. J j^iGNMOUTH SHORE I 
 
 

 
 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 Class 12j^^^^ 
 
 
 
 
(^l-^^- 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/charlesdickenshiOOshorricli 
 
I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 From the Painting by D. Maclise, R.A., in the 
 National Portrait Gallery. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 BY 
 
 W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 CASSELL AND COMPANY. Ltd. 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 
 
 1909 
 
[all rights resbrvbo] 
 

 TO 
 GEORGE SOMES LAYARD 
 
 S29609 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. The Starting-point 
 
 11. John Forster 
 
 III. Doughty Street 
 
 IV. Macready . 
 V. The Times . 
 
 VI. The Man 
 VII. Lady Blessington and her Court 
 Vm. Walter Savage Landor 
 IX. Moving on . 
 X. Three Jesters . 
 XI. A Group of Artists 
 XII. Thackeray . 
 
 XIII. Northward Ho ! . 
 
 XIV. America and Elsewhere 
 XV. Dickens with the Children 
 
 XVI. Broadstairs 
 XVII. Cornwall and Company there 
 
 XVIII. 1843 
 
 XIX. Italy 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 12 
 
 25 
 28 
 30 
 44 
 SI 
 S3 
 69 
 86 
 89 
 
 9S 
 los 
 no 
 
 112 
 117 
 122 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTKR 
 
 XX. 1845-6 
 
 XXI. Switzerland 
 XXII. Paris .... 
 
 XXIII. On Tour . 
 
 XXIV. Oddments and Eloquence 
 XXV. 1848-9 
 
 XXVI. " Household Words " 
 XXVII. More Playing . 
 XXVIII. WiLKiE Collins . 
 
 XXIX. Other Friends . 
 
 XXX. Tavistock House 
 
 XXXI. On the Continent— 1853-6 
 XXXII. Mrs. Charles Dickens 
 
 XXXIII. Gad's Hill . 
 
 XXXIV. Charles Albert Fechter 
 XXXV. The Wearing of a Beard 
 
 XXXVI. The Readings 
 XXXVII. America Revisited 
 XXXVIII. Last Days and Death 
 XXXIX. Charles Dickens 
 
 PAGB 
 
 135 
 140 
 144 
 
 155 
 168 
 
 174 
 182 
 
 195 
 199 
 
 221 
 
 253 
 264 
 
 275 
 280 
 284 
 294 
 301 
 313 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Charles Dickens. From the Painting by D, 
 Maclise, R.A., in the National Portrait 
 Gallery ....... Frontispiece 
 
 Charles Dickens. From a Sketch by D. 
 
 Maclise, R.A Facing page i6 
 
 The Countess of Blessington. From the Paint- 
 ing by Sir T. Lawrence, P. R.A. . . „ „ 32 
 
 Charles Dickens. From the Drawing by Count 
 
 D'Orsay . . . . . . . ,, „ 42 
 
 Samuel Rogers, From the Drawing by George 
 Richmond, R.A., In the National Portrait 
 Gallery , „ 60 
 
 Augustus L. Egg, R.A. From a Sketch by 
 
 W. P. Frith, R.A .,70 
 
 Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A. From the Sketch 
 by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., in the National 
 Portrait Gallery , „ 78 
 
 John Leech. From the Drawing by Sir J. E. 
 Millais, P.R.A., In the National Portrait 
 Gallery „ „ 84 
 
 W. M. Thackeray. From a Sketch by D. 
 
 . Maclise, R.A ,, „ 88 
 
 Charles Dickens (1842). From the bust by 
 
 Henry Dexter „ „ lOO 
 
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Logan Stone in Cornwall. From a 
 
 Sketch by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. . Facing page ii6 
 
 Dickens Reading " The Chimes." From the 
 
 Sketch by D. Maclise, R.A. ....,,. 128 
 
 W. P. Frith, R.A. From the Painting by 
 
 Augustus L, Egg, R.A „ ., 176 
 
 The Earl of Lytton. From the Sketch by 
 
 " Alfred Croquis " (D. Maclise, R.A.) . „ „ 192 
 
 Jane Welsh Carlyle. From the Painting by 
 
 Samuel Laurence in the National Portrait 
 
 Gallery , „ 208 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. From the Painting by G. F. 
 
 Watts, R.A., in the National Portrait 
 
 Gallery .208 
 
 Charles Dickens (1859). From the Oil Sketch 
 
 by W. P. Frith, R.A ., „ 280 
 
 The Last Letter „ ., 3^° 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 I 
 THE STARTING-POINT 
 
 ON March 26, 1836, there appeared in The Times 
 an advertisement announcing the immediate 
 publication of the first part of "The Posthu- 
 mous Papers of the Pickwick Club, edited by Boz," and 
 within a few months of this date, Charles Dickens, aged 
 twenty-four, was a famous man. Hitherto he had been 
 known in his own immediate circle as an admirable 
 parliamentary reporter, and the writer of amusing descrip- 
 tive articles and facetious sketches, a selection of which 
 had been brought out in volume form under the title 
 " Sketches by Boz." He was then living in Fumival's Inn 
 — the actual building, alas, destroyed, though the name 
 of it remains — and was engaged to be married to Catherine 
 Thomson Hogarth, eldest daughter of George Hogarth, 
 one of his colleagues upon the Morning Chronicle. To 
 Miss Hogarth he was married, two days after the appear- 
 ance of the first part of " Pickwick," in Saint Luke's 
 Church, Chelsea, of which Charles Kingsley's father was 
 then rector. What more suitable starting-point could be 
 selected for our adventure ? 
 
 Once again may be told the story of the first meeting 
 of Dickens and Thackeray, related by the latter at the 
 B I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Royal Academy Dinner in 1858. " I can remember," 
 he said, " 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 Fumival's Inn with two 
 or three drawings in my hand, which, strange to say, he 
 did not find suitable." 
 
 In March, 1837, Dickens moved from Furnival's Inn 
 to Doughty Street, Bloomsbury, a street which has changed 
 but httle since those days, and which is connected with 
 the names of several in Dickens's circle, such as Edmund 
 Yates, Sydney Smith, and Shirley Brooks, who all at one 
 time or another resided there. In 1837 there was a 
 gate at each end of the short wide street, and a lodge 
 wherein sheltered a stately porter, with gold-laced hat 
 and mulberry-coloured coat with buttons that bore the 
 Doughty arms. Yates gives an amusing description of 
 his residence there in the 'fifties ; he found the neighbour- 
 hood both dull and noisy, painting an almost pathetic 
 picture of " the hot summer Sunday afternoons, when 
 the pavement would be red-hot, and the dust, and bits 
 of straw, and scraps of paper would blow fitfully about 
 with every little puff of air, and the always dull houses 
 would look infinitely duller with their blinds down, and 
 no sound would fall upon the ear save the distant hum 
 of the cabs in Holborn, or the footfall of some young 
 person in service going to afternoon church " ; and 
 indeed it is very much like that to-day. But it cannot 
 be imagined that any place was ever dull while Charles 
 Dickens was present. 
 
 Forster gives a striking portrait of Boz at this time ; 
 
A HIGHLY COLOURED PORTRAIT 
 
 but it will be better to present one equally vivid and less 
 well known. " Genial, bright, lively-spirited, pleasant 
 toned," writes Mrs Cowden Clarke, " he entered into con- 
 versation with a grace and charm that made it feel per- 
 fectly natural to be chatting and laughing as if we had 
 known each other from childhood. . . . Charles Dickens 
 had that acute perception of the comic side of things 
 which causes irrepressible brimming of the eyes ; and 
 what eyes his were ! Large, dark blue, exquisitely shaped, 
 fringed with magnificently long and thick lashes — they 
 now swam in Uquid, limpid suffusion, when tears started 
 into them from a sense of humour or a sense of pathos, and 
 now darted quick flashes of fire when some generous 
 indignation at injustice, or some high- wrought feeling of 
 admiration at magnanimity, or some sudden emotion 
 of interest and excitement touched him. Swift-glancing, 
 appreciative, rapidly observant, truly superb orbits they 
 were, worthy of the other features in his manly, handsome 
 face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, 
 well-shaped, and expressive ; sensitive, nay restless, in 
 its susceptibiUty to impression that swayed him, or senti- 
 ment that moved him. He, who saw into apparently 
 slightest trifles that were fraught to his perception with 
 deepest significance ; he, who beheld human nature 
 with insight almost superhuman, and who revered good 
 and abhorred evil with intensity, showed instantaneously 
 by his expressive countenance the kind of idea that 
 possessed him." This would seem far too highly coloured 
 a portrait, but that its essential truth is borne out by other 
 and not so easily impressed observers. 
 
n 
 
 JOHN FORSTER 
 
 THE name of John Forster has been mentioned, 
 and before going farther it will be right to say 
 somewhat of one who was so closely bound in 
 ties of friendship to Dickens and who eventually at his 
 friend's expressed desire became his biographer. It may 
 be doubted whether Forster would be more than a shadowy 
 name to this present generation were it not for his " Life 
 of Charles Dickens," a work which lives by reason of its 
 matter rather than its manner. Forster's other contri- 
 butions to literature sleep solemnly upon our shelves — 
 even the Life of Goldsmith, learned, ponderous, and lack- 
 ing in insight. Of Forster the man it is possible to speak 
 in terms almost warm, though it is difficult to form an 
 exact estimate of his character. Mr Frith seems to hit 
 the truth very fairly, " Forster was a gruff man with the 
 kindest heart in the world." His rough, brusque manner 
 gave a wrong impression of his character to those who were 
 but slightly acquainted with him ; he was a rough nut, 
 but the outward shell hid a kernel kind and mellow. A 
 " rough and uncompromising personage," Mr Percy 
 Fitzgerald says of him. His voice was loud, so was his 
 laugh ; his face and cheeks broad ; "if anyone desired 
 to know what Dr Johnson was like, he could have found 
 him in Forster," which is the worst ever said of him. By 
 the way, Elia called him " Fooster," which is almost as 
 
 4 
 
THE INFALLIBLE FORSTER 
 
 quaint as some of Landor's pronunciations. A pleasanter 
 view of him is given by Mrs Cowden Clarke, who speaks 
 of his " somewhat stately bow . . . accompanied by 
 an affable smile and a marked courtesy that were very 
 winning." 
 
 It was in the office of the True Sun, when acting as the 
 leader of a reporters' strike, that Dickens was first seen 
 by John Forster, who records that his " keen animation 
 of look would have arrested attention anywhere." 
 
 Dickens, so we are told in " Fifty Years of Fleet Street," 
 was quite alive to Forster's peculiarities, and would mimic 
 in the most amusing way his assumption of infallibility, 
 sometimes even to his face. He told a story, too, of dining 
 one night with him, and that boiled beef was set upon the 
 table unadorned with carrots. Forster rang the bell, and 
 said to the maid, " Mary ! Carrots ! " Mary repHed 
 that there " weren't none." To which Forster, with a 
 dignified wave of the hand, " Mary, let there he carrots ! " 
 Cheery parties were at any rate some of those given by 
 Forster, notably one in 1833, of which Macready writes : 
 " Forster called for me in a coach with Talfourd and 
 Procter. I met at his lodgings Blanchard, a pleasing man, 
 Abbott, Knowles and others. A pleasant but too indulg- 
 ing evening ; toasts and commendations flying about. 
 A great deal of heart, and when that is uppermost the 
 head is generally subjected." 
 
 He was fond of entertaining his friends to dinner 
 on Saturdays ; the parties were small, the menus not 
 too lengthy, the food and wine of the best. It was a 
 kindly trait in his hospitality that those who came 
 to his table usually found he had provided for them 
 one or other of their favourite dishes — James White 
 with apple-pudding, Thackeray with three-cornered 
 
 5 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 jam tarts, for examples ; the host's taste turning often 
 toward tripe and to fried Hver and bacon. " Fare which 
 pleased everybody," says Whit well Elwin, " was not 
 without its cheering influence on dinners which could 
 not be excelled in social charm. There was no made 
 conversation between men remarkable for genius, or 
 talent, or knowledge, or experience, and who, for the most 
 part, had the ease and freedom of old acquaintanceship. 
 With an audience quick to understand whatever was 
 uttered they spoke from the fullness of their minds, 
 without rivalry, without ostentation, and without re- 
 serve. Forster, a consummate host, exerted his skill 
 to put his guests on their happiest themes, and while 
 the good fellowship was always uppermost, the observa- 
 tions on men, books, and things were not more sparkling 
 and festive than they were instructive and acute." 
 Dickens writes in one of his letters to an American friend, 
 " I'm told there is a sound in Lincoln's Inn Fields at night, 
 as of men laughing, together with a clinking of knives and 
 forks and wine-glasses." 
 
 Forster was looked upon by his intimates as a con- 
 firmed old bachelor, though he had once been engaged 
 to marry no less a person than the famous Letitia Elizabeth 
 Landon, the poetess L.E.L. But in 1856 he astonished 
 them all by marrying. Dickens wrote when he had heard 
 of his friend's intention : "I have the most prodigious, 
 overwhelming, crushing, astounding, Winding, deafening, 
 pulverising, scarifying secret, of which Forster is the hero 
 . . . after I knew it (from himself) this morning, I lay 
 down flat as if an engine and tender had fallen upon me." 
 His wife was the widow of Colbum, the publisher, and owned 
 a house in Montague Square, to which Forster removed, 
 retaining, however, his chambers in 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 
 6 
 
" THICK, AND FULL OF LEAD " 
 
 where so many interesting meetings took place, and which 
 figure in " Bleak House " as those 'of Mr Tulkinghorn. 
 Under the same roof lived also Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 Once when Forster was awaiting a call from Count 
 d'Orsay, he was unexpectedly summoned to his printers. 
 " Now," he said to his servant, " you will tell the Count 
 that I have only just gone round to call on Messrs Spottis- 
 woode, the printers — you will observe, Messrs Spot-is- 
 wode." However, he missed the Count, and when next 
 he met him, his explanation was cut short by him saying, 
 " Ah ! I know, you had just gone round to Ze Spotted 
 Dog — I understand." Forster worshipped almost at 
 D'Orsay's shrine ; he was heard shouting above the 
 hub-bub of conversation at one of his dinners to his 
 servant Henry, " Good heavens, sir, butter for the 
 Count's flounders ! " 
 
 An amusing and characteristic story of Forster was told 
 by Dickens. When " Household Words " was sold by 
 Messrs Bradbury and Evans, Boz was represented at the 
 sale by Forster and Arthur Smith. When the sale was 
 over, a friend, who had been present, hastened to Dickens 
 to inform him of the result, adding, " I cannot resist 
 telling you how admirable Forster was throughout ; cool, 
 prompt, and energetic, he won the day with his business- 
 like readiness." When Dickens met Forster, he repeated 
 this to him, and the comment made by Forster was, " I 
 am very sorry, my dear Dickens, that I cannot return the 
 
 compliment, for a damneder ass than your friend I 
 
 never met in a business affair." 
 
 Douglas Jerrold once picked up a worn, thick stump 
 of a pencil — belonging to Stanfield — and exclaimed, 
 " Hullo, here is the exact counterpart of John Forster, 
 short, thick, and full of lead." 
 
 7 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 The friendship between the two has been admirably 
 summed up by Edmund Yates in his dehghtful " Recol- 
 lections and Experiences " : — " Forster, partly owing to 
 natural temperament, partly to harassing official work 
 and ill-health, was almost as much over, as Dickens was 
 under, their respective actual years ; and though Forster's 
 shrewd common sense, sound judgement, and deep affection 
 for his friend commanded, as was right, Dickens's loving 
 and grateful acceptance of his views, and though the 
 communion between them was never for a moment 
 weakened, it was not as a companion ' in his lighter hour ' 
 that Dickens in his latter days looked on Forster." 
 
 J. T. Fields makes a point : — " For Dickens he had a 
 love amounting to jealousy. He never quite relished 
 anybody else whom the great novelist had a fond- 
 ness for, and I have heard droll stories touching this 
 weakness." 
 
 Forster was born in the same year — 1812 — as was 
 Dickens. 
 
Ill 
 
 DOUGHTY STREET 
 
 THE success, almost overwhelming, of " Pickwick " 
 at once brought Dickens into contact with a 
 larger world than that in which he had been 
 moving, or to which his birth and education gave him 
 any right of entry. But before describing the circle into 
 which he was so cordially welcomed and in which he main- 
 tained himself with such ease, it will be better to devote 
 some space to his domestic and more intimate history. 
 
 Dickens's wife, as has been mentioned, was the eldest 
 daughter of George Hogarth, who held a prominent 
 position on the Morning Chronicle, a kind, accomplished 
 man and a good musician. When the Evening Chronicle 
 was started in 1837, he was appointed editor, and as such 
 first made the personal acquaintance of his future son-in- 
 law. Another valued friend was John Black, the editor 
 of the Morning Chronicle, of whom Dickens frequently 
 said, " Dear old Black ! My first hearty out-and-out 
 appreciator." He spoke with a strong Border brogue, 
 which he brought from his birthplace, Dunse, in Berwick- 
 shire, possessed a genial gift of humour, and was a fine 
 linguist. He was always pleased to discover a young 
 fellow with gifts and to give him a helping hand. He 
 came to London with a few pence as his capital, walking 
 all the way from Berwickshire, hospitably entertained 
 on his way by farmers and their wives. He was every 
 inch a journalist, as is well exemplified by the following 
 
 9 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 story of an interview of his with Lord Melbourne. In the 
 midst of their talk, his lordship said somewhat abruptly : 
 
 " Mr Black, I think you forget who I am ! " 
 
 " I hope not, my lord," Black replied, somewhat taken 
 aback and alarmed. 
 
 " Mr Black, you forget that I am the prime minister, 
 and treat me in a manner that is, to say the least of it, 
 somewhat uncommon. Here am I, as I have said, in the 
 position of prime minister, in confidential intercourse 
 with you, and always glad to see you. I have patronage 
 at my disposal, and you never so much as hint to me that 
 you would like me to give you a place. And, Mr Black, 
 there is no man Hving to whom I would sooner give a 
 place than yourself." 
 
 " I thank you, my lord," said Black, " but I do not want 
 a place. I am editor of the Morning Chronicle, and like 
 my work and the influence it gives me, and do not desire 
 to change places with anybody in the world — not even 
 your lordship." 
 
 " Mr Black, I envy you ; and you're the only man I 
 ever did." 
 
 Albany Fonblanque said of him : " Though rather rude 
 himself in style, he had a delicate perception and apprecia- 
 tion of the style of others, and there was no better critic." 
 
 But to return to the Hogarths. When Dickens married, 
 there came to live with them his wife's next youngest 
 sister, Mary, whose terribly sudden death on the 7th of 
 May, 1837, at the age of seventeen, deprived him of what 
 had become to him an ideal friendship. The three of them 
 had returned, full of high spirits, late one night from the 
 theatre, when she was struck down with sudden illness, 
 djdng a few hours later in Dickens's arms ; " the dear 
 girl whom I loved, after my wife, more deeply and fer- 
 
 10 
 
MARY HOGARTH 
 
 vently than anyone on earth." The shock and the grief 
 prostrated him ; work was impossible to him for many 
 weeks ; he moved for a time to Hampstead, where Forster 
 visited him, the first occasion that he was his guest. The 
 two men drew so closely together in friendship that 
 shortly afterward Dickens wrote : "I look back with 
 unmingled pleasure to every link which each ensuing week 
 has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go 
 hard, I hope, ere anything but death impairs the toughness 
 of a bond now so firmly rivetted." 
 
 " I wish you could know," he writes to Mrs Hogarth, 
 in the autumn of the year, " how I weary now for the 
 three rooms in Furnival's Inn, and how I miss that 
 pleasant smile and those sweet words which, bestowed 
 upon an evening's work, in our merry banterings round the 
 fire, were more precious to me than the applause of a whole 
 world would be. I can recall everything she said and did 
 in those happy days. . . ." Then in 1843, on May 8th, 
 he wrote to Mrs Hogarth : " After she died, I dreamed 
 of her every night for many months — I think the better 
 part of a year — sometimes as a spirit, sometimes as a 
 living creature, never with any of the bitterness of my 
 real sorrow, but always with a kind of quiet happiness, 
 which became so pleasant to me that I never lay down 
 at night without a hope of the vision coming back in one 
 shape or other. And so it did." And to Forster, after 
 Mrs Hogarth's death five years after Mary's, he wrote : 
 " I don't think there ever was love Hke that I bear her." 
 
 The story was best told in his own words, and is best 
 left untouched. 
 
 XX 
 
IV 
 
 MACREADY 
 
 THE concluding number of " Pickwick " was 
 published in November, 1837, and there is a 
 letter from Dickens to Macready, inviting him 
 to a little dinner, to celebrate the occasion, at the Prince 
 of Wales, in Leicester Place, Leicester Square, on a 
 Saturday afternoon, at five for half-past five precisely, 
 at which there were also to be present Serjeant Talfourd, 
 John Forster, Harrison Ainsworth, William Jerdan, a 
 well-known Scottish journalist, and the publishers of 
 " Pickwick," Messrs Chapman and Hall, which firm is 
 still so notably connected with the works of Charles 
 Dickens under the able guidance of Mr Arthur Waugh, 
 an eloquent and enthusiastic Dickensian. Macready 
 from this time on to the end was one of Dickens's dearest 
 friends. In his diary, under date June 16, 1837, 
 Macready records, " Forster came into my room," at 
 Covent Garden Theatre, of which he was then manager, 
 " with a gentleman, whom he introduced to me as Dickens, 
 ahas Boz — I was glad to see him." Forster he had first 
 met at Richmond in 1833, in the drawing-room of the 
 house in which Edmund Kean lay dead. 
 
 William Charles Macready was born in 1793, of theatri- 
 cal stock, being the son of an Irish theatrical manager, 
 and was, with the exception of Phelps, the last of the great 
 school of actors of whom Garrick, Mrs Siddons, the 
 
 12 
 
MACREADY 
 
 Kembles and Kean were the most brilliant. He served a 
 hard apprenticeship in the Provinces before he reached 
 and made his name upon the London stage. He was a 
 man of culture and wide reading, and of his character 
 we should be inclined to say that he was a somewhat 
 petulant, moody grumbler, but for the evidence to the 
 contrary of those who knew him most intimately. He 
 was pious in the best sense of the word, and his life 
 long fought courageously to overcome the violent temper 
 which more than once brought him into trouble. With 
 his " calling " he never seems to have been thoroughly 
 contented, and more than once we find him debating 
 whether or not he should continue in it. " The only con- 
 dition that could reconcile me to the profession . . . was 
 to hold its highest walks. . . . My wish was to make the 
 trial of my talents in some other profession, and the 
 Church offered me apparently facilities for the attempt," 
 so that, probably, a notable parson was lost to us. Con- 
 temporary evidence goes to show that he was an actor of 
 impressive powers, and from his Diaries we gather that 
 he certainly had the genius of taking pains, as in these 
 two extracts : " 1833. January 2nd. My performance 
 this evening of Macbeth afforded me a striking evidence 
 of the necessity there is for thinking over my characters 
 previous to playing, and establishing by practice, if 
 necessary, the particular modes of each scene and im- 
 portant passage. ... It was crude and uncertain, though 
 spirited and earnest ; but much thought is yet required 
 to give an even energy and finished style to all the great 
 scenes of the play, except, perhaps, the last, which is 
 among the best things I am capable of." Again, January 
 4th, " My acting was coarse and crude — no identification of 
 myself with the scene, and, what increased my chagrin 
 
 13 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 on the subject, some persons in the pit gave frequent 
 vent to indulgent and misplaced admiration. The con- 
 sciousness of unmerited applause makes it quite painful 
 and even humihating to me." He was most certainly 
 his own sternest critic. 
 
 Recording his impressions of Macready as King John, 
 Frith speaks of " Macready's fearful whisper — when, 
 having placed his mouth close to Hubert's ear, and drop- 
 ping his half-hearted hints of his desire for Arthur's 
 death, he throws off the mask, and in two words, ' the 
 grave,' he makes his wish unmistakeable — was terrific : 
 the two words were uttered in a whisper that could be 
 heard at the back of Drury Lane gallery, and the effect 
 was tremendous. You felt as if you were assisting at 
 a terrible crime." 
 
 It was not only as an actor but as a manager also 
 that Macready rendered good service to the stage ; it 
 was by and through him that Lytton's best plays, " The 
 Lady of Lyons " and " Money " amongst them, were 
 produced, and a very true friendship existed between 
 author and actor. They first met at a party in October, 
 1834, and Macready describes Bulwer — as he then was — 
 as very good-natured and intelligent. He also speaks 
 with enthusiasm of a pretty Mrs Forster, " whom," he 
 quaintly says, " I should hke very much as any other 
 man's wife, though not so well as my own." He urged 
 Bulwer to write a play, and was informed that one, on 
 Cromwell, had already been written, but that the greater 
 part of it had been lost. Lytton impresses us as very 
 willing to take advice upon his work — an unusual virtue 
 in dramatists, 
 
 " Ion" Talfourdwas another crony of Macready, and 
 once played a very pretty joke upon him, which he took in 
 
 14 
 
AT TALFOURD'S 
 
 good part. In 1839 Dickens brought Macready a play to 
 read, named " Glencoe," with which the actor was well 
 pleased. Dining some few nights later with Talfourd, 
 Dickens being absent on the score of ill-health and 
 Forster completing the party, the conversation turned 
 upon plays, Macready mentioned that one of striking 
 character had recently come into his hands. The re- 
 mainder of the tale he shall tell himself : — " Talfourd 
 asked me the title. I told him ' Glencoe.' He questioned 
 me about its possible melodramatic tendency. I told 
 him, that the treatment avoided the melodrama of the 
 stage ; that the style was an imitation of his writing, 
 but without the point that terminated his speeches ; 
 that the story was weU managed and dramatic ; and 
 that I intended to act it. At last to my utter astonish- 
 ment, he pulled out two books from his pocket and said, 
 * Well, I will no longer conceal it — it is my play ' ; and he 
 gave each of us a copy ! I never in my life experienced 
 a greater surprise. . . . Forster affected great indignation, 
 and really stormed ; I laughed, loud and long ; it was really 
 a romance to me." 
 
 After the first night of " Ion," in May, 1836, there was 
 an interesting gathering at Talfourd's, among those present 
 being Wordsworth, whom Macready held in high rever- 
 ence, Walter Savage Landor, Stanfield, Robert Browning, 
 Miss Mitford, Miss Ellen Tree, and others. Macready sat 
 between Wordsworth and Landor, with Browning 
 opposite, " happily placed," as he says himself. He 
 pointed out to Wordsworth the likeness between a 
 passage in " Ion " and some lines the poet had once 
 quoted to him from a MS. tragedy of his. " Yes, I 
 noticed them," said Wordsworth, and then quoted them 
 again : 
 
 15 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " Action is transitory — a step — a blow, 
 The motion of a muscle — this way or that— 
 'Tis done ; and in the after vacancy 
 We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed." 
 
 Landor talked of plays, admitting that he had not 
 the constructive faculty. Macready in rash chaff chal- 
 lenged Miss Mitford to write a play ; she quickly replied, 
 " Will you act it ? " Macready was silent. 
 
 Robert Browning's health was proposed by Talfourd, 
 who acclaimed him the youngest poet in England. On 
 the way home Macready caught up Browning, and said 
 to him, " Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going 
 to America." Said Browning, " Shall it be historical and 
 English ; what do you say to a drama on Strafford ? " 
 Later Macready brought to the foothghts Browning's 
 "Strafford" and "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon." He 
 describes Browning as " very popular with the whole 
 party ; his simple and enthusiastic manner engaged 
 attention and won opinions from all present ; he looks 
 and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man I 
 ever saw." 
 
 In Macready's Eharies there are notes of many memor- 
 able dinners, one of which may well be selected as typical 
 and interesting. It was a meeting of the Shakespeare 
 Club on March 30, 1839. 
 
 The Shakespeare Club held its nightly meetings in a 
 large room in the Piazza Hotel, under the Colonnade 
 in Covent Garden. Serjeant Ballantine asserts that 
 Forster's temper, which " was not a very comfortable 
 one to deal with," was mainly the cause of the club 
 breaking up, or rather down. This is borne out by Charles 
 Knight, who describes a meeting — a dinner — at which 
 Dickens occupied the chair. Forster, while proposing 
 
 16 
 
CHARLES DICKENS. 
 From a Sketch by D. MacHse, R.A. 
 
• * •» • • •«« 
 
MACREADY RETIRES 
 
 a toast, lost his temper at some foolish interruptions ; 
 the evening was spoiled and the meeting broke up. 
 
 It was at the Piazza, which he designated as Cuttris's 
 Coffee Room, that Dickens put up in December, 1844, 
 when he came from Italy for the reading of " The 
 Chimes " at Forster's chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 
 Dickens presided, and among others present at the 
 Club meeting were Procter, Stanfield, Leigh Hunt, 
 Maclise, Cattermole, Jerrold, Thackeray, Lever, Frank 
 Stone, Forster — a wonderful gathering. The dinner was 
 good, so were the songs and the speeches. Dickens spoke 
 earnestly and eloquently in proposing Macready's health, 
 and Macready rephed earnestly — but scarcely eloquently. 
 Leigh Hunt spoke in a rambling, conversational style, 
 something perhaps in the manner of Mr Skimpole. " All 
 went off in the happiest spirit," and home in boisterous 
 spirits, there is no doubt. 
 
 Macready retired from the stage in 1851, playing Mac- 
 beth at the Haymarket to a vast and enthusiastic audience : 
 " acted Macbeth as I never, never before acted it ; with 
 a reality, a vigour, a truth, a dignity that I never before 
 threw into my delineation of this favourite character," 
 he writes in words which he did not mean for any other 
 eyes than his own. The farewell performance was followed 
 by a farewell dinner; the list of stewards and guests 
 included many great names in art and literature. Bul- 
 wer was in the chair, and spoke felicitously in proposing 
 the toast of the evening : " To-day let us only rejoice 
 that he whom we so prize and admire is no worn-out 
 veteran retiring to a rest he can no longer enjoy — that he 
 leaves us in the prime of his powers, with many years to 
 come, in the course of nature, of that dignified leisure 
 for which every public man must have sighed in the 
 c 17 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 midst of his triumphs " — and which so many are loth 
 to seek. Forster, in proposing the toast of dramatic 
 literature, read some Hnes addressed to Macready by 
 Tennyson : — 
 
 " Farewell, Macready, since to-night we part ; 
 
 Full-handed thunders often have confessed 
 
 Thy power, well-used to move the public breast. 
 We thank thee with our voice, and from the heart. 
 Farewell, Macready, since this night we part ; 
 
 Go, take thine honours home ; rank with the best, 
 
 Garrick and statelier Kemble, and the rest 
 Who made a nation purer through their Art. 
 Thine is it that our drama did not die. 
 
 Nor flicker down to brainless pantomime. 
 
 And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see. 
 Farewell, Macready ; moral, grave, sublime ; 
 Our Shakespeare's bland and universal eye 
 
 Dwells pleased, through twice a hundred years on thee." 
 
 A well-meant but scarcely inspired tribute. 
 
 In responding, Macready wound up by saying, " With 
 a heart more full than the glass I hold " — his glass was 
 empty ! 
 
 He died at Cheltenham on April 27, 1873, and was 
 buried at Kensal Green, beside many of the loved ones 
 of his family who had " gone before." 
 
 Lady Bancroft relates amusingly her first meeting with 
 Macready, during his farewell appearances, when she 
 did not find him so forbidding as she had been told that 
 he often was. She was to act Fleance to his Macbeth : — 
 " * Well, I suppose you hope to be a great actress some day?' 
 I replied quickly, ' Yes, sir.' He smiled. * And what do 
 you intend to play ? ' * Lady Macbeth, sir,' upon which 
 he laughed loudly . . . but he soon won my heart by 
 saying : * Will you have a sovereign to buy a doll with, 
 or a glass of wine ? ' After a little hesitation, I answered, 
 ' I should like both, I think.' He seemed to enjoy my 
 
 18 
 
VARIED OPINIONS 
 
 frank reply, and said laughingly, * Good ! I am sure you 
 will make a fine actress ; I can see genius through those 
 little windows,' placing his hands over my eyes. ' But 
 do not play Lady Macbeth too soon ; begin slowly, or 
 you may end quickly.' " Macready's prophetic insight 
 did not play him false ; Lady Bancroft, then little Marie 
 Wilton, did make a fine actress, though she never played 
 Lady Macbeth. 
 
 Of his character and of his acting opinions natur- 
 ally differed. Charlotte Bronte writes : " I twice saw 
 Macready act — once in Macbeth and once in Othello. I 
 astonished a dinner-party by honestly saying I did not 
 like him. It is the fashion to rave about his splendid 
 acting. Anything more false and artificial, less genuinely 
 impressive than his whole style I could scarcely have 
 imagined." But she rather detracts from the value of 
 her criticism by going on to say, " The fact is, the stage- 
 system altogether is hoUow nonsense. They act farces 
 well enough ; the actors comprehend their parts and do 
 them justice. They comprehend nothing about tragedy 
 or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so ; and by so 
 saying produced a blank silence — a mute consternation." 
 No wonder. 
 
 The rougher side of his character has been painted with 
 some acerbity by George Augustus Sala, who never met 
 him in private life : " he was altogether an odd person, 
 this William Charles Macready : high-minded, generous, 
 just ; but the slave, on the stage, of a simply ungovernable 
 temper." 
 
 But Browning said of him, " one of the most admirable 
 and indeed fascinating characters I have ever known," 
 and Lady Pollock records the worth of Dickens's friendship 
 to the actor in his latter days : — " when the weight of 
 
 19 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 time and sorrow pressed him down, Dickens was his most 
 frequent visitor ; he cheered him with narratives of bygone 
 days ; he poured some of his own abundant warmth into 
 his heart ; he led him into new channels of thought ; 
 he gave readings to rouse his interest ; he waked up in 
 him again by his vivid descriptions his sense of humour ; 
 he conjured back his smile and his laugh — Charles Dickens 
 was and is to me the ideal of friendship." 
 
 Of two of the others who were to make up the Pickwick 
 party we may say a few words here. Harrison Ains worth, 
 who started his business career as a publisher but found it 
 more profitable to write and to permit others to issue 
 his works, attained fame with his novel of " Rookwood," 
 published in 1834, a fame which the progress of years 
 has somewhat dimmed. It has been asserted, though 
 no evidence has been brought forward in support of the 
 accusation, that Turpin's famous ride to York in this novel 
 was written by the facile Maginn and not by Ainsworth 
 at all. On the face of things, and judging by his other 
 works in a similar genre, we may take it that there is not 
 any truth in the assertion. Ainsworth was a more able 
 writer than many of more lasting reputation ; perhaps 
 some day he will come by his own again. 
 
