dover, too; and that will bring it within an hour of Canterbury and
an hour and a half of Dover. I am glad to hear of your havi.-'g been
in the neighbourhood. There is no healthier (marshes avoided),
and none in my eyes more beautiful. One of these days I shall
show you some places up the Medway with which you will be
charmed."

The association with his youthful fancy that first made the p? ce
attractive to him has been told; and it was with wonder he had heard
one (lay, from his friend and fellow-worker at Household Words, Mr.
W. H. Wills, that not only was the house for sale to which he had so
often looked wistfully, but that the lady chiefly interested as its
owner had been long known and much esteemed by himself. Such
curious chances led Dickens to the saying he so frequently repeated
about the smallness of the world; but the close relation often found
thus existing bet\/een things and persons far apart, suggests not so
much the smallness of the world as the possible importance of the
least things done in it, and is better explained by the grander
teaching of Carlyle, that causes and effects, connecting e\ ery
man and thing with every other, extend through all space and
time.

It was at the close of 1855 the negotiation for its purchase be^an.
"They wouldn't," he wrote (25 November), "take ;^i70o for the
Gadshill property, but 'finally' wanted ;^i8oo. I have finally offere I
;/;i750. It will require an expenditure of about ;^3oo more before
yielding ;^ioo a year." The usual discovery of course awaited him
that this first estimate would have to be increased threefold. "The
changes absolutely necessary" (y February, 1856) "will take a thou-
sand pounds; which sum I am always resolving to squeeze out of this,
grind out of that, and wring out of the other; this, that, and the other
generally all three declining to come up to the scratch for the pur-
pose." "This day," he wrote on 14 March, "I have paid the purchase-
money for Gadshill Place. After drawing the cheque (1790) I turned
round to give it to Wills, and said, 'Now isn't it an extraordinary
thing — look at tlxe Day — Friday! I have been nearly drawin it
half a dozen times when the lawyers have not been ready, and here
it comes round upon a Friday as a matter of course.' " He had no
thought at this time of reserving the place wholly for himself, or of
making it his own residence except at intervals of summer. He
looked upon it as an investment only. "You will hardly know Gads-
hill again," he wrote in January 1858, "I am impro^dng it so much

yet I have no interest in the place." But continued ownership

i* •

!-♦;

; 'f

1 '

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602

The Life of Charles Dickens

brought increased liking; he took more and more interest in his own
improvements, which were just the kind of occasional occupation
and resource his life most wanted in its next seven or eight years;
and any further idea of letting it he soon abandoned altogether. It
only once passed out of his possession thus, for four months in 1859;
in the following year, on the sale of Tavistock House, he transferred
to it his books and pictures and choicer furniture; and thenceforward
varied only by houses taken from time to time for the London season,
he made it his permanent family abode. Now and then, even during
those years, he would talk of selling it; and on his final return from
America, when he hdd sent the last of his sons out into the world,
he really might have sold it if he could then have found a house in
London suitable to him, and such as he could purchase. But in this
he failed; secretly to his own satisfaction, as I believe; and thereupon,
in that last autumn of his life, he projected and carried out his most
costly addition to Gadshill. Already of course more money had been
spent upon it than his first intention in buying it would have justified.
He had so enlarged the accommodation, improved the grounds and
offices, and added to the land, that, taking also into account this
closing outlay, the resen'^ed price placed upon the whole after his
death more than quadrupled what he had given in 1856, for the
house, shrubbery, and twenty years' lease of a meadow field. It was
then purchased, and is now inhabited, by his eldest son.

Its position has been described, and a history of Rochester pub-
lished a hundred years ago quaintly mentions the principal interest
of the locality. "Near the twenty-seventh stone from London is
Gadshill, supposed to have been the scene of the robbery mentioned
by Shakespeare in his play of Henry I V.; there being reason to think
also that it was Sir John Falstaff, of truly comic memory, who under
the name of Oldcastle inhabited Cooling Castle, of which the ruins
are in the neighbourhood. A small distance to the left appears on an
eminence the Hermitage, the seat of the late Sir Francis Head, Bart.;
and close to the road, on a small ascent, is a neat building lately
erected by Mr. Day. In descending Strood Hill is a fine prospect of
Strood, Rochester, and Chatham, ^which three towns form a continued
street extending above two miles in length." It had been supposed
that "the neat building lately erected by Mr. Day" was that which
the great novelist made famous; but Gadshill Place had no existence
until eight years after the date of the history. The good rector who
so long lived in it told me, in 1859, that it had been built eighty years
before by a well-known character in those parts, one Stevens, grand-
father-in-law of Henslow the Cambridge professor of botany. Stevens,
who could only with much difficulty manage to write his name, had
begun life as ostler at an inn; had become husband to the landlord's
widow; then a brewer; and finally, as he subscribed himself on one
occasion, "mare" of Rochester. Afterwards the house was inhabited
by Mr. Lynn (from some of the members of whose family Dickens
made his purchase; and, before the Rev. Mr. Hindle became its tenant

at in his own

1 occupation

eight years;

dtogether. It

iths in 1859;

e transferred

enceforward

ndon season,

even during

return from

the world,
d a house in
. But in this
d thereupon,
out his most
Ley had been
ive justified,
grounds and
iccount this
ole after his
856, for the
field. It was

Chester pub-
ipal interest

1 London is
Y mentioned
son to think
', who under
ch the ruins
)pears on an
Head, Bart.;
ilding lately

prospect of
a continued
en supposed
) that which
no existence
[ rector who
eighty years
vens, grand-
ny. Stevens,
s name, had
le landlord's
Qself on one
IS inhabited
lily Dickens
ae its tenant

The Life of Charles Dickens

60^.

it was inhabited by a Macaroni parson named Townshend, whose
liorses the Prince Regent bought, throwing into the bargain a box of
much desired cigars. Altogether the place had notable associations
even apart from those which have connected it with the masterpieces
of English humour. "This House, Gadshill Place, stands on the
summit of Shakespeare's Gadshill, ever memorable for its association
with Sir Jo in Falstaff in his noble fancy. But, my lads, my lads, to-
morrow morning, by four o'clock, early at Gadshill/ there are pilgrims
going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with
fat purses; I have vizards for you all; you have horses for yourselves."
Illuminated by Mr. Owen Jones, and placed in a frame on the first-
floor landing, these words were the greeting of the new tenant to his
visitors. It was his first act of ownership. . . .

On abandoning his notion, after the American readhigs, of exchang-
ing Gadshill for London, a new staircase was put up from the hill; a
parquet floor laid on the first landing; and a conservatory built, open-
ing into both drawing-room and dining-room, "glass and iron," as he
described it, "brilliant but expensive, with foundations as of an
ancient Roman work of horrible solidity." This last addition had
long been an object of desire with him; though he would hardly even
now have given himself the indulgence but for the golden shower from
America. He saw it first in a completed state on the Sunday before
his death, when his younger daughter was on a visit to him. "Well,
Katey," he said to her, "now you see positively the last improve-
ment at Gadshill"; and everyone laughed at the joke against himself.
The success of the new conservatory was unquestionable. It was the
remark of all around him that he was certainly, from this last of his
improvements, drawing more enjoyment than from any of its pre-
decessors, when the scene for ever closed.

Of the course of his daily life in the country there is not much to
be said. Perhaps there was never a man who changed places so much
and habits so little. He was always methodical and regular; and passed
his life from day to day, divided for the most part bet^ en working
and walking, the same wherever he was. The only exception was when
special or infrequent visitors were with him. When such friends as
Longfellow and his daughters, or Charles Eliot Norton and his wife,
came, or when Mr. Fields brought his wife and Professor Lowell's
daughter, or when he received other Americans to whom he owed
special courtesy, he would compress into infinitely few days an
enormous amoant of sight-seeing and country enjoyment, castles,
cathedrals, and fortified lines, lunches and picnics among cherry
orchards and hop-gardens, excursions to Canterbury or Maidstone
and their beautiful neighbourhoods, Druid Stone and Blue Bell Hill.
"All the neighbouring country that could be shown in so short a
time," he wrote of the Longfellow visit, "they saw. I turned out a
couple of postilions in the old red jackets of the old red royal
Dover road for our ride, and it was like a holiday ride in England
fifty years ago." For Lord Lytton he did the same, for the Emerson

6o4

The Life of Charles Dickens

Tennents, for Mr. Layard and Mr. Helps, for Lady Molesworth
and the Higginses (Jacob Omnium), and such other less frequent
visitors.

Excepting on such particular occasions however, and not always
even then, his mornings were reserved wholly to himself; and he
would generally preface his morning work (such was his love of order
in everything around him) by seeing that all was in its place in the
several rooms, visiting also the dogs, stables, and kitchen garden, and
closing, unless the weather was very bad indeed, with a turn or two
round the meadow before settling to his desk. His dogs were a great
enjoyment to him; and, with his high road traversed as frequently as
any in England by tramps and wayfarers of a singularly undesirable
description, they were also a necessity. There were always two, of the
mastifif kind, but latterly the number increased. His own favourite
was Turk, a noble animal, full of affection and intelligence, whose
death by a railway accident, shortly after the Staplehurst catastrophe,
caused him great grief. Turk's sole companion up to that date was
Linda, puppy of a great St. Bernard brought over by Mr. Albert Smith,
and grown into a superbly beautiful creature. After Turk there was an
interval of an Irish dog. Sultan, given by Mr. Percy Fitgzerald; a cross
between a St. Bernard and a bloodhound, built and coloured like a
lioness and of splendid proportions, but of such indomitably aggres-
sive propensities, that, after breaking his kennel-chain and nearly
devouring a luckless little sister of one of the servants, he had to be
killed. Dickens always protested that Sultan was a Fenian, for that
no dog, not a secretly sworn member of that body, would ever have
made such a point, muzzled as he was, of rushing at and bearing down
with fury anything in scarlet with the remotest resemblance to a
British uniform. Sultan's successor was Don, presented by Mr.
Frederick Lehmann, a grand Newfoundland brought over very young,
who with Linda became parent to a couple of Newfoundlands, that
were still gambolling about their master, huge, though hardly out of
puppydom, when they lost him. He had given to one of them the
name of Bumble, from having observed, as he described it, "a
peculiarly pompous and overbearing manner he had of appearing to
mount guard over the yard when he was an absolute infant." Bumble
v/as often in scrapes. Describing to Mr. Fields a drought in the
summer of 1868, when thei- poor supply of ponds and surface w^lls
had become waterless, he wrote: " I do not let the great dogs swini in
the canal, because the people have to drink of it. But when they get
into the Medway, it is hard to get them out again. The other day
Bumble (the son, Newfoundland dog) got into difficulties among some
floating timber, and became frightened. Don (the father) was stand-
ing by me, shaking off the wet and looking on carelessly, when all of
a sudden he perceived something amiss, and went in with a bound and
brought Bumble out by the ear. The scientific way in which he towed
{iim along was chufiiiing." . . .

Round Cobham skirting the park and village, and passing the

amiWiianaiii

Molesworth
less frequent

d not always
iself; and he
love of order
1 place in the
1 garden, and
1, turn or two
were a great
frequently as
J undesirable
js two, of the
wn favourite
gence, whose
catastrophe,
hat date was
Ubert Smith,
there was an
erald; a cross
loured like a
tably aggres-
1 and nearly
he had to be
lian, for that
lid ever have
rearing down
nblanee to a
ited by Mr.
r very young,
idlands, that
tiardly out of
of them the
;ribed it, "a
appearing to
.nt." Bumble
)ught in the
surface wells
dogs switti in
hen they get
ae other day
among some
r) was stand-
r, when all of
a bound and
ich he towed

The Life of Chartes Dickens

605

[>eather Bottle famous in the page of Pickwick, was a favourite walk
with Dickens. By Rochester and the Medway, to the Chatham Lines,
was another. He would turn out of Rochester High Street through
The Vines (where some old buildings, from one of which called
Restoration House he took Satis House for Great Expectations, had a
curious attraction for him), would pass round by Fort Pitt, and com-
ing back by Frindsbury would bring himself by some cross fields
again into the high road. Or, taking the other side, he would walk
through the marshes to Gravesend, return by Chalk church, and stop
always to have greeting with a comical old monk who for some in-
comprehensible reason sits carved in stone, cross-legged with a jovial
pot, over the porch of that sacred edifice. To another drearier church-
yard, itself forming part of the marshes beyond the Medway, he often
took friends to show them the dozen small tombstones of various
sizes adapted to the respective ages of a dozen small children of one
tamily which he made part of his story of Great Expectations, though,
with the reserves always necessary in copying nature not to overstep
her modesty by copying too closely, he makes the number that
appalled little Pip not more than half the reality. About the whole of
this Cooling churchyard, indeed, and the neighbouring castle ruins,
there was a weird strangeness that -aade it one of his attractive walks
in the late year or winter, when fro-.i Higham he could get to it across
country over the stubble fields; and, for a shorter summer walk, he
was not less fond of going round the village of Shorn and sitting on a
hot afternoon in its pretty shaded churchyard. But, on the whole,
though Maidstone had also much that attracted him to its neighbour-
hood, the Cobhani neighbourhood was certainly that which he had
greatest pleasure in; and he would have taken oftener than he did the
walk through Cobham park and woods, which was the last he enjoyed
before his life suddenly closed upon him, but that here he did not like
his dogs to follow.

Don now has his home with Lord Darnley, and Linda lies under
one of the cedars at Gadshill.

I ' I

passing the

6o6

The Life of Charles Dickens

i 5

FIRST PAID READINGS
1858-9

Dickens gave his paid public readings successively, with not long
intervals, at four several dates; in 185&-9, in 1861-3, in 1866-7, and
in 1868-70; the first series under Mr. Arthur Smith's management, the
second under Mr. Headland's, and the third and fourth, in America as
well as before and after it, under that of Mr. George Dolby, who,
excepting in America, acted for the Messrs. Chappell. The references
in the present chapter are to the first series only.

It began with sixteen nights at St. Martin's Hall, the first on
29 April, the last on 22 July, 1858; and there was afterwards a pro-
vincial tour of eighty-seven readings, beginning at Clifton on 2
August, ending at Brighton on 13 November, and taking in Ireland
and Scotland as well as the principal English cities: to which were
added, in London, three Christmas readings, three in January, with
two in the following month; and, in the provinces in the month of
October, fourteen, beginning at Ipswich and Norwich, taking in Cam-
bridge and Oxford, and closing with Birmingham and Cheltenham.
The series had comprised altogether 125 readings when it ended on
27 October, 1859; and without the touches of character and interest
afforded by his letters written while thus employed, the picture of the
man would not be complete.

Here was one day's work at the opening which will show something
of the fatigue they in Ived even at their outset. ' ' On Friday we came
from Shrewsbury to Chester; saw all right for the evening; and then
went to Liverpool. Came back from Liverpool and read at Chester.
Left Chester at 11 at night, after the reading, and went to London.
Got to Tavistock House at 5 a.m. on Saturday, left it at a quarter past
10 that morning, and came down here" (Gadshill: 15 August, 1858).

The "greatest personal affection and respect" had greeted him
everywhere. Nothing could have been "more strongly marked or
warmly expressed"; and the readings had "gone" quite wonderfully.
What in this respect had most impressed him, at the outset of his
adventures, was Exeter. "I think they were the finest audience I ever
read to; I don't think I ever read in some respects so well; and Inever
beheld anything like the personal affection which they poured out
upon me at the end. I shall always look back upon it with pleasure."
He often lost his voice in these early days, having still to acquire the
art of husbanding it: and in the trial to recover it would .^"a.in v-'asts
its power. ' ' I think I sang half the Irish melodies to myself as I walked
about, to test it."

mSm

The Life of Charles Dickens

607

dth not long
1866-7, and
agement, the
n America as
Dolby, who,
he references

the first on
wards a pro-
31ifton on 2
ag in Ireland
1 which were
inuary, with
he month of
king in Cam-
Cheltenham.

it ended on
and interest
>icture of the

w something
day we came
ng; and then
I at Chester.
; to London,
quarter past
gust, 1858).
greeted him
■ marked or
ivonderfuliy.
)utset of his
iience I ever
and I'never
poured out
h pleasure."
I acquire the

[ as I walked

An audience of two thousand three hundred people (the largest he
had had) greeted him at Liverpool on his way to Dublin, and, besides
the tickets sold, more than two hundred pounds in money was taken
at the doors. This taxed his business staff a little. "They turned away
hundreds, sold all the books, rolled on the ground of my room knee-
deep in checks, and made a perfect pantomime of the whole thing."
(20 August.) He had to repeat the reading thrice.

It was the first time he had seen Ireland, and Dublin greatly sur-
prised him by appearing to be so much larger and more populous than
he had supposed. He found it to have altogether an unexpectedly
thriving look, being pretty nigh as big, he first thought, as Paris; of
which some places in it, such as the quays on the river, reminded him.
Half the first day he was there, he took to explore it; walking till tired,
and then hiring a car. "Power, dressed for the character of Tedy the
Tiler, drove me: in a suit of patches, and with his hat unbrushed for
twenty years. Wonderfully pleasant, light, intelligent, and careless."
A letter to his eldest daughter makes humorous addition. "The man
who drove our jaunting car yesterday hadn't a piece in his coat as big
as a penny roll . . . but he was remarkably intelligent and agreeable,
v/ith something to say about everything. When we got into the
Phoenix Park, he looked round him as if it were his own, and said
That's a Park sir, av ye plase!' I complimented it, and he said
'Gintlemen tills me as they iv bin, sir, over Europe and never see a
Park aqualling ov it. Yander's the Vice-regal Lodge, sir; in thim two
corners lives the two Sicretaries, wishing I was thim sir. There's air
here, sir, av yer plase! There's scenery here sir! T jre's mountains
thim sir!' " The number of common people he saw in his drive, also
"riding about in cars as hard as they could split," brought to his re-
collection a more distant scene, and but for the dresses he c.ould have
thought himself on the Toledo at Naples.

In respect of the number of his audience, and their reception of
him, Dublin was one of his marked successes. He came to have some
doulDt of their capacity of receiving the pathetic, but of their quick-
ness as to the humorous there could be no question, any more than
of their heartiness. He got on wonderfully well with the Dublin people
and the Irish girls outdid the American in one particular. He wrote
to his sister-in-law: "Every night since I have been in Ireland, they
have beguiled my dresser out of the bouquet from my coat; and yester-
day morning, as I had showered the leaves from my geranium in
reading Little Domhey, they mounted the platform after I was gone,
and picked them all up as a keepsake." The Boots at Morrison's ex-
pressed the general feeling in a patriotic point of view, "He was
waiting for me at the hotel door last night. 'Whaat sart of a hoose
sur?' he asked me. 'Capital.' 'The Lard be praised fur the 'onor o'
Dooblin!' " Within the hotel, on getting up next morning, he had a

■•••-••■£,•-«'• "• - -...-• ». ,., .. ,:?.„.., ..,_, i.-«^-^v/a\^vt, cs. xxi.(.xv

boy of the ripe age of six, which he presented, in his letter to his
sister-in-law, as a colloquy between Old England and Young Ireland

r\'f

i I

1 W

i 1

608

The Life of Charles Dickens

inadequately reported for want of the "imitation" it required for its
full effect. "I am sitting on the sofa, writing, and find him sittmg

beside me.

"Old England. Holloa old chap.