 He lived in a comfortable house in Kilburn, where he 
 delighted to entertain his friends ; here is a peep into his 
 parlour : — " the time is early summer, the hour about 
 eight o'clock in the evening ; dinner has been removed 
 from the prettily decorated table, and the early fruits 
 tempt the guests, to the number of twelve or so, who are 
 grouped around it. At the head there sits a gentleman no 
 longer in his first youth, but still strikingly handsome ; 
 there is something artistic about his dress, and there may 
 be a little affectation in his manners, but even this may 
 
 20 
 
" ION " TALFOURD 
 
 in some people be a not unpleasing element. He was om 
 host, William Harrison Ainsworth, and, whatever may 
 have been the claims of others, and in whatever circles 
 they might move, no one was more genial, no one more 
 popular." In later days he made his home at Kemp 
 Town, Brighton. 
 
 Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd was a distinguished man of 
 law, who has strayed into fame as the author of the 
 tragedy " Ion," after the first night of which, as has been 
 duly recorded in these pages, there was " a sound of 
 revelry by night " in Russell Square, where the learned 
 judge then resided. There among the guests would be 
 men of letters and men of sciences, lawyers, painters, 
 actors ; Macready, one of whose best parts was " Ion," 
 Lord Lytton, Dickens, Albert Smith, full of fun and 
 frivolity, and last but not least. Lady Talfourd, cordial 
 and kind, her charming daughters, her niece, and her 
 son Frank, strikingly handsome and Hberally en- 
 dowed with brains. He was somewhat Bohemian in 
 his habits : " He dined when most people were in bed," 
 says HoUingshead, " and when many were thinking of 
 getting up, and though temperate in his habits as regards 
 drinking, he was intemperate in this particular." > 
 
 Perhaps some of the Bohemianisms were inherited^from 
 his father. The distinguished American jurist and senator, 
 Charles Sumner, notes that Talfourd used to take his 
 negus at the Garrick Club, then in King Street, in the 
 morning on his way to Westminster Hall, and also a 
 night-cap on his way home from ParUament. He dubs 
 him a night-bird, who does not put in an appearance at 
 the club until midnight or thereabouts ; and Mrs Lynn 
 Linton says, " I remember how he kept up the tradition 
 of the then past generation, and came into the drawing- 
 
 21 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 room with a thick speech and unsteady legs." " Those 
 who knew him," says Ballantine, " will never forget his 
 kindly, genial face, the happiness radiating from it when 
 imparting pleasure to others, and his generous hospitality." 
 Edmund Yates greatly enjoyed going to his house, which 
 he describes as genially presided over by the " kindly 
 host, with short-cropped, iron-gray hair and beaming 
 face." 
 
 Talfourd was somewhat inordinately fond and proud 
 of his dramatic offspring, as is evidenced by the following: — 
 
 Said Dickens to Rogers one day at Broadstairs, 
 
 " We shall have Talfourd here to-night." 
 
 " Shall we ? I am rejoiced to hear it. How did you 
 know he was coming ? " 
 
 " Because ' Ion ' is to be acted at Margate, and he is 
 never absent from any of its representations." 
 
 Another claim he has to fame : that to him Jerrold 
 once spoke a pun so appalling bad that it was really 
 inspired, " Well, Talfourd," he asked, " have you any 
 more Ions in the fire ? " 
 
 . He died suddenly in 1854, while charging the grand jury 
 in the court-house at Stafford. Albany Fonblanque 
 wrote of his death, " I observe in the announcement 
 of his death that the hour is particularly named. You 
 are aware that he was christened * Noon ' because he was 
 bom about that hour, an unusual circumstance. His 
 death took place about the same time, and removed him 
 (I think kindly) before the waning lights of his fame 
 and life." 
 
 Dickens wrote after his death, "The chief delight of 
 his life was to give delight to others. His nature was 
 so exquisitely kind, that to be kind was its highest 
 happiness." 
 
 22 
 
V 
 
 THE TIMES 
 
 IN order to gain a clear view of the period and the 
 persons dealt with in these pages, it is advisable 
 to grasp somewhat of the circumstances in which 
 they lived and the difference between them and those of 
 the present day. Roughly speaking, Dickens and his 
 comrades began life in the dying days of horse traction 
 and of illumination by candles and lamps ; before their 
 careers had ended, gas and steam had completely altered 
 the conditions of commerce and society, and electricity, 
 employed in telegraphy, had begun to give promise of 
 the vast revolution which it is working to-day. 
 
 It was the age of tinder-boxes, as John HoUingshead 
 puts it in an " illuminating " passage. " The ' midnight 
 oil ' was a tallow candle laboriously lighted with a com- 
 bination of materials that showed the inventive ingenuity 
 of mankind before science came down from its lofty 
 pedestal, and gave up the duty of attending on the gods, 
 to devote itself to the comfort and improvement of the 
 common people — the multitude swinish or not swinish 
 — the very necessary but vulgar tax-payers. . . . The 
 tinder-box was the toy of my childhood. Without it 
 there would have been no light or fire — with it there was 
 (after a time) hght and fire, and a certain amount of 
 safety. . . . First of all, the rags had to be got, and burnt 
 into tinder. This tinder was put into a large round tin 
 
 23 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 box, big enough for a pie-dish. Then a piece of jagged 
 flint had to be got, and a thing called ' a steel,' which 
 might have been the remains of an old horse-shoe, had to 
 be purchased ; the flint, struck edge- way on the steel, 
 sent sparks into the tinder which smouldered and pre- 
 pared itself for the matches. The matches were a formid- 
 able bundle of thin strips of wood, diamond-pointed at 
 the ends and dipped in brimstone." To-day tinder-boxes 
 are curiosities in museums and safety matches are four 
 boxes a penny. 
 
 Those indeed were, compared with ours, the dark ages ; 
 in 1827 gas, of the poorest quality, was only beginning to 
 be used as a street illuminant. The electric light w£is 
 undreamed of, inconceivable. 
 
 Railways were in their infancy, the first that made an 
 appeal to the metropolis being that from London to Green- 
 wich, and the cattle-trucks of our day are superior to the 
 unroofed third-class carriages of that age. The rattle 
 and jingle and the merry tooting horn of the coach were 
 still abroad in the land, echoing and re-echoing through 
 the pages of Dickens's novels and sketches. Ruskin in 
 a famous passage has inveighed against the prose of railway 
 travel as compared with the poetry of older and slower 
 methods, and de Quincey was equally emphatic. " The 
 modern modes of travelling," he writes in "The English 
 Mail-Coach," " cannot compare with the old mail-coach 
 system in grandeur and power. They boast of more 
 velocity, not, however, as a consciousness, but as a fact 
 of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence ; 
 as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone 
 fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from feeUng 
 it as a personal experience. . . . The vital experience 
 of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible 
 
 24 
 
THE COMING OF THE " BOILER " 
 
 on the question of our speed ; we heard our speed, we saw 
 it, we felt it as thrilHng ; and this speed was not the pro- 
 duct of bhnd, insensate agencies, that had no sympathy 
 to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the 
 noblest among brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic 
 muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs. . . . But now, 
 on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers 
 have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his 
 locomotion. . . . Tidings, fitted to convulse all nations, 
 must henceforwards travel by culinary process ; and the 
 trumpet that once announced from afar the laurelled mail, 
 heartshaking, when heard screaming on the wind, and 
 proclaiming itself through the darkness to every village 
 or solitary house on its route, has now given way for ever 
 to the pot-wailopings of the boiler." For ever ? There 
 are signs of " for ever " coming to an end now, when 
 electricity is invading the territory of King Steam, and 
 motor cars are creating a revolution which may prove 
 as far-reaching as that heralded by the coming of the 
 " boiler." 
 
 Turning to a later period, about midway in Dickens's 
 career, we find some curious facts in Peter Cunningham's 
 " Hand-Book of London," in a new and corrected edition, 
 published in 1850. Compare the list of places of amuse- 
 ment in London of the opening twentieth century with 
 that of the mid-nineteenth ; then there were the 
 Italian Opera, in the Haymarket, on the site now 
 occupied by His Majesty's Theatre and the Carlton 
 Hotel ; Covent-Garden Theatre, Drury-Lane Theatre, 
 the Adelphi, the Lyceum, the St James's, Sadler's Wells, 
 from which the glory shed upon it by Phelps has long 
 since departed, Astley's Amphitheatre — where is that 
 now ? — the Princess's, and Exeter Hall Concerts — the 
 
 25 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 very building has vanished — Vauxhall Gardens and 
 Cremorne. 
 
 Cunningham gives what is evidently the fruits of experi- 
 ence with regard to " Hotel and Tavern Dinners " ; the 
 Clarendon Hotel in New Bond Street " is much resorted 
 to by persons desirous of entertaining friends in the best 
 style, and to whom expense is no object. Dinners are 
 given sometimes at as high a rate as five guineas a-head." 
 Good turtle is to be had at the Ship and Turtle Tavern 
 in Leadenhall-street,and a moderately priced dinner, "with 
 as good tavern wine as any in London," at Richardson's 
 Hotel, under the Piazza in Covent-Garden, and at the 
 Piazza tavern. For joints, from five o'clock to seven — 
 how greatly hours have altered — the Albion, over against 
 Drury-Lane Theatre, Simpson's in the Strand and the 
 Rainbow in Fleet Street are recommended. " If you can 
 excuse an indifferently clean table-cloth, you may dine well 
 and cheaply at the Cheshire Cheese, in Wine-Ofhce-court, 
 in Fleet Street," and at Verrey's, comer of Hanover-street, 
 Regent Street, " you will get some average French cook- 
 ing." Nowadays it is difficult to obtain average English 
 cooking anywhere in London. The best buns were to be 
 had of Birch's in Cornhill, whose quaint shop front is 
 still a dehghtful reminder of past times. Anything 
 approaching the modem palatial restaurant was then 
 unknown ; respectable women never dined in pubHc. 
 The chop-house was a famous institution in early- Victorian 
 days, with sanded or sawdusted iSoor and wooden compart- 
 ments or boxes. A la mode beef was a fairly recent 
 introduction from the " Continent " ; and— oh ! happy 
 days ! — oysters were sixpence a dozen ! Cab-fares were 
 eightpence a mile, fourpence for each mile after the 
 first. Dickens was bom in 1812, and here follow a few 
 
 26 
 
OTHER DAYS 
 
 of the more interesting social items of London history of 
 his earlier years : November 29, 1814, The Times first 
 printed by steam power ; 1816, first appearance of a 
 steam boat upon the Thames ; 1820, cabs introduced ; 
 1822, St James's Park first lighted by gas ; October 18, 
 1826, the last pubHc lottery ; 1830, Peter James Bossy was 
 convicted of perjury, and stood in the pillory in the Old 
 Bailey, the last criminal to be so honoured ; 1830, omni- 
 buses first introduced by an enterprising Mr Shillibeer, 
 the first running between Paddington and the Bank ; 
 February 26, 1836, the first portion of the Greenwich 
 Railway opened ; 1838, an experiment made with wood 
 pavement in Oxford Street ; January 10, 1840, the Penny 
 Postage came into being ; 1845, two steam packets begin 
 running on the Thames . So far the dependable Cunningham. 
 This is but a brief, even sketchy, indication of some 
 of the changes which have taken place since the day of 
 Dickens's birth, now nearly a century ago, but it will suffice 
 to show in some degree against what background stand 
 the figures of our portrait group. So great has been the 
 change that much of " Pickwick " is now a puzzle to those 
 who have not some acquaintance with the social history 
 of the period in which it was written. The best of all 
 descriptions of the London of Dickens's early manhood 
 are to be found in his own delightful " Sketches by Boz," 
 especially in the " Scenes," to which for further and better 
 information we refer our gentle readers. " Pickwick," 
 too, should be read from this point of view. There are 
 not a few of us who are thankful that we live in a time when 
 drinking is not the favourite amusement of all classes of 
 society, when public executions have been abolished, and 
 when the prize-fighter is not a hero adored of most men 
 and many women. 
 
 27 
 
VI 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 WHAT tremendously high spirits ran riot in those 
 early- Victorian days ! The men seem to have 
 been just jolly grown-up boys, overflowing 
 with animal spirits. There was no morbidity of decadence 
 then ! The flowers were always blooming in the spring, 
 save when holly and mistletoe, good will and good cheer, 
 ruled the roast at winter-tide. Charles Dickens was one 
 of the brightest of them all, a splendidly handsome young 
 fellow, a good forehead above a nose with somewhat full 
 nostrils ; eyes of quite extraordinary brilliancy, a char- 
 acteristic to the day of his death ; a somewhat pro- 
 minent, sensitive mouth. Equally true then was what 
 Serjeant Ballantine wrote at a later period : " There was 
 a brightness and geniality about him," says the Serjeant, 
 " that greatly fascinated his companions. His laugh 
 was so cheery, and he seemed so thoroughly to enter into 
 the feelings of those around him. He told a story well 
 and never prosily ; he was a capital listener, and in con- 
 versation was not in the shghtest degree dictatorial." 
 
 With all his vivacity and apparent boyishness he was 
 extremely methodical in all his ways. 
 
 " No writer ever lived," says an American friend, in a 
 somewhat sweeping way, " whose method was more exact, 
 whose industry was more constant, and whose punctuality 
 was more marked," and his daughter " Mamie " wrote 
 
 28 
 
A TIDY MAN 
 
 of him, " There never existed, I think, in all the world, 
 a more thoroughly tidy or methodical creature than was 
 my father. He was tidy in every way — in his mind, in 
 his handsome and graceful person, in his work, in keeping 
 his writing-table drawers, in his large correspondence, 
 in fact in his whole Hie." He could be a fidget, too, 
 as for example with regard to the furniture of a room in an 
 hotel, at which he might be spending only a single night — 
 rearranging it all, and turning the bed north and south — 
 to meet the views of the electrical currents of the earth ! 
 
 What astounding vitality he had ; his way of resting a 
 tired brain was to indulge in violent bodily exercise ; 
 " a fifteen-mile ride out," with a friend, " ditto in, and a 
 lunch on the road," topping up with dinner at six o'clock 
 in Doughty Street. He would write to Forster, " you 
 don't feel disposed, do you, to muffle yourself up, and 
 start off with me for a good brisk walk over Hampstead 
 Heath ? I knows a good 'ous there where we can have a 
 red-hot chop for dinner, and a glass of good wine," the 
 " 'ous " being the far-famed Jack Straw's Castle. 
 
 Of course the success of " Pickwick " brought him into 
 contact with all that was brightest and best in the literary 
 and artistic world of London, and in order to gain some 
 idea of what that meant, let us pay a visit to Gore House 
 and the " most gorgeous Lady Blessington," by whom we 
 trust we shall be as he was — most kindly welcomed. 
 
 29 
 
VII 
 LADY BLESSINGTON AND HER COURT 
 
 LADY BLESSINGTON must indeed have been a 
 queen of hearts even if we credit but a part of 
 all the kind things that have been said of her 
 beauty and wit. It is not incumbent on us to tell her 
 story in full, but rather to indicate the position she held in 
 Dickens's day in London society, and to portray somewhat 
 of the circle of which she was the centre. 
 
 Marguerite Power, Countess of Blessington, was bom 
 in 1789, and in 1804, under pressure from her father, 
 was forced into an unhappy marriage with Captain Maurice 
 St Leger Farmer, from whom after a few months of misery 
 she separated. In 1818 he died, drunk, and in the same 
 year she married Charles John Gardiner, first Earl of 
 Blessington, and travelled with him on the Continent 
 until his death, returning a widow to London in 1831, 
 accompanied by Coimt Alfred d'Orsay, who married and 
 separated from Lady Harriet Gardiner, her second 
 husband's daughter and an heiress. What exactly were the 
 relations between Lady Blessington and D'Orsay we need 
 not stop to inquire, but what the world thought of them is 
 amply proved by the cold shoulders turned toward her by 
 other women on this account and because of earlier mys- 
 teries in her career. Lord Blessington, who died in 1829, had 
 left her an income of £2500 a year, unfortunately dependent 
 on the value of landed property in Ireland, which later 
 
 30 
 
"THE MOST GORGEOUS" 
 
 failed her ; also furniture, plate, pictures and so forth. 
 For a time after her arrival in London she lived in her house 
 in St James's Square, which, being too expensive, she let 
 to the Windham Club and moved to Seamore Place, 
 Mayfair, and afterward to Gore House, Kensington. A 
 sister, Mrs Purves, had in 1828 married the Rt. Hon. John 
 Manners Sutton, afterward Lord Canterbury, and another, 
 Mary Anne, a strikingly handsome woman, became the 
 Countess de St Mersault in 1832, she being about thirty and 
 her husband about twice as old. The truth seems to have 
 been that they both believed that they were making a 
 " good match," but, alas, money was not in abundance 
 upon either side. They quarrelled ; they separated. Mary 
 Anne's place in her sister's household was supplied by 
 Marguerite and Ellen Power, the charming daughters of 
 Lady Blessington's brother. 
 
 It seems almost as if the language of judicious laudation 
 failed those who sang the praises of " the most gorgeous 
 Lady Blessington." P. G. Patmore, in his very dull book, 
 says of her : " There was an abandon about her, — 
 partly attributed to temperament, partly to her birth 
 and country, and partly, no doubt, to her consciousness 
 of great personal beauty, — which in any woman less 
 happily constituted, would have degenerated into some- 
 thing bordering on vulgarity. But in her it was so tempered 
 by sweetness of disposition, and so kept in check by an 
 exquisite social tact, as well as by natural good breeding 
 as contradistinguished from artificial — in other words, 
 a real sympathy, not an affected one, with the feelings 
 of others — that it formed the chief charm and attraction 
 of her character and bearing." But lest it may be thought 
 that these are the rambhngs of a mere man, we quote the 
 description of her given by Mrs Cowden Clarke : — " fair, 
 
 31 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 florid-complexioned, \vith sparkling eyes and white, 
 high forehead, above which her bright brown hair was 
 smoothly braided beneath a light and simple blonde cap, 
 in which were a few touches of sky-blue satin ribbon 
 that singularly well became her, setting off her buxom 
 face and its vivid colouring." 
 
 She dressed brilhantly, but at the same time with an 
 admirable skill that set off her charms to the very best 
 advantage^ as well as also softening that tendency to 
 exuberance which was the only defect in a well-nigh 
 perfect figure. Thus gifted with beauty, with wit, with 
 the supreme gift of charm, is it any wonder that we find 
 Haydon writing in 1835 that " everybody goes to Lady 
 Blessington. She has the first news of every thing, and 
 everybody seems dehghted to tell her." Wits, dandies, 
 poets, politicians, scholars, men of letters — all gathered 
 together in her hospitable salon, but women kept carefully 
 away, save her own relations, and Lady Charlotte Bury, 
 Byron's Countess Guiccioli and one or two others. In 
 her circle were the following — a few picked out from many, 
 her friends and her admirers, Walter Savage Landor, 
 whom we find visiting at Seamore Place in 1832, the old 
 and the young Disraeli, Barry Cornwall, Dickens, Bulwer 
 (Lord Lytton), Macready, Captain Marryat — a bluff, 
 breezy-mannered seaman; he was tall, broad in the 
 shoulders and thickset, and Henry Vizetelly, in opposition 
 somewhat to others, says, " There was nothing of the jovial 
 ' salt ' about him ; none of that flow of animal spirits which 
 his writings might have led one to expect, nor aught that 
 could be termed genial even ; his style," he adds, " was 
 rather that of the 'quarter-deck ' ; " — Albany Fonblanque, 
 Maclise, John Forster, who met Lady Blessington first 
 in 1836, Trelawney — the " Younger Son " — Lord Canter- 
 
 32 
 
THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON. 
 From the Painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. 
 
D'ORSAY 
 
 bury and plenty more, some of whom we shall take care 
 to meet — and, always. Count d'Orsay, the prince of the 
 dandies. The well-dressed man-about-town of those days 
 did not consider it a necessary part of his equipment as a 
 dandy to be or pretend to be devoid of brains or of any 
 interest in the serious affairs of life. He set up to be — and 
 usually was — a wit and a cultivated, accompHshed gentle- 
 man. Among the most famous, always after D'Orsay, 
 were Dickens himself, Bulwer, Benjamin Disraeli and 
 Harrison Ainsworth, a goodly company the like of which 
 has not been seen before nor since. 
 
 Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Count d'Orsay, was bom 
 in 1 80 1, of a noble French family, served in the body- 
 guard of the Bourbons, and has been immortalised by 
 Byron as a model of the French gentleman of the ancien 
 figime. He came to England, as we have noted, with 
 Lady Blessington in 1831, and actually separated from his 
 wife in 1834, doing so legally some six years later, resigning 
 his interest in the Blessington property in consideration 
 of a large annuity and a sum of £55,000. But such sums 
 were trifles in the ocean of his expenditure. He counted 
 tradesmen as convenient persons whose reason for existence 
 was to give credit to such magnificent customers as himself, 
 which up to a point they found it profitable to do, for his 
 patronage made them famous. 
 
 Charles James Mathews, who had travelled with him 
 and the Blessingtons in Italy, gives this description of 
 D'Orsay when a youth of nineteen : " he was the model of 
 all that could be conceived of noble demeanour and youth- 
 ful candour ; handsome beyond all question ; accom- 
 plished to the last degree ; highly educated, and of great 
 literary acquirements ; with a gaiety of heart and cheerful- 
 ness of mind that spread happiness on all around him. 
 D 33 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 His conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as 
 clever and instructive," and the somewhat ponderous 
 Patmore waxes positively enthusiastic over him ; " he 
 was one of the very best riders in a country whose riders 
 are admitted to be the best in the world ... he was 
 the best judge of a horse among a people of horse-dealers 
 and horse-jockeys," a fine cricketer, swimmer, boxer, 
 swordsman, wrestler and tennis player ; " he was in- 
 comparably the handsomest man of his time . . . 
 uniting to a figure scarcely inferior in the perfection 
 of its form to that of the Apollo, a head and face that 
 blended the grace and dignity of the Antinous with 
 the beaming intellect of the younger Bacchus, and the 
 almost feminine softness and beauty of the Ganjnnede." 
 Prodigious ! 
 
 He was skilled in all the accomplishments that become 
 a man of the world, and an artist of considerable ability ; 
 above all, the best dressed man in town. Edmund Yates 
 describes him driving in the Park " always in faultless 
 white kid gloves, with his shirt wristbands turned back 
 over his coat-cuffs, and his whole ' turn-out ' . . . per- 
 fection." His wit, says Chorley, " was more quaint 
 than anything I have heard from Frenchmen (there are 
 touches of like quality in Rabelais) — more airy than the 
 brightest London wit of my time, those of Sydney Smith 
 and Mr Fonblanque not excepted." He was not only all- 
 conquering with the fair sex, to whom he always acted 
 with deferential courteousness, but also with men, whom 
 his capital conversation always delighted. He even 
 conquered Carlyle ! 
 
 In the spring of 1839 D'Orsay went to see him at 
 Cheyne Row, and the sage's description of the visit is 
 amusing : — " About a fortnight ago, this Phoebus Apollo 
 
 34 
 
THE SAGE AND THE DANDY 
 
 of dand5dsm, escorted by poor little Chorley, came 
 whirling hither in a chariot that struck all Chelsea into 
 mute amazement with its splendour. Chorley's under jaw 
 went like the hopper or under riddle of a pair of fanners, 
 such was his terror on bringing such a splendour into 
 actual contact with such a grimness. Nevertheless, we 
 did amazingly well, the Count and I. He is a tall fellow 
 of six feet three, built like a tower, with floods of dark 
 auburn hair, with a beauty, with an adornment unsur- 
 passable on this planet ; withal a rather substantial 
 fellow at bottom, by no means without insight, without 
 fun, and a sort of rough sarcasm rather striking out of 
 such a porcelain figure. He said, looking at Shelley's 
 bust, in his French accent, ' Ah, it is one of those faces 
 who weesh to swallow their chin.' . . . Jane laughed for 
 two days at the contrast of my plaid dressing-gown, 
 bihous, iron countenance, and this Paphian apparition." 
 
 Another curious conjunction of stars of different mag- 
 nitudes was this : " Count d'Orsay is a friend of mine, 
 co-godfather to Dickens's child with me," writes Tennyson 
 in 1852. 
 
 The somewhat egregious Nathaniel Parker Willis, a 
 New York man of letters and journalist, who was florid 
 both in his style and in his costume, visited Lady Blessing- 
 ton at Seamore Place, and has left us the following " Pencil- 
 ling by the Way." That Willis was not a Httle florid in his 
 literary style as well as in his dress is shown by this de- 
 scription of Lady Blessington : — " In the long library, 
 lined alternately with splendidly-bound books and mirrors, 
 and with a deep window of the breadth of the room, 
 
 opening upon Hyde Park, I found Lady B alone. 
 
 The picture to my eye as the door opened was a very 
 lovely one : — a woman of remarkable beauty half buried 
 
 35 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent 
 lamp suspended from the centre of the arched ceiling ; 
 sofas, couches, ottomans, and busts arranged in rather 
 a crowded sumptuousness through the room ; enamel 
 tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every 
 comer ; and a deUcate white hand relieved on the back 
 of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze 
 of diamond rings." 
 
 Willis was introduced to Lady Blessington by Landor, 
 by letter, in the year 1834 : — " an American gentleman 
 attached to the legation at Paris " and " the best poet 
 the New World has produced in any part of it," with which 
 criticism we cannot find it in our heart to agree, for he 
 was no poet at all but a mere maker of verses. Willis 
 was then twenty-seven years of age, a "smart" man, 
 editor and proprietor of The New York Mirror ; tall, 
 with a good figure, bright-complexioned, slightly reddish- 
 hued hair and large, light-blue eyes ; a self-conscious 
 dandy, and self-complacent also. Scarcely a man worth 
 quarrelling with, save that he took advantage of his 
 kindly welcome in London society to pen a series of 
 portraits which contained a considerable amount of truth 
 leavened with too great an amount of cheap disparage- 
 ment of men and women far superior to himself. 
 
 In 1836 Lady Blessington moved from Seamore Place 
 to Kensington Gore, which she describes to Landor as 
 having " taken up her residence in the country, being a 
 mile from London " ! Gore House, the site of which is 
 now occupied by the Royal Albert Hall, was a low, un- 
 pretentious building, painted white, standing close down 
 to the roadside, with a fine garden behind. Wilberforce, 
 who emancipated, as his beautiful successor made, 
 slaves, once occupied it, and writes, " We are just one 
 
 36 
 
GORE HOUSE 
 
 mile from the turnpike at Hyde Park Comer, having about 
 three acres of pleasure-ground around our house, or 
 rather behind it, and several old trees, walnut and mul- 
 berry, of thick foliage. I can sit and read under their 
 shade with as much admiration of the beauties of Nature 
 as if I were down in Yorkshire, or anywhere else 200 miles 
 from the great city." 
 
 As some indication of the luxury of Lady Blessington's 
 surroundings, already hinted at by Willis, we quote this 
 from the catalogue of the sale, to which we shall refer later 
 on : — " Costly and elegant effects ; comprising all the 
 magnificent furniture, rare porcelain, sculpture in marble, 
 bronzes, and an assemblage of objects of art and decora- 
 tion ; a casket of valuable jewellery and bijouteries, 
 services of rich chased silver and silver-gilt plate, a superbly 
 fitted silver dressing-case ; collection of ancient and modern 
 pictures, including many portraits of distinguished persons, 
 valuable original drawings, and fine engravings, framed 
 and in portfolios ; the extensive and interesting library 
 of books, comprising upwards of 5000 volumes, expensive 
 table services of china and rich cut glass, and an infinity 
 of useful and valuable articles. All the property of the 
 Right Hon. the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the 
 Continent." 
 
 Dickens made her acquaintance somewhere about the 
 year 1841, soon becoming one of her closest and most 
 appreciative friends, among whom was also William 
 Makepeace Thackeray. 
 
 We find Landor visiting her again in 1837 ; at her 
 house he was always welcome, and there spent many of 
 his happiest hours in London. " I shall be at Gore House 
 on Monday," he writes to Forster, " pray come in the 
 evening. I told Lady Blessington I should not let any 
 
 37 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 of her court stand at all in my way. When I am tired of 
 them, I leave them." Landor describes " Disraeli sitting 
 silently watching their conversation as if it were a display 
 of fireworks." Can this be true ? If true, probably the 
 young novelist was taking stock for future use. 
 
 Among those whom Dickens met there was Landor, 
 at a dinner at that most delightful house. The lalter's 
 attire had become slightly disordered, to which D'Orsay 
 laughingly drew attention as they rose from the table. 
 Flushing up, Landor said, " My dear Count d'Orsay, 
 I thank you ! My dear Count d'Orsay, I thank you 
 from my soul for pointing out to me the abominable 
 condition to which I am reduced ! If I had entered the 
 drawing-room, and presented myself before Lady Blessing- 
 ton in so absurd a light, I would have instantly gone home, 
 put a pistol to my head, and blown my brains out ! " 
 Those were the great days of the great dandies ! 
 
 Chorley, the well-known musical critic, from whom we 
 have already quoted, who was introduced to Lady Bless- 
 ington by N. P. Willis, admired her, as everyone 
 seems to have done who knew her ; she had " the 
 keenness of an Irishwoman in relishing fun and repartee, 
 strange turns of language, and bright touches of character. 
 . . . Her taste in everything was towards the gay, the 
 superb, the luxurious." He describes a dinner there on 
 May 8th, 1838 : — " Yesterday evening, I had a very 
 rare treat — a dinner at Kensington tete-a-UHe with Lady 
 Blessington and Mr Landor ; she talking her best, brilliant 
 and kindly, and without that touch of self-consciousness 
 which she sometimes displays when worked up to it by 
 flatterers and gay companions. Landor, as usual, the 
 very finest man's head I have ever seen, and with all his 
 Johnsonian disposition to tyrannise and lay down the 
 
 38 
 
A PLEASANT CIRCLE 
 
 law in his talk, restrained and refined by an old-world 
 courtesy and deference towards his bright hostess, for 
 which chivalry is the only right word." 
 
 As evanescent as the enchantments of the actor's 
 art are those of the wit and the beauty, and we can 
 but faintly picture from descriptions by eye- and ear- 
 witnesses the delights of the winter and summer nights' 
 entertainments at Gore House. 
 
 WilUam Archer Shee gives a bright description : — 
 " Gore House last night was unusually brilliant. Lady 
 Blessington has the art of collecting around her all that 
 is best worth knowing in the male society of London. 
 There were Cabinet Ministers, diplomats, poets, painters, 
 and politicians, all assembled together. . . . She has the 
 peculiar and most unusual talent of keeping the conversa- 
 tion in a numerous circle general, and of preventing her 
 guests from dividing into Httle selfish pelotons. With a 
 tact unsurpassed, she contrives to draw out even the most 
 modest tyro from his shell of reserve, and, by appearing 
 to take an interest in his opinion, gives him the courage 
 to express it. All her visitors seem, by some hidden 
 influence, to find their level, yet they leave her house 
 satisfied with themselves." 
 
 Which is fully borne out by — among much other evidence 
 — what Patmore has recorded of the brilliant hostess : — 
 " As a talker she was a better sort of De Stael — as acute, 
 as copious, as offhand, as original, and almost as sparkling, 
 but without a touch of her arrogance, exigence, or 
 pedantry ; and with a faculty for listening that is the 
 happiest and most indispensable of all the talents that go 
 to constitute a good talker." 
 
 George Augustus Sala describes being taken as a small 
 boy by his mother to Gore House, when among others 
 
 39 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 present were Maclise and Harrison Ainsworth, then a 
 young man of about thirty, strikingly handsome, a dandy 
 of the oiled, curled, be-whiskered D'Orsay type. The story 
 is told of the beautiful Blessington standing one time 
 between the two dandies, declaring that she was supported 
 by the two handsomest men in town, 
 
 Macready gives a brief glimpse of Lady Blessington in 
 1837 : " reached Lady Blessington's about a quarter 
 before eight. Found there Fonblanque, Bulwer, Tre- 
 lawney, Procter, Auldjo, Forster, Lord Canterbury, 
 Fred Reynolds, and Mr and Mrs Fairlie, Kenney, a young 
 Manners Sutton, Count d'Orsay and some unknown. 
 I passed an agreeable day, and a long and interesting 
 conversation in the drawing-room (what an elegant 
 and splendid room it is !) with D'Orsay on pictures." 
 
 As a little powder among all this jam, we note that 
 Edmund Yates recalls Lady Blessington as " a fair, fat, 
 middle-aged woman, in a big heavy swinging chariot 
 glistening — the chariot, not her ladyship — with varnish, 
 and profusely emblazoned with heraldry, and with two 
 enormous footmen, cane-carrying, powder-headed and 
 silk-stockinged, hanging on behind. One of the Misses 
 Power, her nieces, and remarkably pretty girls, generally 
 accompanied her ladyship." 
 
 Among D'Orsay's paintings was a large picture of the 
 garden of Gore House, with portraits of Lady Blessington, 
 the Duke of Wellington, Lord Douro, Lord Brougham, 
 Sir Edwin Landseer, the Misses Power and others. "In 
 the foreground, to the right, are the great Duke and Lady 
 Blessington ; in the centre. Sir E. Landseer, seated, in 
 the act of sketching a fine cow, with a calf by her side ; 
 Count d'Orsay himself with two favourite dogs, is seen on 
 the right of the group, and Lord Chesterfield on the left ; 
 
 40 
 
THE LAST ACT 
 
 nearer the house are the two Misses Power (nieces of Lady 
 Blessington), reading a letter, a gentleman walking behind. 
 Further to the left are Lord Brougham, Lord Douro, etc., 
 seated under a tree, engaged in conversation." 
 
 Of the many good stories told at Gore House we can 
 find room only for this, told there one night a propos of 
 Theodore Hook's righteously losing his temper when over- 
 pressed by a vulgar hostess to " perform." 
 
 " Do, Mr Hook, do favour us ? " 
 
 " Indeed, madam, I can't ; I can't indeed. I am like 
 that httle bird, the canary ; can't lay my eggs when any 
 one is looking at me." 
 
 About the year 1847 clouds began to lower over the 
 house ; monetary troubles accumulated. We may here 
 relate an incident that occurred one Sunday evening 
 in February, when among others present were Prince 
 Louis Napoleon, Dickens, Bulwer, and Forster. Lady 
 Blessington exhibited a painting of a girl's face, which she 
 had received from her brother Robert, who held a Govern- 
 ment berth at Hobart ; it was a portrait done by the 
 hand of the murderer and forger, Thomas Griffiths 
 Wainwright. 
 
 In March, 1849, the crash came; the baihffs entered 
 Gore House, and the glory thereof departed for ever. 
 
 " I have just come away," writes Thackeray, " from a 
 dismal sight : Gore House full of snobs looking at the 
 furniture. Foul Jews ; odious bombazine women, who 
 drove up in mysterious fiys which they had hired — the 
 wretches, . . . so as to come in state to a fashionable 
 lounge ; brutes keeping their hats on in the kind old 
 drawing-room — I longed to knock some of them off, 
 and say, ' Sir, be civil in a lady's room. . . .' There 
 was one of the servants there, not a powdered one, but 
 
 41 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 a butler. . . . My heart melted towards him, and I gave 
 him a pound. Ah ! it was a strange, sad picture of * Vanity 
 Fair.' My mind is all boiling up with it." 
 
 Lady Blessington and D'Orsay fled to Paris. Her 
 " goods and chattels " sold for sufficient to pay her debts. 
 She and her nieces took an appartement in the Rue du 
 Cerq, hard by the Champs Elysees. In the June of 1849, 
 still an exile, she died peacefully in her sleep. When he 
 heard the news of her death, Landor wrote to Forster, 
 " Yet why call it sad ? It was the very mode of departure 
 she anticipated and desired." 
 
 In July, 1856, Dickens wrote to Landor, from 
 Boulogne : " There in Paris ... I found Marguerite 
 Power and little NeUy, living with their mother and a 
 pretty sister, in a very small, neat apartment, and working 
 (as Marguerite told me) hard for a living. All that I 
 saw of them filled me with respect, and revived the 
 tenderest remembrances of Gore House. They are coming 
 to pass two or three weeks here for a country rest, next 
 month. We had many long talks concerning Gore House, 
 and all its bright associations ; and I can honestly report 
 that they had no one in more gentle and affectionate 
 remembrance than you. Marguerite is still handsome. ..." 
 
 D'Orsay dined with Dickens in Paris in 1850, and in 
 the same year Thackeray called on him there : " To-day 
 I went to see D'Orsay, who has made a bust of Lamartine, 
 who, too, is mad with vanity. . . . D'Orsay has fitted 
 himself up a charming atdier with arms and trophies, 
 pictures and looking-glasses, the tomb of Blessington, 
 the sword and star of Napoleon, and a crucifix over his 
 bed, and here he dwells without any doubts or remorses, 
 admiring himself in the most horrible pictures which he 
 has painted, and the statues which he gets done for him.'' 
 
 42 
 

 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 From the Drawing by Count D'Orsay, 
 

D'ORSAY'S DEATH 
 
 Napoleon, with whom he had been very friendly in 
 his days of exile in London, and who was a familiar and 
 mysterious figure at Gore House, seems to have neglected 
 D'Orsay somewhat in the days of his downfall, but in the 
 year of his death, 1852, appointed him Director of the 
 Fine Arts, a post more lordly in name than in emolument. 
 
 D'Orsay had gained a firm place in the hearts of many 
 men whose esteem it was not easy to win or retain. 
 Landor writes on August 7, 1852, " the death of poor, 
 dear D'Orsay fell heavily tho' not unexpectedly upon me. 
 Intelhgence of his painful and hopeless malady reached me 
 some weeks before the event. With many foibles and 
 grave faults he was generous and sincere. Neither spirits 
 nor wit ever failed him, and he was ready at all times to 
 lay down his life for a friend." Macready, also, was deeply 
 touched by his death : "To my deep grief perceived the 
 notice of the death of dear Count d'Orsay. No one who 
 knew him and had affections could help loving him. When 
 he hked he was most fascinating and captivating. It 
 was impossible to be insensible to his graceful, frank, 
 and most affectionate manner. ... He was the most 
 brilliant, graceful, endearing man I ever saw — humorous, 
 witty, and clear-headed." 
 
 With some of those in this brilliant circle, who were 
 numbered among Dickens's friends, we meet again. 
 
 43 
 
VIII 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 OF those of the Blessington's intimate friends who 
 were not dandies, but were men of letters, 
 perhaps Walter Savage Lander was the most 
 striking figure. He was bom in 1775, and lived on, a 
 chequered life of robust joys and robust miseries, until 
 1864. What historic days he saw ! What a brave 
 connecting link he was for Dickens between the days 
 present and past. Of him as a literary man it is not 
 necessary to say anything here, we need only come into 
 contact with him as a striking and lovable personality. 
 One touch of his younger days we may give : " At Oxford," 
 he says, " I was about the first student who wore his hair 
 without powder. ' Take care,' said my tutor ; ' they will 
 stone you for a repubHcan.' " Yet strangely enough he 
 disUked, despised the French as a people. For he was 
 brusque and sweeping in his wholesale judgments, as for 
 example once exclaiming to Macready, " Sir, the French 
 are all scoundrels," which has quite a Johnsonian smack 
 about it. Then, writing from Paris in 1802, he says, 
 " Doubtless the government of Bonaparte is the best that 
 can be contrived for Frenchmen. Monkeys must be 
 chained, though it may cost them some grimaces." 
 
 Forster first met Landor in the summer of 1836, when 
 these two with Wordsworth and Crabb Robinson occupied 
 a box at the first night of "Ion." Afterward they adjourned 
 
 44 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 to Talfourd's house, where, as related elsewhere in these 
 pages, a fine company was gathered together. We gain a 
 clear view of him, some two years later, from an American 
 visitor, Charles Sumner, who described him in 1838 as 
 " dressed in a heavy frock-coat of snuff colour, trousers of 
 the same colour, and boots . . . with an open counten- 
 ance, firm and decided, and a head gray and inclining to 
 baldness . . . conversation . . . not varied, but it was 
 animated and energetic in the extreme. We crossed each 
 other several times ; he called Napoleon the weakest, 
 littlest man in history ... he considers Shakspeare 
 and Washington the two greatest men that ever hved, 
 and Cromwell one of the greatest sovereigns," 
 
 " I recall the well-remembered figure and face," writes 
 Forster in 1869, " as they first became known to me 
 nearly thirty years ago. Landor was then upwards of 
 sixty, and looked that age to the full. He was not above 
 the middle stature, but had a stout stalwart presence, 
 walked without a stoop, and in his general aspect, particu- 
 larly the set and carriage of his head, was decidedly of 
 what is called a distinguished bearing. His hair was 
 already silvered gray, and had retired far upward from 
 his forehead, which, wide and full but retreating, could 
 never in the earlier time have been seen to such advantage. 
 What at first was noticeable, however, in the broad white 
 massive head, were the full yet strangely-lifted eyebrows. 
 ... In the large, grey eyes there was a depth of com- 
 posed expression that even startled by its contrast to 
 the eager restlessness looking out from the surface of them ; 
 and in the same variety and quickness of transition the 
 mouth was extremely striking. The lips that seemed 
 compressed with unalterable will would in a moment relax 
 to a softness more than feminine ; and a sweeter smile it 
 
 45 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 was impossible to conceive. ... A loud long laugh 
 hardly less than leonine. Higher and higher went peal 
 after peal, in continuous and increasing volleys. . . ." 
 
 He could snore to admiration, also, for we have Dickens 
 writing to him from Paris in 1846, familiarly addressing 
 him as " Young Man " : — " that steady snore of yours, 
 which I once heard piercing the door of your bedroom . . . 
 reverberating along the bell-wire in the hall, so getting 
 outside into the street, playing Eolian harps among the 
 area railings, and going down the New Road hke the blast 
 of a trumpet." 
 
 It is chiefly with his life at Bath that we will deal, 
 where Dickens, Mrs Dickens, Maclise and Forster visited 
 him on February 7th, 1840, at 36 St James's Square. 
 " Landor's ghost goes along the silent streets here before 
 me," Dickens wrote in the year before his death. It 
 was during this visit, writes Forster, that there came into 
 the novelist's mind the first stirrings of imagination that 
 eventually took form as Little Nell, who became to Landor 
 as one who had really lived and died. 
 
 Of his habit of life he himself gives us a description, 
 writing to his sister in 1845 : " I walk out in all weathers 
 six miles a day at least ; and I generally, unless I am 
 engaged in the evening, read from seven till twelve or 
 one. I sleep twenty minutes after dinner, and nearly 
 four hours at night, or rather in the morning. I rise at 
 nine, breakfast at ten, and dine at five. All the winter 
 I have some beautiful sweet daphnes and hyacinths in 
 my window." He used some quaint, old-fashioned pro- 
 nunciations, such as " woonderful," " goolden," " woorld," 
 " srimp," " yaller," and " laylock." 
 
 A love of his old age was Pomero, his small, white 
 Pomeranian ; he " is sitting in a state of contemplation," 
 
 46 
 
MEMORIES OF LANDOR 
 
 Landor writes playfully, " with his nose before the fire. 
 He twinkles his ears and his feathery tail. . . . Last 
 evening I took him to hear Luisina de Sodre play and sing. 
 . . . Pomero was deeply affected, and lay close to the 
 pedal on her gown, singing in a great variety of tones, 
 not always in time. It is unfortunate that he always 
 will take a part where there is music, for he sings even 
 worse than I do." 
 
 " When he laughed and Pomero barked," says Mrs 
 Lynn Linton, " and Pomero always barked whenever he 
 laughed — it was Bedlam in that small room in beautiful 
 Bath." 
 
 But even dear Pomero came occasionally under the lash 
 of his master's tongue, or shall we say bark, which was so 
 seldom accompanied by a bite, and Landor would burst out, 
 " Be quiet, you nasty, noisy, troublesome beast ! I'll 
 wring your neck, if you won't be quiet ! " 
 
 Mrs Lynn Linton describes in Fraser's Magazine her 
 first meeting with Landor, in 1847, he then over seventy, 
 she nearly fifty years younger. She was with friends, 
 Doctor Brabant and his sister, in Empson's curiosity 
 shop at Bath, " when we saw what seemed a noble- 
 looking old man, badly dressed in shabby snuff-coloured 
 clothes, a dirty old blue necktie, unstarched cotton shirt — 
 and ' knubbly ' apple-pie boots. But underneath the 
 rusty old hatbrim gleamed a pair of quiet and penetrating 
 grey-blue eyes ; the voice was sweet and masterly ; the 
 manner that of a man of rare distinction." It was Landor, 
 one of the gods of her idolatry ; she goes on, " I remember 
 how the blood came into my face as I dashed up to him 
 with both hands held out, and said, ' Mr Landor ? oh ! 
 is this Mr Landor ? ' as if he had been a god suddenly 
 revealed. And I remember the amused smile with which 
 
 47 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 he took both my hands in his, and said, ' And who is this 
 httle girl, I wonder ? ' From that hour we were friends ; 
 and I thank God I can say truthfully, that never for one 
 hour, one moment, afterwards were we anything else. 
 For twelve long, dear years, we were father and daughter. 
 We never called each other anything else." Elsewhere 
 she gives a very amusing picture of him : — " He was 
 always losing and overlooking, and then the tumult that 
 would arise was something too absurd, considering the 
 occasion. He used to stick a letter into a book : then, 
 when he wanted to answer it, it was gone — and someone 
 had taken it — the only letter he wanted to answer — that 
 he would rather have forfeited a thousand pounds than 
 have lost, and so on. Or he used to push his spectacles 
 up over his forehead, and then declare they were lost, 
 lost for ever. He would ramp and rave about the room 
 at such times as these, upsetting everything that came in 
 his way, declaring that he was the most unfortunate 
 man in the world, or the greatest fool, or the most in- 
 humanly persecuted. I would persuade him to sit down 
 and let me look for the lost property ; when he would sigh 
 in deep despair ; and say there was no use in taking any 
 more trouble about it, it was gone for ever. When I 
 found it, as of course I always did, he would say * thank 
 you ' as quietly and naturally as if he had not been raving 
 like a maniac half a minute before." 
 
 Carlyle was with Landor in 1850. " Landor was in his 
 house," he writes, " in a fine quiet street Hke a New Town 
 Edinburgh one, waiting for me, attended only by a nice 
 Bologna dog. Dinner not far from ready ; his apartments 
 all hung round with queer old Italian pictures ; the very 
 doors had pictures on them. Dinner was elaborately 
 simple. The brave Landor forced me to talk far too much, 
 
 48 
 
DICKENS AND LANDOR 
 
 and we did very near a bottle of claret, besides two glasses 
 of sherry ; far too much liquor and excitement for a poor 
 fellow like me. However, he was really stirring company : 
 a proud, irascible, trenchant, yet generous, veracious, and 
 very dignified old man ; quite a ducal or royal man in the 
 temper of him. ... He left me to go smoking along the 
 
 streets about ten at night, he himself retiring then 
 
 Bath is decidedly the prettiest town in all England." 
 
 Malmsey Madeira was a famous, favourite drink of his, 
 a pleasant wine when in proper condition. Landor talked 
 little while he ate, but burst forth between the courses, 
 and of his wine he would swear that it was such that the 
 Ancient Greeks had drunk withal, and that it must have 
 been the favourite tipple of Epicurus and Anacreon, and 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 Dickens, writing of Landor's appearance, gives a curious 
 account : — " The arms were very peculiar. They were 
 rather short, and were curiously restrained and checked 
 in their action at the elbows ; in the action of the hands, 
 even when separately clenched, there was the same kind 
 of pause, and a notable tendency to relaxation on the 
 part of the thumb. Let the face be never so intense 
 or fierce, there was a commentary of gentleness in the hands 
 essential to be taken along with it. Like Hamlet, Landor 
 would speak daggers but use none. In the expression of 
 his hands, though angrily closed, there was always gentle- 
 ness and tenderness ; just as when they were open, and 
 the handsome old gentleman would wave them with a 
 little courtly flourish that sat well upon him, as he recalled 
 some classic compliment that he had rendered to some 
 reigning beauty, there was a chivalrous grace about them 
 such as pervades his softer verses." 
 
 Carlyle dubbed him " the unsubduable Roman." 
 K 49 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " Once, when I was staying with him," Mrs Lynn 
 Linton writes, " he had a small dinner-party, of Dickens, 
 John Forster, and myself. This was my first introduction 
 to both these men. I found Dickens charming, and 
 Forster pompous, heavy, and ungenial. Dickens was 
 bright and gay and winsome, and while treating Mr 
 Landor with the respect of a younger man for an elder, 
 allowed his wit to play about him, bright and harmless 
 as summer lightning . . . but Forster was saturnine 
 and cynical." Mrs Lynn Linton is righteously indignant 
 at Forster's " carping and unsympathetic " hfe of Landor, 
 one of the worst books that ever he wrote. 
 
 The occasion of this festivity was his seventy-fifth 
 birthday, and after it he wrote those splendid Unes : — 
 
 " I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ; 
 Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art ; 
 I warm'd both hands before the fire of life ; 
 It sinks, and I am ready to depart." 
 
 50 
 
IX 
 
 MOVING ON 
 
 ALTHOUGH it is not in any way the purpose of 
 this book to re-tell the life of Charles Dickens, 
 it is time we returned to the centre of the 
 circle. In 1838 he rented a cottage at Twickenham, not 
 then the suburb of London which it has since become, 
 where he entertained himself and his friends, and where 
 there were high jinks, as there were apt to be wherever 
 he was present or presided. Among the visitors were 
 Talfourd, Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold, Machse, Ains- 
 worth, George Cattermole, who Forster says " had then 
 enough and to spare of fun as well as fancy to supply 
 ordinary artists and humourists by the dozen, and wanted 
 only a little more ballast and steadiness to possess all that 
 could give attraction to good fellowship." Dear ! Dear ! 
 If only he had been as steady and dull as Forster ! Catter- 
 mole, who it will be remembered drew many illustrations 
 for Dickens, married a distant relation of the novelist. 
 Miss Elderton, in 1839, ^^^ the " happy couple " passed 
 their honeymoon near Petersham, where Dickens was 
 staying at the time. He was bom in 1800 and died in 1868. 
 Toward the end of the year 1839 Dickens moved from 
 Doughty Street to i Devonshire Terrace, a bigger house 
 with a large garden, hard by the York Gate of Regent's 
 Park, a house afterward occupied by George du Maurier. 
 Of his method of work, writes one who knew him while 
 
 51 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 living there : — " His hours and days were spent by rule. 
 He rose at a certain time, he retired at another, and though 
 no precisian, it was not often that his arrangements varied. 
 His hours for writing were between breakfast and luncheon, 
 and when there was any work to be done no temptation 
 was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This 
 order and regularity followed him through the day. 
 His mind was essentially methodical, and in his long walks, 
 in his recreations, in his labour, he was governed by rules 
 laid down for himself, rules well studied beforehand and 
 rarely departed from. The so-called men of business — 
 the people whose own exclusive devotion to the science 
 of profit and loss makes them regard doubtfully all to whom 
 that same science is not the main object in life — would 
 have been delighted and amazed at this side of Dickens's 
 character." 
 
 52 
 
X 
 
 THREE JESTERS 
 
 SAMUEL ROGERS was a rich banker, a poor poet, 
 a wicked wit and a delightful entertainer, amongst 
 his multitudinous guests and friends being Charles 
 Dickens. He was born in 1763 and lived on to unusual 
 old age, dying in 1855. His father was a banker in Corn- 
 hill, so that he was wealthy, writing poetry for pleasure 
 and with considerable pains. He was indeed an extremely 
 slow worker, which gave rise to the following quaint con- 
 ceit of Sydney Smith, who having told a friend that 
 Rogers was not very well, was asked what was wrong with 
 him. " Oh, don't you know," said Sydney Smith, " he 
 has produced a couplet. When our friend is delivered 
 of a couplet, with infinite labour and pains, he takes to 
 his bed, has straw laid down, the knocker tied up, and 
 expects his friends to call and make inquiries, and the 
 answer at the door invariably is, ' Mr Rogers and his 
 little couplet are as well as can be expected.' " 
 
 The said Sydney Smith is reported as having gotten him- 
 self into trouble with Rogers by recommending him when 
 he sat for his portrait to take the pose of " saying his 
 prayers with his face in his hat." There is another version 
 of this tale, but we like better the above. 
 
 To breakfast with the banker-poet in his charming 
 house, 22 St James's Place, St James's Street, overlooking 
 the Green Park, must have been truly delightful, and few 
 
 53 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 there were who would not receive an invitation with 
 pleasure and accept it with alacrity. 
 
 Rogers wrote to Lady Dufferin, " Will you breakfast 
 with me to-morrow ? S. R." The reply was " Won't I ? 
 H. D." 
 
 There were usually not more than four or five guests, 
 and for many years there were gathered round the hos- 
 pitable table the leading lights in literature, art, science, 
 politics, and any distinguished strangers staying in or 
 passing through town. Various are the portraits painted 
 of the poet, varying according to the temperaments of 
 the painters, but it is evident that he was an accomplished 
 entertainer, an admirable teller of tales, a wit, a punster, 
 and a master of the art of conversation ; caustic and cyni- 
 cal at times, and also an inspirer of wit and talk. 
 
 " At least, Mr Rogers, you will admit that there was 
 fire in Byron ? " said a guest. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " he answered, " and plenty of it, but it 
 was hell fire." 
 
 Charles Mackay, who narrates this, gave Rogers a very 
 good character, " he said unkind things, but he did kind 
 ones in a most gracious manner. If he was sometimes 
 severe upon those who were ' up,' he always was tender 
 to those who were ' down.' He never closed his purse- 
 strings against a friend, or refused to help the young and 
 deserving." 
 
 Tom Moore notes that on March 23, 1843 : — " Break- 
 fasted at Rogers's to meet Jeffrey and Lord John — two 
 of the men I like best among my numerous friends. 
 Jeffrey's volubility (which was always superabundant) 
 becomes even more copious, I think, as he grows older. 
 But I am ashamed of myself for finding any fault with 
 him." 
 
 54 
 
CHANTREY 
 
 At his dinners he had candles set high round the room 
 so that the pictures might be seen to advantage. When 
 asked what he thought of this arrangement, Sydney Smith 
 replied that he did not like it — " above, a blaze of light, 
 below, darkness and gnashing of teeth," 
 
 Macaulay writes, " What a delightful house it is ! It 
 looks out on the Green Park just at the most pleasant 
 point. The furniture has been selected with a delicacy 
 of taste quite unique. Its value does not depend on 
 fashion, but must be the same while the fine arts are held 
 in any esteem. In the drawing-room, for example, the 
 chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most 
 beautiful Grecian forms. The bookcase is painted by 
 Stothard, in his very best manner, with groups from 
 Chaucer, Shakspere, and Boccaccio. The pictures are 
 not numerous, but every one is excellent. The most 
 remarkable object in the dining-room is, I think, a cast 
 of Pope, taken after death by Roubilliac, a noble model 
 in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he after- 
 wards made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de 
 Medici ; and, lastly, a mahogany table on which stands 
 an antique vase. When Chantrey dined with Rogers 
 some time ago he took particular notice of the vase, 
 and the table on which it stands, and asked Rogers who 
 made the table. * A common carpenter,' said Rogers. 
 * Do you remember the making of it ? ' said Chantrey. 
 ' Certainly,' said Rogers, in some surprise, ' I was in the 
 room while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the 
 workman directions about placing it.' ' Yes,' said Chan- 
 trey, ' I was the carpenter. I remember the room well, 
 and all the circumstances.' " 
 
 Of May 24, 1840, Macready notes, " Talfourd and 
 Dickens called for me, and we went together to Rogers's, 
 
 55 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 where we dined. ... I was pleased with the day, hking 
 Mrs Norton very much, and being much amused with 
 some anecdotes of Rogers's. His collection of pictures 
 is admirable, and the spirit of good taste seems to pervade 
 every nook of his house." 
 
 Caroline Elizabeth Sarah was one of the three beautiful 
 daughters of Thomas Sheridan and grand-daughter of 
 Richard Brinsley, and is best known in history as Mrs 
 Norton, having married the Hon. George Chappie Norton 
 in 1827. Later she became Lady Stirling-Maxwell. 
 Her elder sister was Lady Dufferin and her younger the 
 Duchess of Somerset, who was Queen of Beauty at the 
 celebrated Eglinton Tournament. Serjeant Ballantine 
 paints her as one of the most lovely women of her time, 
 clever, too, and accompUshed. Of her beauty Charles 
 Sumner gives an enthusiastic account in 1839 ; her 
 loveliness " has never been exaggerated. It is brilliant 
 and refined. Her countenance is lighted by eyes of the 
 intensest brightness, and her features are of the greatest 
 regularity. There is something tropical in her look ; 
 it is so intensely bright and burning, with large dark eyes, 
 dark hair, and Italian complexion. And her conversa- 
 tion is so pleasant and powerful without being masculine, 
 or rather it is masculine without being mannish ; there 
 is the grace and ease of the woman with a strength and 
 skill of which any man might well be proud. Mrs Norton 
 is about twenty-eight years old, and is, I believe, a grossly 
 slandered woman." She was dark-haired, with dark 
 eyes, a classic forehead and delicate features, so others 
 tell us. It is pleasant to find this unanimity, for there 
 does not seem to be any matter upon which the observa- 
 tions of eye-witnesses differ so greatly as upon this of 
 a woman's or a man's appearance. All that we, who have 
 
 56 
 
MRS NORTON 
 
 not seen, can do is to strike an average when the evidence is 
 contradictory, with a result more or less unsatisfactory. 
 
 Mrs Norton did not live happily with her husband, 
 separating from him in 1836, and he foolishly and without 
 due cause afterward brought an action for divorce against 
 her, coupling her name with that of Lord Melbourne. 
 Rogers stood staunchly by her in her trouble and accom- 
 panied her into court on the first day of the trial, 
 
 A false accusation has often been levelled against Mrs 
 Norton that in 1852 she conveyed to Delane, the famous 
 editor of The Times, the news that " the heads of the 
 Government had agreed " upon " repeal," the publication 
 of which decision created dismay and amazement. It was 
 said that she had fascinated Sidney Herbert into giving 
 away the secret to her, and it has even been stated that 
 she sold the information for £500 to Barnes, Delane's 
 predecessor, who had then been dead some four years ! 
 Delane had other and more trustworthy sources of obtain- 
 ing " inside information " as to the views and doings of 
 the Government. She is, more or less, the heroine of Mr 
 George Meredith's " Diana of the Crossways," in which 
 the above-mentioned mythical incident in her life is 
 utilised. 
 
 To return to our Rogers. 
 
 On November 25, 1840, Carlyle dined with Rogers, 
 Milman, " Pickwick " and others : — " A dull evening, 
 not worth awakening for at four in the morning, with the 
 dance of all the devils round you, . . . Rogers is still 
 brisk, courteous, kindly-affectioned — a good old man, 
 pathetic to look upon." Some years later he was with him 
 at the Ashburtons', and notes : — " I do not remember 
 any old man (he is now eighty-three) whose manner of 
 living gave me less satisfaction. A most sorrowful, 
 
 57 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 distressing, distracted old phenomenon, hovering over 
 the rim of deep eternities with nothing but light babble, 
 fatuity, vanity, and the frostiest London wit in his mouth. 
 Sometimes I felt as if I could throttle him, the poor old 
 wretch ! " 
 
 He used to tell this tale — " An Englishman and a 
 Frenchman had to fight a duel. That they might have 
 the better chance of missing one another, they were to fight 
 in a dark room. The Englishman fired up the chimney, 
 and, by Jove ! he brought down the Frenchman ! When 
 I tell this story in Paris — I put the Englishman up the 
 chimney ! " 
 
 Apparently he was like Douglas Jerrold in being 
 bitter of wit but not at heart : " When I was young," 
 he said of himself, " I used to say good-natured things, 
 and nobody listened to me. Now I am old I say ill- 
 natured things and everybody listens to me." " Often 
 bitter, but very kindly at heart," writes Tennyson. 
 " We have often talked of death together till I have seen 
 the tears roll down his cheeks." 
 
 " He says the most ill-natured things, and does the best," 
 says Sumner. 
 
 Of his readiness the following is a happy example : 
 A man, whom Rogers did not know, stopped him one day 
 in Piccadilly. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr Rogers ? You don't remember me, 
 sir. I had the pleasure of seeing you at Bath." 
 
 " Delighted to see you again — at Bath," was the 
 response. 
 
 Washington Irving, writing from Brighton to Moore, 
 August 14, 1824, says of Rogers, " I dined tite-a-tete with 
 him some time since, and he served up his friends as he 
 served up his fish, with a squeeze of lemon over each. 
 
 58 
 
DICKENS AND ROGERS 
 
 It was very piquante, but it rather set my teeth on edge." 
 He does not mention the fact, however, that Moore himself 
 was one of the friends so served up ! 
 
 Of his friendship with Dickens we have considerable 
 record, but the following must suffice. In Forster we find 
 a comical account of a dinner given by Dickens in April, 
 1849, when both Rogers and Jules Benedict were taken 
 suddenly but not seriously iU. The host had been dis- 
 patiating upon an atrocious pauper-farming case, and 
 was now roundly chaffed as being nearly as iniquitous and 
 a poisoner of his confiding guests. When Forster was 
 helping Rogers on with his over-shoes, for his customary 
 walk home, the poet said, " Do you know how many 
 waistcoats I wear ? Five ! Here they are ! " Wherewith 
 he displayed them. 
 
 From Albaro, Dickens writes on the ist of September, 
 1844, to Rogers : — " I wish you would come and pluck an 
 orange from the tree at Christmas time. You should walk 
 on the terrace as early in the morning as you pleased, 
 and there are brave breezy places in the neighbourhood 
 to which you could transfer those stalwart Broadstairs 
 walks of yours, and hear the sea, too, roaring in your 
 ears." 
 
 And Forster writes to Rogers from Fort House, Broad- 
 stairs, under date September 9, 1851, . . , "I am 
 staying with Dickens, who, with all his family, desire their 
 most kind remembrances to you. This place is full of 
 associations connected with you, which make it more 
 pleasant to all of us." 
 
 Rogers was not an " out-and-out " admirer of Dickens's 
 hterary work. In conversation at Broadstairs he said to 
 his nephew Henry Sharpe that he had been looking at 
 the " Christmas Carol " the night before ; "the first 
 
 59 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 half-hour was so dull it sent him to sleep, and the next 
 hour was so painful that he should be obliged to finish 
 it to get rid of the impression. He blamed Dickens's 
 style very much, and said there was no wit in putting bad 
 grammar into the mouths of all his characters, and show- 
 ing their vulgar pronunciation by spelling * are ' ' air,' a 
 horse without an h," 
 
 In Paris in 1843, Washington Irving nearly ran over his 
 old friend, " we stopped and took him in. He was on one 
 of his yearly epicurean visits to Paris, to enjoy the Italian 
 opera and other refined sources of pleasure. The hand of 
 age begins to bow him down, but his intellect is as clear 
 as ever, and his talents and taste for society in full vigour. 
 He breakfasted with us several times, and I have never 
 known him more delightful. He would sit for two or 
 three hours continually conversing, and giving anecdotes; 
 of all the conspicuous persons who have figured within 
 the last sixty years, with most of whom he had been on 
 terms of intimacy. He has refined upon the art of telhng a 
 story, until he has brought it to the most perfect simpHcity 
 where there is not a word too much or too little, and where 
 every word has its effect. His manner, too, is the most 
 quiet, natural, and unpretending that can be imagined." 
 
 At last came the end : — 
 
 " Old Sam Rogers is gone at last," records William 
 Archer Shee, " at the mature age of ninety-two. His age 
 has been a matter of speculation among his friends 
 for years, and he was as shy of alluding to it as any 
 fading beauty of the other sex. . , . My earliest recollec- 
 tions are associated with him, having in my childhood 
 enjoyed immensely, at each returning Christmas, the merry 
 juvenile parties which he used to give to his nephews 
 and nieces in St James's Place." With which pleasant 
 
 60 
 
SAMUEL ROGERS. 
 From the Drawing by George Richmond, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. 
 

THOMAS HOOD 
 
 peep into the old man's way of life, let us say " May he 
 rest in peace." 
 
 In startling contrast there stands before us now the 
 pathetic figure of Thomas Hood, a poor man but a rich 
 poet, a kindly wit and a joyous spirit, at whose door 
 poverty was ever knocking with his lean finger and whose 
 footsteps his life long were dogged by ill-health. He 
 fought a good fight and won an undying name. He was 
 bom in 1799 and died — too soon for the world — in 1845. 
 The grandiloquent Samuel Carter Hall describes him as 
 " of middle height, slender and sickly-looking, of sallow 
 complexion and plain features, quiet in expression, and 
 very rarely excited, so as to give indication of either the 
 pathos or the humour that must ever have been working 
 in his soul ! " It would be possible to crowd many pages 
 with his quips and quiddities, whims and whimsicalities, 
 but it is somewhat sad laughing at the jests of one whose 
 Ufe was so sorrowful, who wrote rubbish for bread and 
 butter, and who with half Rogers's worldly advantages 
 would, perchance, have left us more than the few lovely 
 verses we have of his. 
 
 One jest we will retail, however ; it is one of the most 
 delightful and least known of his ; this of a gentleman who 
 was drawing the long bow with regard to his shooting ; 
 said Hood, 
 
 " What he hit is history, 
 What he missed is mystery." 
 
 There was not anything in his brave life that became 
 him better than his leaving it. 
 
 In what was probably his last letter, written on March 
 24, 1845, he writes, " Still alive — but cannot last long." 
 His plucky fight for life was drawing to an end. " He 
 saw the oncoming of death with great cheerfulness," 
 
 61 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 wrote a friend, "though without anything approaching 
 to levity. Toward the end, he said, ' It's a beautiful 
 world, and since I have been lying here, I have thought 
 of it more and more ; it is not so bad, even humanly speak- 
 ing, as people would make it out. I have had some very 
 happy days while I lived in it, and I could have wished 
 to stay a httle longer. But it is all for the best, and we 
 shall all meet in a better world.' " On the first of May, 
 feehng that he was sinking, he called his family round his 
 bed, his beloved wife, his daughter, his son : and his last 
 words were, " Remember, I forgive all, all, as I hope to be 
 forgiven." He sleeps in Kensal Green Cemetery ; his 
 epitaph, " He sang ' The Song of The Shirt.' " 
 
 During his last illness, it is said that he made the follow- 
 ing gruesome jest, when his wife was making a large 
 mustard poultice for him : — " Oh, Mary, that will be a 
 great deal of mustard to a very Httle meat." 
 
 He was very friendly with Dickens, of whom he writes 
 in 1840, " Boz is a very good fellow and he and I are very 
 good friends." It was proposed to set up a monument 
 to him by public subscription. Asked to support this, 
 Dickens wrote a letter which foreshadowed his hope, 
 expressed later, that no monument should ever be raised 
 to himself : — " I have the greatest tenderness for the 
 memory of Hood, as I had for himself. But I am not very 
 favourable to posthumous memorials in the monument 
 way, and I should exceedingly regret to see any such 
 appeal as you contemplate made public. ... I think 
 that I best discharge my duty to my deceased friend, and 
 best consult the respect and love with which I remember 
 him, by declining to join in any such public endeavour. 
 
 . . I shall have a melancholy gratification in privately 
 assisting to place a simple and plain record over the 
 
 62 
 
DOUGLAS JERROLD 
 
 remains of a great writer that should be as modest as he 
 himself, . . ." 
 
 With Douglas Jerrold Dickens was upon terms of closest 
 friendship. " He was," he says, " one of the gentlest and 
 most affectionate of men. I remember very well that 
 when I first saw him, in about the year 1835, when I 
 went into his sick room in Thistle Grove, Brompton, and 
 found him propped up in a great chair, bright eyed, and 
 quick, and eager in spirit, but very lame in body, he gave 
 me an impression of tenderness. ... In the company 
 of children and young people he was particularly happy 
 ... he never was so gay, so sweet-tempered, so pleasing, 
 and so pleased as then. Among my own children I have 
 observed this many and many a time." 
 
 There was once an estrangement for some months 
 between the two, until one day they sat back to back in a 
 club dining-room : Jerrold turned round, and said, " For 
 God's sake, let us be friends again ! A life's not long 
 enough for this." 
 
 He is but a shadow of a name to this generation, a 
 ghost of a joker to whose account many jokes have been 
 credited which are neither his nor to his credit, and the 
 author of " Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures," of which he 
 himself said, *' It just shows what stuff the people will 
 swallow. I could write such rubbish as that by the 
 yard." 
 
 Douglas William Jerrold was bom in Greek Street, 
 Soho, on January 3, 1803, and died at St John's Wood, 
 June 8, 1857. He had varied experiences, spending some 
 two years as a midshipman and setthng in London in 
 1816 as apprentice to a printer in Northumberland Street, 
 Strand. But we will jump on to the year 1845, when — 
 a famous man of letters and of wit — he went to live at 
 
 63 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 West Lodge, Lower Putney Common ; first pausing to 
 gain some idea of his appearance and personality. 
 
 We have a description from a German pen of Jerrold 
 in 1855 : — " Douglas Jerrold then lived at Putney. . . . 
 His house was situated on a charming plain, upon which 
 broad-headed cattle were comfortably grazing. . . . 
 Never did I see a handsomer head on an uglier body. 
 Douglas Jerrold is small, with stooping shoulders ; but 
 the head placed upon those shoulders is truly magnifi- 
 cent. He has the head of a Jupiter on the body of a 
 Thersites. A high, broad, cheerful, arched forehead ; 
 a very fine mouth ; a well-shaped nose ; clear, heaven- 
 blue eyes. . . ." 
 
 With which we may compare this from the pen of 
 Edmund Yates : — " I had often been in his company, 
 and had heard him flash forth the biting epigram and 
 quick repartee for which in our day he has had no rival. 
 A small delicately-formed bent man, with long grey 
 hair combed back from his forehead, with grey eyes 
 deep set under penthouse brows, and a way, just as the 
 inspiration seized him, of dangling a double eyeglass, 
 which hung round his neck by a broad black ribbon : a 
 kindly man for all his bitter tongue . . . soft and easy 
 with women and children." 
 