"Young Ireland. Hal— loo! . , ' . „

•Old England (in his delightful way). What a nice old fellow you
are. I am very fond of little boys.

"Young Ireland. Air yes? Ye'r right.

"Old England. What do you learn, '>ld fellow? ^.,j. ^

'•■ Young Ireland (v - - \tent on Old England, and always childish
except in his brogue. . x wureds of three siUibils-and wureds

of two sillibils— and wureds of one sillibil. , . ,, ,

"Old England (cheerfully). Get out, you humbug! \ou learn only
words of one syllable. ^u ^ i. • *.i

"Young Ireland (laughs heartily). You ma> say that it is mostly

wureds of one sillibil.

"Old England. Can you write?

"Young Ireland. Not yet. Things comes by deegrays.

"Old England. Can you cipher?

"Young Ireland (very quickly). Whaat's that?

"Old England. Can you make figures?

"Young Ireland. I can make a nought, which is not asy, being

roond. . ^ c j

"Old England. I say, old boy! Wasn't it you I saw on Sunday morn-
ing in the hall, in a soldier's cap? You Icnow!— In a soldier's cap.^

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

"Old England. Yes.

"Young Ireland. Did it fit ankommon?

"Old England. Yes.

' ' Young Ireland. Dat was me ! '

The last night in Dublin was an extraordinary scene. \ou can
hardly imagine it. All the way from the hotel to the Rotunda (a mile),
I had to contend against the stream of people who were turned away
When I got there, they had broken the glass in the pay-boxes, and
\/ere offering £5 freely for a stall. Half of my platform had to be taken
down and people heaped in among the ruins. You never saw such a
scene " " Ladies stood all night with uheir chins against my platform,
he wrote to his daughter. "Other ladies sat all night upon my steps.
We turned away people enough to make immense houses for a week.
But he would not return a^ .r his other Irish engagements. I have
positively said No. The work is too hard. It is not like doing it m
one easy room, and always the same room. With a different place
every night and a different audience with its own peculiarity every
night it is a tremendous strain ... I seem to be aiways either m a
railway carriage or reading, or going to bed; and I get so knocked up

•^ _. ° r _4._ j._ _-_,„_» Kf!" 'f fhq+- then T orr» +n T->pr1 at; a
whenevei' l nave a miiiute tu remcmoci it, xhav tist-u . -,>-

matter of course." . . ^, ,. » ^

Belfast he liked quite as much as Dublin m another way. A fine

quired for its
d him sitting

Id fellow you

ways childish
—and wureds

ou learn only

t it is mostly

ot asy, being

Sunday morn-
dier's cap?
3od cap?

ne. "You can
tunda(amile),
5 turned away,
ay-boxes, and
ad to be taken
rer saw such a
my platform,"
pon my steps.
3S for a week."
lents. "I have
ike doing it in
different place
:uliarity every
a,ys either in a
so knocked up
"o to bed as 3

r way. "A fine

The Life of Charles Dickens 609

place with a rough people; everything looking prospeious; the rail-
way ride from Dublin quite amazing in the order, neatness, and clean-
ness of all you see; every cottage looking as if it had been whitewashed
the day before; and many with charming gardens, prettily kept with
bright flowers." The success, too, was quite as great. "Enormous
audiences. We turn away half the town. I think them a better audi-
ence on the whole than Dublin; and the personal affection is some-
thing overwhelming. I wish you and the dear girls" (he is writing to
his sister-in-law) ' ' could have seen the people look at me in ic street;
or heard them ask me, as I hurried to the hotel after the reading last
night, to 'do me the honour to shake hands Misther Dickens 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!' " He had never seen men "go in to cry so undis-
guisedly," as they did at the Belfast Dombey reading; "and as to the
Boots and Mrs. Gamp it was just one roar with me and them. For they
made me laugh so, that sometimes I could not compose my face to go
on." His greatest trial in this way however was a little later at
Harrogate— "the queerest place, with the strangest people in it,
leading the oddest lives of dancing, newspaper-reading, and tables
d'hote"— where he noticed, at the same reading, embodiments
respectively of the tears and laughter to which he has moved his
fellow-creatures so largely. "There was one gentleman at the Little
Dombey yesterday morning" (he is still writing to his sister-in-law)
'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 before 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 remark-
ably good fellow too, of thirty or so, who found something 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 Toots came once more, he gave a kind of cry, as
if it were too much for him. It was uncommonly droll, and made me
laugh heartily."

At Harrogate he read twice on one day (a Saturday), and had to
engage a special engine to take him back that night to York, which,
having reached at one o'clock in the morning, he had to leave,
because of Sunday restrictions on travel, the same morning at half-
past four, to enable him to fulfil a Monday's reading at Scarborough.
Such fatigues became matters of course; but their effect, not noted
at the time, was grave. Here again he was greatly touched by the
personal greeting. "I was brought very near to what I sometimes
dream may be my Fame," he wrote to me in October from York,
"when a lady whose face I had never seen stopped me yesterday in
the street, and said to me, Mr. Dickens, will you let me touch the hand,
that has filled my house with many friends." ...

338

6io

The Life of Charles Dickens

m% 1

The reception that awaited him at Manchester had very special
warmth m it. occasioned by an adverse tone taken in the comment
of one of the Manchester daily papers on the letter which by a breach
of confidence had been then recently printed. "My violated letter"
Dickens always called it {ante, 600). "When I came to Manchester
on Saturday I found seven hundred stalls taken! When I went into
the room at night 2500 people had paid, and more were being turned
away from every door. The welcome they gave me was astounding
in Its affectionate recognition of the late trouble, and fairly for once
unmanned me. I never saw such a sight or heard such a sound When
they had thoroughly done it. they settled down t oenjoy themselves-
and certainly did enjoy themselves most heartily to the last minute ''
Nor. for the rest of his English tour, in any of the towns that remained
had he reason to complain of any want of hearty greeting At
Sheffield great crowds in excess of the places came. At Leeds the hall
overflowed in half an hour. At Hull the vast concourse had to be
addressed by Mr. Smith on the gallery stairs, and additional readings
had to be given, day and night, "for the people out of town and for
the people 1 'own."

The net profit to himself, thus far, had been upwards of three
hundred pounds a week; but this was nothing to the success in Scot-
land, where his profit in a week, with all expenses paid, was five
hundred pounds. The pleasure was enhanced, too, by the presence
of his two daughters, who had joined him over the Border At first
the look of Edinburgh was not promising. "We began with for us a
poor room. . . . ^' it the effect of that reading (it was the Chimes)
was immense; and on the next night, for Little Dombey, we had a full
.00m. It is our greatest triumph everywhere. Next night [Poor
Fraveller, Boots, and Gamp) we turned away hundreds upon hundreds
of people; and last night, for the Carol, in spite of advertisements in
the morning that the tickets were gone, the people had to be got in
through such a crowd as rendered it a work of the utmost dififculty
to keep an alley into the room. They were seated about me on the
platform, put into the doorway of the waiting-room, squeezed into
every conceivable place, and a multitude turned away once more
I think I am better pleased with what was done in Edinburgh than
with what has been done anywhere, almost. It was so completely
taken by storm, and carried in spite of itself. Mary and Katev have
been infinitely pleased and interested with Edinburgh. We are iust
going to sit down to dinner and therefore I cut my missive short.
Travelling, dinner, reading, and everything else, come crowding
together into this strange life." ^

Then came Dundee: "An odd place," he wrote, "like Wappine,
with high rugged hills behind it. We had the strangest journey here-
bits of sea, and bits of railroad, alternately; which carried nay mind
back to travelhng^in America. The room is an immense new one,
t^.onging to ^oxu xviniiaird, and Lord Panmure, and some others d
that sort. It looks something between the Crystal Palace and West-

I very special
the comment
h by a breach
olated letter"
o Manchester
n I went into
being turned
IS astounding
airly for once
sound. When
y themselves;
last minute,"
^at remained,
greeting. At
-eeds the hall
se had to be
onal readings
town and for

irds of three
xess in Scot-
aid, was five
the presence
rder. At first
ith, for us, a
the Chimes)
we had a full
night {Poor
>on hundreds
"tisements in
to be got in
3st difficulty
it me on the
jueezed into
once more,
iburgh than
> completely
Katey have
We are just
issive short,
le crowding

e Wapping,
imey here —
sd my mind
se new one,
ne others ot
e and West-

The Life of Charles Dickens

6ii

mmster Hall (I can't imagine who wants it in this place), and has
never been tried yet for opeaking in. Quite disinterestedly of course, I
hope It will succeed." The people he thought, in respect of taste and
mtelhgence, below any other of his Scotch audiences; but they woke
up surprisingly, and the rest of his Caledonian tour was a succession
of triumphs. "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 gentlefolk came posting in from thirty
miles round, and the whole town came besides, ai>d filled an immense
hall. They were as full of perception, fire, and enthusiasm as any
people I have seen. At Glasgow, where I read three evenings a-d
one morning, we took the prodigiously large sum of six hundred
pounds! And this at the Manchester prices, which are lower than St.
Martin's Hall. As to the effect— I wish you could have seen them after
Lilian died in the Chimes, or when Scrooge woke in the Carol and
talked to the boy outside the window. And at the end of Doml^y
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 such astonishing heartiness and fondness that, for the first time
in all my public career, they took me completely off my legs, and I
saAv the whole eighteen hundred of them reel to one side as if a shock
from without had shaken the hall. Notwithstanding which, I must
confess to you, I am very anxious to get to the end of my readings,
and to be at home again, and able to sit down and think in my own
study. There has been only one thing quite without alloy. The dear
girls have enjoyed themselves immensely, and their trip with me has
been a great success."

The subjects of his readings during this first circuit were the Carol,
the Chimes, the Trial in Pickwick, the chapters containing Paul
Dombey, Boots at the Holly Tree Inn, the Poor Traveller (Captain
Doubledick), and Mrs. Gamp: to which he continued to restrict
himself through the supplementary nights that closed in the autumn
of 1859. Of these the most successful in their uniform effect upon his
audiences were undoubtedly the Carol, the Pickwick scene, Mrs.
Gamp, and the Dombey — the quickness, variety, and completeness of
his assumption of character, having greatest scope in these. Here, I
think, more than in the pathos or graver level passages, his strength
lay; but this is entitled to no weight other than as an individual
opinion, and his audiences gave him many reasons for thinking
differently. . , ,

6l2

The Life of Charles Dickens

"all the year round" and "uncommercial traveller"

1859-61

In the interval before the close of the first circuit of readings, painful
personal disputes arising out of the occurrences of the previous year
were settled by the discontinuance of Household Words, and the
establishment in its place of All the Year Round. The disputes turned
upon matters of feeling exclusively, and involved no charge on either
side that would render any detailed reference here other than gravely
out of place. The question into which the difference ultimately re-
solved itself was that of the respective rights of the parties as pro-
prietors of Household Words; and this, upon a bill filed in Chancery,
was settled by a winding-up order, under which the property was sold.'
It was bought by Dickens, who, even before the sale, exactly fulfilling
a previous announcement of the proposed discontinuance of the
existing periodical and establishment of another in its place, precisely
similar but under a different title, had started All the Year Round.
It was to be regretted perhaps that he should have thought it neces-
sary to move at all, but he moved strictly within his rights.

To the publishers first associated with his great success in litera-
ture, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, he now returned for the issue of the
remainder of his books; of which he always in future reserved the
copyrights, making each the subject of such arrangement as for the
time might seem to him desirable. In this he was met by no difficulty;
and indeed it will be only proper to add, that, in any points affecting
his relations with those concerned in the production of his books,
though his resentments were easily and quickly roused, they were
never very lasting. The only f^ir rule therefore was, in a memoir
of his life, to confine the mention of such things to what was strictly
necessary to explain its narrative. This accordingly has been done;
and, in the several disagreements it has been necessary to advert
to, I cannot charge myself with having in a single instance over-
stepped the rule. Objection has been made to my revival of the early
differences with Mr, Bentley. But silence respecting them was incom-
patible with what absolutely required to be said, if the picture of
Dickens in his most interesting time, at the outset of his career in
letters, was not to be omitted altogether; and, suppressing every-
thing of mere temper that gathered round the dispute, use was made
of those letters only containing the young writer's urgent aooeal to
t>e absolved, rightly o: wrongly, from engagements he had too
j)recipitately entered into. Wrongly, some might say, because the

The Life of Charles Dickens

613

kVELLER'

ings, painful
revious year
•ds, and the
putes turned
rge on either
ihan gravely
timately re-
rties as pro-
n Chancery,
rty was sold.
:tly fulfilling
ance of the
ce, precisely
/ear Round.
?ht it neces-
hts.

!ss in litera-
issue of the
eserved the
it as for the
10 difficulty;
its affecting
I his books,
, they were
1 a memoir
was strictly
been done;
^ to advert
tance over-
of the early
was incom-
5 picture of
is career in
sing every-
B was made
t aooeal to
ie had too
lecause the

law was undoubtedly on Mr. Bentley's side; but all subsequent
reflection has confirmed the view I was led strongly to take at the
time, that in the facts there had come to be involved what the law
could not afford to overlook, and that the sale of brain-work can
never be adjusted by agreement with the same exactness and
certainty as that of ordinary goods and chattels. Quitting the subject
once for all with this remark, it is not less incumbent on me to say
that there was no stage of the dispute in which Mr. Bentley, holding
as strongly the other view, might not think it to have sufficient
justification; and certainly in later years there was no absence of
friendly feeling on the part of Dickens to his old publisher. This
already has been mentioned;and on the occasion of Hans Andersen's
recent visit to Gadshill, Mr. Bentley was invited to meet the cele-
brated Dane. Nor should I omit to say, that, in the year to whicn
this narrative has now arrived, his prompt compliance with an inter-
cession made to him for a common friend pleased Dickens greatly.

At the opening of 1859, bent upon such a successor to Household
Words as should carry on the associations connected with its name,
Dickens was deep in search of a title to give expression to them.
"My determination to settle the title irises out of my knowledge that
I shall never be able to do anything ior the work until it has a fixed
name; also out of my observation that the same odd feeling afiects
everybody else." He had proposed to himself a title that, as in
Household Words, might be capable of illustration by a line from
Shakespeare; and alighting upon that wherein poor Henry the Sixth
is fain to solace nis captivity by the fancy, that, like birds encaged
he might soothe himself for loss of liberty "at last by notes of house-
hold harmony," he for the time forgot that this might hardly be ac-
cepted as a happy comment on the occurrences out of which the
supposed necessity had arisen of replacing the old by a new house-
hold friend. "Don't you think," he wrote on 24 January, "this is
a good name and quotation? I have been quite delighted to get hold
of it for our title.

"Household Harmony.

'At last by notes of Household Harmony.' — Shakespeare.'*

He was at first reluctant even to admit the objection when stated
to him. "I am afraid we must not be too particular about the possi-
bility of personal references and applications: otherwise it is manifest
that I never can write another book. I could not invent a story of any
sort, it is quite plain, incapable of being twisted into some such
nonsensical shape. It would be wholly impossible to turn one through
half a dozen chapters." Of course he yielded, nevertheless; and much
consideration followed over sundry other titles submitted. Reviving
none of those formerly rejected, here were a few of these now rejected
in their turn. The Hearth. The Forge. The Crucible. The Anvil

u>-

6i4

The Life of Chides Dickens

I r

OP THE Time. Charles Dickens's Own. Seasonable Leaves.
Evergreen Leaves. Home. Home-Music. Change. Time and
Tide. Twopence. English Bellc. Weekly Bells. The Rocket.
Good Humour. Still the great want was the line adaptable from
Shakespeare, which at last exultingly he sent on 28 January. "I am
dining early, before reading, and write literally with my mouth full.
But I have just hit upon a name that I think really an admirabkj
one — especially with the quotation before it, in the place where our
present H. W. quotation stands.

** * The story of our lives, from year to year.' — Shaksspeare,

All the Yeak Round.
A weekly journal conducts ^ by Charles Dickens."

With the same resolution and en*. , other things necessary to the
adventure were as promptly done. I have taken the new office,"
he wrote from Tavistock House on 21 February; "have got workmen
in; have ordered the paper; settled with the printer; and am getting
an immense system of advertising ready. Blow to be struck on the
1 2th of March. . . . Meantime I cannot please myself with the
opening of my story" (the Tale of Two Cities, which All the Year
Round was to start with), "and cannot in the least settle at it or take
to it. ... I wish you would come and look at what I flatter myself
is a rather ingenious account to which I have turned the Stanfield
scenery here." He had placed the Lighthouse scene in a single frame;
had divided the scene of the Frozen Deep into two subjects, a British
man-of-war and an Arctic sea, which he had also framed; and the
schoolroom that had been the theatre was now hung with sea-pieces
by a great painter of the sea. To believe them to have been but the
amusement of a few mornings was difficult indeed. Seen from the
due distance there was nothing wanting to the most masterly and
elaborate art.

The first number oiAll the Year Round appeared on 30 April, and
tne result of the first quarter's Recounts of the sale will tell every-
thing that noeds to be said of a success that went on without inter-
mission to the close. "A word before I go back to Gadshill," he wrote
froni Tavistock House in July, "which I know you will be glad to
receive. So well has All the Year Round gone that it was yesterday
able to repay me, with five per cert, interest, all the money I
advanced for its establishment (paper, print etc. all paid, down to the
last number), and yet to leave a good ;^5oo balance at the banker's!"
Beside the opening of his Tale of Two Cities its first number had con-
tained another piece of his writing, the "Poor Man and his Beer";
as to which an interesting note has been sent me. The Rev. T. B.
Lawes, of Rothamsted, St Albans, had been associated upon a
sanitary commission with Mr. Henry Austin, Dickens's brother-in-
law and counsellor in regard to all such matters in his own houses,

E Leaves.
Time and
E Rocket.
•table from
ary. "I am
mouth full,
admirable
where our

f#.

•

sary to the
ew office,"
t workmen
am getting
uck on the
I with the
// the Year
t it or take
tter myself
e Stanfield
igle frame;
s, a British
d; and the
I sea-pieces
en but the
1 from the
isterly and

April, and
tell every-
tiout inter-
" he wrote
be glad to

yesterday
money I
own to the
banker's!"
sr had con-
his Beer";
lev. T. B.
d upon a
)rother-in-
ra houses,

The Life of Charles Dickens 615

or in the houses of the poor; and this connection led "o Dickens's
knowledge of a club that Mr. Lawcs had established at Rolhumated,
which he became eager to recommend as an example } other country
neighbourhoods. The club had been set on foot to enabie the agri-
cultural labourers of the p. i sh to have their beer and pipes inde-
pendent e* the public-house; and the description of it, says Mr.
Lawes, "was the occupation of a drive between this place (Rotham-
sted) and L jndon, twenty-five miles, Mr Dickens refusing the offer
of a bed, and saying that he could arrange his ideas on the jouriiey.
In the course of our conversation I mentioned that the labourers
were very jealcus of the small tradesmen, blacksmiths and others,
holding allotm t-gardens; but that the latter did so indirectly by
paying higher i its to the labourers for a share. This circumstance
is not forgotten ..i the verses on the Blacksmith in the same number,
composed by Mr. Dickens and repeated to me while he was walking
about, and which close the mention of his gains with allusion to

A share (concealed) in the poor man's field,
Which adds to the poor man's store."

It is pleasant to be able to add that the club was still flourishing when
I received Mr. Lawes's letter, on 18 December, 1871.

The periodical thus established was in all respects, save one, so
exactly the counterpart of what it replaced, mat a mention of this
point of difference is the only description of it called for. Besides his
own three- volume stories of the Tale of Two Cities and Great Expecta-
tions, Dickens admitted into it other stories of the same length by
writsrs of character and name, of which the authorship was avowed.
It published tales of varied merit and success by Plr. Edmund Yates;
Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, and Mr. Charles Lever. Mr. Wilkie Co' 'ns
contributed to it his Woman in White, No Name, and Moonstone, the
first of which had -x pre-eminent success; Mr. Reade his Hard Cash-
and Lord Lytton his Strange Story. Conferring about the lati^
Dickens passed a week at Knebworth, accompanied by his daughter
and sister-in-law, in the summer of 1861, as soon as he had closed
Great Expectations; and there met Mr. Arthur Helps, with whom and
Lord Orford he visited the so-called "Hermit" near Stevenage,
whom he described as Mr. Mopes in Tom Tiddler's Ground. With his
great brotusr-artist he thoroughly enjoyed himself, as he invariably
did; ana reported him as "in better health and spirits than I have
seen him in, in all these years — a little weird occasionally regarding
magic and spirits, but always fair and frank under opposition. "le
was brilliantly talkative, anecdotical, and droll; he looked young and
well; laughed heartily; and f'njoyed with great zest some games we
played. In his artist-character and talk, he was full of interest and
matter, saying the subtlest and finest things — but that he never fails
in. I enjoyed myself immensely, as we all did."

In All the Year Round, as in its predecessor, the tales for Christmas

rjl^'

i 'Il

!:«f

!*«' %\

i: .1-

tf'i

*^,'

■

The Life of Charles Dickens

6i6

wf^^'inTn- V°''*'''"^^u^?* "^^^^ ^ surprisingly increased popu-
lanty. and Dickens never had such sale for any of his writings as for
his Christmas pieces m the latter periodical. It had reached before he
died, to nearly three hundred thousand. The first was called the
Haunted House, ^nd had a small mention of a true occurrence in his
boyhood which IS not included in the bitter record on a former pa^e
I was taken home, and there was debt at home as well as death and
we had a sale there My own little bed was so superciliously looked
upon by a power unknown to me hazily called The Trade, that a brass
coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a bird-cage were obliged to be nut
into It to make a lot of it. and then it went for a song. So^I heard men
tronea and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal ?ong

The Uncommercial Traveller papers, his two serial stories, and his
Christmas tales were all the contributions of any importance made
by Dickens to ^// the Year Round; but he reprinted in?t° on theTom-
pletion of his first story, a short tale called Hunted DownZritten^r
a newspaper m America called the New York Ledger

SECOND SERIES OF READINGS
186I-3

Ai^ue end of the first year of residence at Gadshill it was the remark
of Dickens that nothing had gratified him so much as the confidence
with which his poorer neighbours treated him. He had tested gener-
ally their worth and good conduct, and they had been encourafedTn
any illness or trouble to resort to him for help. There was pleasait
indication of the feeling thus awakened, wh^n. in the summer c
i860, his younger daughter Kate was married to Charles Alston
Collins, brother of the novelist, and younger son of the painter and
academician, who might have found, if spared to witness that summer
morning scene, subjects not unworthy of his delightful pencil in many
a rustic group near Gadshill. All the villagers had turned out I

th«TftI^ oSlr^w ' T^f^ *^^ carriages could hardly get to and from
the little church for the succession o£ triumphal arches they had to

S^S^f'f?!? K, 7^^?"'*\''''^''P^^*^^ ^y ^i"^' and when the /m
dejote of the blacksmith in the lane, whose enthusiasm had smuggled

?.t,?^^ T°f «^f" ^,f "°^ ^^^ ?^" ^'''^^' exploded upon him at the

ovaSI;^ ^""^ ^^ "'^'' "^^^ ^^^'* ^° *^^e^ aback at an

The first portion of tiiis second series was planned by Mr. Arthur

■WT,!1

The Life of Charles Dickens

617

Smith, but he only superintended the six readings in London which
opened it. These were the first at St. James's Hall (St. Martin's Hall
having been burnt since the last readings there), and were given in
March and April 1861. "We are all well here and flourishing," he
wrote to me from Gadshill on 28 April. "On the iSth I finished the
readings as I purposed. We had between seventy and eighty pounds
in the stalls, which, at four shillings apiece, is something quite unpre-
cedented in these times. . . . The result of the six was, that, after pay-
ing a large staff of men and all other charges, and Arthur Smith's
ten per cent, on the receipts, and replacing everything destroyed in
the fire at St. Martin's Hall (including all our tickets, country baggage,
check-boxes, books, and a quantity of gas-fittings and what not), 1
got upwards of ;^5oo. A very great result. We certainly might ha'v
gone on through the season, but I am heartily glad to be concentrated
on my story."

It had been part of his plan that the provincial readings should
not begin until a certain interval after the close of his story of Great
Expectations. They were delayed accordingly until 28 October, from
which date, when they opened at Norwich, they went on with the
Christmas intervals to be presently named to 30 January, 1862, when
they closed at Chester. Kept within England and Scotland, they took
in the border town of Berwick, and, besides the Scotch cities, com-
prised the contrasts and varieties of Norwich and Lancaster, Bury St.
Edmunds and Cheltenham. Carlisle and Hastings, Plymouth and
Birmingham, Canterbury and Torcjuay, Preston and Ipswich, Man-
chester and Brighton, Colchester and Dover, Newcastle and Chester.
They were followed by ten readings at the St. James's Hall, between
13 March and 27 June, 1862; and by four at Paris in January 1863,
given at the. Embassy in aid of the British Charitable Fund. The
second series had thus in the number of the readings nearly equalled
the first, when it closed at London in June 1863 with thirteen readings
in the Hanover Square Rooms; and it is exclusively the subject of
such illustrations or references as this chapter will supply.

On Great Expectations closing in June 1861, Bulwer Lytton, at
Dickens's earnest wish, took his place in All the Year Round with the
Strange Story; and he then indulged himself in idleness for a little
while. "The subsidence of those distressing pains in my face the
moment I had done my work, made me resolve to do nothing in that
way for some time if I could help it." But his "doing nothing" was
seldom more than a figure of speech, and what it meant in this case
was soon told. "Every day for two or three hours, I practise my new
readings, and (except in my office work) do nothing else. With great
pains I have made a continuous narrative out of Copperfield, that I
think will reward the exertion it is likely to cost me. Unless I am much
mistaken, it will t very valuable in London. I have also done
Nicholas NicP^eby at the Yorkshire school, and hope I have got
something droll out of Squeeis, John Browdie, & Co. Also, the
Bastille prisoner from the Tale of Two Cities. Also, the Dwarf from

338*

'kit'

lii

'Si

■■si

! I
US'-'

6i8

The Life of Charles Dickens

one of our Christmas numbers." Only the first two were added to the
list for the present circuit. . . .

His mention of Newcastle, which he had taken on his way to
Edinburgh, reading two nights there, should be given. "At Newcastle,
against the very heavy expenses, I made more than a hundred guineas
profit. A finer audience there is not in England, and I suppose them to
be a specially earnest people; for, while they can laugh till they shake
the roof, they have a very unusual sympathy with what is pathetic
or passionate. An extraordinary thing occurred on the second night.
The room was tremendously crowded and my gas-apparatus fell down.
There was a terrible wave among the people for an instant, and God
knows what destruction of life a nsh to the stairs would have caused.
Fortunately a lady in the froii- of the stalls ran out towards me,
exactly in a place where I knew that the whole hall could see her. So
I addressed her, laughing, and half-asked and half-ordered her to sit
down again; and, in a moment, it was all over. But the men in attend-
ance had such a fearful sense of what might have happened (besides
the real danger of Fire) that they positi- jly shook the boards I
stood on, with their trembling, when they came up to put things
right. I am proud to record that the gasman's sentiment, as delivered
afterwards, was, 'The more you want of the master, the more you'll
find in him.' With which complimentary homage, and with the wind
blowing so that I can hardly hear myself write, I conclude." . . .

Two brief extracts from letters will sufficiently describe the
London readings. "The money returns have been quite astounding.
Think of ;^ 190 a night! The effect of Copperfield exceeds all the expec-
tations which its success in the country led me to form. It seems to
take people entirely by surprise. If this is not new to you, I have not
a word of news. The rain that raineth every day seems to have washed
news away or got it under water." That was in April. In June he
wrote: "I finished my readings on Friday night to an enormous hall —
nearly ;^2oo. The success has been throughout complete. It seems
almost suicidal to leave off with the town so full, but I don't like to
depart from my public pledge. A man from Australia is in London

ready to pay ;^io,ooo for eight months there. If " It was an If

that troubled him for some time, and led to agitating discussion. . . .
It closed at once when he clearly saw that to take any of his family
with him, and make satisfactory arrangements for the rest during
such an absence, would be in^possible. By this time also he began to
find his way to the new story, and better hopes and spirits had
returned. . . .

jj^g^

The Life of Charles Dickens

619

is way to
■Newcastle,
ed guineas
se them to
;hey shake
s pathetic
and night,
fell down.
, and God
ve caused,
^^ards me,
see her. So
. her to sit
in attend-
d (besides

boards I
)ut things
; delivered
lore you'll
I the wind
e "

cribe the
itounding.
the expec-
; seems to
'. have not
VQ. washed
1 June he
ous hall —

It seems
a't like to
n London
was an If
ssion. . . .
[lis family
:st during

began to
nrits had

VII

THIRD SERIES OF READINGS
1864-7

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

"I saw him first, nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed
to become the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly
before Christmas, at the Athenaeum Club, when he told me that he
had been in bed three days . . . and that he had it in his mind to try
a new remedy which he laughingly described. He was cheerful, and
looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died. The long
interval between these two periods is marked in my remembrance of
him by many occasions when he was extremely humorous, when he
was irresistibly extravagant, when he was softened and serious, when

he was charming with children No one can be surer than I, of the

greatness and goodness of his heart. ... In no place should I take it
upon myself at this time to discourse of his books, of his refined know-
ledge of character, of his subtle acquaintance with the weaknesses of
human nature, of his delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his
quaint and touching ballads, of his mastery over the English
language. . . . But before me lies all that he had written of his latest
story . . . and the pain I have felt in perusing it has not been deeper
than the conviction that he was in the healthiest vigour of his powers
when he worked on this last labour. . . . The last words he corrected
in print were ' And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss.' God
grant that on that Christmas Eve when he laid ais head back on his
pillow and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very
weary, some consciousness of duty done, and of Christian hope
throughout life humbly cherished, may have caused his own heart so
to throb, when he passed away to his Redeemer's rest. He was found
peacefully lying as above described, composed, undisturbed, and to
all appearance asleep." *

Other griefs were with Dickens at this time, and close upon them
came the too certain evidence that his own health was yielding to the
overstrain which had been placed upon it by the occurrences and
anxieties of the few preceding years. His mother, whose infirm health
had been tending for more than two years to the close, died in
September 1863; and on his own birthday in the following February

* From the Cornhill Magazine for February 1864.

620

The Life of Charles Dickens

he had tidmgs of the death of his second son Walter, on the last dav
of the old year, in the officers' hospital at Calcutta; to which he had
been sent up invalided from his station, on his way home. He was a
lieutenant m the 26th Native Infantry regiment, and had been doing

duty with the 42 nd Highlanders ^

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

"For some time," he wrote at the end of February 1866 "I have
been very unwell. F. B. wrote me word that with such a pulse as I de-
scribed, an examination of the heart was absolutely necessary. 'Want
of muscular power in the heart,' B. said. 'Only remarkable irritability
of the heart,' said Doctor Brinton of Brook Street, who had been
called into consultation. I was not disconcerted; for I knew well
beforehand that the effect could not possibly be without the one
cause at the bottom of it, of some degeneration of some function of
the heart. Of course I am not so foolish as to suppose that all my work

The Life of Charles Dickens

621

can have been achieved without some penalty, and I have noticed
for some time a decided change in my buoyancy and hopefulness — in
other words, in my usual 'tone.' But tonics have already brought me
round. So I have accepted an offer, from Chappells of Bond Street, of
;^5o a night for thirty nights to read 'in England, Ireland, Scotland,
or Pari3'; they undertaking all the business, paying all personal
expenses, travelling and otherwise, of myself, John" (his office
servant) "and my gasman; and making what they can of it. . . ."

The success ever5rwhere went far beyond even the former successes.
A single night at Manchester, when eight hundred stalls were let, two
thousand five hundred and sixty-five people admitted, and the receipts
amounted to more than three hundred pounds, was followed in nearly
the same proportion by all the greater towns; and on 20 April the out-
lay for the entire venture was paid, leaving all that remained, to the
middle of the month of June, sheer profit. . . .

One memorable evening he had passed at my house in the interval,
when he saw Mrs. Carlyle for the last time. Her sudden death followed
shortly after, and near the close of April he had thus written to me
from Liverpool. "It was a terrible shock to me, and poor dear Carlyle
has been in my mind ever since. How often I have thought of the un-
finished novel. No one now to finish it. None of the writing women
come near her at all." This was an allusion to what had passed at their
meeting. It was on 2 April, the day when Mr. Carlyle had delivered his
inaugural address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, and a
couple of ardent words from Professor Tyndall had told her of the
triumph just before dinner. She came to us flourishing the telegram
in her hand, and the radiance of her enjoyment of it was upon her all
the night. Among other things she gave Dickens the subject for a
novel, from what she had herself observed at the outside of a house
in her street; of which the various incidents were drawn from the
condition of its blinds and curtains, the costumes visible at its
windows, the cabs at its door, its visitors admitted or rejected, its
articles of furniture delivered or carried away; and the subtle serious
humour of it all, the truth in trifling bits of character, and the gradual
progress into a half-romantic interest, had enchanted the skilled
novelist. She was well into the second volume of her small romance
before she left, being as far as her observation then had taken her; but
in a few days exciting incidents were expected, the denouement
could not be far off, and Dickens was to have it when they met again.
Yet it was to something far other than this amusing little fancy his
thoughts had carried him, when he wrote of no one being capable to
finish what she might have begun. In greater things this was still
more true. None could doubt it who had come within the fascinating
influence of that sweet and noble nature. With some of the highest
gifts of intellect, and the charm of a most varied knowledge of books
and things, there was something " beyond, beyond=" No one who
knew Mrs. Carlyle could replace her loss when she had passed away.

The same letter which told of his uninterrupted success to the last.

622

The Life of Charles Dickens

II?

told me also that he had a heavy cold upon him, and was "very
tired and depressed." Some weeks before the first batch of readings
closed, Messrs. Chappell had already tempted him with an offer for
fifty more nights to begin at Christmas, for which he meant, as he
then said, to ask them seventy pounds a night. ' ' It would be unreason-
able to ask anything now on the ground of the extent of the late
success, but I am bound to look to myself for the future. The
Chappells are speculators, though of the worthiest and most honour-
able kind. They make some bad speculations, and have made a very
good one in this case, and will set this against those. I told them
when we agreed: 'I offer these thirty readings to you at fifty pounds
a night, because I know perfectly well beforehand that no one in
your business has the least idea of their real worth, and I wish to prove
It/ The sum taken is £^720:' The result of the fresh negotiation
though not completed until the beginning of August, may be at once
described. "Chappell instantly accepts my proposal of forty nights at
sixty pounds a night, and every conceivable and inconceivable ex-
pense paid. To make an even sum, I have made it forty- two nights
for ;^25oo. So I shall now try to discover a Christmas number [he
means the subject for one], and shall, please Heaven, be quit of the
whole series of readings so as to get to work on a new story for our
proposed new series of All the Year Round early in the spring The
readings begin probably with the New Year." These were fair designs,
but the fairest are the sport of circumstance, and though the subject
for Christmas was found, the new series of All the Year Round never
had a new story from its founder. With whatever consequence to him-
self the strong tide of the readings was to sweep on to its full. The
American war had ceased, and the first renewed offers from the
States had been made and rejected. Hovering over all, too, were other
sterner dispositions. "I think," he wrote in September, "there is
some strange influence in the atmosphere. Twice last week I was
seized in a most distressing manner— apparently in the heart; but,
I am persuaded, only in the nervous system. ' '

In the midst of his ovations such checks had not been wanting.
"The police reported officially," he wrote to his daughter from
Liverpool on 14 April, "that three thousand people were turned away
from the hall last night. . . , Except that I can not sleep, I really
think myself in very much better training than I had anticipated.
A dozen oysters and a little champagne between the parts every night,
seem to constitute the best restorative I have ever yet tried." "Such
a prodigious demonstration last night at Manchester." he wrote to
the same correspondent twelve days later, "that I was obliged
(contrary to my principle in such cases) to go back. I am very tired
to-day; for it v/ould be of itself ver>' hard work in that immense place,
if there were not to be added eighty miles of railway and late hours
to boot." "It has been very heav^ work," he wrote to his sister-in-
law on II May from Clifton, "getting up at 6.30 each mornine after
a heavy night, and I am not at all well to-day. We had a tremendous

hall at B
a most r
instead o^
Went ba<
if they lii
another '.
severe a ]
to do an]
no better
as it was
was also (
felt most
Everyt
nothing <
tion, or t
deen {16
There w£
ourselves
and wash
later he ^
got a lov(
verse of \
gloomy a
we are gc
The last
24 May, i
America.

The lei
the follow
seemed t
evening"
You hav(
as their r(
I have lee
ing after
everythir
ous; corr
possessioi
ation. Fir
I learnt 1
with exac
. . ." Six
excellenci
cile me t(
him. "It
subject. I

The Life of Charles Dickens

623

hall at Birmingham last night, ;^23o odd, 2,100 people; and I made
a most ridiculous mistake. Had Nickleby on my list to finish with,
instead of Trial. Read Nickleby with great go, and the people remained.
Went back again at 10 o'clock, and explained the accident: but said
if they liked I would give them the Trial. They d^d like; — and 1 had
another half-hour of it, in that enormous place. ... I have so
severe a pain in the ball of my left eye that it makes it hard for me
to do anything after 100 miles' shaking since breakfast. My cold is
no better, nor my hand either." It was his left eye, it will be noted,
as it was his left foot and hand; the irritability or faintness of heart
was also of course on the left side; and it was on the same left side he
felt most of the effect of the railway accident.