 The study at his Putney home was a snug room : " All 
 about it are books. Crowning the shelves are Milton and 
 Shakspere. A bit of Shakspere's mulberry tree lies on 
 the mantelpiece. Above the sofa are the ' Rent Day ' 
 and * Distraining for Rent,' Wilkie's two pictures. Under 
 the two prints laughs Sir Joshua's sly ' Puck,' perched 
 upon a pulpy mushroom. . . . The furniture is simple 
 solid oak. The desk has not a speck upon it. The 
 marble shell upon which the inkstand rests has no htter 
 
 64 
 
JERROLD'S REPARTEES 
 
 in it. Various notes lie in a row between clips, on the 
 table. The paper-basket stands near the arm-chair, 
 prepared for answered letters and rejected contributions. 
 The little dog follows his master into his study, and lies 
 at his feet. 
 
 " That cottage at Putney, its garden, its mulberry 
 tree, its grass-plot, its cheery library with Douglas Jerrold 
 as the chief figure in the scene, remains as a bright and 
 most pleasant picture in our memory. He had an almost 
 reverential fondness for books, books themselves, and said 
 he could not bear to treat them, or to see them treated, 
 with disrespect. He told us it gave him pain to see them 
 turned on their faces, stretched open, or dog's-eared, or 
 carelessly flung down, or in any way misused. He told us 
 this, holding a volume in his hand with a caressing gesture, 
 as though he tended it affectionately and gratefully for 
 the pleasure it had given him." 
 
 There were many merry meetings there of merry spirits, 
 and what a sight for gods and men must have been that 
 of Dickens, Maclise, Macready, Forster, with their host 
 Jen^old, tucking in their " tuppenies" and playing joyously 
 at leap-frog ! 
 
 Various writers have tried to make excuse for the 
 severity and hurting-power of Jerrold's repartees, but 
 for our part we cannot see that any defence can be made 
 for the man who uses his gift of wit to amuse himself 
 at the expense and with the distress of those to whom 
 he professes friendship. Tale after tale is told, there is no 
 questioning their truth, of bitter, wickedly-biting jests 
 made by Jerrold upon the persons or mental qualities 
 of those whom he met. It is not to be denied that at 
 heart he was a most kindly and, in the best sense of the 
 word, charitable man, but his wit too often got the better 
 F 65 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 of his heart ; he did not count the cost to others of what 
 was mere fun to him, which he should have been able 
 to do, for a scathing repartee " shut him up " completely. 
 Even such a simple one as that of the young lady behind 
 the bar, upon whom he had been exercising his wit ; 
 " There's your grog," she said, " mind you don't fall into 
 it, httle man." 
 
 Here are a few specimens of his wit': 
 
 Heraud, the poet, enquired of Jerrold if he had seen 
 his " Descent into Hell "; said Jerrold, " I wish to 
 Heaven I had ! " 
 
 " That air always carries me away when I hear it," 
 said a bore. 
 
 " Can nobody whistle it ? " asked Jerrold. 
 
 " Orion " Home went to Australia, leaving his wife in 
 England ; he treated her, said Jerrold, with " unremitting 
 kindness." 
 
 Leigh Hunt said of him, that if he had — and he had — the 
 sting of the bee, he also had the honey. 
 
 As an example of Jerrold's kindlier wit, may be repeated 
 his answer when asked by Charles Knight to write his 
 epitaph ; " Good Knight," said Jerrold. 
 
 He had a quaint, whimsical way of putting things. One 
 bitterly cold spring night, walking home across West- 
 minster Bridge, he remarked to his companions : " I 
 blame nobody ; but they call this May ! " 
 
 Of Jerrold's real kindliness the following story is a 
 pleasant confirmation. While living at Putney he had a 
 brougham built for him. At the coachmaker's one day 
 he was looking at the immaculate varnish on the back 
 of the vehicle. 
 
 " Its pohsh is perfect now," he said, " but the urchins 
 will soon cover it with scratches." 
 
 66 
 
JERROLD'S KINDLINESS 
 
 ** But, sir, I can put on a few spikes that will keep 
 them off " 
 
 " No — to me a thousand scratches on my carriage would 
 be more welcome than one on the hand of a footsore lad, 
 to whom a stolen lift might be a godsend," 
 
 One of his less well-known accomplishments was that 
 of whistling with great sweetness. 
 
 On the 8th of June, 1857, Dickens met Jerrold at the 
 Gallery of Illustration, Regent Street — afterward bettei 
 known as German Reeds' — where they were to meet 
 W. H. Russell to advise him with regard to his lectures 
 on the War in the Crimea. " Arriving some minutes 
 before the time," Dickens related to Blanchard Jerrold, 
 " I found your father sitting alone in the haU. I sat down 
 by him in a niche on the staircase, and he told me that he 
 had been very imweU for three or four da}^. A window 
 in his study had been newly painted, and the smell of the 
 paint (he thought it must be that) had filled him with 
 nausea and turned him sick, and he felt weak and giddy, 
 through not having been able to retain any food. He 
 was a little subdued at first, and out of spirits ; but we 
 sat there half an hour talking, and when we came out 
 together he was quite himself. In the shadow I had not 
 observed him closely ; but when we got into the simshine 
 of the streets I saw that he looked ill. We were both 
 engaged to dine with Mr Russell at Greenwich, and I 
 thought him so ill that I advised him not to go . . .we 
 walked on to Covent Garden, and before we had gone 
 fifty yards he was very much better. ... It would 
 do him good to have a few quiet hours in the air, and he 
 would go on with us to Greenwich. . , . We strolled 
 through the Temple on our way to a boat ; and I have 
 a lively recollection of him, stamping about Elm Tree 
 
 67 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Court (with his hat in one hand, and the other pushing 
 his hair back), laughing in his heartiest manner at a 
 ridiculous remembrance we had in common, which I had 
 presented in some exaggerated light to divert him. We 
 found our boat, and went down the river, . . . and talked 
 all the way. . . . The dinner-party was a large one, and 
 I did not sit near him at table. But he and I had arranged, 
 before we went in to dinner, that he was to eat only of 
 some simple dish that we agreed upon, and was only to 
 drink sherry and water. We broke up very early, and before 
 I went away with Mr Leech, who was to take me to London, 
 I went round to Jerrold, and put my hand upon his shoul- 
 der, asking him how he was. He turned round to show me 
 the glass beside him, with a little wine and water in it. 'I 
 have kept to the prescription. ... I have quite got over 
 the paint, and I am perfectly well.' He was really elated 
 by the relief of having recovered, and was as quietly 
 happy as I ever saw him. We exchanged ' God bless you !' 
 and shook hands. 
 
 " I went down to Gad's Hill next morning, where he 
 was to write to me after a little while, appointing his own 
 time for coming to see me there. A week afterwards, 
 another passenger in the railway carriage in which I was 
 on my way to London Bridge, opened his morning paper, 
 and said : ' Douglas Jerrold is dead ! ' " 
 
 68 
 
XI 
 
 A GROUP OF ARTISTS 
 
 MR W. P. FRITH in his truly delightful Re- 
 miniscences tells an amusing story of some 
 of those who wiU appear in these pages. 
 Two of the best known frescoes in the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment are by Maclise, " The Death of Nelson " and " The 
 Meeting of Wellington and Blucher after the Battle of 
 Waterloo." On the invitation of the painter of them, 
 John Phillip — Phillip of Spain — Egg, and Frith went to 
 see the completed Wellington, with which they were greatly 
 struck. " I shall go and put the dashed thing I am doing 
 on the fire," exclaimed Phillip, as they walked away 
 homeward. " We didn't say half enough to him about it," 
 said Egg, " let us send him a congratulatory address — a 
 round-robin, or something." On the proposal of Frith 
 it was decided to add to the address a small gift, a silver 
 port-crayon or pencil case, and when the question arose 
 of asking others to join in with them. Frith volunteered 
 to approach Landseer, from whom he received the follow- 
 ing reply : — " Dear Frith, I have been away and unwell, 
 which partly accounts for my apparent want of attention 
 to your note, telling of the affectionate intentions towards 
 our justly-valued friend, D. Maclise. I am inclined to 
 think the committee, or whoever suggested this testi- 
 monial to D. M., would do well to pause and reconsider 
 the matter. I think the scheme out of proportion with 
 
 69 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 the gigantic achievement, and that it comes at the wrong 
 time. You may sincerely beheve in my respect and 
 admiration for his great genius, and that I as faithfully 
 appreciate the man, who is the best fellow on earth." 
 As Frith himself admits, the pencil case on one side and 
 Maclise's frescoes on the other were slightly out of propor- 
 tion, but we know that the kindly, generous Irishman did 
 not look at the affair in this light, but welcomed warmly 
 the mark of appreciation from his brothers of the palette. 
 
 Daniel M'Clise, or Maclise as he afterward wrote his 
 name, was bom in Cork on January 25, 1811, being the 
 son of a small tradesman. The first notable event of his 
 life occurred when he was fourteen years of age. Sir 
 Walter Scott was that year touring in Ireland, in company 
 of the Lockharts and Miss Edge worth, and visited Cork. 
 Maclise finding out that the famous Scotsman was calling 
 at the shop of a well-known bookseller named Bolster, 
 seized the opportunity to make a sketch of Sir Walter, 
 which he worked up at home and the next day procured 
 its exhibition in the shop, where it was noticed by the 
 great man himself. Maclise was dragged forward, and 
 Scott, astonished at the skill of the juvenile artist, signed 
 his name to the sketch. The drawing was lithographed, 
 and the copies sold brought Maclise immediate profit and 
 profitable notoriety. In July, 1827, ^e went to London, 
 entering the Royal Academy Schools, where he worked 
 with assiduity and success. 
 
 He was a tall man, over six feet in height ; his forehead 
 high, crowned with dark, glossy curls, and his eyes large 
 and expressive, the lips rather fuU. Frith describes 
 Machse as a man " delightful in every way," good-looking, 
 generous, an enthusiast in his appreciation of the work 
 of others and untouched by envy. 
 
 70 
 
AUGUSTUS L. EGG, R.A. 
 From a Sketch by W. P. Frith, R.A 
 
MACLISE 
 
 Forster waxes enthusiastic over him when writing of 
 the company that visited Dickens at Twickenham in 
 1838. " 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." 
 He goes on to mention " a quaint oddity that in him gave 
 to shrewdness itself an air of Irish simplicity," and speaks 
 of his " handsome person." Indeed, they were fine young 
 feUows all in those days, and dandies the most of them, 
 all honour to them. 
 
 In May, 1838, Maclise, then well on the road to a fame 
 of which time has somewhat dimmed the lustre, had been 
 introduced by Forster to Dickens, and the two struck up 
 an affectionate and lasting friendship. His portrait of 
 Dickens, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was ex- 
 hibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1840. It is 
 generally known that when the painting was completed 
 Dickens sent the artist a handsome cheque, which was 
 returned, accompanied by the following letter : — " My 
 dear Dickens, How could you think of sending me a cheque 
 for what was to me a matter of gratification ? I am 
 almost incUned to be offended with you. May I not be 
 permitted to give some proof of the value I attach to your 
 friendship ? I return the cheque, and regret that you 
 should have thought it necessary to send it to yours 
 faithfully, Daniel Maclise." To which Dickens responded : 
 " Do not be offended. I quite appreciate the feeling which 
 induced you to return what I sent you ; notwithstanding, 
 
 71 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 I must ask you to take it back again. If I could have 
 contemplated for an instant the selfish engrossment of so 
 much of your time and extraordinary powers, I should 
 have had no need (knowing you, I knew that well) to 
 resort to the little device I played off. I will take anything 
 else from you at any time that you will give me, any scrap 
 from your hand ; but I entreat you not to disturb this 
 matter. I am willing to be your debtor for anything 
 else in the whole wide range of your art, as you shall very 
 readily find whenever you put me to the proof." 
 
 Thackeray pronounced the portrait " perfectly amazing 
 — a looking-glass could not render a better facsimile." 
 
 Maclise died of acute pneumonia in 1870. To the very 
 last art was all in all to him, and on the day before his 
 death, which occurred on the 25th of April, he tried to 
 work, but the pencil fell from his fingers. He was buried 
 in Kensal Green Cemetery, the annual dinner of the Royal 
 Academy taking place on the same day, at which Dickens's 
 last words spoken in public were a eulogy of his friend : 
 " The gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as 
 to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the 
 frankest and largest hearted as to his peers, incapable 
 of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly sustaining the 
 true dignity of his vocation, without one grain of self- 
 ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, 
 ' in wit a man, simplicity a child.' " 
 
 Of Egg, Dickens writes, he " is an excellent fellow, 
 and full of good quahties ; I am sure a generous and 
 staunch man at heart, and a good and honourable nature." 
 Augustus Leopold Egg was born in 1816, became a student 
 at the Royal Academy in 1836 and R.A. in i860. Holman 
 Hunt describes him as " a keen reader and renderer of 
 human expression, he had distinguished himself from 
 
 72 
 
DINNER AT EGG'S 
 
 his compeers by the freshness of his pictorial dramas, so 
 that he reached at times the realm of poetic interpretation." 
 In and round about 1850 he lived in Ivy Cottage, in Black 
 Lion Lane, now Queen's Road, Bayswater, then almost 
 countrified ; the house was ancient and picturesque, 
 and was the scene of many a pleasant party and jollifica- 
 tion. Frith relates a funny tale of Mulready, who per- 
 sistently refused Egg's frequent invitations. It trans- 
 pired that he did so, because he believed that Leech in 
 his amusing caricature of the once famous Mulready 
 envelope had insinuated that the designer of it was " a 
 leech and a bloodsucker," the mistake arising from 
 Mulready 's ignorance of Leech's habit of signing his work 
 with a bottle containing a leech. The matter was ex- 
 plained, the next invitation accepted, and Mulready 
 astonished and amused Leech, with whom he became very 
 friendly, by narrating the delusion under which he had 
 laboured. 
 
 Egg was of somewhat Jewish appearance, large nose, 
 large mouth, long black hair — a regular mane, which he 
 had a habit of tossing. 
 
 Mark Lemon was a frequent guest at Egg's dinners, 
 and Frith describes him as apt to be quarrelsome when he 
 lad imbibed the amount of wine which in others conduces 
 to increased joviality. 
 
 The dining-room was long, low, and narrow, the table 
 round, the walls covered with engravings by S. W. 
 Reynolds, after the greater Reynolds, and there was a 
 first-rate cook and an excellent cellar. Let us take a peep 
 at a party whereat beside the host were Dickens, Frith, 
 Mark Lemon, Leech, and others. So well-served was 
 the banquet that Dickens proposed a vote of thanks to the 
 cook, suggesting that she should be summoned and ad- 
 
 73 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 dressed by him. " Like most good cooks," said the host, 
 " she has an uncertain temper, and I shouldn't advise 
 you to try it — she wouldn't understand your ' appropriate 
 language ' as meant seriously, and she might resent it in 
 her own language, which, I believe, is sometimes described 
 by her kitchen companions as ' bad language.' " 
 
 Lemon topped this with a serio-comic story of a ferocious 
 cook of a friend of his, with whom he had a terrific 
 encounter. 
 
 Books, pictures, painters, actors were in turn discussed. 
 Of Charles Kean, Dickens acutely said : "If you can 
 imagine port wine without its flavour, you have a fair 
 comparison between the elder Kean and his son." 
 
 After dessert, at Forster's request. Leech sang a song, 
 probably his favourite " King Death," written by Barry 
 Cornwall, which he used to sing with pathetic solemnity, 
 arousing, usually, uproarious laughter. Here are a few 
 lines : 
 
 " King Death was a rare old fellow. 
 He sat where no sun could shine. 
 And he lifted his hands so yellow 
 To drink of his coal-black wine. 
 Hurra ! for the coal-black wine ! " 
 
 He had a deep, sympathetic voice, and after listening 
 to him one time, Jerrold remarked : " I say. Leech, if 
 you had the same opportunity of exercising your voice 
 as you have of using your pencil, how it would draw ! " 
 
 At Egg's, Dickens interrupted the song with: "There, that 
 will do. If you go on any longer you will make me cry." 
 
 Then followed a story by Leech, a mild gamble at a 
 quaint game called " Races," at which Dickens lost all his 
 loose silver and was not allowed to stake his watch and 
 chain, as he solemnly proposed to do, a visit to Egg's 
 "workshop" to inspect his "goods," and then the host, 
 
 74 
 
AN EGG ANECDOTE 
 
 in reply to a query from Dickens, told the following 
 strange story (we quote Mr Frith) of " a pencil drawing 
 of great beauty, representing a handsome young man — 
 the head and bust only — " which hung in the dining- 
 room, " and below the drawing was a small piece of dis- 
 coloured linen with an inscription." 
 
 " What is the history of this ? " asked Dickens. " Can 
 you tell us ? Who is this good-looking young fellow ? 
 and what is the meaning of this discoloured stuff, which 
 looks as if it had been white at one time ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Egg ; " it was white at one time, but 
 that time is long ago. Sit down all of you, and I will 
 tell you about it. The room you have just left, where 
 I work, was built by Reynolds, the engraver, about 1815, 
 or thereabouts. A boy named Cousins was apprenticed 
 to him about that time to learn the art of engraving. 
 The boy's parents were very poor, and the lad had been 
 their main support by making pencil likenesses, which he 
 executed with wonderful skill. This practice with the 
 pencil was of great service to him in learning the different 
 processes of mezzotinto engraving, and he advanced very 
 rapidly in his new art, to the great satisfaction of his 
 master, with whom he became a favourite pupil, and 
 eventually a very efficient assistant. One day — in 1817, 
 I think, but am not sure about the date — a young man, 
 dressed in a coat with a fur collar, and the many capes 
 j in favour with the youth of that period — a handsome, 
 gipsy-like fellow — called upon Reynolds, and was shown 
 into the engraving-room. After the usual greetings, 
 Reynolds said, * Now, you must let me have your hkeness. 
 I have a lad here who will take you in no time.' ' Well,' 
 said the young man, ' if he is as rapid as that,' or some- 
 thing like it, ' he may try his hand ; but five-and-twenty 
 
 75 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 minutes are about all I can give him.' ' Sit down there, 
 then,' said Reynolds. ' Now, Cousins, my boy, do your 
 best.' In less than half an hour the drawing was made 
 from the features, but the hair was still unfinished ; except 
 that, the likeness was perfect. ' Give him five minutes 
 more for the hair.' ' Five minutes, and no more,* said 
 the sitter, taking out his watch. The hair was done, and 
 the gipsy-like-looking man shook hands with the boy, 
 patted him upon the head, and went away. ' Well 
 done, Cousins, my boy. Now, do you know who it was 
 you have been drawing ? ' ' No, sir.' ' That young 
 fellow was Edmund Kean, who took the town by storm 
 in Shylock the other night.' And," concluded Egg, 
 " the piece of linen affixed to the drawing was torn from 
 the breast of Kean's shirt by himself in one of his storms 
 of passion in Sir Giles Overreach ; and the lad Cousins 
 is the well-known engraver and Academician." 
 
 Egg was a capital host, and amongst his gifts was a 
 quiet fund of dry humour. He showed himself superior to 
 many of his contemporary artists by his early and en- 
 thusiastic recognition of the work of Holman Hunt, which 
 differed so greatly in aim from his own. 
 
 The following quaint anecdote is related of him as an 
 amateur actor : — 
 
 In Lytton's " Not So Bad as We Seem," Egg was " dis- 
 covered " when the curtain rose, and thus soliloquised : 
 " Years ago, when under happier circumstances — " which 
 the actor invariably rendered, " Here's a go, etc." 
 
 Holman Hunt carried the news of his death to Wilkie 
 Collins, who was overwhelmed by it, and said : " And so 
 I shall never any more shake that dear hand and look 
 into that beloved face ! And, Holman, all we can resolve 
 is to be closer together as more precious in having had his 
 
 76 
 
THE LANDSEERS 
 
 affection." To Hunt, Dickens wrote of Egg, referring 
 chiefly to their dramatic travels : " The dear fellow was 
 always one of the most popular of the party, always 
 sweet-tempered, humorous, conscientious, thoroughly 
 good, and thoroughly beloved." 
 
 We must not stop with the Landseers for long ; we have 
 so many friends to make ; art is long, but books should 
 not be overlong. They were three : Thomas, born in 
 1795, Charles in 1799, and Edwin Henry in 1802, the sons 
 of the well-known engraver John Landseer. Thomas, 
 too, " whom everyone quite loves for his sweet nature " 
 writes Dickens, was an engraver, helping to popularise 
 many of his youngest brother's famous pictures ; he was 
 a big, genial, stout man, afflicted with deafness, which 
 he asserted to have been the result of standing too near 
 to a cannon when it was fired. Once at an evening party 
 he gathered from the clapping of hands that he could see 
 that the song he had not heard had been a success ; he 
 approached the singer, and made this appalling request : 
 " That must have been a delightful song of yours ; would 
 you mind singing a verse or two into my trumpet ? " 
 Charles and Edwin were both shght, active men, but the 
 former, when not making puns, was apt to be brusque, 
 whereas Sir Edwin was a most courtly person, and spoke 
 with a drawl, natural or acquired. A daughter of Mr 
 Frith describes him thus : "he was small and compact, 
 and wore a beautiful shirt with a frill in which was placed a 
 glittering diamond brooch or pin, I do not know which ; and 
 he looked to me like one of his own most good-humoured 
 white poodles. He was curled and scented and exquisitely 
 turned out." The same writer tells a comic story of him : 
 he was walking one day with a certain duchess through a 
 glen where workmen had been making extensive altera- 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 tions in the face of nature ; " I can't think how it was 
 managed," said he ; " oh, it was quite easy," was her 
 reply, startHng from so mild mannered a personage, 
 " it was a mere matter of damming and blasting." 
 
 A quaint story is told of him when he was " visitor " 
 at the R. A. Life School. His father — John Landseer — 
 came in one night and found his son reading — 
 
 " Why don't you draw ? " asked the old man. 
 
 " Don't feel inclined," the son shouted down his father's 
 ear trumpet. 
 
 " What's the book ? " 
 
 " Oliver Twist." 
 
 " Is it about art ? " 
 
 " No ; it's about Ohver Twist." 
 
 " Let me look at it. Ha ! It's some of Dickens's 
 nonsense, I see. You'd much better draw than waste 
 your time upon such stuff as that." 
 
 When Edwin proposed that Sydney Smith should sit to 
 him for his portrait, he met with the retort : " Is thy 
 servant a dog that he should do this thing ? " 
 
 He could work almost as well with his left as with his 
 right hand. He had the faculty of imitating the cries of 
 animals with marvellous truth, and the tale is told of his 
 approaching, on all fours, a savage dog, which was so 
 terrified at his snarls and growls that he snapped his chain, 
 leaped over the wall, and appeared no more. 
 
 We will now turn to some of the artists whose connection 
 with Dickens was a matter of business as well as of friend- 
 ship, at any rate in most cases ; we mean to those who were 
 associated with him as illustrators of his work. 
 
 With George Cruikshank we need not stay long, for he 
 can have had little if any affinity with Dickens. He was 
 born in 1792, and lived on until 1878, and, no doubt, 
 
 78 
 
SIR EDWIN LANDSEER, R.A. 
 Frovi the Sketch by Sir F. Grant, P.R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. 
 
CRUIKSHANK 
 
 accounted for his length of years by the strength of his 
 teetotalism. In " Leaves from a Life," a highly enter- 
 taining work, we read, " a most eccentric couple whom 
 I, at any rate, hated, were Mr and Mrs George Cruikshank ; 
 but I have never seen any woman worship her husband 
 as did Mrs George. . . . she would never allow anyone 
 to speak if George wanted to lay down the law on any 
 particular subject, and she invariably took care that some 
 time or other during the evening he should be encouraged 
 to sing, or else to give ' in costume ' the moving ballad of 
 ' Lord Bateman.' As the costume consisted always of 
 my very best hat and red feather worn rakishly on the 
 side of his head, and my sacred red ' opera cloak ' flung 
 over one shoulder, I could scarcely retain my rage, especi- 
 ally as he had no more idea of singing than a crow, and 
 he used to declaim the ' Ballad ' hopping round and round 
 the inner drawing-room, with Mrs Cruikshank following 
 him with admiring eyes and leading and enforcing applause 
 when he stopped for an instant in his wild career." 
 
 He apparently went entirely mad over the drink 
 question, of which, as an example, may be recorded an 
 encounter between him and Mrs Lynn Linton : " one 
 evening," she relates, "we had been to Westland Marston's, 
 and we walked home together. On the way we passed 
 ' a group of rowdy drunken men and women. Suddenly 
 George stopped, and, taking hold of my arm, said solemnly : 
 " * You are responsible for those poor wretches.' 
 " I answered that I did not exactly see this, and dis- 
 claimed any share in their degradation. But he insisted 
 ,. on it, and hung those ruined souls like infernal bells about 
 I my neck, tinkHng out my own damnation, because at 
 supper I had drunk a glass of champagne from which he 
 had vainly tried to dissuade me ! " 
 
 79 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 At an evening party at Dickens's, Cruikshank went up to 
 the wife of a celebrated artist, who was innocently drinking 
 a glass of sherry, which he brusquely took away, ex- 
 claiming : " You dare not take it, you must not take it ! " 
 Luckily Dickens noted the performance ; clutching Cruik- 
 shank by the arm, he said : " How dare you touch it ! Just 
 because you've been a drunken old reprobate all your 
 life, there's no reason why she shouldn't drink a glass of 
 wine. Give it back at once." 
 
 He seems, indeed, to have made a terrible nuisance of his 
 hobby — we find Shirley Brooks noting in his diary : " Old 
 George Cruikshank called on me ... to express his 
 regret, or rather to talk about himself and end with a 
 tea-total moral, which I snubbed. Never cared for this 
 man, and yet he is a wondrous artist in a limited way." 
 
 Jerrold, meeting him after his conversion to the water 
 cult, said : " Now, George, remember that water is good 
 anywhere — except on the brain." The jest contained wise 
 advice by which the receiver of it did not profit. 
 
 Hablot Knight Browne, best known as " Phiz," was a 
 man much more after Dickens's heart. He was the de- 
 scendant of an exiled Huguenot, named Simon Brunet, 
 and was bom on July 12, 1815, in Kennington Lane, the 
 ninth son of his father. He was apprenticed to Finden, 
 the engraver, but he disliked the mechanical work. His 
 friendship with Dickens commenced with " Pickwick," 
 and it is related that the rejected Thackeray carried to 
 Browne the news that the latter had been selected for 
 the work, the two celebrating the occasion at a tavern 
 with sausages and stout. He does not, however, seem 
 to have been a very " social " man, but rather reserved, 
 and latterly to have grown out of touch with Dickens. 
 " I was about the last of those he knew in early days 
 
 80 
 
" PHIZ " 
 
 with whom Dickens fell out," he said to Mr Arthur AUchin, 
 " and considering the grand people he had around him, 
 and the compliments he perpetually received, it is a 
 wonder we remained friends so long." 
 
 Later still, writing to one of his sons about the illus- 
 trations to " A Tale of Two Cities," the last work of 
 Dickens for which he made the drawings, he says : " A 
 rather curious thing happened with this book : Watts 
 Phillips the dramatist hit upon the very same identical 
 plot ; they had evidently both of them been to the same 
 source in Paris for their story. Watts' play came out 
 with great success, with stunning climax, at about the 
 time of Dickens's sixth number. The public saw that 
 they were identically the same story, so Dickens shut up 
 at the ninth ^ number instead of going on to the eighteenth 
 as usual. All this put Dickens out of temper, and he 
 squabbled with me amongst others, and I never drew 
 another line for him." 
 
 He died at Hove in 1882. 
 
 He was for long connected with Punch, beginning 
 to work for it in 1842, the second year of its life, and drew 
 its second wrapper. Even after his illness in 1861 he 
 continued to work for it, drawing with the pencil tied 
 to his fingers. 
 
 Of the eariier and happier days of his dealings with 
 Dickens, we have some glimpses, which are also inter- 
 esting in that they bring home to us the difference in 
 travelling in those days and these. In the summer of 
 1837, h^ ^^^ Dickens and his wife went for a ten days' trip 
 abroad, landing at Calais on July 2. Dickens writes to 
 Forster : "we have arranged for a post-coach to take us 
 to Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp, and a hundred other places, 
 
 ^ Actually the eighth number. 
 C'> 81 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 that I cannot recollect now and couldn't spell if I did." 
 Then in February of the succeeding year he accompanied 
 Dickens to Yorkshire, in search of " local colour " for 
 Dotheboys' Hall. Dickens writes to his wife of this 
 journey : " As we came further north the mire grew deeper. 
 About eight o'clock it began to fall heavily, and, as we 
 crossed the wild heaths hereabout, there was no vestige 
 of a track. The man kept on well, however, and at eleven 
 we reached a bare place with a house standing alone in the 
 midst of a dreary moor. ... I was in a perfect agony 
 of apprehension, for it was fearfully cold, and there was 
 no outward sign of anybody being up in the house. 
 But to our great joy we discovered a comfortable room, 
 with drawn curtains and a most blazing lire. In half 
 an hour they gave us a smoking supper and a bottle of 
 mulled port (in which we drank your health), and then 
 we retired to a ouple of capital bedrooms, in each of 
 which there was a rousing fire halfway up the chimney. . . 
 We have had for breakfast, toast, cakes, a Yorkshire pie, 
 a piece of beef about the size and much the shape of my 
 portmanteau, tea, coffee, ham, and eggs." 
 
 We may take this opportunity of expressing the opinion 
 that Dickens has scarcely received sufficient credit as a 
 writer of admirable letters : a department of literature in 
 which he is amongst the great. 
 
 John Leech must have been a man of singular and 
 striking charm ; all men and women seem to have had a 
 kind word to say for him. He was born in 1817, his 
 father being the proprietor of a coffee-house on Ludgate 
 Hill, and was educated at the Charterhouse, where began 
 his life-long friendship with Thackeray, who often told of 
 Leech's arrival at the school, a small boy of seven, in little 
 blue jacket and high-buttoned trousers, and of his being 
 
 62 
 
JOHN LEECH 
 
 set upon a table and being made to sing. Leech's mother 
 took a room in a house from which she could overlook 
 the school and watch her son playing his games. Later 
 he became a medical student, one of his comrades being 
 Albert Smith, but res angustce made him take to drawing 
 for a livelihood. When nineteen years old, on the death 
 of Seymour, he offered himself, unsuccessfully it need 
 scarcely be recorded, as illustrator of " Pickwick," with 
 the author of which he was to become so intimate. 
 
 Leech in 1838 is thus pictured by Henry Vizetelly : 
 He was " a good-looking young fellow, though somewhat 
 of the Dundreary type — tall and slim, with glossy brown 
 hair negligently arranged in the then prevailing fashion, 
 and the luxuriant whiskers," also the mode of the moment. 
 
 Leech used to live in a terrace of three or four houses 
 that was just beyond the turning called Wright's Lane, 
 in Kensington, and there he died. A girl-friend describes 
 him as " tall and blue-eyed, irritable and energetic," 
 but it would be nearer the truth to substitute for " irrit- 
 able," nervous. Mrs Leech was a pretty, early- Victorian 
 little woman, who often made her appearance in her 
 husband's drawings ; a quiet, Martha-like housewife, who 
 scarcely realised, perhaps, how great a part she played 
 in her " man's " life. There was much of romance 
 in the way he met and wooed her. One day, in 1843, 
 he passed a bewitching young lady in the street, was 
 bewitched, discreetly followed her home, hunted up 
 her name in the directory, contrived to obtain an intro- 
 duction to her, wooed and won her. Thus, in this 
 highly-romantic way Miss Annie Eaton became Mrs John 
 Leech, and appeared again and again in his Punch 
 pictures as one of the " plump young beauties " whom 
 Thackeray admired. 
 
 83 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Dean Hole, who first met Leech in 1858, thus describes 
 him : " He was very hke my idea of him, only ' more so.' 
 A slim, elegant figure, over six feet in height, with a grand 
 head, on which nature had written ' gentleman ' — with 
 wonderful genius in his ample forehead ; wonderful 
 penetration, observation, humour, in his blue-gray Irish 
 eyes ; and wonderful sweetness, sympathy and mirth 
 about his lips, which seemed to speak in silence." 
 
 Du Maurier describes him as " the most charming 
 companion conceivable, having intimately known so 
 many important and celebrated people, and liking to speak 
 of them. . . . He was tall, thin, and graceful, extremely 
 handsome, of the higher Irish type, with dark hair and 
 whiskers and complexion, and very light greyish-blue eyes ; 
 but the expression of his face was habitually sad, even 
 when he smiled." 
 
 One of the neatest stories of Leech's " good things " 
 is this : on one occasion while drawing the illustrations for 
 some of Albert Smith's books, artist and author were 
 leaving the latter's house together, when a small urchin 
 jeeringly read out the inscription on the brass door-plate : 
 
 " Ho, yus ! Mister Albert Smith, M.R.C.S., Surgin 
 Dentist ! " 
 
 " Good boy," said Leech, " here's a penny for you ; 
 now go and insult somebody else." 
 
 On another occasion, the joke was on Leech, who, indeed, 
 does not seem to have been a maker but more an illus- 
 trator of jests. He and some friends were visiting a 
 waxworks show, and Leech, looking at a lean representa- 
 tion of George IV, exclaimed : "I thought George IV 
 was a fat man." " Did yer ? " retorted the irritated 
 showman, " Did yer ? Yer wouldn't be a fat man neither 
 if you'd been kep without vittles so long as him ! " 
 
 84 
 
JOHN LEECH. 
 
 From the Dmzving by Sii- J. E. Millais, Bart., P.R.A., in the National 
 
 Portrait Gallery. Photogiaph by Emery Walker. 
 
THACKERAY AND LEECH 
 
 When Thackeray died, in 1863, Leech said: "I saw 
 the remains of the poor dear fellow, and, I assure you, 
 I can hardly get over it. A happy or a merry Christmas 
 is out of the question." On hearing of his death. Leech 
 said to a colleague on Punch : " I feel somehow I shan't 
 survive him long, and I shouldn't much care either, if 
 it were not for my family." 
 
 And when Leech himself was no more, Thackeray's 
 daughter, Mrs Ritchie (now Lady Ritchie) exclaimed : 
 " How happy my father will be to meet him." 
 
 Punch's epitaph on him was " to know him well was 
 to love him dearly." He was buried close to Thackeray 
 at Kensal Green, among the pall bearers being Mark 
 Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, Horace Mayhew, 
 Sir John Tenniel, Sir Francis Cowley Bumand, and Sir 
 John Everett Millais. 
 
 85 
 
XII 
 
 THACKERAY 
 
 THACKERAY and Dickens knew and esteemed 
 each other, but there can be no doubt that 
 there was not anything of really intimate 
 friendship between them. It will be sufficient, therefore, 
 in these pages to show briefly the points and occasions 
 of contact between the two. Thackeray was born in 
 1811 at Calcutta, and, as we have seen, while at the 
 Charterhouse began his friendship with John Leech ; 
 also, as we have seen, he first met Dickens in the " Pick- 
 wick " days at Fumival's Inn. We hear — briefly — of 
 Thackeray's occasional appearances at Dickens's house 
 for theatrical and other entertainments, and on October 
 13, 1855, Dickens took the chair at a dinner given in the 
 London Tavern to Thackeray on his departure to pay 
 his second visit to America, Of which occasion it may 
 be noted, as indicating the troubles that meet even such 
 vagabondish historians as ourselves, that one chronicler 
 says Dickens surpassed himself in his speech, another 
 states that he was not very happy ; one notes that 
 Thackeray was not very good, another would have us 
 believe that he excelled himself. So many listeners so 
 many opinions, apparently. 
 
 Dickens observed and recorded Thackeray's fondness 
 for children : " he had a particular delight in boys, and an 
 excellent way with them. I remember his once asking me, 
 
 86 
 
THACKERAY 
 
 with fantastic gravity, when he had been to Eton, where 
 my eldest boy then was, whether I felt as he did in regard 
 of never seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give 
 him a sovereign." 
 
 In the summer of 1858, Thackeray and Dickens were 
 entangled in an unfortunate squabble arising out of a 
 foohsh article in Town Talk, written by Edmund Yates. 
 Indeed, in some of its sentences rather more than foohsh, 
 as for example : " No one succeeds better than Mr 
 Thackeray in cutting his coat according to his cloth. 
 Here he flattered the aristocracy ; but when he crossed 
 the Atlantic George Washington became the idol of his 
 worship." Yates, himself, admitted the " siUiness and 
 bad taste " of the article, which annoyed Thackeray 
 the more, for he thought it an invasion on the privacy 
 of intercourse at the Garrick Club, of which both were 
 members, as also was Dickens. He promptly made matters 
 worse by a strong letter to the dehnquent, who went to 
 Dickens for advice, and the battle of the giants — with 
 Tom Thumb in between — began in earnest. Thackeray's 
 next step was to appeal to the Club committee, with the 
 result that at the general meeting, in spite of a spirited 
 defence by Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Yates was con- 
 demned to banishment from the Club unless he tendered 
 an ample apology. This resulted in Yates's retirement, 
 and in an estrangement between Thackeray and Dickens, 
 which did not come to an end until a week before the death 
 of the former in 1863. The two shook hands and " made 
 it up " at the Athenaeum. 
 
 To the Cornhill Magazine for February, 1864, Dickens 
 contributed a fine eulogy of his dead friend and rival : 
 " No one can be surer than I of the greatness and goodness 
 of his heart. . . . The last words he corrected in print 
 
 87 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 were ' And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss.' 
 God grant that on that Christmas Eve when he laid his 
 head back on his pillow and threw up his arms as he was 
 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, undis- 
 turbed, and to all appearance asleep." 
 
 Which may fitly be followed by lines written by 
 Thackeray of Dickens : 
 
 " Have you read Dickens ? O ! it is charming ! 
 brave Dickens ! It has some of his prettiest touches — 
 those inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great 
 man of him ; and the reading of the book has done 
 another author a great deal of good. In the first place 
 it pleases the other author to see that Dickens, who has 
 left off alluding to the A's works, has been copying the 
 O. A., and greatly simpHfying his style, and overcoming 
 the use of fine words. By this the pubHc will be the 
 gainer and David Copperfield will be improved by taking 
 a lesson from Vanity Fair." 
 
 88 
 
\V. M. THACKERAY. 
 From a Sketch by D. Maclise, R.A, 
 
tyt 
 
XIII 
 NORTHWARD HO ! 
 
 OUR stage has now become fairly crowded with 
 principal figures ; it is time that the action of 
 the piece proceeded, though, indeed, our plot 
 is but loosely jointed and our scenario most vague. 
 
 There are events in the year 1841 which have claims 
 upon our attention. We will begin with a minor matter. 
 
 On the 2ist of January, 1841, Macready called upon 
 Dickens, and the two went on together to call on Rogers. 
 He relates that he asked " Boz " to spare the life of Little 
 Nell, and " observed that he was cruel. He blushed, 
 and men who blush are said to be either proud or cruel ; 
 he is not proud, and therefore — or, as Dickens added — 
 the axiom is false." The next day he found at home 
 a note from Dickens with a forthcoming number of 
 Master Humphrey's Clock, in which "The Old Curiosity 
 Shop " was published. " I saw one print in it of the 
 dear dead child that gave a dead chill through my blood. 
 I dread to read it, but I must get it over. ... I have 
 never read printed words that gave me so much pain. I 
 could not weep for some time. Sensation, sufferings have 
 returned to me, that are terrible to awaken : it is real to 
 me ; I cannot criticise." A little girl of his own, three 
 years of age, had died less than a year before. 
 
 Then in March, so Forster records, Dickens received 
 a letter from Lord Jeffrey, in Edinburgh, in which he 
 
 89 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 declared that there had been " nothing so good as Nell 
 since Cordelia " ! With this amazing piece of criticism 
 came the information that there was a desire in Edinburgh 
 that he should pay that town a visit. Dickens had been 
 contemplating a trip to Ireland, but this he now rejected 
 in favour of Northward Ho ! Jeffrey paid a visit to London 
 early in April, but a gloom was cast over the festivities 
 by the news of the death of Wilkie, which Dickens could 
 scarce bring himself to realise : " my heart assures me 
 Wilkie liveth," he said, " he is the sort of man who will 
 be very old when he dies." 
 
 Wilkie we meet at the Nickleby dinner-celebration 
 at the Albion, in Aldersgate Street, on October 5, 1839. 
 Of the party were Talfourd, Maclise, Macready, and 
 Forster, who tells us that Wilkie " made a speech as good 
 as his pictures," touching in quaint and homely language 
 upon Dickens's genius. 
 
 Sir David Wilkie, whose works have immortalised 
 himself and whose death inspired one of Turner's greatest 
 works, was born in Fifeshire in 1785, coming to London 
 twenty years later. He will appear no more in these 
 pages and makes no great figure in the life of Dickens, 
 so we must be content with obtaining a passing glimpse 
 of him as he appeared to some of his friends. C. R. 
 Leslie says : " The little peculiarities of his character, as 
 they all arose from the best intentions, rather endeared 
 him to his friends than otherwise. He was a modest man, 
 and had no wish to attract attention by eccentricity ; 
 and indeed all his oddity, and he was in many things very 
 odd, arose from an extreme desire to be exactly like 
 other people." 
 
 Jerdan describes him as " tall and slightly gauche, 
 he was frank and straightforward, and open as the day. 
 
 90 
 
I 
 
 WILKIE 
 
 There was, indeed, a simplicity in his character which 
 tended to make society his friends. . . . He was also 
 rather grave, or undemonstrative in his demeanour ; and 
 even when he appeared at evening parties he might have 
 been mistaken for a Dominie Samson. Yet sometimes 
 Sir David would astonish his younger friends by a specimen 
 of a Scottish dance, a reminiscence of his earlier flings — 
 double quick, over the buckle, and I know not what other 
 trange frisks and capering vagaries." 
 
 E. M. Ward speaks of him as " always wrapped up as 
 if suffering from imperfect circulation ; generally two 
 coats on while in the house — very neat in his person : 
 he painted in a room looking out on the Kensington Road 
 — he was then living on the right-hand side of the way, 
 opposite Lower Phillimore Place, some distance beyond 
 the church. ... I heard Wilkie make his last speech 
 at a dinner at the Royal Academy at the end of the 
 exhibition, previously to his journey to the East, where 
 he died : * it was a very strange one for a Scotchman, 
 as he said that the Scotch owed everything to the English. 
 I remember the following sentences : ' Where we had 
 sheep-walks ye gave us roads ; where we had kilts ye gave 
 us breeks.' David Roberts growled out, ' Hoot, mon ! 
 they didna' give us brains.' " 
 
 It was not in, but on his way home from a tour in the 
 East that Wilkie died on board the Oriental. The ship 
 had just left Gibraltar and immediately put back, but, 
 permission being refused to land the body, the burial 
 took place at sea. 
 
 " What a genius was in this Wilkie," Carlyle writes 
 in his Journal, " a great broad energy of humour and 
 sympathy ; a real painter in his way, alone among us 
 
 ^ But see below. 
 91 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 since Hogarth's time — reflected with sorrow that the 
 man was dead, that I had seen him with indifference, 
 without recognition, while he hved. Poor Wilkie ! A 
 very stunted, timidly proud, uninviting, unproductive- 
 looking man. ... I saw Wilkie and did not know him. 
 One should have his eyes opener." 
 
 But before we go North with Dickens we will make 
 the acquaintance of " that bright old man " Jeffrey, as 
 Dr John Brown called him. Francis Jeffrey, Lord 
 Jeffrey, was bom in 1773, and his fame chiefly rests upon 
 the critical and other articles which he wrote in the 
 Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders 
 in 1802, and which he edited from 1803 to 1829. 
 
 Two visitors to him in 1838 have left us their impres- 
 sions, and once again we find that opinions do differ in a 
 manner that sometimes is almost incredible. 
 
 Carlyle seems to have been disappointed : " My 
 esteem for Jeffrey," he says, " could not hide from me 
 that at bottom our speech was, as I said, clatter. In 
 fact, he is becoming an amiable old fribble, very cheerful, 
 very heartless, very forgettable and tolerable." 
 
 Charles Sumner stayed with him at Craig Crook Castle, 
 and records : " never have I heard anyone express himself 
 with such grace, beauty, precision, and variety of words 
 as did Jeffrey . . . superlatively eminent as a converser, 
 — light, airy, poetical, argumentative, fantastical, and yet 
 full of the illustrations of literature and history. . . . 
 Enghsh did, indeed, fall mended from his lips. Words 
 the most apt, and yet out of ordinary reach, came at 
 his bidding, like well-trained servants. He spoke of 
 anciently passing along the streets of Edinburgh, and 
 having water ejaculated upon his head ... Jeffrey against 
 all the world ! " 
 
 92 
 
LORD JEFFREY 
 
 Of his real good-heartedness a good example is his 
 letter to Moore, when, in 1819, the poet's finances were 
 at a low ebb : "I cannot from my heart," writes the 
 critic, " resist adding another word. I have heard of 
 yonr misfortunes and of the noble way you bear them. 
 Is it very impertinent to say that I have ^^500 entirely 
 at your service, which you may repay when you please ; 
 and as much more, which I can advance upon any reason- 
 able security of repayment in seven years. Perhaps it 
 is very unpardonable in me to say this ; but upon my 
 honour, I would not make you the offer, if I did not feel 
 that I would accept it without scruple from you." This 
 from the man whose caustic and unjustifiable criticism 
 had in past days led to an " affair of honour " between 
 these two, which only just did not come off, ending in 
 farce. It is characteristic of both men that, while their 
 seconds were making the final arrangements on the field 
 of battle, they strolled up and down together, chatting 
 in most friendly spirit. 
 
 When one complained to Sydney Smith that Jeffrey had 
 irritably damned the North Pole when that subject was 
 introduced, he promptly and sympathizingly remarked : 
 " I've heard him speak disrespectfully of the equator." 
 
 He died in 1850. 
 
 " Poor dear Jeffrey ! " writes Dickens of the event, 
 " I . . . was so stunned by the announcement . . . 
 I had a letter from him in extraordinary good spirits 
 within this week or two ... I say nothing of his wonder- 
 ful abilities and great career, but he was a most affectionate 
 and devoted friend to me ; and though no man could wish 
 to live and die more happily, so old in years and yet so 
 young in faculties and sympathies, I am very, very deeply 
 grieved for his loss." 
 
 93 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Mr and Mrs Dickens arrived in Edinburgh on June 23, 
 and promptly proceeded to sight-see. Among the first 
 people they met was Professor Wilson, " a tall, burly, hand- 
 some man of eight-and-fifty, with a gait like O'Connell's, 
 the bluest eye you can imagine, and long hair " — 
 John Wilson, known the world over as " Christopher 
 North." Dickens gives a wonderful word-picture of 
 him, which is quoted in the pages of Forster. The public 
 dinner of welcome took place on Friday, June 25, with 
 Wilson, vice Lord Jeffrey indisposed, occupying the chair. 
 The scene was brilliant, the room crammed, and Dickens 
 met with an enthusiastic reception, which did not, how- 
 ever, scare him out of his self-possession. The toasts 
 entrusted to him were : " Wilson and Scottish Literature," 
 and the " Memory of Wilkie." 
 
 He was also accorded the freedom of the city. 
 
 On a later day, they drove out to Lord Jeffrey's place, 
 Craig Crook, three miles away ; indeed, their visit to 
 Edinburgh was a whirl of pleasure and triumph, and we 
 hear of Dickens sighing for " Devonshire Terrace and 
 Broadstairs, for battledore and shuttlecock." 
 
 After Edinburgh, a trip to the Highlands, and " so 
 home." 
 
 94 
 
XIV 
 AMERICA AND ELSEWHERE 
 
 WHEN Dickens was known to be contemplating 
 a trip to America, said Fonblanque : " Why, 
 aren't there disagreeable people enough to 
 describe in Blackburn or Leeds ? " 
 
 In January, 1842, Mr and Mrs Dickens sailed for 
 America in the good ship Britannia of the Cunard Line — 
 Captain Hewett in command — returning in July. It is 
 not within the scope of this work to detail the events of 
 that eventful trip, which have been so well and fully told 
 in the pages of Forster, but rather to take the opportunity 
 of meeting some of Dickens's American friends. 
 
 First, Washington Irving, to whom he writes from Wash- 
 ington, on March 21 : " Wherever you go, God bless you ! 
 What pleasure I have had in seeing you and talking with 
 you, I will not attempt to say. I shall never forget it 
 as long as I live." From New York, Dickens writes to 
 Forster : " Washington Irving is a great fellow. We have 
 laughed most heartily together. He is just the man he 
 ought to be." It was in New York the two first met 
 in the flesh, in the spirit and on paper they had met 
 before. 
 
 A letter, says Irving in 1841, " from that glorious fellow 
 Dickens (Boz), in reply to the one I wrote, expressing my 
 heartfelt delight with his writings, and my yearnings 
 towards himself. See how completely we sympathize in 
 
 95 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 feeling : ' My dear Sir, There is no man in the world who 
 could have given me the heart-felt pleasure you have, 
 by your kind note. . . . There is no living writer, and 
 there are very few among the dead, whose approbation 
 I should feel so proud to earn. And with everything 
 you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts, 
 and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say 
 so. If you could know how earnestly I write this, you 
 would be glad to read it — as I hope you will be, faintly 
 guessing at the warmth of the hand I autobiographically 
 hold out to you over the broad Atlantic. 
 
 " ' I wish I could find in your welcome letter some hint 
 of an intention to visit England. I can't. I have held 
 it at arm's length, and taken a bird's-eye view of it, after 
 reading it a great many times, but there is no greater 
 encouragement in it this way than in a microscopic 
 inspection. I should love to go with you — as I have gone, 
 God knows how often — into Little Britain, and East- 
 cheap, and Green Arbour Court, and Westminster Abbey, 
 I should like to travel with you, outside the last of the 
 coaches, down to Bracebridge Hall, It would make 
 my heart glad to compare notes with you about that 
 shabby gentleman in the oilcloth hat and red nose, who 
 sat in the nine-cornered back parlour of the Masons' 
 Arms ; and about Robert Preston, and the tallow- 
 chandler's widow, whose sitting-room is second nature to 
 me ; and all about those delightful places and people 
 that I used to walk about (with) and dream of in the 
 day-time, when a very small and not over-particularly- 
 taken-care-of boy, . . . 
 
 " ' I have been so accustomed to associate you with my 
 pleasantest and happiest thoughts, and with my leisure 
 hours, that I rush at once into full confidence with you, 
 
 q6 
 
I 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVlNC 
 
 and fall, as it were naturally, and by the very laws of 
 gravity, into your open arms. Questions come thronging 
 to my pen as to the lips of people who meet after long 
 hoping to do so. I don't know what to say first, or what 
 to leave unsaid, and am constantly disposed to break off 
 and tell you again how glad I am this moment has arrived. 
 
 " ' My dear Washington Irving, I cannot thank you 
 enough for your cordial and generous praise, or tell you 
 what deep and lasting gratification it has given me. I 
 hope to have many letters from you, and to exchange a 
 frequent correspondence. I send this to say so. After 
 the first two or three, I shall settle down into a connected 
 style, and become gradually rational. 
 
 " ' You know what the feeling is, after having written a 
 letter, sealed it, and sent it off. I shall picture you reading 
 this, and answering it before it has lain one night in the 
 post-office. Ten to one that before the fastest packet 
 could reach New York I shall be writing again. 
 
 " ' Do you suppose the post-office clerks care to receive 
 letters ? I have my doubts. They get into a dreadful 
 habit of indifference. A postman, I imagine, is quite 
 callous. Conceive his delivering one to himself, without 
 being startled by a preliminary double knock ! 
 
 " ' Always your faithful friend, 
 
 " ' Charles Dickens.' " 
 
 In " The Life and Letters of Washington Irving," there 
 is a most interesting account of Dickens, Irving & Co., 
 by Professor Felton, extracted from the speech he made 
 at the Massachusetts Historical Society after the death 
 of Irving. It is worthy of quotation almost in full : 
 " The time when I saw the most of Mr Irving, was the 
 winter of 1842, during the visit of Charles Dickens in 
 H g7 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 New York. I had known this already distinguished 
 writer in Boston and Cambridge. . . . T renewed my 
 acquaintance with Mr Dickens, often meeting him in the 
 brilliant society which then made New York a most 
 agreeable resort. Halleck, Bryant, Washington Irving, 
 . . . and others scarcely less attractive by their genius, 
 wit, and social graces, constituted a circle not to be sur- 
 passed anywhere in the world. I passed much of the 
 time with Mr Irving and Mr Dickens ; it was delightful 
 to witness the cordial intercourse of the young man, in 
 the flush and glory of his fervent genius, and his elder 
 compeer, then in the assured possession of immortal 
 renown. Dickens said, in his frank, hearty manner, 
 that from his childhood he had known the works of Irving ; 
 and that, before he thought of coming to this country, 
 he had received a letter from him, expressing the delight 
 he felt in reading the story of Little Nell ; and from that 
 day they had shaken hands autographically across the 
 Atlantic, Great and varied as was the genius of Mr 
 Irving, there was one thing he shrank with a comical 
 terror from attempting, and that was a dinner speech. 
 
 " A great dinner, however, was to be given to Mr 
 Dickens in New York, as one had already been given in 
 Boston ; and it was evident to all that no man but 
 Washington Irving could be thought of to preside. With 
 all his dread of making a speech, he was obliged to obey 
 the universal call, and to accept the painful pre-eminence. 
 I saw him daily during the interval of preparation, either 
 at the lodgings of Dickens, or at dinner or evening parties. 
 ... At length the long-expected evening arrived ; a com- 
 pany of the most eminent persons, from all the professions 
 and every walk of life, were assembled, and Mr Irving 
 took the chair. ... I had the honour to be placed next 
 
 98 
 
I 
 
 A BREAK -DOWN 
 
 but one to Mr Irving, and the great pleasure of sharing 
 in his conversation. He had brought the manuscript 
 of his speech, and laid it under his plate. ' I shall cen- 
 tainly break down,' he repeated over and over again. 
 At last the moment arrived. Mr Irving rose, and was 
 received with deafening and long-continued applause, 
 which 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 troops of knights all 
 armed and eager for the fray ; and ended with the toast, 
 ' Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation.' ' There ! ' 
 said he, as he resumed his seat under a repetition of the 
 applause which had saluted his rising, ' there, I told you 
 I should break down, and I've done it ' " 
 
 In a letter to Rogers from New York, dated February 
 3, 1836, Irving writes : " I am building a little cottage on 
 the banks of the Hudson, and hope, in the course of the 
 spring, to have, for the first time in my life, a roof of 
 my own over my head. It stands in the midst of the 
 ' fairy haunts of long lost hours,' in a neighbourhood 
 endeared to me by boyish recollections, and commands one 
 of our magnificent river prospects. I only wish I could 
 have you there as a guest, and show my sense of that 
 kind and long-continued hospitality enjoyed in your 
 classic little mansion in St James's Place." 
 
 Thackeray gives this description of a visit paid by him 
 when in New York, in 1855, to Washington Irving : 
 " One day I went out to Yonkers, fifteen miles from here, 
 on the Hudson River, and spent the pleasantest day I 
 have had in the States ; drove from the pretty village, a 
 busy, bustling new place lying on the river banks, thrice 
 
 99 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 as broad as the Rhine, and as picturesque, to Irvingtown, 
 nine miles, where good old Washington Irving lives with 
 two nieces, who tend him most affectionately, in a funny 
 little in-and-out cottage surrounded by a little domain 
 of lawns not so smooth as ours, and woods rather small 
 and scrubby ; — in little bits of small parlours, where we 
 were served with cakes and wine, — with a little study not 
 much bigger than my back room, with old dogs trotting 
 about the premises, with flocks of ducks sailing on the 
 ponds, — a very pleasant, patriarchal life. He is finish- 
 ing the second volume of a Life of Washington ; he has 
 other two to write ; it's a bold undertaking for a man 
 of seventy-four, I don't know whether the book is good or 
 not ; the man is, and one of the pleasantest things I have 
 noted in American manners is the general respect and 
 affection in which this good old man is held. — He described, 
 however, how a few days or weeks since a stranger came 
 out and introduced himself, woke up good old Irving from 
 a snooze in his arm-chair, sat and talked for half-an-hour, 
 and a few days after appears a long account in the Herald 
 of Sunnyside and Mr Irving, and how he slept and looked, 
 and what he talked about, etc., etc. — Isn't it pleasant ? " 
 
 A sweet, kindly, homely, lovable man as well as a writer 
 of rare charm and humour. Tom Moore speaks of him 
 as " not strong as a ' lion,' but delightful as a domestic 
 animal." 
 
 Of Dickens himself, we may as well take a glimpse. 
 Here is a pen-portrait of him as he sat for his picture to 
 Francis Alexander, a well-known Boston artist : " His 
 long brown hair, slightly curling, sweeps his shoulder, 
 the bright eyes glance, and that inexpressible look of 
 kindly mirth plays round his mouth and shows itself 
 in the arched brow. Alexander caught much of that 
 
 xoo 
 
CHARLES DICKENS (1842). 
 From the Bust by Henry Dexter, modelled during Dickens's first visit to America. 
 
" THE EMPEROR OF CHEERFULIsESS " 
 
 singular lighting up of the face which Dickens had, beyond 
 anyone I ever saw ; " and J. T. Fields says that he 
 " seemed like the Emperor of Cheerfulness on a cruise 
 of pleasure, determined to conquer a realm or two of fun 
 every hour of his overflowing existence." 
 
 Indeed, he made a host of good and kind friends, many 
 of whom, as we shall see, afterward came to visit him 
 in England. There was Dana, the author of " Two Years 
 Before the Mast " — a book once much read and well worth 
 the reading — " a very nice fellow indeed," so Dickens 
 wrote, " . . . he is short, mild-looking, and has a careworn 
 face." 
 
 At Cambridge University he met many of the professors, 
 who appear to have been goodly company, and not dry- 
 as-dust, as are too many dons. There was Longfellow, 
 whose poetry was almost as popular once upon a time 
 in England as in America ; Ticknor ; Bancroft, " a 
 famous man ; a straightforward, manly, earnest heart." 
 But above all there was Felton, who became to him a very 
 dear friend. He was Professor of Greek at Cambridge, 
 and Dickens found him a man after his own heart, " un- 
 affected, hearty, genial, jolly," adding with quaint 
 insularity, " quite an Englishman of the best sort." He 
 describes a meeting with him on board ship on the way 
 down to New York, having previously made his acquaint- 
 ance at Boston. They were evidently a hilarious couple, 
 for " we drank all the porter on board, ate all the cold 
 pork and cheese, and were very merry indeed." They 
 were also, at least we will hope so, men of fine digestions. 
 
 At New York they were very kindly entreated by their 
 friend David Colden, of whom Dickens writes to Macready 
 that he was a real good fellow, and " I am deeply in love 
 with his wife. Indeed we have received the greatest 
 
 1 01 
 
• • ' :-.;•.'. CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 and most earnest and zealous kindness from the whole 
 family, and quite love them all." 
 
 Sumner, from whom more than one quotation has been 
 given, proved a serviceable friend also. Fitz-Greene 
 Halleck "is a merry little man," as opposed to Bryant, 
 who is melancholy ; the painter, Washington Allston, " a 
 glorious old genius " ; Henry Clay is " a most charming 
 fellow " ; on the whole, he seems to have liked very well 
 the men he met. J. T. Fields, the Boston publisher, 
 we will meet again. He was one of the sincerest 
 admirers that Charles Dickens ever had, and he had 
 plenty. 
 
 Into Canada, which Mr and Mrs Dickens visited, we 
 need not follow them. 
 
 Dickens appears to have been entertained at more than 
 one dinner on his return home, and Hood was one of those 
 who entertained him at Greenwich, and this is the account 
 he gives of the festivity : " The snug one dozen of diners 
 . . . turned out to be above two (in fact twenty-seven) — 
 two others, Talfourd and Macready, being prevented. 
 Jerdan was the Vice, and a certain person, not very well 
 adapted to fill a Chair, was to have occupied the opposite 
 Virtue, but on the score of ill-health I begged off, and 
 Captain Marryat presided instead. On his right Dickens, 
 and Monckton Milnes, the poetical M.P., on his left, 
 Sir John Wilson, T. H., and for my left hand neighbour 
 Dr Elhotson . . . Foster" (? Forster), "Stanfield the 
 painter. Among the rest were Charles and Tom Landseer. 
 Tom two stone deafer than I am, and obliged to carry a 
 tube. Father Prout and Ains worth ; . . . Procter, alias 
 Barry Cornwall, and Barham, otherwise Ingoldsby, 
 Cruikshank, and Cattermole, . . . and a Rev. Mr Wilde, 
 who greatly interested Dr Elliotson and myself : a tall, 
 
 102 
 
A GREENWICH DINNER 
 
 very earnest-looking man, like your doctor, only with 
 none of his Sweet-WiUiam colour, but quite pale ; and the 
 more so for long jet-black locks, either strange natural 
 hair, or an unnatural wig. He was silent till he sang, 
 and then came out such a powerful bass voice, fit for a 
 cathedral organ — to a song of the olden time, that between 
 physiognomy, costume, vox, and words, the impression 
 was quite black-letterish. . . . Well, we drank * the 
 Boz ' with a delectable clatter, which drew from him a 
 good warm-hearted speech. . . . He looked very well. 
 . . . Then we had more songs. Barham chanted a Robin 
 Hood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of 
 
 Lord H ^ ; and somebody, unknown to me, gave a 
 
 capital imitation of a French showman. Then we toasted 
 Mrs Boz, and the Chairman, and the Vice, and the Tradi- 
 tional Priest sang the ' Deep Deep Sea ', in his deep deep 
 
 ^K voice ; and then we drank to Procter, who wrote the said 
 
 ^^ song ; . . . . and Ainsworth's, and a Manchester friend 
 of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, so full of trading 
 stuff, that it really seemed to have been not composed, 
 but manufactured. . . . As to myself, I had to make 
 my second maiden speech, for Mr Monckton Milnes proposed 
 my health in terms my modesty might allow me to repeat 
 to you, but my memory won't. However, I ascribed the 
 toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured them that 
 their wishes had already improved it — that I felt a brisker 
 circulation — a more genial warmth about the heart, and 
 
 l^p explained that a certain trembling of my hand was not 
 from palsy, or my old ague, but an inclination in my hand 
 to shake itself with everyone present. Whereupon I had 
 
 J to go through the friendly ceremony with as many of the 
 
 I company as were within reach, besides a few more who 
 ^ Lord Bateman ; surely ? 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 came express from the other end of the table. Very 
 gratifying, wasn't it ? " 
 
 With many of the hosts we have already met, but will 
 take this opportunity of glancing at some of the others. 
 William Jerdan was in his day a well-known Scottish 
 journalist, and distinguished himself by being the first 
 to lay hold on the assassin of Spencer Perceval in the 
 House of Commons in 1812 ; he was an antiquary of note, 
 helped to found the Royal Society of Literature, and 
 wrote a somewhat dull "Autobiography". Richard 
 Monckton Milnes, afterward Lord Houghton, lives in 
 literary history as a minor poet of some parts ; we meet 
 him later on. 
 
 Of Doctor Elliotson, who was a great friend of Thackeray 
 also, and of " Barry Cornwall," we shall see more 
 anon. Though it does not particularly pertain to this 
 place — or at all to the date with which we are dealing — 
 here is another Greenwich dinner: On July 24, 1848, 
 a very pleasant jaunt was made to Greenwich by Macready 
 in company with some American friends, the party being 
 joined in the evening at the Trafalgar by Dickens and his 
 wife, Miss Hogarth, Mrs Macready, Stanfield, Maclise, 
 and one or two others, " and we sat down to one of those 
 peculiar English banquets, a whitebait-dinner. We were 
 all very cheerful — very gay ; all unbent, and without 
 ever forgetting the respect due to each other ; all was 
 mirth unrestrained and delighted gaiety. Songs were 
 sung in rapid succession, and jests flung about from each 
 part of the table. Choruses broke out, and the reins were 
 flung over the necks of the merry set. After ' Auld Lang 
 Syne' sung by all, Catherine" (Mrs Macready) "giving 
 the solos, we returned home in our hired carriage, and an 
 omnibus, hired for the nonce. ... A very happy day." 
 
 104 
 
XV 
 DICKENS WITH THE CHILDREN 
 
 IT is not only with his grown-up but with his children 
 friends that we must meet Charles Dickens if we 
 are to understand him. No man ever loved children 
 more sincerely, was happier with them, or more intimately 
 sympathized with them. Again and again he shows 
 in his writings his love and understanding of them. To 
 many Little Nell and Paul Dombey make but small 
 appeal ; they appear of the lime-light lime-lighty, and it 
 can scarcely be denied that Dickens has somewhat 
 failed in depicting them. He saw them with his mind's 
 eye and heard them with his mind's ear, but he has 
 scarcely succeeded in making them quite real to us of 
 to-day, life-Uke as we have seen one of them to have 
 been to such men as Landor, Macready, and Lord 
 Jeffrey. 
 
 Shortly before his first trip to America, we find him 
 writing a charming letter to his child-friend, Mary Talfourd, 
 who has asked him to dine with her upon her birthday. 
 He rephes that unfortunately he cannot do so, he will 
 soon be leaving his own children for six long months, 
 and feels that he must be with them as much as possible. 
 " But although," he writes lo her, " I cannot come to 
 see you on that day, you may be sure I shall not forget 
 that it is your birthday, and that I shall drink your health 
 and many happy returns, in a glass of wine, filled as full 
 
 105 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 as it will hold. And I shall dine at half-past five myself, 
 so that we may both be drinking our wine at the same time; 
 and I shall tell my Mary (for I have got a daughter of 
 that name but she is a very small one as yet) to drink your 
 health too. . . ." ^ 
 
 Then what a delightfully whimsical letter is that he 
 wrote in 1838 to an unknown correspondent, a Master 
 Hastings Hughes, concerning " Nicholas Nickleby," about 
 the disposal of the characters in which story the young- 
 ster had written to him, the letter reaching Dickens 
 through the hands of " Ingoldsby " Barham ; it winds 
 up thus : 
 
 " I meant to have written you a long letter, but I cannot 
 write very fast when I like the person I am writing to, 
 because that makes me think about them, and I like you, 
 and so I tell you. Besides, it is just eight o'clock at night, 
 and I always go to bed at eight o'clock, except when it is 
 my birthday, and then I sit up to supper. So I will not 
 say anything more besides this — and that is my love to you 
 and Neptune ; and if you will drink my health every 
 Christmas Day I will drink yours — come. 
 "I am, 
 
 " Respected Sir, 
 
 *' Your affectionate friend." 
 
 ^ A list of Dickens's children may prove interesting : 
 Charles CuUiford Boz, b. 1837, d. 1896. 
 Mary (Mamie), b. 1838, d. (unmarried) 1896. 
 
 Kate Macready, b. 1839. Married, i. Charles Allston Collins in i860, 
 who died in 1873 ; ii. Charles Edward Perugini. 
 Walter Landor, b. 1841, d. 1863. 
 Francis Jeffrey, b. 1844, d. 1886. 
 Alfred Tennyson, b. 1845. 
 
 Sydney Smith Haldimand, b. 1847, d., and buried at sea, 1872. 
 Henry Fielding, b. 1849. (K.C. in 1892.) 
 Dora Annie, b. 1850, d. 185 1. 
 Edward Biilwer Lytton (Plorn), b. 1852, d. 1902. 
 
 106 
 
A DICKENS EPITAPH 
 
 But we shall best leam what he was to children if we 
 look at him with the eyes of one of his own young folk, 
 as we are able to do by means of the very charming remi- 
 niscences given us by Miss Mary Dickens, whose nickname 
 in the family was " Mamie," and also, as descriptive 
 she says, " Mild Gloster." 
 
 During the trip to America the house in Devonshire 
 Terrace was let, and the children stayed in Osnaburgh 
 Street, near Regent's Park, in the charge of Mr and Mrs 
 Macready, but went back home to welcome the travellers 
 on their return : " It is here that I dimly remember the 
 return of the travellers. One evening, after dark, we 
 were hurried to the gate, a cab was driving up to the door, 
 or, rather, as it would then have been called, a hackney- 
 coach ; before it could stop, a figure jumped out, someone 
 lifted me up in their arms, and I was kissing my father 
 through the bars of the gate. How all this happened, 
 and why the gate was shut, I am unable to explain. 
 He, no doubt, was in such a state of joy and excitement, 
 that, at sight of us, he just made a rush, and kissed 
 us as he could. Home at last ! " 
 
 It was while in America that he was asked to write an 
 
 epitaph for the tomb of a little child ; this is what he 
 
 wrote : 
 
 This is the Grave of a Little Child, 
 
 WHOM GOD IN HIS GOODNESS CALLED TO A BRIGHT ETERNITY 
 
 WHEN HE WAS VERY YOUNG. 
 
 HARD AS IT IS FOR HUMAN AFFECTION TO RECONCILE ITSELF TO DEATH 
 
 IN ANY SHAPE (AND MOST OF ALL, PERHAPS, AT FIRST IN THIS), 
 
 HIS PARENTS CAN EVEN NOW BELIEVE THAT IT WILL BE A CONSOLATION 
 
 TO THEM THROUGHOUT THEIR LIVES, 
 
 AND WHEN THEY SHALL HAVE GROWN OLD AND GRAY, 
 
 Always to think of him as a Child in Heaven. 
 "And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of 
 
 them." 
 107 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 When his children were still tiny folk, he would sing 
 to them before they went up to bed all manner of funny 
 songs, the which he would himself enjoy and laugh at 
 as much as any of his small audience. Encores were 
 allowed, especially of one ditty of an old, rheumatic 
 man, who had caught cold in an omnibus, which was 
 sung with a piping voice broken with coughing and 
 sneezing. 
 