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

The letter which told me of the close of his English readings [in
the following year] had in it no word of the further enterprise, yet it
seemed to be in some sort a preparation for it. "Last Monday
evening" (14 May) "I finished the 50 readings with great success.
You have no idea how I have worked at them. Finding it necessary,
as their reputation widened, that they should be better than at first,
I have learnt them all, so as to have no mechanical drawback in look-
ing after the words. I have tested all the serious passion in them by
everything I know; made the humorous points much more humor-
ous; corrected my utterance of certain words; cultivated a self-
possession not to be disturbed; and made myself master of the situ-
ation. Finishing with Domhey (which I had not read for a long time),
I learnt that, like the rest; and did it to myself, often twice a day,
with exactly the same pains as at night, over and over and over again.
..." Six days later brought his reply to a remark, that no degree of
excellence to which he might have brought his readings could recon-
cile me to what there was little doubt would soon be pressed upon
him. "It is curious" (20 Mav^ "that vou should touch the American
subject, because I must confess that my mind is in a most disturbed

624

The Life of Charles Dickens

state about it. That the people there have set themselves on having
the readings, there is no question. Every mail brings me proposals,
and the number of Americans at St. James's Hall has been surprising!
A certain Mr. Grau, who took Ristori out, and is highly responsible,
wrote to me by the last mail (for the second time) saying that if I
would give him a word of encouragement he would come over
immediately and arrange on the boldest terms for any number I
chose, and would deposit a large sum of money at Coutts's. Mr.
Fields writes to me on behalf of a committee of private gentlemen at
Boston who wished for the credit of getting me out. who desired to
hear the readings and did not want profit, and would put down as a
guarantee /io,ooo--also to be banked here. Every American specu-
lator who comes to London repairs straight to Dolby, with similar
proposals. And, thus excited, Chappells, the moment this last series
was over, proposed to treat for America!" Upon the mere question
of these various offers he had little difficulty in making up his mind.
If he went at all, he would go on his own account, making no com-
pact with anyone. Whether he should go at all, was what he had to
determine.

One thing with his usual sagacity he saw clearly enough. He must
make up his mind quickly. "The Residential election would be in
the autumn of next yeai , They are a people whom a fancy does not
hold long. They are bent upon my reading there, and they believe
(on no foundation whatever) that I am going to read there. If I ever

go, the time would be when the Christmas number goes to press "

Then there came that which should have availed to dissuade, far
more than any of the arguments which continued to express my
objection to the enterprise. "I am laid up," he wrote on 6 August,
"with another attack in my foot, and was on the sofa all last night
in tortures. I cannot bear to have the fomentations taken off for a
moment. I was so ill with it on Sunday, and it looked so fierce, that I
came up to Henry Thompson. He has gone into the case heartily,
and says that there is no doubt the complaint originates in the action
of the shoe, in walking, on an enlargement in the nature of a bunion.
Erysipelas has supervened upon the injury; and the object is to avoid
a gathering, and to stay the erysipelas where it is. Meantime I am
on my back and chafing. ... I didn't improve my foot by going
down to Liverpool to see Dolby off, but I have little doubt of its
yielding to treatment, and repose." A few days later he was chafing
still; the accomplished surgeon he consulted having dropped other
hints that somewhat troubled him. "I could not walk a quarter of a
mile to-night for ;^5oo. I make out so many reasons against supposing
it to be gouty that I really do not think it is."

So momentous in my judgment were the consequences of the
American journey to him that it seemed right to preface thus much
of the inducements and temptations that led to it. My own part in
the discussion was that of steady dissuasion throughout: though this
might perhaps have been less persistent if I could have reconciled

myself to
readings \
had by tl
enterprise
The rer
there was
Lord Lyt

in having
proposals,
irprising.
ponsible,
that if I
•me over
lumber I
:ts's. Mr.
;lemen at
esired to
own as a
m specu-
1 similar
ist series
question
lis mind,
no com-
e had to

The Life of Charles Dickens

625

m^'

myself to the belief, which I never at any time did, that public
readings were a worthy employment for a mau of his genius. But it
had by this time become clear to me that nothing could stay the
enterprise. . . .

The remaining time was given to preparations; on 2 November
there was a Farewell Banquet in the Freemasons' Hall over which
Lord Lytton presided; and on the 9th Dickens sailed for Boston.

.ia

He must
lid be in
does not
T believe
If I ever
ess. . . ,"
lade, far
iress my
August,
LSt night
ofiE for a
e, that I
heartily,
le action
bunion,
to avoid
ne I am
>y going
t)t of its
i chafing
;d other
rter of a
ipposing

} of the
is much
part in
usfh this
conciled

BOOK NINTH
AMERICA REVISITED

1867-8. JET. 55-6

T. November and December, 1867,
II. January to April, 1868.

627

I (

It is the
incidents
that only
letters wi
On tht
where h(<
first lette
all to tha
saleable,
for twelv
r ench tl
*ur calcu
not been
the old gi
his settin
greeting ^
before, a
himself li
He hac
profit of
seven do]
omen in
severity,
changes,
work is (
everythir
invitatioi
New Yor!
more tha
these spe(
profits, w
them — n(
move ! — c
300 tirke
these wor
sale of th
a Wednea

AMERICA: NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER

1867

It is the intention of this and the following chapter to narrate the
incidents of the visit to America m Dickens's own language, and in
that only. They will consist almost exclusively of extracts from his
letters written home, to members of hi.« family and to myself.

On the night of Tuesday, 19 Novemb«r, he arrived at Boston,
where h«< took up his residence at the Par er House Kotel; and his
first letter (21st) stated that the tickets 1 r the first four readings,
all to that time issued, had been sold immedia ely on their becoming
saleable. "A^ .nmense train of people waited in the freezing street
for twelve houri. and passed into the office in their turns, as at a
French theairt . The receipts alreadv taken for these nights exceed
our calculation hy more than ;^25o.' Up to the last moment, he had
not been able to clear off wholly a shade of 1 isgiving that some of
the old grudges might make themselves felt; but hnin the instant of
his setting foot in Boston not a vestige of such iear remained. The
greeting was to the full as extraordinary as that of twenty -five years
before, and was given now, as then, to the man who had made
himself Ihe most popular writer in th country. ...

He had written, the day before he ieit, that he was making a 'ear
profit of thirteen hund ed pounds English a week, even allowing
seven dollars to the pound; bu: words were added having no good
omen in them, that the weather was taking a turn of even i .nusuki!
severity, and that he found the clii. te, in the suddenne .. if its
changes, "and the wide leaps they take," excessively tryin/j. "The
work is of course rather trying too; but the sound position that
everything must be subservient to it enables me to keep aiocf from
invitations. To-morrow," ran the close of the letrer, "we rrove to
New York. We cannot beat the speculators in our tickets. W^ ^jell no '
more than six to any one person for the course of four readings; but
these speculators, who sell at greatly increased prices and make large
profits, will employ any number of men to buy. One of the chief of
them — now living in this house, in order that he may move as we
move ! — can put on 50 people in any place we go to; and thus he gets
300 tickets into his own hands." Almost while Dickens was writing
these words an eyewitness was describing to a Philadelphia petper the
sale of the New York tickets = Tho pav-place was to open at nine on
a Wednesday morning, and at midnight of Tuesday a long line of s^cc-

629

l?j

630

The Life of Charles Dickens

ulators were assembled in queue; at two in the morning a few honest
buyers had begun to arrive; at five there were, of ah classes, two
lines of not less than 800 each; at eight there were at least 5000 per-
sons in the two lines; at nine each line was more than three-quarters
of a mile in length, and neither became sensibly shorter during the
whole morning. "The tickets for the course were all sold before noon.
Members of families relieved each other in the queues; waiters flew
across the streets and squares from the neighbouring restaurant, to
serve parties who were taking their breakfast in the open December
air; while excited men offered five and ten dollars for the mere per-
mission to exchange places with other persons standing nearer the
head of the line !"

The effect of the reading in New ^^ork corresponded with this
marvellous preparation, and Dickeiio characterised his audience
as an unexpected support to him; in its appreciation quick and un-
failing, and highly demonstrative in its satisfactions. On 11 Decem-
ber he wrote to his daughter: ". . . We have not yet had in it less
than ;^43o per night, alio ving for the depreciated currency ! I send
i:3ooo to England by this packet. From all parts of the States,
applications and offers continually come in. We go to Boston next
Saturday for two more readings, and come back here on Christmas
Day for four more. I am not vet bound to go elsewhere, except three
times, each time for two nights, to Philadelphia; thinking it wisest to
keep free for the largest places. I have had an action brought against
me by a man who considered himself injured (and really may have been)
in the matter of his tickets. Personal service bein^ necessary, I was
politely waited on by a marshal for that purpose^ whom I received
with the greatest courtesy, apparently very much to his amazement.
The action was handsomely withdrawn next day, and the plaintiff
paid his own costs. ..."

The time had now come when the course his readings were to take
independently of the two leading cities must be settled, and the
general tour made out. His agents' original plan was that they should
be m New York every week. "But I say No. By the loth of January
I shall have read to 35,000 people in that city alone. Put the readings
out of the reach of all the peopte behind them, for the time. It is
that one of the popular peculiarities which I most particularly notice,
that they must not have a thing too easily. Nothing in the country
lasts long; and i, thing is prized the more, the less easy it is made.
Reflecting therefore that I shall want to close, in April, with farewell
readmgs here and in New York, I am convinced that the crush and
pressure upon these necessary to their adequate success is only to be
got by absence; and that the best thing I can do is not to give either
city as much read' ig as it wants now, but to be independent of both
while both are most enthusiastic. ..."

An incident at Boston should have mention before he resumes
his readings in New York. In the interval since he was first in America,
the Harvard professor of chemistry, Dr. Webster, whom he hud at

The Life of Charles Dickens

631

that visit met among the honoured men who held chairs in their
Cambridge University, had been hanged for the murder, committed
in his laboratory in the college, of a friend who had lent him money,
portions of whose body lay concealed under the lid of the lecture-
room table where the murderer continued to meet his students.
"Being in Cambridge," Dickens wrote to Lord Lytton, "I thought I
would go over the Medical School, and see the exact localities where
Professor Webster did that amazing murder, and worked so hard to
rid himself of the body of the murdered man. (I find there is of course
no rational doubt that the Professor was always a secretly cruel man.)
They were horribly grim, Brivate, cold, ctnd quiet; the identical
furnace smelling fearfully (sc ne anatomical broth in it I suppose) as
if the body were still there; jars of pieces of sour mortality standing
about, like the forty robbers in A li Baba after being scalded to death;
and bodies near ns ready to be carried in to next morning's lecture.
At the house where I afterwards dined I heard an amazing and fear-
ful story; told by one who had been at a dinner-party of ten or a
dozen, at Webster's, less than a year before the murder. They
began rather uncomfortably, in consequence of one of the guests
(the victim of an instinctive antipathy) starting up with the sweat
pouring dovvrn his face, and crying out, 'O Heaven! There's a cat
somewhere in the room!' The (at was found and ejected, but they
didn't get on very well. Left with their wine, they were getting on a
little better; when Webster suddenly told the servants to turn the
gas off and bring in that bowl of burning minerals which he had
prepared, in order that the company might see how ghastly they
looked by its weird light. All this was done, and every man was
looking, horror-stricken, at his neighbour; when Webster was seen
bending over the bowl with a rope round his neck, holding up the end
of the rope, with his head on one side and iiis tongue lolled out, to
represent a hanged man!"

Dickens read at Boston on 23 and 24 December, and on Christmas
Day t-avelled back to New York where he was to read on the 26th.
The last words written before he left were of illness. "The low action
of the heart, or whatever it is, has inconvenienced me greatly this last
week. On Monday night, after the reading, I was laid upon a bed, in a
very faint and shady state; and on the Tuesday I did not get up till the
afternoon," But what in reality was less grave took outwardly the
form of a greater distress; and the effects of the cold which had struck
him in travelling to Boston, as yet rot known to his English friends,
appear most to have alarmed those about him. x depart from my rule
in this narrative, otherwise strictly observed, in singling out one of
those friends for mention by name; but a business connection with
the readings, as we" ■"* untiring offices of personal kindness and sym-
pathy, threw Mr. Fields in+^'^ closer relations with Dickens from
arrival to departure, than any other person had; and his description

.i*-t-^A T3^„i-,», „.

^t ■L.'u~ i:x: _x v.^-ij-u :-. ,..u;„v. "Pvc _

went through the rest of the labour he had undertaken, will be a sad

I "■..

^'n

WP^'

632

The Life of Charles Dickens

I1 1.

though fit prelude to what the following chapter has to tell. "He went
from Boston to New York carrying with him a severe catarrh con-
tracted in our climate. He was quite ill from the effects of the disease;
but he fought courageously against them. . . . His spirit was wonder-
ful, and, although he lost all appetite and could partake of very little
food, he was always cheerful and ready for his work when the evening
came round. A dinner was tendered to him by some of his literary
friends in Boston; but he was so ill the day before that the banquet
had to be given up. The strain upon his strength and nerves was very
great during all the months he remained, and only a man of iron will
could have accomplished what he did. He was accustoned to talk and
write a good deal about eating and drinking, but I have rarely seen a
man eat and drink less. He liked to dilate in imagination over the
brewing of a bowl of punch, but when the punch was ready he drank
less of it than anyone who might be present. It was the vSentiment of
the thing and not the thing itself that engaged his attention. J scarcely
saw him eat a hearty meal during his whole stay. Both at Parker's
hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New York, everything was
arranged by the proprietors for his comfort, and tempting dishss to
piqi:.3 his invalid appetite were sent up at different hours of the day;
but the influenza had seized him with masterful power, and held the
strong man down till he left the country."

When he arrived in New York on the evening of Christmas Day he
found a letter from his daughter. Answering her next day he told her:
"I wanted it much, for I had a frightful cold (English colds are nothing
to those of this country) and was very miserable. ... It is a bad
country to be unwell and travelling in. You are one of, say, a hundred
people in a heated car with a great stove in it, all the little windows
being closed; and the bumping and banging about are indescribable,
the atmosphere detestable, the ordinary motion all but intolerable."
The following day this addition was made to the letter. "I managed to
read last night, but it was as much as I could do. To-day I am so very
unwell 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."

His stronger will prevailed, and he went on without stopping. On
the last day of the year he announced to us that though he had been
very low he was getting right again; that in a couple of days he should
have accomplished a fourth of the entire readings; and that the first
month of the new year would see him through Philadelphia and Balti-
more, as well as through two more nights ir. Boston. He also preprred
his English friends for the startling intelligence they might shc-./y
expect, of four readings coming off in a church, before an audience of
two thousand people accommodated in pews, and with himself
emerging from a \'estiy.

The Life of Charles Dickens

633

JANUARY TO APRIL

1868

The reading on 3 January closed a fourth of the entire series, and on
that day Dickens wrote of the trouble brought on them by the
"speculators," which to some extent had affected unfavourably the
three previous nights in New Yoik. When adventurers bought up the
best places, the public resented it by refusing the worst; to prevent
it by first helping themselves, being the last thing they ever thought
of doing. "We try to withhold the best seats from the speculators, but
the unaccountable thing is that the great mass of the public buy of
them (prefer it), and the rest of the public are injured if we have not
got those very seats to sell them. We have now a travelling staff of
six men, in spite of which Dolby, who is leaving me to-day to sell
tickets in Philadelphia to-morrow morning, will no doubt get into a
tempest of difficulties. Of course also, in such a matter, as many
obstacles as possible are thrown in an Englishman's way; and he may
himself be a little injudici' s into the bargain. Last night, for instance,
he met one of the ' usheis ' (who show people to their seats) coming
in with one of wur men. It is against orders that anyone employed in
front should go out during the reading, 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 inde-
pendent 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 itwas a small matter to raise a stir
and ill-will about, especially as one of our men was equally in fault;
and really there is little to be done at night. American people are so
accustomed to take care of themselves, that one of these immense
audiences will fall into their places with an ease 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. Our great
labour is outside; and we have been obliged to bring our staff up to
six, besides a boy or two, by employment of a regular additional
clerk, a B- ^tonian. The speculators buying the front seats (we have
found instances of this being done by merchants in good position) the
public won't have the back seats; return their tickets; write and print
volumes on the subject; and deter others from coming. You are not to
suppose that this prevails to any great extent, as our lowest house
here has been ;^3«jo; but it does hit us. There is no doubt about it.
Fortunateiy I saw the danger when the trouble began, and changed
the list at the right time. . . . You may get an idea of the staff's work,

I J -i

B^Hf '

^^m

634

The Life of Charles Dickens

by what is in hand now. They are preparing, numbering, and stamp-
ing, 6000 tickets for Philadelphia, and Sooo tickets for Brooklyn. The
moment those are done, another 8000 tickets will be wanted for Balti-
more, and probably another 6000 for Washington: and all this in addi-
tion to the correspondence, advertisements, accounts, travelling, and

the nightly business of the readings four times a week I cannot get

rid of this intolerable cold ! My landlord invented for me a drink of
brandy, rum, and snow, called it a 'Rocky Mountain Sneezer,' and
said it was to put down all less effectual sneezing; but it has not yet
had the effect. Did I tell you that the favourite drink before you get
up is an Eye-opener? There has been another fall of snow, succeeded
by a heavy thaw."

The day after (the 4th) he went back to Boston, and next day
wrote to me: "I am to read here on Monday and Tuesday, return to
New York on Wednesday, and finish there (except the farewells in
April) on Thursday and Friday. The New York reading of Doctor
Marigold made really a tremendous hit. The people doubted at first,
having evidently not the least idea what could be done with it, and
broke out at last into a perfect chorus of delight. At the end they made
a great shout, and gave a rush towards the platform as if they were
going to carry me off. It puts a strong additional arrow into my quiver.
Another extraordinary success has been Nickleby and Boots at the
Holly Tree (appreciated here in Boston, by the by, even more than
Copperfield); and think of our last New York night bringing £e^0Q
English into the house, after making more than the necessary deduc-
tion for the present price of gold ! The manager is always going about
with an immense bundle that looks like a sofa-cushion, but is in
reality paper-money, and it had risen to the proportions of a sofa on
the morning he left for Philadelphia. Well, the work is hard, the
climate is hard, the life is hard: but so far the gain is enormous. My
cold steadily refuses to stir an inch. It distresses me greatly at times,
though it is always good enough to leave me for the needful two hours!
I have tried allopathy, homoeopathy, cold things, warm things, sweet
things, bitter things, stimulants, narcotics, all with the same result.
Nothing will touch it."

In the same letter, light was thrown on the ecclesiastical mystery.
"At Brooklyn I am going to read in Mr. Ward Beecher's chapel: the
only building there available for the purpose. You must understand
that Brooklyn is a kind of sleeping-place for New York, and is sup-
posed to be a great place in the money way. We let the seats pew by
pew ! the pulpit is taken down for my screen and gas ! and I appear out
of the vestry in canonical form ! These ecclesiastical entertainments
come off on the evenings of the i6th, 17th, 20th, and 21st of the
present month." His first letter after returning to New York
(9 January) made additions to the Brooklyn picture. "Each evening
an enormous ferry-boat will convey me and my state-carriage (not to
mention halx a dozen wagons and any number of people and a few
score of horses) across the river to Brooklyn, and will bring me back

The Life of Charles Dickens

635

again. The sale of tickets there was an amazing scene. The noble army
of speculators are now furnished (this is literally 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 whisky. With this outfit, they
lie down in line on the pavement the whole of the night before the
tickets are sold: generally taking up their position at about 10. 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; from which
the people farthest off in the line rushed bleeding when they saw any
chance of ousting others nearer the door, put their mattresses in the
spots so gained, and held on by the iron rails. At 8 in the morning
Dolby appeared with the tickets in a portmanteau. He was immedi-
ately 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 I Look alive, Dolby, etc., in the midst of which he pro-
ceeded to business, and concluded (as usual) by giving universal dis-
satisfaction. He is now going off upon a little journey to look over the
ground and cut back again. This little journey (to Chicago) is twelve
hundred miles on end, by railway, besides the back again !" It might
tax the Englishman, but was nothing to the native American, It was
part of his New York landlord's ordinary life in a week, Dickens told
me, to go to Chicago and look at his theatre there on a Monday; to
pelt back to Boston and look at his theatre there on a Thursday; and
to come rushing to New York on a Friday, to apostrophise his
enormous ballet. . . .