 He understood their night terrors, the cause of such 
 horrible agony — no weaker word would be strong enough 
 — to so many small ones. He entered heart and soul into 
 all their amusements, their keeping of pet animals — did 
 he not himself keep pet ravens ? — and their games. 
 Miss " Mamie " narrates how anxious he was that they 
 should learn to dance well, and how he insisted on her 
 and her sister Katie teaching him and Leech how to dance 
 the polka ; how earnestly he devoted himself to it ; how 
 he would practise gravely by himself in a corner, and how 
 one bitter winter's night he awoke with the fear on him 
 that he had forgotten the step, so jumped out of bed and 
 practised it — " one, two, three ; one, two, three " — to his 
 own whistling and by the dim rays of a rush-light. 
 
 He writes to Professor Felton, in 1842, an account of 
 the festivities at Devonshire Terrace on Twelfth Night, 
 his son Charley's birthday ; there was a magic lantern 
 and " divers other tremendous engines of that nature." 
 Forster and he had procured between them the stock-in- 
 trade of a conjuror, and " O my dear eyes, Felton, if 
 you could see me conjuring the company's watches into 
 impossible tea-caddies, and causing pieces of money to 
 fly, and burning pocket-handkerchiefs without hurting 
 'em, and practising in my own room, without anybody 
 to admire, you would never forget it as long as you live." 
 
 108 
 
THE CONJUROR 
 
 Clarkson Stanfield was a " confederate," who always did 
 his part " exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable 
 delight of all beholders." And, again, to the same friend 
 on January 2, 1844 : " Forster is out again ; and if he 
 don't go in again, after the manner in which we have been 
 keeping Christmas, he must be very strong indeed. Such 
 dinings, such dancings, such conjurings, such blindman's- 
 buffings, such theatre-goings, such kissings-out of old 
 years and kissings-in of new ones, never took place in 
 these parts before." Then follows a description of him 
 dancing a country dance with Mrs Macready at a children's 
 party at the actor's house. 
 Yes, Dickens loved children and won their love. 
 
 X09 
 
XVI 
 BROADSTAIRS 
 
 IN August, 1842, the family went down to Broad- 
 stairs, which from 1837 ^^ ^^47 was his favourite 
 watering-place. When first he went there, it was 
 a little-known and quiet place of retirement, and its 
 peacefulness was delightful to him. 
 In 1840 he writes to MacHse : 
 
 " My foot is in the house, 
 My bath is on the sea. 
 And, before I take a souse. 
 Here's a single note to thee," 
 
 and then follows an invitation to " come to the bower 
 which is shaded for you in the one-pair front, where 
 no chair or table has four legs of the same length, 
 and where no drawers will open tiU you have pulled the 
 pegs off, and then they keep open and won't shut again." 
 
 But it is to Professor Felton, to whom he wrote some 
 of the most delightful of his letters, that he best described 
 the place : the intense quiet, the splendid sea, the Goodwin 
 Sands and the floating lights thereon, the North Foreland 
 lighthouse, the sands, and the quaint old-fashioned 
 company. 
 
 Wherever he went he delighted to surround himself 
 with the best of good company, with his good friends, and 
 few men had more or more sincere friends than he had. 
 In 1840, Maclise and Forster went down to join him there, 
 so as to have the pleasure of posting to London with him 
 by way of Chatham, Rochester, and Cobham. Again, 
 
 110 
 
BROADSTAIRS 
 
 in August, 1841, he went there, and so on, again and 
 again, faithful to the places he loved as to the friends. 
 It was " Our English Watering-Place : — 
 " In the autumn-time of the year, when the great 
 metropolis is so much hotter, so much noisier, so much 
 more dusty or so much more water-carted, so much more 
 crowded, so much more disturbing and distracting in all 
 respects, than it usually is, a quiet sea-beach becomes 
 indeed a blessed spot. Half awake and half asleep, this 
 idle morning in our sunny window on the edge of a chalk- 
 cliff in the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are 
 a faithful resorter, we feel a lazy inclination to sketch its 
 picture. The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach, 
 and village, lie as still before us as if they were sitting 
 for a picture. It is dead low- water. A ripple plays 
 among the ripening com upon the cliff, as if it were 
 faintly trying from recollection to imitate the sea ; and 
 the world of butterflies hovering over the crop of radish 
 seed are as restless in their little way as the gulls are in 
 their larger manner when the wind blows. But the ocean 
 lies winking in the sunhght like a drowsy lion — its glassy 
 waters scarcely curve upon the shore — the fishing-boats 
 in the tiny harbour are all stranded in the mud — our two 
 coUiers (our watering-place has a maritime trade employ- 
 ing that amount of shipping) have not an inch of water 
 within a quarter of a mile of them, and turn, exhausted, 
 on their sides, like faint fish of an antediluvian species. 
 Rusty cables and chains, ropes and rings, undermost parts 
 of posts and piles and confused timber-defences against the 
 waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter of tangled sea- 
 weed and fallen cliff which looks as if a family of giants 
 had been making tea here for ages, and had observed an 
 untidy custom of throwing their tea-leaves on the shore." 
 
 Ill 
 
XVII 
 CORNWALL AND COMPANY THERE 
 
 IN the autumn of 1842, the " Inimitable Boz," Maclise, 
 Forster and Stanfield " tripped " down to Corn- 
 wall, and a merry jaunt they made of it. In a letter 
 to Felton, Dickens notes this as taking place just after 
 Longfellow's visit had concluded, concerning which a 
 few words. Two events of this visit seem to have become 
 firmly fixed in Longfellow's memory, one of which was a 
 trip to Rochester, where they had some difficulty, which 
 they boldly surmounted, in visiting the ruins of the castle ; 
 the second being what we should now term a slumming 
 expedition into some of the lowest quarters of London. 
 Of his visit Longfellow wrote, " I passed a very agreeable 
 fortnight with Dickens. His whole household is a de- 
 lightful one. At his table he brings together artists and 
 authors — such as Cruikshank, a very original genius ; 
 Maclise, the painter ; Macready, the actor, etc., etc." 
 And of his departure : — " Taking reluctant leave of Lon- 
 don, I went by railway to Bath, where I dined with 
 Walter Savage Landor, a rather ferocious critic." 
 
 With •' the trippers " we are now familiar, with the 
 exception of Clarkson Stanfield. Of the artist friends 
 with whom Dickens was intimate it is probable that 
 he will hold by far the highest place in the history 
 of painting, with the possible exceptions of Wilkie and 
 Landseer, who, once his maudlin semi-human animal 
 
 112 
 
ar 
 
 " STANNY " 
 
 pictures are forgotten, will come by his own again. Stan- 
 field was born at Sunderland in the year 1793, and was, 
 therefore, somewhat older than the other members of the 
 jovial party of which we are writing, but in spirits as 
 youthful and jolly as any of them. From childhood he 
 showed a love of drawing and a love of the sea ; in 
 1808 he entered the merchant service, and four years 
 later was " pressed " for the navy. In 1814 both he and 
 Douglas Jerrold were on board H.M.S. Namur, and he 
 painted scenery for a dramatic performance of which 
 the latter was " manager." Incapacitated by an accident 
 he retired from the service, but not altogether from sea- 
 service until 1818, when he obtained work as scene- 
 painter at the Royalty Theatre, in Wellclose Square, 
 London, East, a house much frequented by seafaring men. 
 In 1822, in similar capacity he achieved great success at 
 Drury Lane, at the same time beginning to work at easel 
 pictures, giving up scene-painting in 1834, though, as 
 we shall see, he occasionally practised it to help his friend 
 Dickens and others. For Macready he painted in 1837 
 a diorama for his pantomime at Co vent Garden, and in 
 1842 the effective scenery for " Acis and Galatea " at Drury 
 Lane. He was for years a regular contributor to the 
 Royal Academy, becoming an Associate in 1832, and an 
 Academician in 1835. In 1847 he settled down at Hamp- 
 stead at the Green Hill, where he spent many happy 
 and sociable years. 
 
 " Clarkson Stanfield lives vividly in our memory," 
 rites Mrs Cowden Clarke, " as we last saw him, when we 
 ^ere in England in 1862, in his pretty garden-surrounded 
 house at Hampstead. He showed us a portfolio of gorgeous 
 sketches made during a tour in Italy, two of which remain 
 especially impressed upon our mind. One was a bit taken 
 r 113 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 upon Mount Vesuvius about daybreak, with volumes of 
 volcanic smoke rolling from the near crater, touched by 
 the beams of the rising sun ; the other was a view of 
 Esa, a picturesque sea-side village perched on the summit 
 of a little rocky hill, bosomed among the olive-clad crags 
 and cliffs of the Cornice road between Nice and Turbia." 
 During his latter years his health was not robust, and he 
 retired somewhat from " sociabilities," dying in 1867. 
 Dickens dubbed him " the soul of frankness, generosity, 
 and simplicity, the most loving and most lovable of men." 
 Dickens writes to Chorley on June 2, 1867, from Gad's 
 Hill : " I saw poor dear Stanfield (on a hint from his eldest 
 son) in a day's interval between two expeditions. It 
 was clear that the shadow of the end had fallen on him. 
 It happened well that I had seen, on a wild day at Tyne- 
 mouth, a remarkable sea-effect, of which I wrote a de- 
 scription to him, and he kept it under his pillow." " You 
 know Mrs Inchbald's story, Nature and Art ? " Hood 
 once wrote, " What a fine edition of Nature and Art is 
 Stanfield." 
 
 Dickens and Lemon clasped hands over Stanfield's 
 grave, the first time they had met since Dickens's estrange- 
 ment from the editor of Punch, who had very rightly 
 declined to bring his paper into taking a part in a purely 
 domestic affair of Dickens. Stanfield on his deathbed 
 had begged Dickens to " make it up " with his old friend, 
 and with success. 
 
 We must now hark back to the autumn of the year 1842, 
 and the trip to Cornwall, which lasted nearly three weeks : 
 " seriously, I do believe there never was such a trip," 
 writes Dickens to Professor Felton. Cornwall was not 
 in those days as easy of access as it is nowadays ; the 
 railway took them down into Devonshire, and then they 
 
 114 
 
Hkan( 
 
 LAND'S END 
 
 proceeded in an open carriage and with the aid of post 
 horses. How old-world it sounds ! Sometimes they 
 journeyed on right through the night, for Dickens did not 
 allow the grass to grow beneath his feet, even when 
 holiday making. Dickens set the pace in whatever 
 company he might be ; indeed, we can scarcely imagine 
 him ever playing " follow my leader " ; he himself was 
 always leader. On this occasion, as he tells us, he was 
 purse-bearer and paymaster, also " regulated the pace " 
 at which the party travelled. Stanfield carried a map 
 and a compass ; Forster was baggage-master, and Maclise, 
 not being allotted any particular task, sang songs ! 
 " Heavens ! " writes Dickens, in the letter already 
 mentioned, " if you could have seen the necks of bottles 
 — distracting in their immense varieties of shape — 
 peering out of the carriage pockets ! ... If you could 
 have seen but one gleam of the bright fires by which we 
 sat in the big rooms of ancient inns at night, until long 
 after the small hours had come and gone, or smelt but one 
 steam of the hot punch (not white, dear Felton, like that 
 amazing compound I sent you a taste of, but a rich, 
 genial, glowing brown) which came in every evening in a 
 huge broad china bowl ! I never laughed in my life as 
 I did on this journey. ... I was choking and gasping 
 
 d bursting the buckle off the back of my stock, all 
 the way." 
 
 They visited Tintagel, the rocky home peopled with 
 memories of King Arthur and his knights ; Mount St 
 Michael and the Land's End were other points. Says 
 Forster, in one of the few eloquent passages in his pages : 
 " Land and sea yielded each its marvels to us ; but of 
 all the impressions brought away, of which some afterwards 
 took forms as lasting as they could receive from the most 
 
 115 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 delightful art, I doubt if any were the source of such 
 deep emotion to us all as a sunset we saw at Land's 
 End. Stanfield knew the wonders of the Continent, 
 the glories of Ireland were native to Maclise, I was famihar 
 from boyhood with border and Scottish scenery, and 
 Dickens was fresh from Niagara ; but there was some- 
 thing in the sinking of the sun behind the Atlantic that 
 autumn afternoon, as we viewed it together from the top 
 of the rock projecting farthest into the sea, which each 
 in his turn declared to have no parallel in memory." 
 
 Among the lasting forms was a sketch of the Logan 
 Stone by Stanfield, with Forster perched atop of it ; 
 " as to your clambering," said Maclise to Forster in after 
 years, " don't I know what happened of old ? Don't 
 I still see the Logan Stone, and you perched on the 
 giddy top, while we, rocking it on its pivot, shrank from 
 aU that lay concealed below ... do I forget you 
 clambering up the goat-path to King Arthur's castle 
 of Tintagel, when, in my vain wish to follow, I grovelled 
 and clung to the soil like a Caliban, and you, in the manner 
 of a tricksy spirit and stout Ariel, actually danced up 
 and down before me ! " Actually ? 
 
 Maclise painted a picture of the waterfall of St Wighton, 
 to which Forster had guided him, which Dickens under a 
 feigned name bought at the Academy exhibition, know- 
 ing that the generous painter, if he knew of his friend's 
 desire to possess it, would insist on making him a present 
 of it. When the artifice was discovered he did so insist, 
 but Dickens, as usual, had his own way, Maclise some 
 four years later "got even "by painting the portrait of 
 Mrs Dickens. 
 
 ii6 
 
'•*«*••••• "• 
 
 THE LOGAN STONE IN CORNWALL, WITH JOHN FORSTEK 
 
 SEATED ON THE TOP. 
 
 From a Sketch by Clarkson Sianfield, R.A. 
 
XVIII 
 
 1843 
 
 ON February 12 Dickens writes to Forster that 
 having found himself unable to write, he had 
 in despair " started off at half-past two with 
 my pair of petticoats to Richmond," where they dined, 
 the " pair " being Mrs Dickens and her sister Miss Georgina 
 Hogarth, who had become one of his household and who 
 to the hour of his death remained his steadfast, devoted 
 ally. Better friend no man ever had. Another dinner, 
 in May, was that organised by Dickens as a token of 
 regard and esteem to his old friend and fellow-worker 
 John Black, of the Morning Chronicle, who had ceased to 
 be editor of the paper for which he had achieved so much. 
 The dinner was at Greenwich, and among the company 
 of good fellows were Thackeray, Macready, MacHse, Sheil, 
 Fonblanque and Forster. It is not surprising that the 
 meeting was a success. 
 
 Yet another dinner, at the Star and Garter at Richmond, 
 to wish Godspeed to Macready, who was setting out for 
 America. " We gave him a splendid dinner last Saturday 
 at Richmond," Dickens writes to Felton, " whereat I 
 presided with my accustomed grace. He is one of the 
 noblest fellows in the world, and I would give a great 
 deal that you and I should sit beside each other to see 
 him play Virginius, Lear, or Werner, which I take to 
 ^be, every way, the greatest piece of exquisite perfection 
 
 117 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 that his lofty art is capable of attaining . . . You recol- 
 lect, perhaps, that he was the guardian of our children 
 while we were away. I love him dearly. . . ," 
 
 A very different affair was the Star and Garter of yester- 
 day to that of to-day, a humbler but a far happier hostelry 
 to our mind. Fire was its doom. The garden behind it 
 was beautiful, and the small rooms which opened into 
 it were bowered in jasmine, honeysuckle, and roses ; the 
 lawns were shaded by magnificent old trees, and at the 
 foot was a fine avenue of limes. On Sunday afternoons 
 and evenings in summer, the garden and hotel would be 
 crowded with revellers, a gathering largely composed of 
 those well known in artistic and literary and Bohemian 
 circles. We obtain countless glimpses of the place in early 
 Victorian novels and memoirs. Here is one taken from 
 Serjeant Ballantine's very amusing " Experiences." 
 
 " There was a party I well remember in connection 
 with one of the most delightful days of many that I 
 passed there ; it consisted of Balfe the composer, and his 
 surpassingly lovely daughter, whose career was only too 
 short. She was twice married ; once to Sir J. Crampton, 
 who I think was our ambassador to the Court of Russia, 
 and afterwards to a grandee of Spain, and died when 
 quite young. Mowbray Morris was another of the 
 group. He was manager of the Times newspaper, 
 and with him I was very intimate. . . . 
 
 " The fourth of the group in addition to myself was 
 Mr Delane, the editor of the same paper, and upon the 
 shoulders of these two men rested the entire weight of 
 its management. No one could be in the society of the 
 latter gentleman without feeling that he was a man of the 
 age. There was a quiet power in his conversation, his 
 knowledge was very varied, and a vein of agreeable 
 
 iiS 
 
DELANE 
 
 persiflage adorned and lightened whatever he talked 
 about. The last time I met him was at a dinner party 
 at Dr Quain's, the eminent physician. 
 
 " At that time his mind had partially given way under 
 the attacks of incurable disease, and it was painful to 
 witness how occasional were the flashes of an intellect 
 that in former days was wont to shed so bright and 
 lasting a light. On this occasion his brougham came for 
 him at the time it had been his custom to go to the office, 
 and he still had the idea that he was actively engaged, 
 although the real editorship had passed into other hands. 
 It seems so short a time since we five were stretched upon 
 the grass plot in full health and spirits, and now I alone 
 of all that party am left to recall it." This was written 
 in 1898. 
 
 With Delane Dickens became very intimate. 
 
 The " American Notes " and portions of " Martin 
 Chuzzlewit " had not unnaturally given considerable 
 offence in America, and it was considered wiser that 
 Dickens should not force the fact of his friendship with 
 Macready upon Americans by seeing him off at Liverpool, 
 this being pointed out by Captain Marryat. The doubt 
 had been in Dickens's mind already, and he had discussed 
 it with Mrs Dickens more than once, but a fear lest he 
 should be accused of giving too much importance to his 
 doings withheld him from moving in the matter. But 
 Marryat, also perceiving the danger, determined him. 
 Forster thought otherwise — not the only occasion on 
 which he advised Dickens other than wisely. 
 
 On October 2 he was down at Manchester, speaking 
 at the opening of the Athenaeum there, among others 
 on the platform being Disraeli and Cobden. He pointed 
 out the help that even a little knowledge could be to men 
 
 119 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 of humble rank, " 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 Bloom- 
 field 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 Manchester." 
 
 In an amusing letter to Ainsworth, written a few days 
 later, he gives a truly graphic picture of a cold in the head, 
 caught probably at Liverpool ; "I am at this moment 
 deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, 
 green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints, 
 and fractious in the temper. ... I will make prodigious 
 efforts to get the better of it to-night by resorting to all 
 conceivable remedies, and if I succeed so as to be only 
 negatively disgusting to-morrow, I will joyfully present 
 myself at six, and bring my womankind along with me." 
 
 We find him, too, interesting himself keenly in the 
 question of ragged schools, writing to Miss Coutts (after- 
 ward the Baroness Burdett Coutts) a stirring account of 
 them, which brought a prompt promise of help from her ; 
 " she is a most excellent creature," he writes, " I protest 
 to God, and I have a most perfect affection and respect 
 for her." Indeed, she was his very good friend from the 
 opening days of his career, and did to him and his children 
 many an act of kindness. 
 
 In September he wrote to Macvey Napier, the editor 
 of the Edinburgh Review, offering to write upon the educa- 
 tion question, to the effect that a system exclusively 
 founded upon Church principles would not do, and that 
 " the Church Catechism is wholly inapplicable to the 
 state of ignorance that now prevails ; and why no system 
 
 120 
 
VAGUE PLANS 
 
 but one, so general in great religious principles as to in- 
 clude all creeds, can meet the wants and understandings 
 of the dangerous classes of society." Had this policy 
 that he then advocated been adopted, how much unhappy 
 and unnecessary controversy would have been saved. 
 This offer of an article was not accepted, as, indeed, he 
 scarcely expected it would be. But so strong were his feel- 
 ings on the matter, and so keen his differences of opinion 
 with clergymen of the Church of England, that he took 
 seats in the Little Portland Street Unitarian Chapel, 
 of which the Rev. Edward Tagart was then minister, 
 an interesting, able man and a good antiquary, his wife 
 an amiable, thoughtful woman. 
 
 Toward the end of the year, Dickens's thoughts turned 
 steadily toward foreign travel, chiefly in search of rest ; 
 he and all his family ; to go to Normandy or Brittany ; 
 possibly to walk through Switzerland, France and Italy ; 
 to take Mrs Dickens to Rome and Venice ; many vague 
 plans crossed his mind ; eventually a prolonged stay in 
 Italy was decided upon. 
 
 121 
 
XIX 
 ITALY 
 
 WE purpose to deal somewhat fully with this 
 journey to Italy, because by so doing we 
 shall receive light upon Dickens's character. 
 He has himself told the tale at length in his " Pictures 
 from Italy " and his letters to Forster and other friends, 
 from the first of which we shall quote at some length. 
 The house in Devonshire Terrace was let, and during the 
 two weeks immediately preceding their departure, the 
 family put up in Osnaburgh Terrace. Then a carriage 
 was purchased for forty-five pounds, " as for comfort — 
 let me see — it is about the size of your library " ; pre- 
 sumably Forster's ; " with night-lamps and day-lamps 
 and pockets and imperials and leathern cellars, and the 
 most extraordinary contrivances. Joking apart, it is a 
 wonderful machine." A wonderful courier he obtained 
 too, one Roche, who, until his death in 1849, was with 
 Dickens on all his foreign travels. Thus Dickens describes 
 him, " the radiant embodiment of good humour . . . 
 in the person of a French courier — best of servants and 
 most beaming of men." 
 
 Before deciding on his destination Dickens had written 
 to Lady Blessington asking her advice and telling her 
 that Nice appealed to him as a good place for headquarters, 
 but both she and D'Orsay recommended Pisa, upon which 
 suggestion he did not act. 
 
 122 
 
y 
 
 ON THE ROAD 
 
 Of course before setting out a dinner was necessary 
 to make all things regular, and this took place at Green- 
 wich, when Lord Normanby was in the chair, and among 
 others present there had come with Stanfield, J. M. W. 
 Turner, who " had enveloped his throat, that sultry 
 summer day, in a huge red belcher-handkerchief, which 
 nothing would induce him to remove. He was not other- 
 wise demonstrative, but enjoyed himself in a quiet silent 
 way, less perhaps at the speeches than at the changing 
 lights on the river." Carlyle stayed away, protesting 
 that he loved Dickens, but preferred to express his 
 affection otherwise than dining out in the dog days. 
 
 The party travelled via Boulogne to Paris ; then " on 
 a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time and 
 weather of eighteen hundred and forty-four, it was, my 
 good friend, when — don't be alarmed ; not when two 
 travellers might have been observed slowly making their 
 way over that picturesque and broken ground by which 
 the first chapter of a Middle- Aged novel is usually attained 
 — but when an English travelling-carriage of consider- 
 able proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the Pan- 
 technicon near Belgrave Square, London, was observed 
 (by a very small French soldier ; for I saw him look at it) 
 to issue from the gate of the Hotel Meurice in the Rue 
 Rivoli at Paris." 
 
 En route to Sens, to Avallon, to Chalons, to Lyons, 
 to Avignon, to Marseilles. Once more we will take a 
 look at the old-world methods of travelling, uncomfort- 
 able enough in many ways, but so inexpressibly superior 
 in that travellers then did really see something of the 
 country and the people : — 
 
 " We have four horses, and one postillion, who has a 
 very long whip, and drives his team, something like the 
 
 123 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Courier of Saint Petersburg in the circle at Astley's or 
 Franconi's : only he sits his own horse instead of stand- 
 ing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by these 
 postillions, are sometimes a century or two old ; and are 
 so ludicrously disproportionate to the wearer's foot, 
 that the spur, which is put where his own heel comes, is 
 generally half-way up the leg of the boots. The man 
 often comes out of the stable-yard, with his whip in his 
 hand and his shoes on, and brings out, in both hands, 
 one boot at a time, which he plants on the ground by 
 the side of his horse, with great gravity, until everything 
 is ready. When it is — and oh Heaven ! the noise they 
 make about it ! — he gets into the boots, shoes and all, or 
 is hoisted into them by a couple of friends ; adjusts the 
 rope harness, embossed by the labours of innumerable 
 pigeons in the stables ; makes all the horses kick and 
 plunge ; cracks his whip like a madman ; shouts ' En 
 route — Hi ! ' and away we go." 
 
 " Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day, 
 with the dusty outsides in blue frocks, like butchers ; 
 and the insides in white nightcaps ; and its cabriolet head 
 on the roof, nodding and shaking, like an idiot's head ; 
 and its Young-France passengers staring out of window, 
 with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles 
 awfully shading their warlike eyes, and very big sticks 
 clenched in their National grasp. Also the Malle Poste, 
 with only a couple of passengers, tearing along at a real 
 good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady 
 old Cures come jolting past, now and then, in such ram- 
 shackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no English- 
 man would believe in ; and bony women dawdle about 
 in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, 
 or digging and hoeing or doing field-work of a more 
 
 124 
 
r 
 
 ITALY 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 laborious kind.or representing real shepherdesses with their 
 flocks — to obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit and 
 its iollowers, in any country, it is only necessary to take 
 any pastoral poem, or picture, and imagine to yourself 
 whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike the 
 descriptions therein contained." 
 
 So runs on the clever delineation of men and manners 
 in France in 1844 as written in the pages of one of Dickens's 
 most delightful works, " Pictures from Italy." We will 
 not track the travellers step by step ; at Marseilles they 
 stayed a night and then proceeded by steamer to Genoa, 
 their destination. Of their arrival there and their two 
 miles' drive to Albaro, where a villa had been rented, 
 Dickens gives a highly comical description. He writes 
 hke a boy of prodigious observation. " Novelty," he says, 
 " pleasant to most people, is particularly delightful, 
 I think, to me." After a short period of depression caused 
 by the Villa Bagnerello, or " the Pink Jail," being a some- 
 what dilapidated and depressing residence, he settled 
 down to keen enjoyment of the new life, into which he 
 plunged with the thoroughness that he displayed in all 
 his undertakings. 
 
 As an example of the minuteness of his observation 
 even of places that he merely glanced at, take this de- 
 scription of a fountain in a courtyard behind a palace in 
 Genoa : — 
 
 " You stand in a yard (the yard of the same house) 
 which seems to have been unvisited by human foot for 
 a hundred years. Not a sound disturbs its repose. Not 
 a head, thrust out of any of the grim, dark, jealous 
 windows, within sight, makes the weeds in the cracked 
 pavement faint of heart, by suggesting the possibility 
 
 t-e being hands to grub them up. Opposite to you, 
 125 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 is a giant figure carved in stone, reclining, with an urn, 
 upon a lofty piece of artificial rockwork ; and out of the 
 urn dangles the fag end of a leaden pipe, which, once 
 upon a time, poured a small torrent down the rocks. 
 But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than this 
 channel is now. He seems to have given his urn, which 
 is nearly upside down, a final tilt ; and after crying, like 
 a sepulchral child, ' All gone ! ' to have lapsed into a stony 
 silence." 
 
 Indeed, it might justly be questioned if ever there 
 were another so greatly gifted with powers of observation 
 as was Dickens. He shows it throughout all his work ; 
 and the more we know of his life the more we can under- 
 stand and appreciate the excellence of his art as a descrip- 
 tive writer. It is well to remember that imagination is 
 not creation but utilisation and adaptation of things seen 
 and known. Unfortunately most of us see and know 
 so Uttle. Again and again, too, does he in his letters 
 as in his fiction give a quaint touch of humanity to 
 stocks and stones. He — in the case above quoted — 
 almost succeeds in making us feel a pity for this lonely, 
 forgotten giant and his empty urn. These thoughts were 
 undoubtedly the inspiration of the moment, the outcome 
 of his. whimsical turn of mind, not laboured fun-making 
 or deliberate picture-painting. He says this himself, 
 when writing of the amphitheatre at Verona : — 
 
 " When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, 
 and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turn- 
 ing from the lovely panorama closed in by the distant 
 Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to lie 
 before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited 
 straw, with an enormously broad brim and a shallow 
 crown ; the plaits being represented by the four-and- 
 
 126 
 
I 
 
 DICKENS'S BEST AND WORST 
 
 forty rows of seats. The comparison is a homely and 
 fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it 
 was irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless " 
 He was at his best when whimsical ; still at Verona : — 
 " I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn 
 that night — of course, no Englishman had ever read it 
 there, before — and set out for Mantua next day at sunrise, 
 repeating to myself (in the coupe of an omnibus, and next 
 to the conductor, who was reading the Mysteries of Paris), 
 
 There is no world without Verona's walls. 
 But purgatory, torture, hell itself. 
 Hence-banished is banished from the world, 
 And world's exile is death 
 
 which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five- 
 and-twenty miles after all, and rather disturbed my 
 confidence in his energy and boldness " ; and at his 
 worst, a bad worst, when he indulges in moralising, none 
 of the freshest or most profound, or expressed in language 
 free from tawdriness. Dickens was a humourist, thank 
 Heaven for it ; as with Sterne, his pathos too often 
 became bathos. 
 
 In October he moved from the depressing " Pink Jail " 
 to the Palazzo Peschiere, better both as to accommodation 
 and situation. 
 
 From a delightful letter, written to Maclise, we must 
 make one brief quotation, " green figs I have already 
 learned to like. Green almonds (we have them at dessert 
 every day) are the most delicious fruit in the world. 
 And green lemons, combined with some rare hoUands 
 that is to be got here, make prodigious punch, I assure 
 you." And this from a letter to Stanfield : — " I love 
 you so truly, and have such pride and joy of heart in your 
 ,^_ friendship, that I don't know how to begin writing to you. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 When I think how you are walking up and down London 
 in that portly surtout, and can't receive proposals from 
 Dick 1 to go to the theatre, I fall into a state between 
 laughing and crying, and want some friendly back to 
 smite. ' Je-im ! ' ' Aye, aye, your honour,' is in my 
 ears every time I walk upon the seashore here ; and the 
 number of expeditions I make into Cornwall in my sleep, 
 the springs of Flys I break, the songs I sing, and the 
 bowls of punch I drink, would soften a heart of stone." 
 Did ever any other man possess such overflowing good 
 spirits ? 
 
 There does not seem to have been anything that de- 
 lighted him more keenly than to be in close touch with 
 his friends : — " You told me it was possible," we have 
 him writing to Mr Tagart, " that you and Mrs Tagart 
 might wander into these latitudes in the autumn. I 
 wish you would carry out that infant intention to the 
 utmost. It would afford us the truest dehght and pleasure 
 to receive you. If you come in October, you will find 
 us in the Palazzo Peschiere, in Genoa, which is surrounded 
 by a delicious garden, and is a most charming habitation 
 in all respects." 
 
 In Genoa, as elsewhere, when at work he sadly missed 
 the turmoil of London ; his pen drags : — " Put me down 
 on Waterloo Bridge," he writes to Forster, while he is 
 hard at " The Chimes," " 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." When the book was 
 finished, Dickens made holiday, touring by himself — 
 though, of course, escorted by Roche — through Ferrara, 
 Parma, Modena, Bologna, Verona, Mantua, Venice 
 
 ' A nickname for himself. 
 128 
 
4*9 
 
 VW: 
 
 ■ Q 
 
 
 
 yn 
 
 Miiiiiitilii 
 
• "«" • * t •< •• 
 
AN INTERESTING PARTY 
 
 and other places of which he has given his 
 " impressions." 
 
 From Milan, on November i8, he writes to Forster, 
 " My design is, to walk into Cuttris's coflee-room ^ on 
 Sunday the ist December, in good time for dinner . . . 
 and when I meet you — oh Heaven ! what a week we will 
 have." He was better than his word, arriving a day 
 eariier, rushing at once to meet Maclise and Forster — 
 we can imagine the uproarious greetings ! The motive 
 of this brief visit to London is to be found in a letter 
 to Douglas Jerrold from Cremona on October i6, " Forster 
 has told you," he writes, " or will tell you, that I very 
 much wish you to hear my little Christmas book ; and I 
 hope you will meet me, at his bidding, in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields," and in one to Forster of earlier date : — " I know 
 you have consented to the party. Let me see. Don't 
 have anyone, this particular night, to dinner, but let 
 it be a summons for the special purpose at half-past 6. 
 Carlyle, indispensable, and I should like his wife of all 
 things : her judgment would be invaluable. You will 
 ask Mac, and why not his sister ? Stanny and Jerrold 
 I should particularly wish ; Edwin Landseer ; Blanchard ; 
 perhaps Harness ; and what say you to Fonblanque and 
 Fox ? . . . And when I meet you (in sound health I 
 hope) oh Heaven ! what a week we will have." 
 
 On Monday, December 2, the party assembled : Carlyle, 
 Stanfield, Laman Blanchard, Douglas Jerrold, Frederick 
 Dickens, Charles's brother, W. J. Fox, Unitarian minister, 
 journahst, free-trader and M.P., Alexander Dyce, the 
 Shakespearean scholar, Maclise, and William Harness, 
 another good Shakespearean. 
 
 It was of Blanchard that Jerrold said, referring to his 
 
 * The Piazza Hotel, Covent Garden, 
 J 129 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 fondness for society, " He to parties gave up what was 
 meant for mankind." 
 
 So successful was the reading that at " Ingoldsby " 
 Barham's request a second took place ; in Barham's 
 diary we read, " December 5, 1844. — Dined with Charles 
 Dickens, Stanfield, Machse and Albany Fonblanque at 
 Forster's. Dickens read with remarkable effect his 
 Christmas story, The Chimes, from the proofs." 
 
 Dickens was delighted, " I swear I wouldn't have 
 missed that week, that first night of our meeting, that 
 one evening of the reading at your rooms," he said to 
 Forster, " aye, and the second reading too, for any 
 easily stated or conceived consideration." 
 
 Apparently he dined at Gore House the very day of 
 the reading, but surely this must have been a slip of his 
 pen when writing to Mrs Dickens ? 
 
 On his way back to Italy he stayed at Paris to meet 
 Macready, who was acting there. We gain a peep at his 
 views on the subject of opera in a letter to Forster : he 
 heard Grisi in // Pirato, " the passion and fire of a scene 
 between her, Mario, and Fomasari was as good and great 
 as it is possible for anything operatic to be." He read 
 " The Chimes " to Macready, and in a letter to Mrs 
 Dickens thus records the effect, " If you had seen Macready 
 last night, undisguisedly sobbing and crying on the sofa 
 as I read, you would have felt, as I did, what a thing it is 
 to have power," 
 
 Before the end of the year he was settled down again 
 in Genoa ; in January he started Southward on a tour with 
 Mrs Dickens, which included Rome and the Carnival, 
 of which he gives so bright and vivid a description in the 
 " Pictures," and then in June — good-bye to Italy. In a 
 letter to Lady Blessington, dated May 9, he says, " I 
 
 130 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 write you my last Italian letter for this bout, designing 
 to leave here, please God, on the ninth of next month, 
 and to be in London again by the end of June. I am 
 looking forward with great delight to the pleasure of seeing 
 you once more, and mean to come to Gore House with 
 such a swoop as shall astonish the poodle, if, after being 
 accustomed to his own size and sense, he retain the power 
 of being astonished at anything in the wide world." 
 
 The return journey was made by the Great St Gothard, 
 of the crossing by which pass Dickens gives a truly 
 thrilling description in a letter to Forster. The party 
 was met at Brussels by Maclise, Jerrold and the afore- 
 said Forster, a week of fun and frolic was spent in Belgium, 
 and so home by the end of June. 
 
 I 
 
 131 
 
XX 
 
 1845-6 
 
 THE two most important events — for our purpose 
 — during the latter part of the year 1845 and 
 the earher of 1846 are the one connected with 
 amateur theatricals and the other with very practical 
 and at the same time impractical journalism. 
 
 The notion of an amateur performance had some time 
 since been mooted, and, working with his wonted energy, 
 within three weeks after his return to town the play had 
 been chosen and cast, and negotiations entered upon for 
 a playhouse. The upshot was detailed in a letter to 
 George Cattermole, who was asked to but did not take 
 the part of Downright in Ben Jonson's " Every Man in His 
 Humour." The date fixed for the performance was 
 September 21, the place Miss Kelly's Theatre, in Dean 
 Street, Soho, now known as the Royalty ; the occasion 
 strictly private, that is to say, the audience was invited, 
 each member of the cast being allotted from thirty to 
 thirty-five cards ; Stanfield was to have been Downright, 
 indeed, rehearsed the part twice, but threw it up finding 
 his time fully occupied with the scenery ; Dickens was 
 Bobadil ; Jerrold, Master Stephen ; Mark Lemon, Brain- 
 worm ; Leech, Master Matthew ; Forster, Kitely. The 
 performance was so triumphant a success that it was 
 repeated some weeks later for a charity ; and before the 
 year closed a performance was given of another Elizabethan 
 
 132 
 
THE " DAILY NEWS " 
 
 masterpiece, Beaumont and Fletcher's " Elder Brother." 
 Dickens's gifts as an actor and stage-manager it will 
 be more convenient to discuss later on in connection with 
 more public performances. After the " show " there was 
 to be a little supper, writes Dickens to Macready, " at 
 No. 9, Powis Place, Great Ormond Street, in an empty 
 house belonging to one of the company. There I am 
 requested by my fellows to beg the favour of thy company 
 and that of Mrs Macready. The guests are limited to the 
 actors and their ladies — with the exception of yourselves, 
 and D'Orsay, and George Cattermole, ' or so ' — that sounds 
 like Bodadil a little." 
 
 Undertaking the editorship of the Daily News was one 
 of the few bad blunders, if not the one, that Dickens 
 made in his business hfe, which might have been avoided, 
 indeed, if he had taken the advice urged upon him by 
 Forster, who very rightly held that Dickens was by 
 temperament unsuited for grappling with the peculiarly 
 harassing duties of the editor of a daily newspaper. 
 Forster knew well how great the cost was to Dickens of 
 work that seemed so spontaneous and so facilely produced, 
 knew also that his health was not so robust as his habits 
 of life would appear to show. Also, what could Dickens 
 gain either in fame or the good-will of the public by success 
 in his new walk of life ? There was indeed everything 
 to lose and not anything to gain. However, Dickens 
 had made up his mind to the undertaking. 
 
 The work was indeed harassing : — 
 
 On January 21, he writes to Forster, before going 
 home at six o'clock in the morning, " been at press three- 
 quarters of an hour, and were out before the Times." 
 
 On the same day to W. J. Fox, who had undertaken 
 to write some of the political articles : — " The boy is 
 
 133 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 waiting. I need not tell you how our Printer failed us 
 last night. I hope for better things to-night, and am 
 bent on a fight for it. If we can get a good paper to-morrow, 
 I believe we are as safe as such a thing can be." 
 
 On February 9, to Forster he writes to say that he is 
 tired and worn out, having already hinted that it was 
 in his mind to throw up the work and to go abroad once 
 again ; in little over four months from the starting of 
 the paper Dickens's connection with it had entirely ceased. 
 The decision to sever himself from it appears to have been 
 arrived at in conversation with Forster during a two days' 
 visit to Rochester on his birthday, he, Mrs Dickens, Miss 
 Hogarth, Maclise, Forster and Jerrold making up the 
 party. Visits were paid to the Castle, to Watt's Charity, 
 the Chatham lines, Cobham Church and Cobham Park, 
 the while they put up at the Bull Inn, which still glories 
 in the names of Dickens and Pickwick. 
 
 134 
 
XXI 
 
 SWITZERLAND 
 
 AFTER dining with Forster on May 30, " Mr and 
 Mrs Charles Dickens and Family " left England 
 on the following day en route for Switzerland, 
 travelling via Ostend, Verviers, Coblentz, Mayence, 
 Mannheim, Strasburg, Bale, so to Lausanne ; accom- 
 panied, or rather conducted, by the indefatigable Roche. 
 From our point of view this visit to Switzerland, which 
 lasted until late in the autumn, is chiefly notable in that 
 during it he made some lasting and true friends. But 
 before introducing ourselves to some of these, we may 
 touch upon one or two minor incidents, which help in 
 one way or another to throw light upon his character. 
 For a full account of this stay in Switzerland — as of many 
 other matters which we merely touch upon or entirely 
 neglect — recourse must be had to Forster's " Life " and 
 to the three volumes of " Letters," these latter being 
 by no means so well known as they should be ; as we 
 have said before, Dickens was among the master men 
 of " Letters." 
 
 His hatred and misunderstanding of other days and 
 other ways is well shown in a description he gives of a 
 visit he paid in August to Chillon ; " there is a court- 
 yard inside ; surrounded by prisons, oubliettes, and old 
 :hambers of torture ; so terrifically sad, that death itself 
 not more sorrowful. And oh ! a wicked old Grand 
 
 135 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Duke's bedchamber upstairs in the tower, with a secret 
 staircase down into the chapel where the bats were wheel- 
 ing about ; and Bonnivard's dungeon ; and a horrible 
 trap whence prisoners were cast out into the lake ; and 
 a stake all burnt and crackled up, that still stands in the 
 torture ante-chamber to the saloon of justice (!) — what 
 tremendous places ! Good God, the greatest mystery 
 in all the earth, to me, is how or why the world was 
 tolerated by its Creator through the good old times, and 
 wasn't dashed to fragments." It is strange that with 
 his intimate knowledge of the horrors of London and his 
 passionate love for and sympathy with the poor and 
 oppressed he did not realise that our ways to-day are other 
 ways, but in the sum of suffering caused by them by no 
 means better ways. Again, commenting upon the re- 
 volution that had upset the Swiss government, he says, 
 " they are a genuine people, these Swiss. There is better 
 metal in them than in all the stars and stripes of all the 
 fustian banners of the so-called, and falsely-called, 
 U-nited States. They are a thorn in the sides of European 
 despots, and a good wholesome people to live near Jesuit- 
 ridden Kings on the brighter side of the mountains." 
 This is quite high-class demagoguese. Later on he says 
 that he believes " the dissemination of Catholicity to be 
 the most horrible means of political and social degradation 
 left in the world." 
 
 Now to hark back to the commencement of the visit, 
 from the very beginning of which he was fortunate in 
 the matter of making of friends. Among the earliest 
 with whom he became acquainted, the acquaintance 
 rapidly growing into sincere friendship, were Mrs Jane 
 Marcet, a Swiss lady, married to the distinguished chemist, 
 Alexander John Gaspard Marcet, and a writer herself of 
 
 136 
 
SWISS FRIENDS 
 
 popular scientific works for the young ; her maiden name 
 was Haldimand : and Wilham Haldimand, her brother. He 
 was bom in 1784, the son of a London merchant, Anthony 
 Francis Haldimand, and was an excellent man of business, 
 becoming a director of the Bank of England when only 
 twenty-five. In 1820 he was elected M.P. for Ipswich, 
 but in 1828 settled at Lausanne in his villa, Denanton. 
 He was among the most ardent supporters of the cause of 
 Greek Independence, guaranteeing Admiral Cochrane 
 ;^20,ooo toward the equipment of a fleet. Toward the 
 founding of a hospital for the blind at Lausanne he sub- 
 scribed £24,000, and his other charitable gifts were large. 
 
 Dickens says of him with amusing extravagance — 
 " He has founded and endowed all sorts of hospitals and 
 institutions here," going on to say that he is hospitably 
 giving a dinner to introduce " our neighbours, whoever 
 they are." To him and to a Swiss friend, M. de Cerjat, 
 Dickens wrote many of his most delightful letters. Of 
 the rest of the circle we need only name the Hon. Richard 
 and Mrs Watson of Rockingham Castle. Mrs Watson 
 was the daughter of Lord George Quin, who married Lady 
 Georgiana Spencer, and Mr Watson was the fourth son 
 of the second Lord Sondes. Rockingham Castle was situ- 
 ated upon one of the few hills to be found in the county 
 of Northampton ; a fine old pile that had once upon a 
 time been a Royal hunting-lodge and stood in the midst 
 of a well-wooded park. A portion of the house dated 
 back as far as King Stephen. In the great Hall, on one 
 of the beams, was a quaint inscription, 
 
 " Thys House shall be preserved and never shall decaye 
 While Almighty Qod is honoured and served da ye by 
 
 DAYE." 
 
 ^e will here take a peep into the future, first quoting 
 137 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 what Dickens has to say of his friends : — " He is a very 
 intelligent agreeable fellow, the said Watson by-the-bye ; 
 he sat for Northamptonshire in the Reform Bill time, 
 and is high sheriff of his county and all the rest of it ; 
 but has not the least nonsense about him, and is a thorough 
 good liberal. He has a charming wife." 
 
 In 1849 we find Dickens paying the Watsons a visit 
 at Rockingham, and he writes thence on November 30 a 
 quaint account of the old place. 
 
 Miss Mary Boyle first met Dickens when on a visit to 
 Rockingham. Mrs Watson was a relative of hers, though 
 not very near, and knowing that she much desired to meet 
 " Boz," asked her down to do so, naming a certain day 
 and train and bidding her look out for the Dickens family 
 at Euston. It was not, however, until the train had 
 reached Wolverton that they met ; then the guard flung 
 open the door of her carriage and announced, " This is 
 Mr Charles Dickens, who is enquiring for Miss Boyle." 
 
 She was an enthusiastic amateur actress ; what 
 more natural than that she and Dickens should at once 
 join forces and play the mad gentleman scenes from 
 " Nicholas Nickleby " for the benefit of the house party ? 
 In the dining-room, a beautiful apartment, panelled 
 in oak, and adorned with numerous heraldic shields, 
 the " theatre " was erected on this occasion. 
 
 Mr Watson died in 1852, to the great grief of Dickens, 
 who had felt for him a sincere affection : — " I loved him 
 as my heart, and cannot think of him without tears," 
 and again, " I loved him very much, and God knows 
 he deserved it." Dickens wrote to the widow one of the 
 truest, most tender letters of sympathy and consolation 
 that man ever penned. It would be a profanity to quote 
 from it ; it should be read in its entirety. 
 
 138 
 
THE GREAT ST BERNARD 
 
 Both as regards time and place we have gone far 
 astray from Switzerland, to which we will now return, 
 but only for a brief space, as it is by no means our 
 intention to follow his footsteps at all closely. 
 
 One of the many trips that he made was especially 
 interesting and enjoyable ; the company, Mr and Mrs 
 Dickens, Miss Hogarth, Mr Haldimand, M. and Mdme. 
 de Cerjat and their daughter, Mr and Mrs Watson and 
 some others ; destination, the Great St Bernard monas- 
 tery; a jolly, merry party. The holy fathers Dickens 
 held to be "a piece of sheer humbug." Writing to Mrs 
 Watson on October 7, 1856, and referring to a chapter in 
 " Little Dorrit " in which the family of that name visits 
 the Great St Bernard, he says, " I did write it for you ; 
 and I hoped in writing it, that you would think so. All 
 those remembrances are fresh in my mind, as they often 
 are, and gave me an extraordinary interest in recalling 
 the past. I should have been grievously disappointed if 
 you had not been pleased, for I took aim at you with a 
 most determined intention." 
 
 On Monday, November 16, they started for Paris : — 
 " I don't believe there are many dots on the map of the 
 world where we shall have left such affectionate remem- 
 brances behind us, as in Lausanne. It was quite miserable 
 this last night, when we left them at Haldimand's." 
 
 So by post to Paris, where they arrived on the 20th, 
 with " several tons of luggage, other tons of servants, 
 and other tons of children." 
 
 139 
 
XXII 
 PARIS 
 
 WE shall be with Dickens in Paris again later on, 
 and will make excuse of this three months' 
 visit chiefly to show Dickens as an affectionate 
 brother. His eldest sister, Fanny, was born at Portsea, 
 in 1810, two years before her famous brother. She became 
 a pupil at the Royal Academy of Music, in Tenterden 
 Street, and during one of the saddest periods of his sad 
 childhood Dickens went to see her receive a prize there : — 
 " I could not bear to think of myself — beyond 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." 
 It was while at Paris that he received disquieting news 
 concerning the health of his sister — now Mrs Burnett — 
 her husband was also a musician — which caused him 
 grave disquietude. She had broken down while at a 
 party at Manchester, and the doctor reported that her 
 lungs were seriously affected. There had previously 
 been fears, but Mrs Dickens had taken her to Doctor 
 EUiotson, who had then given a favourable verdict. 
 Dickens now suggested that she should see him again, 
 and the sentence this time was practically one of death ; 
 her health completely broke down. In the early days 
 
 140 
 
JOHN OVERS 
 
 of July, 1848, Dickens wrote to Forster telling him that 
 the end had come. 
 
 Of the good doctor we must say a word or two. John 
 Elliotson was born in 1791, the son of a chemist, and was 
 educated at Edinburgh, and Jesus College, Cambridge, 
 afterward " walking " St Thomas's and Guy's hospitals. 
 Among his eccentricities, which were many, may be 
 mentioned that he was one of the first of modem English- 
 men to wear a beard. His lectures as Professor of the 
 Practice of Medicine at London University were highly 
 popular, and he was one of the most energetic promoters 
 of University College Hospital. In time he became a 
 student of mesmerism, which brought him into conflict 
 with the medical profession, and greatly interested 
 Dickens. But it is not to our purpose to follow his 
 career, distinguished in many ways, as a physician. He 
 was the friend of Thackeray, who dedicated " Pendennis " 
 to him, and of Dickens. 
 
 Elliotson and Dickens were joint benefactors to one 
 John Overs, a carpenter, who was stricken with consump- 
 tion, dying in 1844. He had some small literary talent, 
 and when disease incapacitated him from work, some of 
 his stories were published by T. C. Newby, with an introduc- 
 tion by Dickens, under the title " Evenings of a Working 
 Man," and dedicated to Elliotson, of whom Forster says : — 
 " whose name was for nearly thirty years a synonym with 
 us all for unwearied, self-sacrificing, beneficent service to 
 everyone in need." Miss Coutts (as she then was) appears 
 prettily in the same connection. Dickens wrote on behalf 
 of the widow to thank Miss Coutts for her generous help in 
 money and for having obtained admission to an orphanage 
 for one of the children ; the reply came, " what is the use 
 of my means but to try and do some good with them ? " 
 
 141 
 
 / 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Dickens paid a flpng visit of eight days to London, 
 chiefly on business intent, and Forster went over to Paris 
 early in 1847 for a fortnight of riotous and vehement 
 sight-seeing, Dickens showing his usual thoughtfulness 
 for a friend's comfort by arranging every detail of his 
 journey, even to the ordering of his dinner at Boulogne 
 at the Hotel des Bains and the taking a place for him in 
 the malle-foste. At Paris, they went to palaces, theatres, 
 hospitals, says Forster, as well as to all the more usual 
 " sights." They were made free of the green-room at 
 the Frangais by Regnier, one of the closest of Dickens's 
 many actor friends ; they were present at a lesson given 
 by Samson at the Conservatoire ; saw various plays, 
 including " Clarisse Harlowe," in which the acting of Rose 
 Cheri greatly impressed them by its pathos ; supped with 
 the splendid Alexandre Dumas and with Eugene Sue. 
 Lamartine, Theophile Gautier, Scribe, Chateaubriand and 
 Victor Hugo were among other famous men they met. 
 Forster gives a striking description of the last-named, 
 in his home in the Place Royale, with its gorgeous decora- 
 tions. He depicts him as " 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." 
 
 The stay at Paris was cut short by the illness of Dickens's 
 eldest son, who was then at King's College School, with 
 scarlet fever, and Mr and Mrs Dickens at once returned 
 to London, but owing to the infectious nature of the 
 disease did not see their son for some weeks. The boy 
 had been nursed in lodgings in Albany Street by his 
 
 142 
 
" DOMBEY AND SON " 
 
 grandmother, Mrs Hogarth, and an amusing story — worth 
 repeating — is told of a charwoman who inquired if the 
 patient was the son of the author of " Dombey and Son." 
 On hearing this was so, she exclaimed, " Lawk, ma'am ! 
 I thought that three or four men must have put 
 together Dombey ! " 
 
 143 
 
XXIII 
 ON TOUR 
 
 NO attempt is made in this rambling record to 
 adopt any strict order of dates. This chapter 
 will be devoted to tours made by Dickens 
 and a Company of Amateur Actors through the provinces, 
 which have been aptly designated by Maclise as " splendid 
 strolling." Dickens loved the theatre and all connected 
 with it, and several actors were amongst his closest friends. 
 It was by the merest freak of fate that he did not become 
 a professional actor. As a young man, he was an enthusi- 
 astic playgoer, and studied various parts himself. Then 
 he determined to try his fortune upon the boards, writing 
 to George Hartley, the comedian and stage-manager at 
 Covent Garden Theatre, describing what powers he be- 
 lieved himself to possess, and asking for an interview. 
 Bartley responded, and a date was fixed for a visit, at 
 which the aspirant's powers were to be tested before no 
 less a person than Charles Kemble. The day arrived, 
 but Dickens was prostrated with a cold. The visit was 
 postponed until the next season, but in the meanwhile 
 the beginnings of a journalistic success had been made 
 and the matter was not reopened. 
 
 In 1847 it was proposed to give some representations 
 of " Every Man in His Humour " on behalf of Leigh 
 Hunt, who was in financial difficulties, and to this motive 
 was added the relieving of the pecuniary necessities of 
 John Poole, the dramatic author. 
 
 144 
 
LEIGH HUNT 
 
 Some letters of Dickens's in June and July set forth 
 fairly fully the aims of the performances and the constitu- 
 tion of the cast. They are written to Mr Alexander 
 Ireland, a Scotchman who had settled in Manchester, 
 being the publisher and business manager of the Ex- 
 aminer there. He is best remembered as the author of 
 " The Book-Lover's Enchiridion." Manchester was 
 one of the towns it was proposed to visit, and Dickens 
 wrote to Ireland, having heard from a common friend that 
 he was interested in all that concerned Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Of this charming writer we do not propose to say much. 
 James Henry Leigh Hunt was bom in the year 1784, 
 and was educated at Christ's Hospital, now as far as con- 
 cerns London, alas, no more ; it was a place of many 
 happy literary ghosts. To every kind of journahsm 
 he turned his graceful pen, he was essayist and also poet, 
 but little of his writing has stood the cruel test of time. 
 There is scarce one work of his which to-day has many 
 readers except among students of literature, perhaps 
 the most generally popular book of his being " The Town," 
 a delightful volume to all lovers of London. Among other 
 of his writings may be named " The Story of Rimini " ; 
 " Lord Byron and some of His Contemporaries " ; "A 
 Legend of Florence," produced at Covent Garden in 
 1840 ; an " Autobiography," which is very disappointing, 
 and " An Old Court Suburb." His chief claim to fame 
 is that he was the friend of Lamb, Moore, Byron, Keats, 
 Shelley, and — for our purpose — of Charles Dickens. He 
 died in 1859 and was buried at Kensal Green. Of his 
 style of prose writing we may gain some hint from an 
 excerpt from his " Autobiography," dealing with his 
 school-days : — 
 
 " Christ-Hospital (for such is its proper name, and not 
 K r45 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Christ's Hospital) occupies a considerable portion of 
 ground between Newgate Street, Giltspur Street, St 
 Bartholomew's, and Little Britain. There is a quad- 
 rangle with cloisters ; and the Square inside the cloisters 
 is called the Garden, and most likely was the monastery 
 garden. Its only delicious crop for many years has been 
 pavement. Another large area, presenting the Grammar 
 and Navigation Schools, is also misnamed the Ditch ; 
 the town ditch having formerly run that way. In New- 
 gate Street is seen the hall, or eating-room, one of the 
 noblest in England, adorned with enormously long paint- 
 ings by Verrio and others, and with an organ. A portion 
 of the old quadrangle once contained the library of the 
 monks, and was built or repaired by the famous Whitting- 
 ton, whose arms were to be seen outside ; but alterations 
 of late years have done it away. Our routine of life was 
 this. We rose to the call of a bell at six in summer, 
 and seven in winter ; and after combing ourselves, and 
 washing our hands and face, we went at the call of another 
 bell to breakfast. All this took up about an hour. From 
 breakfast we proceeded to school, where we remained 
 till eleven, winter and summer, and then had an hour's 
 play. Dinner took place at twelve. Afterwards was a 
 little play till one, when we went again to school, and 
 remained till five in summer, and four in winter. At 
 six was the supper. We used to play after it in summer 
 till eight. On Sundays, the school time of other days 
 was occupied in church, both morning and evening ; 
 and as the Bible was read to us every day before every 
 meal, besides prayers and grace, we rivalled the monks 
 in the rehgious part of our duties." 
 
 At the man himself we may profitably take a few peeps. 
 In 1834 he was hving at 4 Upper Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
 
 146 
 
CARLYLE ON HUNT 
 
 with Carlyle as near neighbour, who thus describes 
 Hunt and his surroundings : — 
 
 " Hunt's household. Nondescript ! Unutterable ! 
 Mrs Hunt asleep on cushions ; four or five beautiful, 
 strange, gipsy-looking children running about in undress, 
 whom the lady ordered to get us tea. The eldest boy, 
 Percy, — a sallow, black-haired youth of sixteen, with a 
 kind of dark cotton nightgown on, — went whirling about 
 like a familiar, pervading everything ; an indescribable 
 dreamlike household. . . . Hunt's house excels all you 
 have ever read of, — a poetical Tinkerdom, without parallel 
 even in literature. In his family room, where are a sickly 
 large wife and a whole school of well-conditioned wild 
 children, you will find half a dozen old rickety chairs 
 gathered from half a dozen different hucksters, and 
 all seeming engaged, and just pausing, in a violent horn- 
 pipe. On these and around them and over the dusty 
 table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter, — books, 
 paper, egg-shells, scissors, and, last night when I was 
 there, the torn heart of a half-quarter loaf. His own room 
 above stairs, into which alone I strive to enter, he keeps 
 cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and a writing- 
 table ; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom 
 in the spirit of a king, apologizes for nothing, places you 
 in the best seat, takes a window-sill himself if there is 
 no other, and then, folding closer his loose flowing ' muslin 
 cloud ' of a printed night-gown, in which he always writes, 
 commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the 
 prospects of man (who is to be beyond measure happy 
 yet) ; which again he will courteously terminate the 
 moment you are bound to go ; a most interesting, pitiable, 
 lovable man, to be used kindly but with discretion." 
 
 In 1839 Sumner speaks of him as " truly brilliant in 
 
 147 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 conversation . . . he is of about the middle size, with 
 iron-gray hair parted in the middle, and suffered to grow 
 quite long." 
 
 Mrs Cowden Clarke gives us a pleasant peep at Leigh 
 Hunt ; she was introduced to him at a party, where he 
 sang a cheery nautical song in his sweet though small 
 baritone. " His manner — fascinating, animated, full of 
 cordial amenity, and winning to a degree of which I have 
 never seen the parallel — drew me to him at once." And 
 J. T. Fields in his diary writes : — June 30, 1859. — " Drove 
 to Hammersmith, where we found Leigh Hunt and his 
 two daughters awaiting us. It was a very tiny cottage, 
 with white curtains and flowers in the window ; but 
 his beautiful manner made it a rich abode. The dear 
 old man talked delightfully about his flowers, calling 
 them ' gentle household pets.' " 
 
 More or less disguised both Landor and Leigh Hunt 
 figure in " Bleak House," the former as Lawrence Boy- 
 thorn, the latter as Harold Skimpole. Landor is said to 
 have been rather proud of his portrait ; not inexcusably 
 Leigh Hunt was not so. Wilkie ColUns made the follow- 
 ing note in his copy of Forster's " Life of Charles Dickens," 
 " At Dickens's own house, when Leigh Hunt was one 
 of his guests at dinner on that occasion, Hunt directly 
 charged Dickens with taking the character of Harold 
 Skimpole from the character of Leigh Hunt, and protested 
 strongly. I was not present, but Dickens told me what 
 had happened." Forster's verdict on Dickens was that 
 " he erred from thoughtlessness only," but both " Barry 
 Cornwall " and Forster himself protested and urged Dickens 
 to alter the likeness, who wrote to the latter, " You will 
 see from the enclosed that Procter is much of my mind. 
 I will nevertheless go through the character again in the 
 
 148 
 
HAROLD SKIMPOLE 
 
 course of this afternoon, and soften down words here and 
 there," but after a second note from Procter further 
 changes were made. In an article, " Leigh Hunt, a 
 Remonstrance," published in " All The Year Round," 
 in 1859, Dickens wrote : — 
 
 " The fact is this : exactly those graces and charms 
 of manner which are remembered in the words we have 
 quoted were remembered by the author of the work of 
 fiction in question when he drew the character in question. 
 Above all other things, that ' sort of gay and ostentatious 
 wilfulness ' in the humouring of a subject, which had 
 many times delighted him, and impressed him as being 
 unspeakably whimsical and attractive, was the airy 
 quality he wanted for the man he had invented. Partly 
 for this reason, and partly (he has since often grieved to 
 think) for the pleasure it afforded him to find that de- 
 lightful manner reproducing itself under his hand, he 
 yielded to the temptation of too often making the character 
 sfeak like his old friend. He no more thought, God for- 
 give him ! that the admired original would ever be charged 
 with the imaginary vices of the fictitious creature than he 
 has himself ever thought of charging the blood of Desde- 
 mona and Othello on the innocent Academy model who 
 sat for lago's leg in the picture. Even as to the mere 
 occasional manner, he meant to be so cautious and con- 
 scientious that he privately referred the two proof-sheets 
 of the first number of that book to two intimate literary 
 friends of Leigh Hunt, and altered the whole of that 
 part of the text on their discovering too strong a resem- 
 blance to his * way.' " 
 
 In one of the above-mentioned letters to Ireland, 
 Dickens makes mention of the other beneficiary : — 
 " there is no objection to its being known that this is 
 
 149 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Mr Poole, the author of * Paul Pry ' and ' Little Peddling- 
 ton * and many comic pieces of great merit, and whose 
 farce of ' Turning the Tables ' we mean to finish with in 
 Manchester. Beyond what he will get from these benefits, 
 he has no resource in this wild world, / know." Not only 
 did the dramatist gain relief from these benefits, but later 
 on, and largely through Dickens's efforts, obtained a Civil 
 List pension. He was born in about 1785 and lived on until 
 1872. Though his plays cannot be said to have held the 
 stage, he has created one immortal figure in " Paul Pry." 
 He was a bit of a wag in his way, as is evidenced by a 
 quaint saying of his at a dinner where the host was 
 grumbling because he could not find any stuffing in the 
 leg of pork he was carving : — " Perhaps," said Poole, 
 " it is in the other leg." But like many another wag he 
 did not highly relish any joke the edge of which was turned 
 against himself. 
 
 Writing on October 8, 1862, to Wilkie Collins, Dickens 
 said : — 
 
 " I saw Poole (for my sins) last Saturday, and he was 
 a sight. He had got out of bed to receive me (at 3 p.m.) 
 and tried to look as if he had been up at Dawn — with a 
 dirty and obviously warm impression of himself on the 
 bedclothes. It was a tent bedstead with four wholly 
 unaccounted for and bare poles, each with an immense 
 spike on the top, like four lightning conductors. He had 
 a fortnight's grey beard, and had made a lot of the most 
 extraordinary memoranda of questions to ask me — which 
 he couldn't read — through an eyeglass which he couldn't 
 hold. He was continually beset with a notion that his 
 landlady was listening outside the door, and was con- 
 tinually getting up from a kind of ironing-board at which 
 he sat, with the intention of darting at the door, but in- 
 
 150 
 
" PAUL PRY '* 
 
 variably missed his aim, and brought himself up by the 
 forehead against blind corners of the wall." And to 
 Macready in April, 1865, " Poole still holds out at Kentish 
 Town, and says he is dying of solitude. His memory is 
 astoundingly good. I see him about once in two or 
 three months, and in the meantime he makes notes of 
 questions to ask me when I come. Having fallen in arrear 
 of the time, these generally refer to unknown words he 
 has encountered in the newspapers. His last three (he 
 always reads them with tremendous difficulty through 
 an enormous magnifying glass) were as follows : — 
 
 1. What's croquet ? 
 
 2. What's an albert chain ? 
 
 3. Let me know the state of mind of the queen." 
 Returning to the Ireland letters, we may quote what 
 
 description Dickens gave of the company : — " Jerrold 
 and myself you have heard of ; Mr George Cruikshank 
 and Mr Leech (the best caricaturists of any times per- 
 haps) need no introduction, Mr Frank Stone (a Manchester 
 man) and Mr Egg are artists of high reputation. Mr 
 Forster is the critic of The Examiner, the author of ' The 
 Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth,' and very 
 distinguished as a writer in The Edinburgh Review. Mr 
 Lewes is also a man of great attainments in polite litera- 
 ture, and the author of a novel published not long since, 
 called ' Ranthorpe.' Mr Costello is a periodical writer, 
 and a gentleman renowned as a tourist. Mr Mark Lemon 
 is a dramatic author, and the editor of Punch — a most 
 excellent actor, as you will find. My brothers play small 
 parts, for love, and have no greater note than the Treasury 
 and the City confer on their disciples." 
 
 The close friendship between Dickens and Egg com- 
 menced with these " play-actings." Of the others 
 
 151 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 mentioned we will glance at one or two, Lewes is the 
 George Henry Lewes, who wrote many things, novels, 
 plays, biographies, dramatic and other criticisms, of 
 whose work perhaps the most lasting will prove to be his 
 " Life of Goethe." In 1851 he met with " George Eliot," 
 travelled with her in Germany three years later, and 
 afterward lived with her until his death. He was one 
 for whom Dickens had a sincere regard. Dudley Costello, 
 of Irish descent as his name shows, was a journalist of 
 considerable repute, a novelist, an expert in MSS., and, 
 we are told, " good-humoured, sociable, and with a large 
 stock of amusing conversation." 
 
 Mark Lemon was born in about 1820, of Jewish descent, 
 as may be gathered from his " Christian " name, and 
 died in the May of 1870, very shortly before the death of 
 Dickens himself. Edmund Yates says of him, " corpulent, 
 jovial, bright-eyed, with a hearty laugh and an air of 
 bonhomie, he rolled through life the outward impersona- 
 tion of jollity and good temper." In early days he was 
 mine host of " The Shakespeare " tavern in Wych Street. 
 As editor of Punch he drove his difficult team with tact 
 and discretion. Opinions differ considerably as to his 
 characteristics, for he has been described as a " mealy- 
 mouthed sycophant " ; Dickens called him " a most 
 affectionate and true-hearted fellow"; and another, who 
 knew him well, the " most loveable elderly boy I have 
 ever seen." Joseph Hatton said of him, " he believed in 
 one God, one woman, one publication " — his wife and 
 Punch. Of his witticisms — or rather " funniments " — 
 we will quote but one, from a letter, " our nurse-maid 
 has the chicken-pock, and we expect to see her throw out 
 feathers to-morrow." He published a volume of " Prose 
 and Verse," which Douglas Jerrold unkindly dubbed 
 
 152 
 
MARK LEMON 
 
 " Prose and Worse." It was to Lemon that Hans Andersen 
 addressed the remark, " Ah, Mr Lemon, I hke you ; you 
 are so full of comic." 
 
 In 185 1 Lemon was with Dickens at a time of sore 
 trouble. John Dickens, the novelist's father, had died 
 on April 5th, and on the 14th Dickens, yielding to pressure, 
 fulfilled his engagement to preside at the Sixth Annual 
 Dinner of the General Theatrical Fund. He came up 
 from Malvern, where he had been staying, and made at 
 the dinner a brilliant speech, from which we will make 
 a brief quotation : — " let any man ask his own heart, 
 and confess if he have not some grateful acknowledge- 
 ments for the actor's art ? Not peculiarly because it is 
 a profession often pursued, and as it were marked, by 
 poverty and misfortune — for other calUngs, God knows, 
 have their distresses — nor because the actor has some- 
 times to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering, ay, 
 even of death itself, to play his part before us — for all 
 of us, in our spheres, have as often to do violence to our 
 feelings and to hide our hearts in fighting this great 
 I battle of life, and in discharging our duties and responsi- 
 bilities. But the art of the actor excites reflections, 
 [sombre or grotesque, awful or humorous, with which 
 7e are all familiar. If any man were to tell me that he 
 denied his acknowledgements to the stage, I would simply 
 put to him one question — whether he remembered his 
 first play ? " During the dinner Forster had been called 
 out, to receive the sad information that Dickens's 
 daughter Dora had died suddenly. When he left the 
 chair, Mark Lemon helped Forster to break the terrible 
 news. We pass on to a letter dated April 26, 1855, from 
 I Dickens to Lemon, a child of whose had died ; " Leech 
 and I called on Tuesday and left our loves. I have not 
 
 153 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 written to you since, because I thought it best to leave 
 you quiet for a day. I have no need to tell you, my dear 
 fellow, that my thoughts have been constantly with you, 
 and that I have not forgotten (and never shall forget) 
 who sat up with rne one night when a little place in my 
 house was left empty." 
 
 Now to our tourists. 
 