His testimony as to improved social habits and ways was expressed
very decidedly. "I think it reasonable to expect that as I go west-
ward, I shall find the old manners going on before me, and may tread
upon their skirts mayhap. But so far, I have had no more intrusion or
boredom than I have when I lead the same life in England. I write
this in an immense hotel, but I am as much at peace in my own rooms,
and am left as wholly undisturbed, as if I were at the Station Hotel in
York. I have now read in New York city to 40,000 people, and am
quite as well known in the streets there as I am in London. People
will turn back, turn again and face me, and have a look at me, or will
say to one another, 'Look here! Dickens coming!' But no one ever
stops me or addresses me. Sitting reading in the carriage outside the
New York post office while one of the staff was stamping the letters
inside, I became conscious that a few people who had been looking at
the turn-out had discovered me within. On my peeping out good-
humouredly, one of them (I should say a merchant's book-keeper)
stepped up to the door, took off his hat, and said in a frank way:
'Mr. Dickens, I should very much like to have the honour of shaking
hands with you' — and, that done, presented two others. Nothing
could be more quiet or less intrusive. In the railways cars, if I see
anybody who clearly wants to speak to me, I usually anticipate the
wish by speaking myself. If I am standing on the brake outside (to

636

The Life of Charles Dickens

■

avoid the intolerable otove), people getting down will say with a
smile: As I am taking my departure. Mr. Dickens, and can't troublo
you for more than a moment. I should like to take you by the hanH
sir.' And so we shake hands and go our vays. ... Of course many of
my impressions come through the readings. Thus I find the peoD?e
lighter and more aumorous than formerly; and there must be a erSt
deal of innocent imagination among every class, or they never could
pet with such extraorainary pleasure as they do. the Boots's storv of
the elopement of the two little children. They seem to see the
children; and the women set up a shrill undercurrent of half-pitv and
half-pleasure that IS quite affecting. To-night's reading is my 26th- bu
as all the Philadelphia ti.Kets for four more are sold? as well as four
at 1 ooklyn. you must assume that I am at— say— my :15th reading

rij^nf. ri ff '° ^k"**''" ^".^"^'^^^ ^°^^ ^^°'"°° «dd; and I roughiv
calculate that on this number Dolby will have another thousand
pounds profit to pay me. These figures are of course between ourselves
at present; but are they not magnificent? . . ."

Then came as evci, the constant shadow that still attended him
the slave in the chariot of his triumph. "The work is very severe'
There is now no chance of my being rid of this American catarrh untii
I embark for England. It is very distressing. It likewise happens, not
seldom, that I am so dead beat when I come off that they lav me
down on a sofa after I have been washed and dressed, and I lie there
extremely faint, for a quarter of an hour. In that time I rallv and
come right.'' One week later from New York, where he had become
due on the i6th for the first of his four Brooklyn readings he wrote to
his sister-in-law. ''My cold sticks to me. and iLn scarcely eLggerate
what I undergo from sleeplessness. I rarely take any breakfast but
an egg and a cup of tea— not even toast or bread and butter. Mv
small dinner at 3. and a little quail or some such light thing when I
come home at night is my daily fare; and at the hall I have estab-
lished the custom of takmg an egg beaten up in sherry before going
in, and another between the parts, which I think pulls me up .

Baltimore and Washington were the cities in which he was now'
on quitting New York, to read for the first time; and as to the latter
some doubts arose He was at Philadelphia on 23 January, when he
wrote: The worst of it is. that everybody one advises with has a
monomania respecting Chicago. 'Good heavens, sir,' the great Phila-
deiphia authority said to me this morning, 'if you don't read in
Chicago the people will go into fits !' Well, I answered, I would rather
they went into fits than I did. But he didn't seem to see it at all "

To ^^yfelf he wrote from Philadelphia, beginning with a thank
Heaven that he had struck off Canada and the West, for he found the
wear and tear'-enormous." "Dolby decided that the croakers were
wrong about Washington, and went on: the rather as his raised
prices, which he put finally at three dollars each, gave satisfaction.
Fields is so confident about Boston, that mv remain in rr Hc+ i«^i.,^».
m all, 14 more readings there. I don't know how many more we'might

The Life of Charles Dickens

^37

not have had here (where I have had attentions otherwise that have
been very grateful to me), if we had chosen. Tickets are now being
resold at ten dollars each. At Baltimore I had a charming little
theatre, and a very apprehensive impulsive audience. It is remarkable
to see how the Ghost of Slavery haunts the town; and how the
shambling, untidy, evasive, and postponing Irrepressible proceeds
about his free work, going round and round it, instead of at it. The
melancholy absurdity of giving these people votes, at any rate at
present, would glare at one out of every roll of their eyes, chuckle in
their mouths, and bump in their heads, if one did not see (as one can-
not help seeing in the country) that their enfranchisement is a mere
party trick to get votes. Being at the Penitentiary the other day (this,
while we mentior tes), and looking over the books, I noticed that
almost every man iiad been 'pardoned' a day or two before his time
was up. Why? Because if he had served his time out, he would have
been ipso facto disfranchised. So, this form of pardon is gone through
to save his vote; and as every officer of the prison holds his place only
in right of his party, of course his hopeful clients vote for the party
that has let them out! When I read in Mr. Beecher's church at
Brooklyn, we found the trustees had suppressed the fact that a
certain upper gallery holding 150 was 'the Coloured Gallery.' On the
first night not a soul could be induced to enter it; and it was not until
it became known next day that I was certainly not going to read
there more than four times, that we managed to fill it. One night at
New York, on our second or third row, there were two well-dressed
women with a tinge of colour — I should say, not even quadroons.
But the holder of one ticket who found his seat to be next them,
demanded of Dolby 'What he meant by fixing him next to those two
Gord darmed cusses of niggers?' and insisted on being supplied with
another good place. Dolby firmly replied that he was perfectly certain
Mr. Dickens wtDuld not recognise such an objection on any account,
but he could have his money back if he chose. Which, after some
squabbling, he had. In a comic scene in the New York Circus one
night, when I was looking on, four white people sat down upon a form
in a barber's shop to be shaved. A coloured man came as the fifth
customer, and the four immediately ran away. This was much laughed
at and applauded. In the Baltimore Penitentiary, the white prisoners
dine on one side of the room, the coloured prisoners on the other; and
no one has the slightest idea of mixing them. But it is indubitably the
fact that exhalations not the most agreeable arise from a number
of coloured people got together, and I was obliged to beat a quick
retreat from their dormitory. I strongly believe that they will die out
of this country fast. It seems, looking at them, so manifestly absurd
to suppose it possible that they can ever hold tb ir own against a
restless, shifty, striving, stronger race."
On 4 February he wrote to me from Washing^ in: It will be no

„_v.v.-.a V.-4 5.ii-_- iuiu vi a T viviiiig px&vskC UCLCUi i^ -..iiw VwiV ill bCX CS LXX J Ij

close of bis lotter is given. Its anecdote of President Lincoln was

«l

t 1

638

The Life of Charles Dickens

II {{,'.

|3 'i

1; ! ;
r »
II I

^^K'Jli&L

repeatedly told by Dickens after his return, and I am under no
necessity to withhold from it the authority of Mr. Sumner's name
I am gomg to-morrow to see the President, who has sent to me
twice. I dmed with Charles Sumner last Sunday, against my rul'»-
and as I had stipulated for no party, Mr. Secretary Stanton was the
only other guest, besides his own secretary. Stanton is a man with a
very remarkable memory, and extraordinarily familiar with my
^ u j' •• * ^^ ^"^ Sumner having been the first two public men
at the dymg President's bedside, and having remained with him until
he breathed his last, we fell into a very interesting conversation after
dinner, when, each of them giving his own narrative separately '•the
usual discrepancies about details of time were observable. Then Mr
Stanton told me a curious little story which wUl form the remaindei
of this short letter.

"On the afternoon of the day on which the President was shot
there was a cabinet council at which he presided. Mr. Stanton'
being at the time commander-in-chief of the Northern troops that
were concentrated about here, arrived rather late. Indeed they were
waiting for him. and on his entering the room the President broke
off m something he was saying, and remarked: 'Let us proceed to
business, gentlemen.' Mr. Stanton then noticed, with great surprise
that the President sat with an air of dignity in his chair instead of
lollmg about it m the most ungainly attitudes, as his invariable
custom was; and that instead of telling irrelevant or questionable
stones, he was grave and calm, and quite a different man. Mr.
btanton, on leaving the council with the Attorney-General, said to
him. That is the most satisfactory cabinet meeting I have attended
ft)r many a long day! What an extraordinary change in Mr. Lincoln!'
JJ}^.f^^^^^^y-General replied, 'We all saw it, before you came in.
While we were waiting for you, he said, with his chin down on his
breast. Gentlemen, something very extraordinary is going to hap-
pen, and that very soon." ' To which the Attorney-General had ob-
served. Something good, sir, I hope?' when the President answered
very gravely: I don't know; I don't know. But it will happen, and
Shortly too ! As they were all impressed by his manner, the Attorney-
GeneraJ took him up again: 'Have you received any information, sir.
not yet disclosed to us?' 'No,' answered the President: 'but I have
had a dream. And I have now had the same dream three times.
Once on the night preceding the Battle of Bull Run. Once, on the
?'S Ij^^^s'^^r.^'^'^^ another (naming a battle also not favourable
.i?^- u. °^^- P^® ^^^" ^^"^ ^" ^^s breast again, and he sat reflecting.
Might one ask the nature of this dream, sir?' said the Attorney-
General. Well, replied the President, without lifting his head or
changing his attitude. 'I am on a great broad rolling river—and I
am in a boat--and I drift— and I drift!— but this is not business'-
suddenly raising his face and looking round the table as Mr. Stanton
entered, let us proceed to business, gentlemen.' Mr. Stanton and the
Awiuxuuy-v^nerai said, as they walked on together, it would be

The Life of Charles Dickens

639

curious to notice whether anything ensued on this; and they agreed to
notice. He was shot that night." . . .

Dickens's last letter from America rvas written to his daughter
Mary from Boston on 9 April, the day before his sixth and last
farewell night. "I not only read last Friday when I was doubtful of
being able to do so, but read as I never did before, and astonished
the audience quite as much as myself. You never saw or heard such
a scene of excitement. Longfellow and all the Cambridge men have
urged me to give in. I have been very near doing so, but feel stronger
to-day. I cannot tell whether the catarrh may have done me any
lasting injury in the lungs or other breathing organs, until I shall
have rested and got home. I hope and believe not. Consider the
weather! There have been two snowstorms since I wrote last, and
to-day the town is blotted out in a ceaseless whirl of snow and wind.
Dolby is as tender as a woman, and as watchful as a doctor. He never
leaves me during the reading, now, but sits at the side of the platform,
and keeps his eye upon me all the time. Ditto George the gasman,
steadiest and most reliable man I ever employed. ..."

In New York, where there were five farewell nights, three thousand
two hundred and ninety-eight dollars were the receipts of the last, on
20 April; those of the last at Boston, on the 8th, having been three
thousand four hundred and fifty-six dollars. But, on earlier nights in
the same cities respectively, these sums also had been reached; and
indeed, making allowance for an exceptional night here and there,
the receipts varied so wonderfully little, that a mention of the high-
est average returns from other places will give no exaggerated
impression of the ordinary receipts throughout, excluding fractions
of dollars, the lowest were New Bedford ($1640), Rochester (S1906),
Springfield ($1970), and Providence ($2140). Albany and Worcester
averaged something less than S2400; while Hartford. Buffalo. Balti-
more, Syracuse, Newhaven, and Portland rose to $2600. Washington's
last night was $26iv), no night there having less than $2500. Phila-
delphia exceeded Washington by $300, and Brooklyn went ahead of
Philadelphia by $200. The amount taken at the four Brooklyn
readings was 11,128 dollars.

The New York public dinner was given at Delmonico's, the hosts
were more than two hundred, and the chair was taken by Mr. Horace
Greeley. Dickens attended with great difficulty, and spoke in pain.
But he used the occasion to bear his testimony to the changes of
twenty-five years; the rise of vast new cities; growth in the graces and
amenities of life; much improvement in the press, essential to every
other advance; and changes in himself leading to opinions more
deliberately formed. He promised his kindly entertainers that no
copy of his Notes or his Chuzzlewit, should in future be issued by him
without accompanying mention of the changes to which he had
referred that night; of the politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospit-
ality, and consideration in all ways for which he had to thank them;
and of his gratitude for the respect shown, during all his visiti

640

The Life of Charles Dickens

to the privacy enforced upon him by the nature of his work and the
condition of his health.

He had to leave the room before the proceedings were over. On
tlie following Monday he read to his last American audience, telling
them at the close that he hoped often to recall them, equally by his
winter fire and in the green summer weather, and never as a mere
public audience but as a host of personal friends. He sailed two days
later in the Russia, and reached England in the first week of May
1868. '

339

ark and the

re over. On
nee, telling
lally by his
r as a mere
)d two days
sek of May

II.

BOOK TENTH
SUMMING UP

1868-70. /ET. 56-8

Last Readings
Last Book

HI. Personal Characteristics

339

64T

V-:' V.:8

Pill

LAST READINGS

1868-70

Favourable weather helped Dickens pleasan ly home. He had
profited greatly by the sea voya^^e, perhaps more greatly by its
repose; and on 25 May he described himself to his Boston friends as
brown beyond belief, and causing the f;Teat»ist disappointment in
all quartc -s by looking so well. "My doctor v^as quite broken down
in spirits on seeing me for the first time last Saturday. Good Lord !
seven years younger ! said the doctor, recoiling." That he gave all the
credit to "those fine days at sea," and none to the 'est from such
labours as he had passed through, the close of the letter too sadly
showed. "We are already settling — think of this! the details of my
farewell course of readings."

Even on his way out to America that enterprise was in hand.
From Halifax he had written to me: "I told the Chappells that when
I got back to England, I would have a series of far'?well readings in
town and country; and then read No More. They at once offer in
writing to pay all expenses whatever, to pay the ten per cent, for
management, and to pay me, for a series of 75, six thousand pounds."
The terms were raised and settled before the first Boston readings
closed. The number was to be a hundred: and the payment, over and
above expenses and percentage, eight thoi'sand pounds. Such a
temptation undoubtedly was great; and though it was a fatal mistake
which Dickens committed in yielding to it, it was not an ignoble one.
He did it under nc excitement from the Amer :an gains, of which
he knew nothing when he pledged himself to che enterprise. No man
could care essentially less for mere money than he did. But the neces-
sary provision for many sons was a constant anxiety; he was proud
of what the readings had done to abridge this care; and the very
strain of them under which it seems that his health had first given
way, and which he always steadily refused to connect especially with
them, had also broken the old confidence of being at all times avail-
able for his higher pursuit. What affected his health only he would
not regard as part of the question either way. That was to be borne
as the lot more or less of all men; and the more thorough he could
make his feeling of independence, and of ability to rest, by what was
now in hand, the better his final chances of a perfect recovery would
be. That was the spirit in which he entered on this last engagement.
It was an opportunity offered for making a particular work reaiiy

643

iS^i

644 The Life of Charles Dickens

which with a pardonable cxultatirhTilSvl't^r* •^^'^"'^■"'•'■'''

I r.n^iibn money. Atter all. we were obliged to call in the aiH ^f o
money-changer, to determine what he should pay as 1 is share of th^
t!^?^h-^°'' °^ conversion into gold. With this^deduSion made ?

/^n'^^ r A *° ^"^y- ^'3.000 received from the Chappells Tnrl

^20.000 from America. V/hat I had made by them before T^nl
only ascertain by a long examination of Coutts's books I .ho n

S thft m^L"°' VT f^'f ^^°'^°°^ ^- I "mlmb'^ttt'/mat
A? hur SrS?h ^Th" *^'/''^ ^^^'''^ ^"^ ^°""*^ campaign with^oo?

nrris:ft'oifo.^'^;^^^ ^-^ --y^^^^^ p^^^-- th:n?e:fmt^,^^^^^^^^^^^

He had scarcely begun these last readings than he was hp<,.f k

impression would not be so horrible as ?oke^n^h;^" whether the
time, is what I cannot satisfy n\yJfuponVhTd^^^^^
It is in three short parts: i. mere Fa mn sets Nn^h r? ^1 ^^'''^•
watch Nancy. .. Th^ scene on London'S^e ^3''^t^^^^
Claypole from his sleep to tell his perverted storv to Q^i ^ ^ lu
Murder, and the Murderer's sense o^fbdngLunted^ti ^h"^ l^^
aiid cut about the text with great care'lnl itl^v ^^'p^^^^^.f^it:^,
to-day referred the boolc and the question to the SpSs as lo
largely interested." I had a strong di.slike to this prSf less nor
haps on the ground which ought to have been taken & the ph^ska;
exertion it would invol . , than becau :,c such a sublec^seemed^to b^^^^
altogether out of the province of reading; and it wis resoled that

^ TarS Sair^ ^'°^^!^'/ ""'IVi '"^^^^^ P^varaudtufefn
01. jamcss i-iail. ... We might have atrrP^^H " 1,^ ^„ -

■ <j

g of it will
quisiticns,

ts squared
lOunted to
le aid of a
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1 made, I
'as ;^2888;

per cent,
ay of our

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gold was
i or so o,
?agement
K'O years,
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. I could
I should
t I made
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bargain
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y carry-

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Is as so

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1, that,

enco in
t„ '<j

The Life of Charles Dickens

645

differ about it very well, because we only wanted to find oul the truth
if we could, and because it was quite understood that I wanted to
leave behind me the recollection of something very passionate and
dramatic, done with simple means, if the art would justify the
theme." Apart from mere personal considerations, the whole question
lay in these last words. It was impossible for me to admit that the
effect to be produced w .3 legitimate, or such as it was desirable to
associate with the recolk-:tion of his readings. . , .

The second portion of the enterprise opened with the New Year;
and thi Sikes and Nancy scenes, everywhere his prominent subject,
exacted the most terrible physical exertion from him. In January
he was at Clifton, where he had given, he told his sister-in-law,
"by far the best Murder yet done"; while at the same date he wrote
to his daughter: "At Clifton on Monday night we had a contagion of
fainting; and yet the place was not hot. I should think we had from
a dozen to twenty ladies taken out stiff and rigid, at various times!
It became quite ridiculous." He was afterwards at Cheltenham.
"Macready is of opinion that the Murder is two Macbeths. He de-
clares that he heard every word of the reading, but I doubt it. Alas !
he is sadly infirm." On the 27th he wrote to his daughter from Tor-
quay that the place into which they had put him to read, and where a
pantomine had been played the night before, was something between
a Methodist chapel, a theatre, a circus, a riding-school, and a cow-
house. That day lie wrote to me from Bath: "Lr,ndor's ghost goes
along the silent streets here before me. . . . The place looks to me
like a cemetery which the Dead have succeeded in rising and taking.
Having built streets of their old gravestones, they wander about
scantly trying to 'look alive.' A dead failure."

In the second week of February he was in London, under engage-
ment to return to Scotland (which he had just left) after the usual
weekly reading at St. James's Hall, when there was a sudden inter-
ruption. "My foot has turned lame again !" was his announcement to
me on the 15th. . . .

A few days' rest again brought so much relief, that, against tlie
urgent entreaties of members of his family as well as other friends,
he was in the railway carriage bound for Edinburgh on the morning
of 20 February, accompanied by Mr. Chappell himself. "I came down
lazily on a sofa," he wrote to me from Edinburgh next day, "hardly
changing my position the whole way. The railway authorities had
do'.ie all sorts of things, and I was more comfortable than on the
sofa at the hotel. The foot gave nie no uneasiness, and 'as been
quiet and steady all night." He was nevertheless under the necessity,
two days later, of consulting Mr. Syme; and he told his daughter
that this great authority had warned him against over-fatigue in the
readings, and given him some slight remedies, but otherwise reported
him in "just perfectly splendid condition." . . .

The whole of that March month he went on with the scenes from
Oliver Twist. "The foot goes famously," he wrote to his daughter.

■

646

The Life of Charles Dickens

I feel the fatigue in it (four Murders in one week) but not overmuch
It merely aches at night, and so does the other, sympathetically I
suppose. . . . The end was near. A public dinner had been piven
hmi in Liverpool on 10 April, with Lord Dufterin in the chair and a
reading was due from him in Preston on the 22nd of that month
But on Sunday the i8th we had ill report of him from Chester and
on the 2ist he wrote from Blackpool to Jiis sister-in-law: "I have
come to this Sea-Beach Hotel (charming) for a day's rest. I am much
better than I was on Sunday; but shall want careful looking to to
get through the readings. My weakness and deadness are all on 'the
K 5 t'J'"'} '{ ^ ^°"'* ^°°^ ^* anything I try to touch with my left
hand I don t know where it is. I am in (secret) consultation with
trank Beard who says that I have given him indisputable evidences
of overworK which he could wish to treat immediately; and so I have
telegraphed for him. I have had a delicious walk by the sea to-dav
and I sleep soundly, and have picked up amazingly in appetite. Mv
foot IS greatly better too, and I wear my own boot." Next day was
appointed for the reading at Preston; and from that place hr wrote
to me, while waiting the arrival of Mr. Beard: "Don't say auythin-
about It, but the tremendous, severe nature of this work is a httl°
shaking mc. At Chester last Sunday I found myself extremely giddv
and extremely uncertain of my sense of touch, both in the left lee
and the left hand and arms. . . . Don't say anything in the Gad's
direction about my being a little out of sorts. I have broached the
matter of course; but very lightly. Indeed there is no reason for
broaching it otherwise."

Even to the close of that letter he had buoyed himself up with
the hope that he might yet be "coached" and that the readin<xs
need not be discontinued. But Mr. Beard stopped them at once, and
brought his patient to London. On Friday morning tho 2^r 1 the
same envelope brought me a note from himself to say that he' was
well enough, but tired; in perfectly good spirits, not at Mi uneasy
and writing this himself that 1 should have i! under his own hand'
with a note from lus eldest son to say that his father apoeared to
him to b ; very ill, and that a consultatio.x had been appointed with
bir Ihomat. Watson. ... ^

^^f'i'M^m^-

The Life of Charles Dickens

647

LAST BOOK
1869-70

The last book undertaken by Dickens was to be published in illus-
trated monthly lumbers, of the old form, but to close with the
twelfth.* It closed, unfinished, with the sixth number, which was
itself underwritten by two pages.

His first fancy for the tale was expressed in a letter in the middle
of July. "What shoul' you think of the idea of a story beginning in
this way?— Two peopie, boy and girl, or very young going apart
froK one another, pledged to be married after many years — at the
end of the book. The interest to arise out of the tracing of their
separate ways, and the impossibility of teUing what will be done
with that impending fate." This was laid aside; but it left a marked
trace on the story as afterwards designed, in the position of Edwin
Drood and his betrothed.

I first heard of the later design in a letter dated "Friday the 6th
of August 1869," in which after speaking, with the usual unstinted
praise he bestowed always on what moved him in others, of a little
tale he had received frv his journax, he spoke of the change that had
occurred to him for tne new tale by himself. "I laid aside the fancy I
told you of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story
Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone)
but a very strong one, though difficult to work." The story, I learnt
immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew
by his uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of
the murderer's career by himself at the cJose, when its temptations
were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man,
were the tempted. The last chapters were to be written in the con-
dem ned cell, to which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him

* In drawing the agreement for the publication, Mr. Oxivry had, by Dickens's
wish, inserted a clause thought to be altogether needless, but found to be sadly
pertinent. It was the first time such a clause had been inserted in one of his igree-
ments. "That if the said Charles Dickens shall die during the composition ot the
said work of the Mystery of Edwin Drood, or shall otherwise become incapable
of completing the said work for publication in twelve monthly numbers as agreed,
it shall be referred .0 John Forster, Esq., one of Her Majesty's Cf.r; nissioners Ji
Lunacy, or in the case of his death, incapacity, ot refusal to act, Ihen to such
person as shall be named by Her Majesty's Attorney-General for the time beine;,
to determine the amount which shall be repaid by the said Charles Dickens, his
executors or administrators, to the said Frederic Chapman as a fair compensation
for so much of the said work as shall not have been completed for pubKcation."
Th*^ =:uTn to hfi raid at once for zs.ooo copies was £7500; publisher and authcn:
sharing equally in the profit of all sales beyond that impression. . . .

W
'l.|

648 The Life of Charles Dickens

oViilTtt:rn::S^i^^^^^^^^ inm Discovery by the murderer

hard upon cZZ:S::^'^,^^^ ^^^ object was to follow
was to be baffled till towards thfrnt I ^^?f °^"-y of the murderer
which had resisted hTcoSo.fvP .^ .' ^!?' ^^ ""^^"^ °^ "^ S^^d ring
thrown the body not onlv the -f' °^ ^' '" ^'^'^ ^"*° ^^^^^ he had
but the localit/'of the crime and thr"''^""'^ ''^' '° ^^ ^^^"t^«^^'
much was told to mrbefore anv of Ih k" T^'" committed it. So
will be recollected thnf fi^ ^ ^. , ^^'Z ^°°^' ^^^ written; and it
betrothed o^yi? t dr enr'^fm^nr \''''''' *° ^^ ^^^^^ *« ^^
with him froni their last SeXw Rolf'* °"; ^^' ^^°"8^* ^^^v
Crisparkle the sistor ^f t n ?'^ ^"""^^ *° "^^^-y Tartar, and

have^.eri:hed intsist^iJ^K^^^^^^^^ '^"^^f ' ^ ^^-"k' "o

murderer. ^^^^^"^g lartar hnally to unmask and seize the

destntc'eXwTitrf^^^^^^ --" P-'ts of the

no hint or prepamfon fo^th^ i^n f numbers; there was

advance; an^d tLTr^ma nedtt:rn\vLTlL"^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^
written of the book bv Thack^r^t .t ^ ^""^ himself so sadlv
evidence of matured d^esiinsne^^^^^^ ^^^*^- ^^^e

planned never to be executed rolds o?f h. ^"^?"^P^f ^^^d, intentions
be traversed, ^oals shinhi^ Tn fufr / *^°"^^t marked out never to
wanting her^. IttJ^U^lur^^^t^^^^^ '" ^^ ^^^^^^^' ^^^

theless to give promise of a muc^gSr boo^^^^^^^^^^^^ ""T''

predecessor. "I hope his hnnV ic fi^Li? S .. *^^" ^^^ immediate

ihe news of his death was flashed to A^'"^'' ^yp^e Longfellow when
his most beautiful works if nSfl^J^^T'"''- " ^" certainly one of
too sad to think the ^enh.i^^^^^^

incomplete." Some of it? ch.r^l " ^''"'J"' ^^"'^' ^"^ left it
in its description^ hhim/^n.T' ""'^ *°"^^^^ ^^*^ subtlety, and
was wantinfto ?he reaiTtv^ "^^^^^^ ^t its best. Not a line

the most widdy con ra tld and^" T. ""'T'' ^^'T^^ ^'^^'^' ^^ P^^^^«
cathedral town and the lurirn J ^''"'7''}^'^^^^^ vividness the lazy
old lightness and buovLcv of?nZ^^^ ^"^- ^°"^«thing like the

the hSmour; the scenes of the rhnT '?'''^' §^^'^ ^ "^^^ freshness to
had both noveX and n?4tv of^^^^^^^^^^ her lucldess betrothed

in chambers wSi hS c erk^a^,d th. f ^' '"^ ^^.''''' ^"'^ ^^- Grewgious
Sapsea. and the blusLr ne nh L!>f ^^'.^^vaiters, the conceited fool
rate comedy jLs TwiSfnn ^^ ?^^^^^ were first-

-nd the lodging 10^^^^^^^ MLwn''^'^''l °^ ^^''' ^a Creeby;

Twnikleton but a so^r^ a^/coun o^^^^^^^^^^^ though she gave iVl4
T^dgers in her veins -T ^.. \ ^^^"^ }'^^°'^' ^^^^ that of Mrs.
boarding-s..ool he mistress ^^ '"^ '^'^>^ ^^^" *° ^ ^^^ g^nt^^^l
of about your ow \gf o/it nSv be '-''' ^ '"^^ than Vourself,
a poorness of blood fiovved from X i f "^t .y^^'" younger, and
my life." IVas evefanS^^ I'f ^"" *^^°"Sb

gentility.? y^^^i^S oeiter said of a school-fare of starved

The last page of ig:<^z£i»:i2 n^^-j ,..p .-x. . ^, ^

i~6 ^ux.?2 ^,„^,^ ,,ao wxiiten in tlie Chalet in the

e murderer
s to follow
e murderer
a gold ring
lich he had
; identified
tted it. So
en; and it
iven to liis
ight away
artar, and
think, to
seize the

:ts of the
there was
lapters in
f so sadly
3ath. The
ntentions
: never to
;hed, was
ed nevcr-
nmediate
ow when
ly one of
would be
d left it
ety, and
ot a hne
of places
the lazy
like the
hness to
strothed
"cwgious
ted foo]
ire first-
Creeby;
ive Miss
of Mrs.
genteel
ourself,
er, and
hrough
starved

in the

The Life ot Charles Dickens

649

afternoon of his last day of consciousness. The MS. more startlingly
showed him how unsettled the habit he most prized had become, in
the clashing of old and new pursuits. "When I had written" (22
December, 1869) "and, as I thought, disposed of the first two Num-
bers of my story, Clowes informed me to my horror that they were,
together, twelve printed pages too short! II Consequently I had to trans-
pose a chapter from number two to number one, and remodel number
two altogether! This was the more unlucky, that it came upon me at
the time when I was obliged to leave the book, in order to get up the
readings" (the additional twelve for which Sir Thomas Watson's
consent had been obtained); "quite gone out of my mind since I left
them off. However, I turned to it and got it done, and both numbers
are now in type. Charles Collins has designed an excellent cover."
It was his wish that his son-in-law should have illustrated the story;
but this not being practicable, upon an opinion expressed by Mr!
Millais which the result thoroughly justified, choice was made of
Mr. S. L. Fildes.

This reference to the last effort of Dickens's genius had been
written as it thus stands when a discovery of some interest was made
by the writer. Within the leaves of one of Dickens's other manuscripts
were found some deta,ched slips of his writing, on paper only half the
size of that used for the tale, so cramped, underlined, and blotted as
to be nearly illegible, which on close inspection proved to be a scene
in which Sapsea the auctioneer is introduced as the principal figure,
among a group of characters new to the story. The explanation of
it perhaps is. that having become a little nervous about the course of
the tale, from a fear that he might have plunged too soon into the
incidents leading on to the catastrophe, such as the Datchery assump-
tion in the fifth number (a misgiving he had certainly expressed to
his sister-in-law), it had occurred to him to open some fresh veins of
character incidental to the interest, though not directly part of it.
and so to handle them in connection with Sapsea as a little to sus-
pend the final development even wliile assisting to strengthen it.
Before beginning any number of a serial, he used, as we have seen
in former instances, to plan briefly what he intended to put into it
chapter by chapter; and his first number-plan of Drood had the fol-
lowing: "Mr. Sapsea. Old Tory jackass. Connect Jasper with him.
(He will want a solemn donkey by and by)"; which was effected by
bringing together both Durdlej and Jasper, for connection with
Sapsea, in the matter of the epitaph for Mrs. Sapsea's tomb. The
scene now discovered might in this view have been designed to
strengthen and carry forward that element in the tale; and other-
wise it very sufficiently expresses itself. It would supply an answer,
if such were needed, to those who have asserted that the hopeless
decadence of Dickens as a writer had set in before his death. Amon"
the lines last written by him, these are the very last we can ever

339*

650

The Life of Charles Dickens

hope to receive; and they seem to me a delightful specimen of th^

Kist^TaThav'^ 'r ^" ^'' P"'"^' ^"^ *^^ rar^eS which a^;
novelist can have, of revealing a character by a touch H^r«

are a couple of people. Kimber and Peartree not known to
us before, whom we read off thoroughly in a dozen words Jd
as to Sapsea himself, auctioneer aid Mayor of Soist^ham it
are face to face with what before we only dimly realised «n^
""^ ^7jhV°^^"'° j^^^^«^' '" his business pulp^ %>la4nToff th^

How Mr. Sapsea Ceased to be a Member

OF THE Eight Club

Told by himself

.1 L^l^K "^ *"" *^^^ ^^"^ ^^''' ^ proceeded by a circuitous route toth^
club It bemg our weekly night of meeting. I found that we mustered

Ei^hi" Club'fve- ^' -^.'■^r-"-d -^- the denominltion'ft^^
Eight C ub We were eight m number; we met at eight o'clock
during eight months of the year; we played eieht l^mJt\^ T
handed cribbage. at eightpen'ce ihe gamerlr^frugTsup^r wa^
composed of eight rolls, eight mutton chops, eight^pork 5^1^^
eight baked potatoes, eight man-ow- bones, with eLhrtoIstsS
eight bottles of ale. There may. or may not b^a cfrtain h.^n
of colour in the ruling idea of^this (toLopt a pLase of ou^^^^^^^^^^
ueighbours) reunion. It was a little idea of mine ^

the name of Kimber By profession, a dancing-master. A common

Si the S "'' °' "'"' "'^"^ ^^^'^'"*^ °^ ^^g-^y - ^nowSdg;

•Anrttij'iftff. !^?. Cl"b-room, Kimber was making the remark;
And he still half-beheves him to be very high in the Churc^i '
I lAf^^^^ hangmg up my hat on the eighth peg bv the door

I caught Kimber's visual ray. H^ lowered it.\nd passed a remark

Z^^tZ '^^T u *^^" "^°°"- ^ ^'^ "«t t^ke particular notke of
this at the moment, because the world was often pleased to be a Tift?;
shy of ecclesiastical topics in my presence For I felt thpH
picked out (though perhaps onl(^ ^through acldden^e tcH
S aruVclTand lUrXhT' r'^' ' ^^^L '"^ glorious t^nSitidon'
min^d's- ?ut fown t"it?s'm'fnri ThTewV 'rfn' *° '>' ^^^^^^-

"Another member of the Eight Club was P^rfr^^- ^-..^
of the Royal College of Surgeo'ns, uT P^r^::T:ott::Z?^i:

- - X- — 0-— "wva^vci -.iicy wanx mm. and is not the parish

The Life of Charles Dickens

651

doctor. Mr. Peartree may justify it to the grasp of hts mind thus to do
his republican utmost to bring an appointed officer into contempt.
Suffice it that Mr. Peartree can never justify it to the grasp of
mine.

"Between Peartree and Kimber there was a sickly sort of feeble-
minded alliance. It came under my particular notice when I sold off
Kimber by auction. (Goods taken in execution.) He was a widower
in a white under- waistcoat, and slight shoes with bows, and had two
daughters not ill-looking. Indeed the reverse. Both daughters taught
dancing in scholastic establishments for Young Ladies — had done so
at Mrs. Sapsea's; nay, Twinkleton's — and both, in giving lessons,
presented the unwomanly spectacle of having little fiddles tucked
under their chins. In spite of which, the younger one might, if I am
correctly informed — 1 will raise the veil so far as to say I know she
might — have soared for life from this degrading taint, but for having
the class of mind allotted to what I call the common herd, and
being so incredibly devoid of veneration as to become painfully
ludicrous.

"When 1 sold off Kimber without reserve, Peartree (as poor as he,
can hold together) had several prime household lots knocked down
to him. 1 am not to be blinded; and of course it was as plain to me
what he was going to do with them; as it was that he was a brown
hulking sort of revolutionary subject who had been in India with the
soldiers, and ought (for the sake of society) to have his neck broke.
I saw the lots shortly afterwards in Kimbcr's lodgings — through the
window — and I easily made out that there had been a sneaking
pretence of lending them till better times. A man with a smaller
knowledge of the world than myself might have been led to suspect
that Kimber had held back money from his creditors, and fraudulently
bought the goods. But, besides that I knew for certain he had no
money. I knew that this would involve a species of forethought not
to be made compatible with the frivolity of a caperer, inoculating
other people with capering, for his bread.

"As it was the first time I had seen either of those two since the
sale, I kept myself in what I call Abeyance. When selling him up, I
had delivered a few remarks — shall I say a little homily? — concern-
ing Kimber, which the world did regard as more than usually worth
notice. I had come up into my pulpit, it was said, uncommonly like —
and a murmur of recognition had repeated his ( 1 will not name whose)
title, before I spoke. I had then gone on to say that all present would
find, in the first page of the catalogue that was lying before them, in
the last paragraph before the first lot, the following words: 'Sold in
pursuance of a writ of execution issued by a creditor.' I had then
proceeded to remind my friends, that however frivolous, not to say
contemptible, the business by which a man got his goods together,
still his goods were as dear to him, and as cheap to society (if sold
without reserve), as though his pursuits had been of a ciiaracter
that would bear serious contemplation. 1 had then divided my text

652

The Life of Charles Dickens

f if I may be allowed so to call it) into three heads: firstly. Sold- secondly
In pursuance of a writ of execution; thirdly, Issued by a creditor'
with a few moral reflections on each, and winding up with. 'Now to
the first lot in a manner that was complimented when I afterwards
mingled with my hearers. '^

"So. not being certain on what terms I and Kimber stood I was
grave. I was chilling. Kimber. however, moving to me, I moved to
Kimber. (I was the creditor who had isssued the writ. Not that ,t
matters.) "-

'"I was alluding Mr. Sapsea.' said Kimber. *to a stranger who
entered into conversation with me in the street as I came to the Club
He had been speaking to you just before, it seemed, by the church
yard; and though you had told him who you were, I could hardJv
persuade him that you were not high in the Church '
" 'Idiot!' said Peartree.
"'Ass!' said Kimber.

" 'Idiot and Ass!' said the other five members.
^ " 'Idiot and Ass, gentlemen.' I remonstrated, looking around me
are strong expressions to apply to a young man of good appearance
and address. My generosity was roused; I own it.

" 'You'll admit that he must be a Fool.' said Peartree
" 'You can't deny that he must be a Blockhead.' said Kimber
"Their tone of disgust amounted to being offensive. Why should
the young man be so calumniated? What had he done' He had onJv
made an innocent and natural mistake. I controlled my generous
indignation, and said so.

" 'Natural?' repeated Kimber. 'He's a Natural!'
"The remaining six members of the Eight Club laughed unani-
mously. It stung me. It was a scornful laugh. My anger was roused
in behalf of an absent, friendless stranger. I rose (for I had been
sitting down) .

" 'Gentlemen.' I said with dignity, 'I will not remain one of this
Club allowing opprobrium to be cast on an unoffending person in his
absence. I will not so violate what I call the sacred rites of hospi-
tality. Gentlemen, until you knt)w how to behave yourselves better
I leave you. Gentlemen, until then I withdraw, from this place or
meeting, whatever personal qualifications I may have brought into
It. Gentlemen, until then you cease to be the Eight Club, and must
make the 1 'jst you can of becoming the Seven.'

"I put on my hat and retired. As I went downstairs 1 distinctly
heard them give a suppressed cheer. Such is the power of demeanour
and knowledge of mank id. I had forced it out of them

'II

"Whom should I meet in the street, within a few yards of the door
: txa^. xi^n rvxicxt Ziic V.1UW \vii3 iiciu, Dut the seiisame young man

653

will add so

The Life of Charles Dickens

whose cause 1 had felt it my duty so warmly — and I
disinterestedly — to take up.

" ' Is it Mr. Sapsea,' he said doubtfully, 'or is it '

" 'It is Mr. Sapsea,' I replied.

" 'Pardon me, Mr. Sapsea; you appear warm, sir.'

" 'I have been warm,' I said, 'and on your account.' Having
stated the circumstances at some length (my generosity almost fwer-
powered him), I asked him his name.

" 'Mr. Sapsea,' he answered, looking down, 'your penetration is so
acute, your glance into the souls of your fellow men is so penetrating,
that if I was hardy enough to deny that my name is Poker, what
would it avail me?"

"I don't know that 1 had quite exactly made out to a fraction
that his name was Poker, but I daresay I had been pretty near
doing it.

" 'Well, well,' said 1, trying to put him at his ease by nodding my
head in a soothing way. ' Your name is Poker, and there is no harm in
being named Poker.'

" 'Oh Mr. Sapsea!' cried the young man, in a very well-behaved
manner. 'Bless you for those words!' He then, as if ashamed of having
given way to his feelings, looked down again.

" 'Come, Poker,' said I, let me hear more about you. Tell
me. Where are you going to. Poker? and where do you come
from?'

" 'Ah Mr. Sapsea!' exclaimed the young man. 'Disguise from you is
impossible. You know already that I come from somewhere, and am
going somewhere else, if 1 was to deny it, what would it avail
me?'

" 'Then don't deny it,' was my remark.

" 'Or,' pursued Poker, in a kind of despondent rapture, 'or if I
was to deny that I came to this town to see and hear you, sir, what
would it avail me? Or if I was to deny ' "

The fragment ends there, and the hand that could alone have com-
pleted it is at rest for ever.

'hi

jmeanour

Some personal characteristics remain tor illustration before the
end is briefly told.

654

The Life of Charles Dickens

III

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
1836-70

Objection has been taken to this biography as likely to disappoint

Its readers ,n not making them "ta'k to Dickens as Boswell makes

them talk to Johnson. But where u ill the blame lie if a man takes up

Pickwick and IS disappumted to find that he is not reading Rasselas^

A book must be judged for what it aims to be. and not for what it

cannot by possibility be. I suppose so remarkable an author as

Dickens hardly ever lived who carried so little of authorship into

ordinal ■ social intercourse. Potent as the sway of his writings was

oyer hi i, it expressed itself in other ways. Traces or triumphs of

literary labour, displays of conversational or other personal prc-

domii anco, were no part of the influence he exerted over friends To

them he was only the pleasaiitest of companions, with whom thev

forgot that he had ever written anything, and felt only the charm

which a nature of such capacity for supreme enjoyment causes everv-

one around it to enjoy. His talk was unaffected and natural never

bookish in the smallest degree. He was quite up to the average of

well-read men; but as there was no ostentation of it in his writing so

neither was there in his conversation. This was so attractive because

so keenly observant, and lighted up with so many touches of humorous

fancy; but. with every possible thing to give relish to it. there were

not many things to bring away. . . .

A dislike of all display was rooted in him; and his objection to
posthumous honours, illustrated by the instructions in his will
was very strikingly expressed two years before his death, v,-hen Mr'
Thomas Fairbairn asked his help to a proposed recognition of Rajah
±5rooke s services by a memorial !n Westminster Abbey "I am verv
strongly impelled" (24 June, 186S) "to comply with any request of
yours But these posthumous honours of committee, subscriptions
and Westminster Abbey are so profoundly unsatisfactory in mv eves
that—plainly— I would rather have nothing to do with them in any
case. My daughter and her aunt unite with me in kindest regards to
Mrs Fairbairn, and I hope you will believe in the possession of mine
until I am quietly buried without any memorial but such as I have
set up in my lifetime." Asked a year later (August 1869) to say some-
thing on the inauguration of Leigh Hunt's bust at his grave in Kensal
Oreen he told the committee that he had a very strong objection to
speech-making beside graves. "I do not expect or wish my feelings
in this wise to guide other men; still, it is so serious with me and the

The Life of Charles Dickens

655

idea of ever being the subject of such a ceremony myself is ho repug-
nant to my soul, that 1 must (iecline to officiate."

His aversion to every f( rm of what is called patronage of literature
was part of the same feeling. A few month.s earlier he had received
an application for support to such a scheme from a person assuming
a title to which he had no pretension, but which appeared to sanction
the request. "I beg to be excused," was his reply, "from complying
with the request you do me the honour to prefer, simply because I
hold the opinion that there is a great deal too much patronage in
England. The better the design, the less (as I think) should it seek
such adventitious aid, and the more composedly should it rest on its
own merits." This was the belief Southey held; it extended to the
support by way of patronage given by such societies as the Literary
Fund, which Southey also strongly resisted; and it survived the
failure of the Guild whereby it was hoped to establish a system of self-
help, under which men engaged in literary pursuits might l>e as proud
to receive as to give. Though there was no project of his life into
which he flung himself with greater eagerness than the Guild, it was
not taken up by the class it was meant to benefit, and every renewed
exertion more largely added to the failure. There is no room in these
pages for th( story, which will add its chapter some day to the
vanity of human wishes; but a passage from a letter to Bulwer
Lytton at its outset will be some measure of the height from which the
writer fell, when all hope for what he had so set his heart upon ceased.
"I do, devoutly believe that this plan carried by the support which 1
trust will be given to it, will change the status of the literary man in
England, and make a revolution in his position which no government,
no p Dwer on earth but his own, could ever effect. I have implicit con-
fidence in the scheme — so splendidly begun — if we carry it out with
a steadfast energy. 1 have a strong conviction that we hold in our
hands the peace and honour of men of letters for centuries to come,
and that you are destined to be their best and most enduring bene-
factor. . . . Oh what a procession of new years may walk out of all this
for the class we belong to, after we are dust."

These views about patronage did not make him more indulgent to
the clamour with which it is so often invoked for the ridiculously small.
"You read that life of Clare?" he wrote (15 August, 1865). "Did you
ever see such preposterous exaggeration of small claims? And isn't
it expressive, the perpetual prating of him in the book as the Poet?
So another Incompetent used to write to the ll-iterary Fund when I
was on the committee: 'This leaves the Poet at his divine mission in a
corner of the single room. The Poet's father is wiping his spectacles.
The Poet's mother is weaving.' — Yah!" . . .

Of his ordinary habits of activity I have sp«.,.:en, and they were
doubtless carried too far. In youth it was all well, but he did not
make allowance for years. This has had abundant illustration, but
will admit of a few words more. To all men who dc much, rule and
order are essential; method in everything was Pickens's peculiarity:

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'*'

«*

656

The Life of Charles Dickens

Wb„te /e was among tSt' to"o«e;"totslZ:r: h^'dSS
som whired you by the Bell and Horns at Brompton and th^r^

behind Holborn, in Borougl, courts and passages in atvwhfrffnr
^leys about tl>e poorer lodging-houses, in p^oL worichous^
ragged-schools poLce-coarts, rag-shops, chandlers' shops and Ijl
Ttirinl SudT '°^ *'^ ^'"^ ^'^"^^ keen cbser^ation^a^d'

P^.^r^?w';l:^rot' ^ Tn f^J'°^^l '«"-^- ."^° ""^
F^enc Len,anro got up forTl^^pTrt SVer^'c^^S tStStS
ache, tod me m a railway carriage the other day, that we had no
ant.qu,hes m heretical England. 'None at all,' I safd ' You hav» ^^e
ships, however.'- 'Yes: a few.' 'Are they strong? • ■Well ' said l"'^,^r
cw^i,? ?'"*"*'■■ ™/. '"*''"'^= "* the'^ ghost rf Neton • A kTh
sS oke Tm^t' him^r?'?*^' "n 'T^^^'y delighted with tht

a^tt^a-fh^-^^^^^^^

Of enjoyment his least important little notes are often worS ore^
serving fake one small instance. So freely had he admSd a tafe fold
by his tnend and solicitor Mr. Frederic Ouvry that he had to r^n u
tea humorous proposal for publication of it.^nhfsovvn manner^ n
his own periodical. "Your modesty is equal to your meri? 1 think
yoiir way of describing that rustic courtship in Sle 'life quitt
matchless. . A cheque for^iooo is lying with the publisher/Wew^ould
vil mgly make It more, but that we find our law^charges so exxeed

^^^u^l^' ^'' ^^"^" ^^^« «^«° examples now and^then of what
he called his conversational triumphs. "I Lve distinguish^ myS'

s, was his
njoyment
jpensable,
sala is an
genferous
described
it inclem-
mberwell
tnersmith
"A ban.
md there
direction
I forth at
he York-
;k wall of
n Sisters
1, under-
i way up
e in the
jghfares.
k streets
/harfs or
khouses^
and ail
;ion and

The Life of Charles Dickens

657

"An old
mage of
le tooth-
had no
ve some

I, 'your
French
ith this
! with a
Bd as to
umour-
lis kind
th pre-
ale told

reply
iner, in

1 think
, quite
3 would
Jxceed-
f what,
lyself"

(28 April, 1861) "in two respects lately. I took ayoung lady, unknown,
down to dinner, and, talking to her about the Bishop of Durham's
Nepotism in the matter of Mr. Cheese, I found she was Mrs. Cheese.
And I expatiated to the member for Marylebone, Lord Fermoy,
generally conceiving him to be an Irish member, on the contemptible
character of the Marylebone constituency and Marylebone repre-
sentation." . . .

!!1

BOOK ELEVENTH
THE CLCSE

1870. ^T. 58

I. Last Days
II. Westminster Abbey

659

The si
He rec
been d
trying
nation
cile th
healthi
in Sepi
Institu
as it vi
habit (
politic,
illimitt
with n
hardly
ment c

Hel
Londo;
Office 1
houses
quarte:
Johnsc
with hi
had no
in Fun
more t
and th<
den, w;
Mr. Fi€
made c
mouth
as we I

Hef
Octobe
nights
taken f
even w

LAST DAYS

1869-70

The summer and autumn of 1869 were passed quietly at Gadshill.
He received there, in June, the American friends to whom he had
been most indebted for unwearying domestic kindness at his most
trying time in the States. In August, he was at the dinner of the Inter-
national boat race; and, in a speech that might have gone far to recon-
cile the victors to changing places with the vanquished, gave the
healths of the Harvard and the Oxford crews. He went to Birmingham,
in September, to fulfil a promise that he would open the session of the
Institute; and there, after telling his audience that his invention, such
as it was, never would have served him as it had done, but for the
habit of commonplace, patient, drudging attention, he declared his
political creed to be infinitesimal faith in the people governing and
illimitable faith in the People governed. In such engagements as these,
with nothing of the kind of strain he had most to dread, there was
hardly more movement or change than was necessary to his enjoy-
ment of rest.

He had been able to show Mr. Fields something of the interest of
London as well as of his Kentish home. He went over its General Post
Office with him, took him among its cheap theatres and poor lodging-
houses, and piloted him by night through its most notorious thieves'
quarter. Its localities that are pleasantest to a lover of books, such as
Johnson's Bolt Court and Goldsmith's Temple Chambers, he explored
with him; and, at his visitor's special request, mounted a staircase he
had not ascended for more than thirty years, to show the chamber
in Furnival' > Inn where the first page of Pickwick was written. One
more book, unfinished, was to close what that famous book began;
and the original of the scene of its opening chapter, the opium-eater's
den, vyas the last place visited. "In a miserable court at night," says
Mr. Fields, "we found a haggard old woman blowing at a kind of pipe
made of an old ink-bottle; and the words that Dickens puts into the
mouth of this wretched creature in Edwin Drood, we heard her croon
as we leaned over the tattered bed in which she was lying." . . .

He finished his first number of Edwin Drood in the third week of
October, and on the 26th read it at my house with great spirit. A few
nights before we had seen together at the Olympic a little drama
taken from his Copperfield, which he sat out with more than patience,
even with something of enjoyment; and another pleasure was given

661

662

The Life of Charles Dickens

him that night by its author. Mr. Halliday, who brought into the bov
another dramatist. Mr Robertson, to whom Dickens^ who then first
saw him. said that to himself the charm of his little comecHes was
their unassummg form." which had so happily shown that ' "eal wif
could afford to put off any airs of pretension to it." He was at Gadshq
till the close of the year; coming .p for a few special occasions such
as Procter's eighty-second birthday; and at my house on New Year's
Eve he read to us a fresh number of his Edwin Drood. Yet thise verv
last days of December had not been without a reminder of theJave
warnings of April. The pains in somewhat modified form had returned
m ooth his left hand and his left foot a few days before we met Tid
they were troubling him still on that day. But he made so li^h? nf
them himself; so little thought of connoting theSwith the un
certainties of touch and tread of which they were really part and
read with such an overflow of humour Mr. Honeythunder's bSrous
philanthropy; that there was no room. then, for anything bSeniov
ment. His only allusion to an effect from his illness was hif mentbn o

1 7hT''';'^1^ f'^^'^? ^^^"^ ^^ ^^^ *° ^^il^ay travel. Th s had
decided him to take a London house for the twelve last readings ^n

ttVnTL^t rHyt Pi^lf &acT^ ''^ ^^^ ^--^ ^^- ^"- gS^

we^rlt^rupV^iXi^lt^^^^

given m each week to the close of January^nd the remainrg erh?
on each of the eight Tuesdays following. Nothing was said of a|. Idnd
of apprehension as the time approached; but. with a curious absence
of the sense of danger, there was certainly both distrust Ld fear
Sufficient precaution was supposed to have been taken by arranl:

attendant Mr F. C Beard; but this resolved itself, not into anv

measure of safety, the case admitting of none short of stopping the

readmgaltogether. but simply into ascertainment of the exact amount

o strain and pressure, which, with every fresh exertion, he was

placing on those vessels of the brain where the Preston trouble Ton

surely had revealed that danger lay. No supposed force ?nreser^^^ no

dommant strength of will, can turn aside the penalties sternly exacted

for disregard of such laws of life as were here plainly overlook and

though no one may say that it was not already too late for any but

the fatal issue, there will be no presumption in believing that life might

been stopped '"""^ ^'""^ prolonged if these readings could hive

"I am a little shaken," he wrote on 9 Januaiy. "by my journev to

Birmmgnam to give away the Institution's prizes on Twelfth Night

?n"rV T"^' ^ ^^'*: ^"^'."^twithstandingLowe's worryingschlme
for collecting a year's taxes in a lump, which they tell me is dimaging
books, pictures, music, and theatres beyond precedent, our 'let' at St
&'\^ /' enormous." He opened with Copperfield and the
Pickwick Trtal- and I may briefly mention, from the notes taken '

The Life of Charles Dickens

663

Mr. Beard and placed at my disposal, at what cost of exertion to him-
self he gratified the crowded audiences that then and to the close made
these evenings memorable. His ordinary pulse on the first night was
at 72; but never on any subsequent night was lower than 82, and had
risen on the later nights to more than 100. After Copperfield on the
first night it went up to 96, and after Marigold on the second to 99;
but on the first night of the Sikes and Nancy scenes (Friday,
21 January) it went from 80 to 112, and on the second night
(i February) to 118. From this, through the six remaining nights, it
ne\-er was lower than no after the first piece read; and after the third
and fourth readings of the Oliver Twist scenes it rose, from 90 to 124
on 15 February, and from 94 to 120 on 8 March; on the former occa-
sion, after twenty minutes' rest, falling to 98, and on the latter, after
fifteen minutes' rest, falling to 82. His ordinary pulse on entering the
room, during these last six nights, was more than once over 100, and
never lower than 84; from which it rose, after Nickleby on 22 February,
to 112. On 8 February, when he read Dombey, it had risen from 91 to
114; on I March, after Copperfield, it rose from 100 to 124; and wher..
he entered the room on the last night it was at 108, having risen only
two beats more when the reading was doie. The pieces on this occa-
sion were the Christmas Carol, followed by the Pickwick Trial; and
probably in all his life he never read so well. On his return from the
States, where he had to address his effects to audiences composed of
immense numbers of people, a certain loss of refinement had been
observable; but the old delicacy was now again delightfully manifest
and a subdued tone, as well in the humorous as the serious portions,
gave something to all the reading as of a quiet sadness of farewell.
The charm of this was at its height when he shut the volume of Pick-
wick and spoke in his own person. He said that for fifteen years he
had been reading his own books to audiences whose sensitive and
kindly recognition of them had given him instruction and enjoyment
in his art such as few men could have had; but that he nevertheless
thought it well now to retire upon older associations, and in future to
devote himself exclusively to the calling which had first made him
known. "In but two short weeks frcr^. this time I hope that you may
enter, in your own homes, on a new series of readings at which my
assistance will be indispensable; but from these garish lights I vanish
now for evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, affectionate
farewell." The brief hush of silence as he moved from the platform;
and the prolonged tumult of sound that followed suddenly, stayed
him, and again for another moment brought him back; will not be
forgotten by any present.

Little remains to be told that has not in it almost unmixed pain
and sorrow. Hardly a day passed, while the readings went on or after
they closed, unvisited by some effect or other of the disastrous excite-
ment shown by the notes of Mr. Beard. On 23 January, when for the
last time he met Carlyle, he came to us with his left hand in a sling;

on f rcuiuai}', wiicii lic paaocU 'viLn da iiiS last Dii Liiutiy, UllU Oil Cne

664

TYke Life of Charles Dickens

25th, when he read the third number of his novel, the hand was still
swollen and painful; and on 21 March, when he read admirably hi^;
fourth number, he told us that as he came along, walking up the
length of Oxford Street, the same incident had recurred as on, the day
of a former dinner with us, and he had not been able to read, all the
way, more than the right-hand half of the names over the shops
Yet he had the old fixed persuasion that this was rather the efiect of
a medicine he had been taking than of any grave cause, and he still
strongly believed his other troubles to be exclusively local. Eight
days later he wrote: "My uneasiness and hemorrhage, after having
quite left me, as I supposed, has come back with an aggravated irrit-
ability that it has not yet displayed. You have no idea what a state
I am m to-day from a sudden violent rush of it; and yet it has not the
slightest effect on my general health that I know of." This was a dis-
order which troubled him in his earlier life; and during the last five
years, in his intervals of suffering from other causes, it had from time
to time taken aggravated form.

His last public appearances were in April. On the 5th he took the
chair for the newsvendors, whom he helped with a genial address in
which even his apology for little speaking overflowed with irre-
pressible humour. He would try, he said, like Falstaff, "but with a
modification almost as large as himself," less to speak himself than
to be the cause of speaking in others. "Much in this manner they
exhibit at the door of a sn jff-shop the effigy of a Highlander with an
empty mull in his hand, who, apparently having taken all the snuff
he can carry, and discharged all the sneezes of which he is capable,
politely invites his friends and patrons to step in and try what they
can do in the same line." On the 30th of the same month he returned
thanks for "Literature" at the Royal Academy dinner. ...

We met for the iast time on Sunday, 22 May, when I dined with
him m Hyde Park Place. The death of Mr. Lemon, of which he heard
that day, had led his thoughts to the crowd of friendly companions
m letters and art who had so fallen from the ranks since we played Ben
Jonson together that we were left almost alone. "And none beyond
his sixtieth year," he said, "very few 'even fifty." It is no good to talk
of it, I suggested. "We shall not think of it the less," was his reply;
and an illustration much to the point was before us, afforded by an
mcident deserving remembrance in this story. Not many weeks
before, a correspondent had written to him from Liverpool describing
himself as a self-raised man, attributing his prosperous career to
what Dickens's writings had taught him at its outset of the wisdom of
kindness, and sympathy for others; and asking pardon for the liberty
he took in hoping that he might be permitted to offer some acknow-
ledgment of what not only had cheered and stimulated him through
all his life, but had contributed so much to the success of it. The
letter enclosed ;^5oo. Dickens was greatly touched by this; and told
the writer, in sending back his cheque, that he would certainly have _
taken it if he had not been, though not a man of fortune, a orosnerous ■

I
I

The Life of Charles Dickens

665

man himself; but that the letter, and the spirit of ita offer, had so
gratified hjm, that if the writer pleased to send him any small
memorial of it in another form he would gladly receive it. The
memorial soon came. A richly worked basket of silver, inscribed
"from one who has been cheered and stimulated by Mr. Dickens's
writings, and held the author among his first rememorances when he
became prosperous," was accompanied by an extremely handsome
silver centrepiece for the table, of which the design was four figures
representing the Seasons. But the kindly donor shrank from sending
Winter to one whom he would fain c^-'.nect with none save the
brighter and milder days, and he had struck the fourth figure from
the design. "I never look at it," said Dickens, "that I don't think
most of the Winter," The gift had yet too surely foreshadowed the
truth, for the winter was never to come to him.

A matter discussed that day with Mr. Ouvry was briefly resumed
in a note of 29 May, the last I ever received from him; which followed
me to Exeter, and closed thus. "You and I can speak of it at Gads
by and by. Foot no worse. But no better." The old trouble was upon
him when we parted, and this must have been nearly the last note
written before he quitted IxDndon. He was at Gadshill on 30 May;
and I heard no more imtil the telegram reached me at Launceston
on the night of 9 June, which told me that the "by and by" was
not to come in this world.

The few days at Gadshill had been given wholly to work on his
novel. He had been easier in his foot and hand; and though he was
suffering severely from the local hemorrhage before named, he made
no complaint of illness. But thp'-c v s observed in him a very unusual
appearance of fatigue. "I d very weary." He was out with

his dogs for the last time .- •. 6 June, when he walked with

his letters into Rochester 'v the 7th, after his daughter

Mary had left on a visit to te, not finding himself equal

to much fatigue, he drove . Wood with his sister-in-law,

there dismissed the carriage, au^ :d round the park and bad:.

He returned in time to put up in his new conservatorv ^onie Chinese
lanterns sent from London that afternoon; and the whole of the
evening, he sat with Miss Hogarth in the dining-room that he might
see their effect when lighted. More than once he then expressed his
satisfaction at having finally abandoned all intention of exchanging
Gadshill for LondoTi ; and this he had done more impressively some
days before. While he lived, he said, he should wish his name to be
more and more associated with the place; and he had a notion that
when he died he should like to lie in the little graveyard belonging
to the Cathedral at the foot of the Castle wall.

On 8 June he passed all the day writing in the Chalet. He came
over for luncheon; and, much against his usual custom, returned to
his desk. In the sentences he was then writing, he imagines such a
brilliant rooming as had risen with that 8 June shining on the old
city of Rochester. He sees in surpassing beauty, with the lusty ivy

666

The Life of Charles Dickens

gleaming in the sun, and the rich trees v. x ing in the balmy air its
antiquities and its ruins; its Cathedral and Castle. But his fancy
then, is not with the stern dead forms of either; but with that which
makes warm the cold stone tombs of centuries, and lights them up
with flecks of brightness, "fluttering there like wings." To him on
that sunny summer morning, the changes of glorious light from
moving boughs, the songs of birds, the scents from garden, woods
and fields, have penetrated into the Cathedral, have subdued its
earthy odour, and are preaching the Resurrection and the I-ife.

He was late in leaving the Chalet; but before dinner, which was
ordered at six o'clock with the intention of walking afterwards in the
lanes, he wrote some letters, among them one to his friend Mr
Charles Kent appointing to see him in London next day; and dinner
was begun before Miss Hogarth saw, with alarm, a singular expres-
sion of trouble and pain in his face. "For an hour," he then told her
"he had h ^en very ili"; but he wished dinner to go on. The.o were the
only really coherent words uttered by him. They were followed by
some, that fell from him disconnectedly, of quite other nu.tters; of
an approaching sale at a neighbour's house, of whether Macready's
son was v/ith his father at Cheltenham, and of his own intention to
go immediately to London; but at these latter he had risen, and his
sister-in-law's help alone preveited him from falling wher- he stood.
Her effort was then to get him on the sofa, but after a slight struggle
he sank heavily on his left side. "On the ground" were the last words
he spoke. It was now a little over ten minutes past six o'clock. His
two daughters came that night v/ith Mr. F. Beard, who had also
been telegraphed for, and whom they met at the station. His eldest
son arrived early next morning, and .^^as joined in the evening (too
late) by his younger son from Cambridge. All possible medical aid
had been summoned. The surgeon of the neighbourhood was there
from the first, and a physician from London was in attendance as
well as Mr. Beard. But human help was unavailing. There was
effusion on the brain; and though stertorous breathing continued all
night, and until ten minutes past 'six o'clock on the evening of
Thursday, 9 June, there had never been a gleam of hope during the
twenty-four hours. He had lived four months beyond his 58th year.

'X1

The Life of Charles Dick'

667

WEETMINSTER ADOEY
1S70

The excitement and sorrow at his death are within the mcmorv of
all. Before the news of it even reached the remoter parts of England,
it '^d been flashed across Europe; was known in the distant con-
tinents of India, Australia, and America; and not in English-speaking
communities only, but in every country of the civilis'^d earth, had
awakened grief and sympathy. In his own land it was as if a personal
bereavement had befallen everyone. Her Majesty the Queen tele-
graphed 'rom Balmoral "her deepest regret at the sad news of
Charles Dickens's death"; and this was the sentiment alike of all
classes of her people. There was not an Fr„''^h journal that did not
give it touching and noble utterance; ano 2V*e. Times took the lead in
suggesting that the only fit resting-place ior the remains of a man so
dear to England was the Abbey in which the most illustrious English-
men are laid.

With the expression thus given to a general wish, the Dean of
Westminster lost no t ne in showing ready compliance; and on the
morning of the day when it appeared was in communication with the
family and the executors. The public homage of a burial in the Abbey
had to be reconciled with his own instructions to be privately buried
without previous announcement of time or place, and without
monument or memorial. He would himself have preferred to lie in
the sma'l graveyard under Rochester Castle wall, or in the little
churches of Cobham or Shornc; but all these were found to be closed;
and the desire of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester to lay him in
their Cathedral had been entertained, when the Dean of Westminster's
request, and the considerate kindness of his generous assurance that
there should be only such ceremonial as would strictly obey all
injunctions of privacy, made it a grateful duty to accept that offer.
The spot already had been chosen by the Dean; and before midday
on the followhig morning, Tuesday, 14 June, with knowledge of those
only who took part in the buiial, all was done. The solemnity had not
lost by the simplicity. Nothing so grand or so touching could have
accompanied it, as the stillness and the silence of the vast cathedral.
Then, later in the day and all the following day, erne • nbidd^ti
mourners in such crowds, that the Dean had to request permission to
keep open the grave until Thursday; but after it was closed they did
not cease to come, and "all day long," Doctor Stanley wrote on the
17th, "there was a constant pressure to the spot, and many flowers
were strewn upon it by unknown hands, xnany tears shed from un-

668 The Life of Charles Dickens

known eyes." He alluded to this in the impressive funeral discourse
dehvered by him m the Abbey on the morning of Sunday the ?qth
pointing to the fresh flowers that then had been newlv thiowMas
they still are thrown in this fourth year after the death), and ryi^"'
M Sxr^^ii^'^^.T"^'^ thenceforward be a sacred one with both thf
^n^J^u-^ ^f *^ T' "-' *^^* °^ '^' representative of the literature
not of this island only, bu ■ of all who speak our English tongue ''
The stone placed upon it is inscribed ^

Charles Dickens

Born February the Seventh, 1812

Died June the Ninth, 1870

The highest associations of both the arts he loved surround him
where he lies. Next to him is Richard Cumberland. Mrs Pr ?
f. mvxn r?.""'^''.* looks down upon him, and immediately behind
IS David Garrick's. Nor is the actor's delightful art more worthilv
represented than the nobler genius of the author. Facing the^avl
and on its left a^d right, are the monuments of Chaucer sSS'
SPEARE and Dryden. the three immortals who did most to cr'eate and

undyU n^mT'"' '" "'^'' ''"^^^"^ ^^^^^^^ ^^« ^-- -' "er

"44

APPENDIX

THE WILL OF CHARLES DICKENS

"I, Charles Dickens, of Gadshill Place, Higham in the county of
Kent, hereby revoke all my former Wills and Codicils and declare
this to be my last Will and Testament. I give 'he sum of ;^iooo free
of legacy duty to Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan, late of Houghton Place,
Ampthill Square, in the county of Middlesex. I give the sum of
;^I9 19 o to my faithful servant Mrs. Anne Cornelius. I give the sum
of ;^i9 19 o to the daughter and only child of the said Mrs. Anne
Cornelius. I give the sum of ;^i9 19 o to each and every domestic
servant, male and female, who shall be in my employment at the
time of my decease, and shall have been in my employment for a not
less period of time than one year. I give the sum of ;^iooo free of
legacy duty to my daughter Mary Dickens. I also give to my said
daughter an annuity of ;^3oo a year, during her life, if she shall so
long continue unmarried; such annuity to be considered as accruing
from day to day, but to be payable half-yearly, the first of such half-
yearly payments to be made at the expiration of six months next
after my decease. If my said daughter Mary shall marry, such annuity
shall cease; and in that case, but in that case only, my said daughter
shall share with my other children in the provision hereinafter made
for them. I give to my dear sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth the sum
of ;^8ooo free of legacy duty. I also give to the said Georgina Hogarth
all my personal jewellery not hereinafter mentioned, and all the little
familiar objects from my writing-table and my room, and she will
know what to do with those things. I also give to the said Georgina
Hogarth all my private papers whatsoever and wheresoever, and I
leave her my grateful blessing as the best and truest friend man ever
had. I give to my eldest son Charles my library of printed books, and
my engravings and prints; and I also give to my son Charles the silver
salver presented to me at Birmingham, and the silver cup presented
to me at Edinburgh, and my shirt studs, shirt pins, and sleeve
buttons. And I bequeath unto my said son Charles and my son
Henry Fielding Dickens, the sum of ;^8ooo upon trust to invest the
same, and from time to time to vary the investments thereof, and
to pay the annual income thereof to my wife during her life, and after
her decease the said sum of ;^8ooo and the investments thereof shall
be in trust for my children (but subject as to my daughter Mary to
the proviso hereinbefore contained) who being a son or sons shall
have attained or shall attain the age of twenty-one years, or being a

rlqiirrli+pr r\v rl o n orh for c oVl'^lI Tioxria q<-foir>p#1 <-»f oVi^ill n4-4'r,^.-. 4.V.^J. - ~i»

669

fiH

^70 Appendix

'''' ^^Ff^u'''''fI "*^ied, in equal shares if more than one. I give mv
wateh (the gold repeater presented to me at Coventry), and I give The
chains and seals and all appendages I have worn with it, to my dear
and trusty fnend John Forster, of Palace Gate House. Kensin^on
^ the county of Middlesex aforesaid; and I also give to the said John
Forster such manuscripts of my published works as may be in mv
possession at the time of my decease. And I devise and bequea^J
all my real and personal estate (except such as is vested in me as "

Toh%or.Srfh^''^.""*^ *^" '^^ ^"^^^^"^ «°g^^th ^^ the said
ii^^.? ? ' ^^^1 ^^'''\ executors, administrators, and assigns
respectively, upon trust that they the said Georgina Hogarth and
John Forster. or the survivor of them or the executors o7aSistra
tors of such survivor, do and shall, at their, his. or her uncontrolled
and irresponsible direction, either proceed to an immediate sa?e or
conversion into money of the said real ^nd personal estate (including
^L^^^ ,?^*1' ?^ ^^^^' .^"^ postpone any sale or conversion Tto

rthT^^'ilnf • ^ *'""" °' *'™'' ^' ^^'y' ^'' ^^ '^^ «^^» think fit. and
in the meant me may manage and let the said real and personal
estate (including my copyrights), in such manner in all respects as I
myself could do if I were living and acting therein; it befn ' my fn
tention that the trustees or trustee for the time being of this mv WUl
shall have the fullest power over the said real andVersonafLSe
which I can give to them. him. or her. And I DECLAREVat? unS the
said real and personal estate shall be sold and converted inio money
the rents and annual income thereof respectively shall be Daid and
applied to the person or persons in the manner and for the purposes

fm^ .r ^^"^ ^°' ^^^'^- *^" ^"^"^^^ i"^°"^« °f the monies^toS
froni the sale or conversion thereof into money would be oavable nr
applicable under this my Will in case the same Lre soldVcon^^^^^^^
into money^ And I declare that my real estate shall for the purp?^^^^
of this my Will be considered as converted into personalty upon my
decease. And I declare that the said trustees or trustee forX time

th^^'ht n^A'^f ' Z''^ ^''? °"' ^^ *^« "^°"i^« ^hi^^h shall comedo
IrZ' ^i ' .^"^ ^^''^^' ""^^^ °^ ^y ^i^tue of this my Will and the
trusts thereof pay my just debts, funeral and testamentary expenses

fhlnf '''1; n^^ ^ ''^''Y^'' *^^* *^^ «^id trust funds?r so much
thereof as shall remain after answering the purposes aforesaid ar"
the annual income thereof, shall be in trust for all my S?en (but

?±S Vr^^ ^^"^^*^^ ^^^^ *^ *h« P^°^i«° herdnblre con-
the a^e oTtl^/"^ ^ '°" °' '^""'^^.^^^ ^^^^ attained or shall attain
havelttpinL *r°>f l^'ff' ^"? ^'^"^ ^ daughter or daughters shall
have attained or shall attain that age or be previously married in
equal shares if more than one. Provided always, that as regards
my copyrights and the produce and profits thereof, my Sd daS

rSncTto'h.^'^"^^^^ '^' ?.r ^'^^ hereinbefore c'^SLInedTith
she I^^Vr^i!^' '^^1 \hare with my other children therein whether
she be married or not. And I devise the estates vested in ine at my

mongagee unto the use of the said Georgina

decease

13 a LX usicc ur

Appendix

671

Hogarth and John Forster, their heirs and assigns, upon the trusts
and subject to the equities affecting the same respectively. And I
APPOINT the said Georgina Hogarth and John Forster executrix
and executor of this my Will, and Guardians of the persons of my
children during their respective minorities. And lastly, as I have
now set down the form of words which my legal advisers assure me
are necessary to the plain objects of this my Will, I solemnly enjoin
my dear children always to remember how much they owe to the
said Georgina Hogarth, and never to b*" wanting in a grateful and
affectionate attachment to her, for they .aiow well that she has been,
through all the stages of their growth and progress, their ever useful
self-denying and devoted friend. And I desire here simply to record
the fact that my wife, since our sepaiation by consent, has been in
the receipt from me of an annual income of ;^6oo, while all the great
charges of a numerous and expensive family have devolved wholly
upon myself. I emphatically direct that I be buried in an inexpensive,
unostentatious, and strictly private manner; that no public announce-
ment be made of the time or place of my burial; that at the utmost
not more than three plain mourning coaches be employed; and that
those who attend my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow, long
hat-band, or other such revolting absurdity. I direct that my name
be inscribed in plain English letters on my tomb, without the addition
of 'Mr.' or 'Esquire.' I conjure niy friends on no account to make me
the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever.
I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country upon my pub-
lished works, and to the remembrance of my friends upon their
experience of me in addition thereto. I commit my soul to the mercy
of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my
dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of
the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any
man's narrow construction of its letter here or there. In witness
whereof I the said Charles Dickens, the testator, have to this my last
Will and Testament set my hand this 12th day of May in the year of
our Lord 1869.

"Charles Dickens.

"Signed published and declared by the^
above-named Charles Dickens the testator as
and for his last Will and Testament in the
presence of us (present together at the same
time) who in his presence at his request and
in the presence of each other have hereunto
subscribed our names as witnesses.

"G. Holsworth,

"26 Wellington Street, Strand.

"Henry Walker.

"26 Wellington Street, Strand.

672

Appendix

"I, Charles Dickens of Gadshill Place near Rochester in the
county of Kent Esquire declare this to be a Codicil to my last Will
and Testament which Will bears date the 12th day of May 1869.
I GIVE to my son Charles Dickens the younger all my share and
interest in the weekly journal called All the Year Round, which is
now conducted under Articles of Partnership made between me and
William Henry Wills and the said Charles Dickens the younger, and
all my share and interest in the stereotypes stock and other effects
belonging to the said partnership, he defraying my share of all debts
and liabilities of the said partnership which may be outstanding at
the time of my decease, and in all other respects I confirm my said
Will, In witness whereof I have hereimto set my hand the 2nd day
of June in the year of our Lord 1870.

"Charles Dickens.

"Signed and declared by the said Charles'
Dickens, the testator as and for a Codicil to
his Will in the presence of us present at the
same time who at his request in his presence
and in the presence of each other hereunto
subscribe our naiiies as witnesses.

"G. liOLSWORTH,

"26 Wellington Street, Strand.

"H. V/ALKER,

"26 Wellington Street, Strand."

The real and personal estate — taking the property bequeathed by
the last codicil at a valuation of something less than two years'
purchase; and of course before payment of the legacies, the (incon-
siderable) debts, and the testamentary and other expenses,—
amounted as nearly as may be calculated, to ;^93,oco.

Made and Printed in Great Britain by
Hazell, Watson tS- Viney, Ltd., London and Aylesbury

iter in the
y last Will
May 1869.
share and
i, which is
«n me and
unger, and
:her effects
)f all debts
tanding at
m my said
le 2nd day

>ICKENS.

eathed by
wo years'
he (incon-
tpenses, —