 On Monday, July 26, the company appeared at Man- 
 chester, when in addition to the Ben Jonson comedy 
 the farces " A Good Night's Rest " and " Turning the 
 Tables " were given, the takings being over £440 ; on the 
 28th they acted at Liverpool, but for the above- 
 named farces " Comfortable Lodgings, or Paris in 1750 " 
 was substituted ; the receipts were over £460. The 
 expenses of the undertaking were so heavy that the profits 
 were but £420, which, however, cannot be considered 
 a mean result. 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 
 154 
 
XXIV 
 ODDMENTS AND ELOQUENCE 
 
 BEFORE proceeding with our story we may pause 
 a moment to note Dickens's friendship with two 
 poets of different countries, generations and 
 gifts. He writes from Paris, in 1846, to M. de Cerjat that 
 Tom Moore is very ill ; he fears dying, though the fear 
 did not prove well founded, as he lived on until 1852. 
 Dickens adds that the last time he had seen him was in 
 London, and that he had found him " sadly changed 
 and tamed, but not much more so than such a man might 
 be under the heavy hand of time." In Forster we find 
 record of Dickens meeting with the brilliant Irish singer 
 at the house of Sir Francis Burdett, in 1841, Rogers 
 being present and in a somewhat rude humour. Moore 
 ras a connecting link between, we might almost say, 
 to-day, for there are many with us still who knew Charles 
 )ickens, and the literature and literary men of the latter 
 id of the eighteenth century, for he was bom in 1779, 
 coming to London twenty years later. Also from Paris, but 
 lis time to Lady Blessington, Dickens writes to say that 
 lehas been to visit Victor Hugo, whose house he describes 
 as looking like an old curiosity shop : " I was much struck 
 ^by Hugo himself, who looks like a genius as he is, every 
 ich of him, and is very interesting and satisfactory from 
 lead to foot." We have quoted these two oddments here, 
 istead of in their proper chronological niches, for we 
 
 155 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 wish once again to draw attention to the fact that 
 Dickens has been grossly neglected as a writer of letters 
 and also to express the wish that some day the letters 
 and Forster's Life may be welded into a whole, with 
 additions and omissions. Lastly, in order that we may 
 acknowledge the self-evident fact that these pages owe 
 much to the Letters and the aforesaid Life. 
 
 In the autumn of this year (1847) a visit was paid to 
 the belov'd Broadstairs, and on returning the family 
 were able to take possession again of their own house in 
 Devonshire Terrace. In December Mr and Mrs Dickens 
 paid a visit to Leeds and to Glasgow, to which we will 
 turn our attention for a moment. The first-named visit 
 was in order that Dickens should preside at a soiree at 
 the Leeds Mechanics' Institution, when almost twelve 
 hundred people were present. The novelist, who was 
 afflicted with " a most disastrous cold," spoke at some 
 length, and it will serve the good purpose of showing what 
 manner of speaker Dickens was on such occasions if we 
 quote one or two passages. " The cause in which we 
 are assembled," he said, " and the objects we are met 
 to promote, I take, and always have taken to be, the 
 cause and the objects involving almost all others that are 
 essential to the welfare and happiness of mankind. And 
 in a celebration like the present, commemorating the birth 
 and progress of a great educational establishment, I 
 recognise a something, not limited to the spectacle of 
 the moment, beautiful and radiant though it be — not 
 limited even to the success of the particular establishment 
 in which we are more immediately interested — but ex- 
 tending from this place and through swarms of toiling 
 men elsewhere, cheering and stimulating them in the 
 onward, upward path that lies before us all. Where- 
 
 156 
 
Ik 
 
 DICKENS AS ORATOR 
 
 ever hammers beat, or wherever factory chimneys smoke, 
 wherever hands are busy, or the clanking of machinery 
 resounds — wherever, in a word, there are masses of in- 
 dustrious human beings whom their wise Creator did not 
 see fit to constitute all body, but into each and every 
 one of whom he breathed a mind — there, I would fain 
 believe, some touch of sympathy and encouragement is 
 felt from our collective pulse now beating in this hall." 
 That passage may have sounded all right, but it reads 
 dangerously like clap-trap. 
 
 The visit to Glasgow was for a somewhat similar cere- 
 mony, a soiree in the City Hall to commemorate the open- 
 ing of the Glasgow Athenaeum, and as an example of his 
 lighter — and by far superior — oratory we will quote the 
 following : — 
 
 " It is a great satisfaction to me to occupy the place I 
 do in behalf of an infant institution ; a remarkably fine 
 child enough, of a vigorous constitution, but an infant 
 till. I esteem myself singularly fortunate in knowing 
 before its prime, in the hope that I may have the 
 ileasure of remembering in its prime, and when it has 
 ttained to its lusty maturity, that I was a friend of its 
 uth. It has already passed through some of the dis- 
 ders to which children are liable ; it succeeded to an 
 elder brother of a very meritorious character, but of rather 
 a weak constitution, and which expired when about 
 twelve months old, from, it is said, a destructive habit 
 of getting up early in the morning : it succeeded this 
 elder brother, and has fought manfully through a sea of 
 oubles. Its friends have often been much concerned for 
 its pulse has been exceedingly low, being only 1250, 
 when it was expected to have been 10,000 ; several re- 
 lations and friends have even gone so far as to walk off 
 
 157 
 
 L 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 once or twice in the melancholy belief that it was dead. 
 Through all that, assisted by the indomitable energy of 
 one or two nurses, to whom it can never be sufficiently 
 grateful, it came triumphantly, and now, of all the youth- 
 ful members of its family I ever saw, it has the strongest 
 attitude, the healthiest look, the brightest and most 
 cheerful air." 
 
 We have neither the desire nor the space to deal with 
 each of the many public speeches made by Dickens on 
 similar and dissimilar occasions. But it may be said, 
 judging as far as it is possible to do so from the written 
 and not from the spoken word, that Dickens's speeches 
 were very much like his writings in style, and also like 
 them in this : that their humour was very much more 
 admirable than their pathos, which is, to use a slangy 
 but extremely expressive word, often rather " cheap." 
 
 Justin M'Carthy counts Dickens as quite the best 
 after-dinner speaker he ever heard, " his voice was rich, 
 full, and deep, capable of imparting without effort every 
 tone and half-tone of emotion, pathetic, inspiriting, or 
 humorous, that any spoken words could demand. His 
 deep eyes seemed to flash upon every listener among the 
 audience whom he addressed." 
 
 But he was at his best in " narratory " or plainly 
 matter-of-fact passages. Here are two retrospective 
 " bits " of thoroughly Dickensian flavour. The first 
 is an extract from a speech delivered at the London 
 Tavern in December, 1854, on the occasion of the Anni- 
 versary Dinner of the Commercial Travellers' Schools : — 
 
 " I think it may be assumed that most of us here present 
 know something about travelling. I do not mean in 
 distant regions or foreign countries, although I dare say 
 some of us have had experience in that way, but at home, 
 
 158 
 
"TRAVELLING" 
 
 and within the limits of the United Kingdom. I dare say 
 most of us have had experience of the extinct * fast 
 coaches,' the * Wonders,' ' Taglionis,' and * Tally-Hos,' 
 of other days. I dare say most of us remember certain 
 modest post-chaises, dragging us down interminable 
 roads, through slush and mud, to little country towns 
 with no visible population, except half-a-dozen men in 
 smock-frocks, half-a-dozen women with umbrellas and 
 pattens, and a washed-out dog or so shivering under the 
 gables, to complete the desolate picture. We can all 
 discourse, I dare say, if so minded, about our recollections 
 of the * Talbot,' the * Queen's Head,' or the * Lion ' of 
 those days. We have all been to that room on the ground 
 floor on one side of the old inn yard, not quite free from 
 a certain fragrant smell of tobacco, where the cruets on 
 the sideboard were usually absorbed by the skirts of the 
 box-coats that hung from the wall ; where awkward 
 jrvants waylaid us at every turn, like so many human 
 lan-traps ; where county members, framed and glazed, 
 ^ere eternally presenting that petition which, somehow 
 other, had made their glory in the county, although 
 ^othing else had ever come of it. Where the books in 
 le windows always wanted the first, last, and middle 
 saves, and where the one man was always arriving at 
 )me unusual hour in the night, and requiring his break- 
 fast at a similarly singular period of the day, I have no 
 doubt we could all be very eloquent on the comforts of 
 our favourite hotel, wherever it was — its beds, its stables, 
 its vast amount of posting, its excellent cheese, its head 
 waiter, its capital dishes, its pigeon-pies, or its 1820 port. 
 Or possibly we could recall our chaste and innocent 
 admiration of its landlady, or our fraternal regard for its 
 handsome chambermaid. A celebrated domestic critic 
 
 159 
 
 I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 once writing of a famous actress, renowned for her virtue 
 and beauty, gave her the character of being an * emi- 
 nently gatherable-to-one's-arms sort of person.' Perhaps 
 someone amongst us has borne a somewhat similar 
 tribute to the mental charms of the fair deities who pre- 
 sided at our hotels." 
 
 In 1865 he presided at the second Annual Dinner of 
 the Newspaper Press Fund, at the Freemasons' Tavern, 
 making a speech which has become almost historic, at any 
 rate as regards the following excerpt : — 
 
 " I hope I may be allowed in the very few closing words 
 that I feel a desire to say in remembrance of some circum- 
 stances, rather special, attending my present occupation 
 of this chair, to give those words something of a personal 
 tone. I am not here advocating the case of a mere 
 ordinary client of whom I have little or no knowledge. 
 I hold a brief to-night for my brothers. I went into the 
 gaUery of the House of Commons as a parliamentary 
 reporter when I was a boy not eighteen, and I left it — 
 I can hardly believe the inexorable truth — nigh thirty 
 years ago. I have pursued the calling of a reporter 
 under circumstances of which many of my brethren at 
 home in England here, many of my modern successors, 
 can form no adequate conception. I have often trans- 
 scribed for the printer, from my shorthand notes, im- 
 portant pubhc speeches in which the strictest accuracy 
 was required, and a mistake in which would have been 
 to a young man severely compromising, writing on the 
 palm of my hand, by the light of a dark lantern, 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, 
 
 160 
 
A TRIBUTE TO THACKERAY 
 
 for the amusement of a friend, the spot on which I once 
 ' took,' as we used to call it, an election speech of my 
 noble friend Lord Russell, 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 notebook, after 
 the manner of a state canopy in an ecclesiastical pro- 
 cession. 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 preposterous 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- 
 stufiing. Returning home from excited 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 postboys, and have got 
 back in time for publication, to be received with never- 
 forgotten comphments by the late Mr Black, coming in 
 the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever 
 knew." 
 
 There could not be anything better in its class than 
 that, or in another way than this, quoted from a speech 
 made by Dickens at the thirteenth anniversary dinner 
 'of the General Theatrical Fund, when Thackeray was in 
 ithe chair : — 
 
 ' It is not for me at this time, and in this place, to take 
 m myself to flutter before you the well-thumbed pages 
 [of Mr Thackeray's books, and to tell you to observe how 
 L i6l 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 full they are of wit and wisdom, how out-speaking, and 
 liow devoid of fear or favour ; but I will take leave to 
 remark, in paying my due homage and respect to them, 
 that it is fitting that such a writer and such an institution 
 should be brought together. Every writer of fiction, al- 
 though he may not adopt the dramatic form, writes in 
 effect for the stage. He may never write plays ; but 
 the truth and passion which are in him must be more or 
 less reflected in the great mirror which he holds up to 
 nature. Actors, managers, and authors are all repre- 
 sented in this company, and it may be supposed that they 
 all have studied the deep wants of the human heart in 
 many theatres ; but none of them could have studied 
 its mysterious workings in any theatre to greater advan- 
 tage than in the bright and airy pages of ' Vanity Fair.' 
 To this skilful showman, who has so often delighted us, 
 and who has charmed us again to-night, we have now 
 to wish God speed, and that he may continue for many 
 years to exercise his potent art. To him fill a bumper toast, 
 and fervently utter, God bless him ! " 
 
 From Glasgow, where they were the guests of Mr 
 Sheriff, afterward Sir Archibald, Ahson, Dickens 
 went on to Edinburgh. The weather was not pleasant ; 
 " it has been snowing, sleeting, thawing, and freezing, 
 sometimes by turns and sometimes all together, since the 
 night before last," he writes to Miss Hogarth. Alison, 
 of course, was the author of a " History of Europe," 
 more famous perhaps than read, who — writes Dickens — 
 " lives in style in a handsome country house out of 
 Glasgow, and is a capital fellow, with an agreeable wife, 
 nice Uttle daughter, cheerful niece, all things pleasant 
 in his household." While at Edinburgh he received from 
 Lord Jeffrey the news of the bankruptcy of James 
 
 162 
 
SHERIDAN KNOWLES 
 
 Sheridan Knowles, the Irish actor and dramatist, author 
 of plays once held in very high esteem, but which to- 
 day scarcely ever haunt the boards, " Virginius," 
 " The Hunchback," " The Love Chase " and so 
 forth. 
 
 Frith gives a highly amusing description of one of 
 Knowles's performances in one of his own plays, " The 
 Wife " ; " he played an Italian — named Pierre, I think — 
 with a broad Irish accent. The part was one for the display 
 of strong passion ; and the stronger became the situation, 
 the more evident became the brogue. Knowles's square, 
 powerful figure, with his fine expressive face, made such 
 an impression upon me, that I believe I could recognise 
 him now." 
 
 He was the delightful person who told O. Smith, the 
 actor, that he always mistook him " for his namesake 
 
 'T. P. Cooke " ! 
 
 It had been decided to give some amateur performances 
 
 jto endow the curatorship of the Shakespeare House at 
 Stratford-on-Avon, destined for Knowles, which plan, 
 
 [however, was abandoned on the town authorities tak- 
 ing the matter into their hands, but the sum received 
 
 [was presented to the unfortunate dramatist, who 
 
 |later on received a pension at the hands of Lord John 
 
 ERussell. 
 
 " Every Man in His Humour " was repeated, " The 
 
 [Merry Wives of Windsor" was added to the repertoire, 
 
 [and the farce " Love, Law, and Physick " was also played. 
 The performances were at Manchester, Liverpool, Edin- 
 burgh, Birmingham, Glasgow, and — naturally — London, 
 at the Haymarket Theatre. The programme for May 17 
 makes interesting reading : — 
 
 163 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 THEATRE ROYAL, HAYMARKET. 
 
 Bmateur pcrtonnance 
 
 in aid of 
 
 THE FUND FOR THE ENDOWMENT OF A PERPETUAL 
 CURATORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE. 
 
 To be always held by some one distinguished in Literature, and more 
 especially in Dramatic Literature ; the Profits of which it is the in- 
 tention of the Shakespeare House Committee to keep entirely separate 
 from the Fund now raising for the purchase of the House. 
 
 On Wednesday Evening, May 17th, 1848, will be presented 
 BEN JONSON'S Comedy of 
 
 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 
 
 Knowell (an old gentleman) 
 
 Edward Knowell (his son) 
 
 Brainworm {the father's man) 
 
 George Downwright (a plain squire) . 
 
 Wellbred (his half-brother) 
 
 Kitely (a merchant) .... 
 
 Captain Bobadil (a Paul's man) 
 
 Master Stephen (a country gull) 
 
 Master Mathew (the town gull) . 
 
 Thomas Cash (Kitely' s cashier) . 
 
 Oliver Cobb (a water bearer) 
 
 Justice Clement (an old merry magistrate) 
 
 Roger Formal (his Clerk) . 
 
 Dame Kitely (Kitely' s wife) 
 
 Mistress Bridget (her sister) 
 
 Tib (Cobb's wife) .... 
 
 The Costumes by Messrs. Nathan, 
 
 Mr. Dudley Costello. 
 Mr. Frederick Dickens. 
 Mr. Mark Lemon. 
 Mr. Frank Stone. 
 Mr. G. H. Lewes. 
 Mr. John Forster. 
 Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 Mr. Augustus Egg. 
 Mr. John Leech. 
 Mr. Augustus Dickens. 
 Mr. George Cruikshank. 
 Mr. Wilhnott. 
 Mr. Cole. 
 Miss Fortescue. 
 Miss Kenworthy. 
 Mrs. Cowden Clarke. 
 
 of Titchbourne Street. 
 
 To conclude with Mr. Kenney's farce of 
 
 LOVE, LAW, AND PHYSIC. 
 
 Doctor Camphor 
 
 Captain Danvers 
 
 Flexible 
 
 Andrew 
 
 Lubin Log 
 
 John Brown 
 
 Coachman 
 
 Laura 
 
 Mrs. Hillary 
 
 Chambermaid 
 
 Mr. George Cruikshank. 
 Mr. Frederick Dickens. 
 Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 Mr. G. H. Lewes. 
 Mr. Mark Lemon. 
 Mr. Augustus Egg. 
 Mr. Eaton. 
 Miss Anne Romer. 
 Mrs. Cowden Clarke. 
 Miss Woulds. 
 
 164 
 
Between 
 the Acts 
 
 DICKENS AS MANAGER 
 
 The Band will perform. 
 
 Previous to the Comedy, The Overture to Semiramide . Rossini. 
 
 ' Battaglie Galop .... Kolloonitsch. 
 Czarina Mazurka . . . . T. German Reed. 
 
 A ria Somnambula \ obligato ^ • ^l^ini- 
 
 ^ Wedding March .... Mendelssohn. 
 Previous to Farce, The Prince of Wales Quadrilles . Jullien. 
 
 *** The doors will he opened at half-past six, and the performance will 
 commence at half-past seven precisely, by which time it is requested that the 
 wliole of the company may be seated. 
 
 Directors of general arrangements — Mr. John Payne Collier, Mr. 
 Charles Knight, Mr. Peter Cunningham and the London Shakespeare 
 House Committee. 
 
 Stage Manager — Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 Evening dress in all parts of the House. 
 
 In " The Merry Wives " Mark Lemon played Falstaff, 
 Dickens Justice Shallow and Mrs Cowden Clarke Dame 
 Quickly, who gives a graphic description of Dickens at 
 rehearsal : — " He had a small table placed rather to one 
 side of the stage, at which he generally sat, as the scenes 
 went on in which he himself took no part. On this table 
 rested a moderate-sized box ; its interior divided into 
 convenient compartments for holding papers, letters, etc., 
 and this interior was always the very pink of neatness 
 and orderly arrangement. Occasionally he would leave 
 his seat at the managerial table, and stand with his back 
 to the foot-lights, in the very centre of the front of the 
 stage, and view the whole effect of the rehearsed per- 
 formance as it proceeded, observing the attitudes and 
 positions of those engaged in the dialogue, their mode 
 of entrance, exit, etc., etc. He never seemed to over- 
 look anything ; but to note the very slightest point that 
 conduced to the ' going well ' of the whole performance. 
 With all this supervision, however, it was pleasant to 
 
 I remark the utter absence of dictatorialness or arrogation 
 165 
 I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 of superiority that distinguished his mode of ruUng his 
 troop : he exerted his authority firmly and perpetually ; 
 but in such a manner as to make it universally felt to be 
 for no purpose of self-assertion or self-importance ; on 
 the contrary, to be for the sole purpose of ensuring general 
 success to their united efforts." 
 
 A rehearsal with him was serious, earnest work. Of 
 his acting, to which we shall return later on, she also gives 
 a vivid word-picture : — 
 
 " The ' make-up ' of Dickens as Justice Shallow was 
 so complete, that his own identity was almost unrecog- 
 nisable, when he came on to the stage, as the curtain 
 rose, in company with Sir Hugh and Master Slender ; 
 but after a moment's breathless pause, the whole house 
 burst forth into a roar of applausive reception, which 
 testified to the boundless dehght of the assembled 
 audience on beholding the literary idol of the day, actually 
 before them. His impersonation was perfect : the old. 
 stiff limbs, the senile stoop of the shoulders, the head 
 bent with age, the feeble step, with a certain attempted 
 smartness of carriage characteristic of the conceited 
 Justice of the Peace — were all assumed and maintained 
 with wonderful accuracy ; while the articulation, part 
 lisp, part thickness of utterance, part a kind of impeded 
 sibilation, like that of a voice that ' pipes and whistles 
 in the sound ' through loss of teeth — gave consummate 
 effect to his mode of speech. The one in which Shallow 
 says, ' 'Tis the heart. Master Page ; 'tis here, 'tis here. 
 I have seen the time with my long sword I would have 
 made you four tall fellows skip like rats,' was delivered 
 with a humour of expression in effete energy of action and 
 would-be fire of spirit that marvellously imaged fourscore 
 years in its attempt to denote vigour long since extinct." 
 
 166 
 
I 
 
 A GORGEOUS COSTUME 
 
 In this same year (1848) or thereabouts, Dickens in 
 his own proper person is depicted by Sir Joseph Crowe 
 as " full of fun and enjoyed company vastly. His 
 abundant hair of sable hue enframed a grand face, some- 
 what drawn and thrown into capricious ridges. His 
 dress was florid : a satin cravat of the deepest blue, 
 relieved by embroideries, a green waistcoat with gold 
 flowers, a dress coat with a velvet collar and satin facings, 
 opulence of white cuff, rings in excess, made up a rather 
 striking whole." 
 
 The performances began in London on April 15, and 
 the tour lasted — on and off — until July 20, the result 
 being gross receipts amounting to over ;f2500. 
 
 167 
 
XXV 
 
 1848-9 
 
 IN this and some of the succeeding years Dickens 
 passed quite a considerable portion of his time 
 at the seaside. In March he and his wife were at 
 Brighton, Mrs Macready, who was in ill-health, being 
 with them. Then came the play-acting, as described, 
 when the actors were accompanied by Mrs Dickens and 
 Miss Hogarth ; then in the autumn Broadstairs again ; 
 at the end of the year Brighton once more with his wife 
 and sister-in-law ; not a bad series of outings for one year. 
 In the February of '49 they were back at Brighton, 
 where the Leeches joined them. This visit was remark- 
 able for the landlord of the lodgings and his daughter 
 being attacked by lunacy — " if you could have heard 
 the cursing and crying of the two ; could have seen the 
 physician and nurse quoited out into the passage by the 
 madman at the hazard of their lives ; could have seen 
 Leech and me flying to the doctor'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 Gamps, 
 strait-waistcoats, struggHng friends and servants, sur- 
 rounding the whole . . . " ! 
 
 Then came a desertion of Broadstairs in the summer 
 and a quite notable visit to the Isle of Wight. This going 
 to Bonchurch seems first to have been discussed early in 
 
 168 
 
I 
 
 JAMES WHITE 
 
 the preceding year, judging by a letter to the Reverend 
 James White, in which Dickens expresses a fear that Ben- 
 church may prove too relaxing, adding that his thoughts 
 have wandered to the north as far as Yorkshire, and some- 
 times to Dover. 
 
 James White, a very jolly, jovial man, is to be counted 
 as one of the most intimate and most dear of Dickens's 
 friends, and this visit to Bonchurch, where he lived, 
 cemented the friendship between the two famihes. He 
 was bom in 1803, dying in 1862, and was educated at 
 Pembroke College, Oxford. He was a miscellaneous 
 writer of considerable scope and no httle ability. Of 
 him Forster gives a quite delightful account : " in the 
 kindly shrewd Scotch face, a keen sensitiveness to pleasure 
 and pain 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 dehghtful." 
 
 Charles Knight met him with Dickens at Broadstairs 
 in 1850, and says " it was impossible for me not to love 
 him. His heart was as warm as his intellect was clear. 
 His conversational powers were of no common order, 
 for to the richness of a cultivated mind he brought a 
 natural vein of humour." 
 
 Dickens apparently went on ahead to spy out the 
 land, for he writes to his wife on June 16 from Shanklin 
 that he has " taken a most delightful and beautiful 
 house, belonging to White, at Bonchurch ; cool, airy, 
 private bathing, everything delicious. I think it is the 
 prettiest place I ever saw in my life, at home or abroad." 
 
 169 
 
 I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 The villa bore — for a summer resort — the ill-omened 
 name of Winterboume. 
 
 Great were the fun and the junketings ! Many the 
 pleasant visitors ; Mr and Mrs Leech were with them 
 much of the time, and others were Mark Lemon, Macready, 
 Talfourd, Egg. Dickens seems to have rioted to the top 
 of his bent, giving full fling to his inexhaustible spirits. 
 One of the frolics was the starting of a club dubbed the 
 " Sea Serpents," in opposition to the " Red Lions," of 
 which association Dr Edwin Lankester, a well-known man 
 of science, was the merry leader. Here is Mrs Lankester's 
 account of the gay-dog doings of the " Serpents." " I 
 recollect the jolly procession from Sandown as it moved 
 across the Downs, young and old carrying aloft a banner 
 bearing the device of a noble red lion painted in vermilion 
 on a white ground. Wending up the hill from the Bon- 
 church side might be seen the * Sea Serpents,' with their 
 ensign floating in the wind — a waving, curiing serpent, 
 cut out of yards and yards of calico, and painted of a 
 bronzy-green colour with fiery-red eyes, its tail being 
 supported at the end by a second banner-holder. Carts 
 brought up the provisions on either side, and at the top 
 the factions met to prepare and consume the banquet 
 on the short, sweet grass under shadow of a rock or a tree." 
 Leech would immortalise the party with his pencil, and 
 they — or some of them — appeared in Punch on August 
 25, as participators in the tragedy labelled " Awful 
 Appearance of a ' Wopps ' at a Picnic." Then by way 
 of additional sport a race would be arranged between 
 those two stout men, Dr Lankester and Mark Lemon, 
 the stately Macready acting as judge. 
 
 But it was not all " beer and skittles." Toward the 
 end of September a most unfortunate and dangerous 
 
 170 
 
I 
 
 DICKENS AS DOCTOR 
 
 accident befell Leech. Bathing when the sea was running 
 somewhat high, he was knocked down by a heavy wave, 
 the blow resulting in congestion of the brain, a serious 
 and anxious illness. Bleeding was resorted to, but at 
 last to alleviate the alarming restlessness of the sufferer, 
 Dickens proposed to Mrs Leech that he should try the 
 effect of mesmerism ; " 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 
 and he is decidedly better." 
 
 The enervating cHmate of the Isle of Wight did not 
 at all suit Dickens ; " Naples is hot and dirty, New 
 York feverish, Washington bilious, Genoa exciting, Paris 
 rainy — but Bonchurch, smashing. I am quite convinced 
 that I should die here, in a year." It was not he only 
 that suffered, but his wife. Miss Hogarth, and the Leeches 
 were similarly affected. So he " folded his tents " at 
 the end of September and beat a retreat to recruit 
 at Broadstairs, whose reviving breezes soon worked 
 wonders. 
 
 During this year he was busily at work on " David 
 Copperfield," which of his books he loved the best and 
 in which he has shown us so much of himself. We have 
 not in these pages done more than make bare mention 
 of any of his other stories, but to this one novel we must 
 devote some little space, for although Forster rightly 
 warns us not to strain the point too far, there is un- 
 doubtedly much in its pages of autobiography, we cannot 
 hope ever to know with exactness how much. 
 
 The publication of the novel, in monthly parts, by 
 Messrs Bradbury and Evans, commenced in May, 1849, 
 concluding in November of the following year. We do 
 not for a moment intend to discuss the literary value of 
 
 171 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 the story or to debate as to who were or were not the 
 originals of various people in it ; we solely desire to draw 
 attention once again to those portions of the novel which 
 are to all intents and purposes an autobiography of a part 
 of the author's unhappy boyhood. Mr Kitton tells us 
 that in a letter to Mrs Howitt Dickens said that " many 
 childish experiences and many young struggles " had 
 been worked by him into " Copperfield." We must not 
 identify Dickens with David, but the chapters of the book 
 to which we refer do certainly help us to understand in 
 what light Dickens looked back upon those miserable 
 days, when all hope of advance for him seemed to have 
 disappeared ; "no words can express the secret agony 
 of my soul," he writes, going on to say, " my whole 
 nature was so penetrated with the grief and humilia- 
 tion . . . 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." It certainly 
 is amazing that any parents could have forced a " child 
 of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, 
 bodily or mentally " into a life of mechanical drudgery 
 amid repugnant surroundings and degrading associations ; 
 " I know I do not exaggerate," he writes, " unconsciously 
 and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and 
 the difficulties of my life. ... I know that I worked, 
 from morning to night, with common men and boys, a 
 shabby child. ... 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." How 
 often in later years, when doing all in his power to make 
 happy the lives of his own children and those of others, 
 must his thoughts have recurred to that time when he 
 
 172 
 
"DAVID COPPERFIELD" 
 
 worked at covering the blacking pots in the factor}^ 
 by old Hungerford Stairs ? 
 
 Before we leave this subject, we must refer to the fact 
 that Dickens wrote to Forster that to no one, " my own 
 wife not excepted," had he ever narrated the story of 
 those unforgettable days, which statement does not tally 
 with one made by Charles Dickens, junior, who says, 
 " I have my mother's authority for saying . . . that the 
 story was eventually read to her in strict confidence by 
 my father, who at the same time intimated his intention 
 of publishing it by-and-bye as a portion of his auto- 
 biography. From this purpose she endeavoured to 
 dissuade him : on the ground that he had spoken with 
 undue harshness of his father, and especially of his 
 mother : and with so much success that he eventually 
 decided that he would be satisfied with working it into 
 ' David Copperfield,' and would give up the idea of 
 publishing it as it stood." It will probably remain one 
 of the multitudinous curiosities of literature that the 
 story in the end saw the light in the pages of Forster, 
 who was indiscreet, or misunderstood Dickens's wishes, 
 or else the latter changed his mind. But certainly Forster 
 might have used his judgment and power as biographer 
 to delete the few lines that bear most hardly upon 
 Dickens's father and mother. 
 
 Toward the close of the writing of this book Dickens 
 wrote, " Oh my dear Forster, if I were but 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." 
 
 17^ 
 
 I 
 
T 
 
 XXVI 
 *' HOUSEHOLD WORDS " 
 
 HE first number of " Household Words " was 
 published on March 30, 1850, and we must 
 introduce ourselves to W. H. Wills, the sub- 
 editor, who won and retained Dickens's esteem and high 
 regard. Their knowledge of one another had commenced 
 during the unfortunate experiment with the Daily News. 
 He has been described to us by one who knew him 
 as a nice fellow, a hard worker, but one not at all 
 fond of pushing himself forward, all of which is 
 amply borne out by what we learn of him from other 
 sources. 
 
 He was a constant contributor to Punch from the 
 commencement of its career, and was secretary to Dickens 
 in the Daily News days, when he was " a small thin 
 man with nimble but slender hands, small but very 
 quick eyes, and a blotched complexion, indicating a 
 j defective digestion," says Sir Joseph Crowe. His wife 
 
 was a sister of Robert Chambers, the Edinburgh publisher, 
 and — with an eye to his slimness — used to sing " Better 
 be mairried to somethin' than no to be married ava ! " 
 and Douglas Jerrold declared that Wills had been in 
 training all his life to go up a gas pipe. Mrs Lynn Linton 
 was in Paris in the 'fifties, and notes, " it was here that 
 I first saw Henry Wills, who, with his wife, afterwards 
 became one of my dearest friends." She found him, as 
 
 174 
 
MRS GASKELL 
 
 did so many others, kindly-hearted and considerate in 
 all his dealings. 
 
 Wills afterward became Dickens's partner in " All 
 the Year Round." We shall meet with him again. 
 
 Of others whose names became " Household Words " 
 we may introduce a few, giving first place to the authoress of 
 " Mary Barton," " Cranford," and the " Life of Charlotte 
 Bronte," Mrs Elizabeth Cleghom Gaskell. 
 
 Mrs Cowden Clarke describes her first meeting with 
 Mrs Gaskell, at a luncheon given by Mrs Tagart : " we 
 found a charming, brilliant - complexioned, but quiet- 
 mannered woman ; thoroughly unaffected, thoroughly 
 attractive — so modest that she blushed like a girl when 
 we hazarded some expression of our admiration of her 
 ' Mary Barton ' ; so full of enthusiasm on general sub- 
 jects of humanity and benevolence that she talked freely 
 and vividly at once upon them ; and so young in look 
 and demeanour that we could hardly believe her to be 
 the mother of two daughters she mentioned in terms 
 that showed them to be no longer children " ; and Mrs 
 Lynn Linton speaks of Mrs Gaskell in the 'fifties " with 
 her beautiful white arms bare to the shoulder, and as 
 destitute of bracelets as her hands were of gloves." 
 
 That Dickens sincerely admired her work is amply 
 shown not only by the fact that he was anxious to secure 
 her aid but by the terms in which he asked for it. Writing 
 early in 1850 he says : "I do honestly know that there is 
 no living English writer whose aid I would desire to enlist 
 in preference to the authoress of ' Mary Barton ' (a book 
 that most profoundly affected and impressed me). . . . 
 My unaffected and great admiration of your book makes 
 me very earnest in all relating to you." 
 
 Forster tells us that George Augustus Henry Sala, 
 
 175 
 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 to give him his full names, was of all the hitherto un- 
 known writers whom " Household Words " helped on 
 their way the one in whom Dickens took the greatest 
 personal interest. " G. A. S." in course of time became 
 renowned initials the world over, as belonging to one who 
 in his exuberant way was, perhaps, entitled to be called 
 the Prince of Journalists. As a literary man he cannot 
 claim a distinguished place, but as a writer of bright, 
 picturesque, telling journalese he has scarcely had a rival. 
 Sala was born in 1828, and lived until nearly the close 
 of the nineteenth century. Edmund Yates, a faithful 
 friend and colleague of his, gives an account of him in 
 those early days : — he met him at the Fielding Club, to 
 which he had been taken to meet the Marquis of Stafford 
 and some others, who were loudly praising an American 
 story in " Household Words," called " Colonel Quagg's 
 Conversion." There was much surmise as to who the 
 writer of it could be, but Albert Smith declared that he 
 could produce the author ; he " went away, returning 
 in triumph with a slim modest young fellow, about six- 
 and-twenty years of age," — G. A. S. Yates proceeds, 
 allowing his good-nature to run away with his critical 
 faculty, " I may be perhaps permitted to say that in the 
 volumes of Household Words from '53 to '56 are to be 
 found essays which not merely the author of Paris Her- 
 self Again and America Revisited has never surpassed, 
 but which Goldsmith or Lamb might have been proud to 
 father." Had they been so, it would only have gone to 
 prove that it is a wise father who knows the value of his 
 own children. His education may be described as mis- 
 cellaneous ; he studied drawing and sometimes drew ; 
 he was for some time a scene painter ; but journalism 
 was his real " line." 
 
 176 
 
\V. p. FKITH, R.A. (aged 30). 
 From the Painting by Augustus L. Egg, R.A. 
 
" G. A. S." 
 
 Frith has somewhat to tell of him, and gives him a good 
 character : — " he is as charming a companion as such a 
 writer might be expected to be. With the tenderest 
 heart in the world, I am sure he never wrote a severe hne 
 about any person or thing unless both thing and person 
 richly deserved it," which of a critic of painting from a 
 painter is truly unusual praise. He was usually seen in 
 a white waistcoat, which explains the following extract 
 from a letter to Frith, who was painting his portrait in 
 the picture of " The Private View " : — " I send you a 
 photo, which Mrs Sala declares to be the best. . . . Don't 
 forget the white waistcoat. I have worn one every day 
 for five-and-twenty years, so that an old washerwoman 
 said to me once : ' How I should like to be your washer- 
 woman ! ' By this time she would have taken more than 
 two hundred pounds for washing my vests alone. I am 
 old and poor.^ but I don't regret the outlay on my 
 laundry. You can't very well murder when you have 
 a white waistcoat on. By donning that snowy gar- 
 ment you have, in a manner, given hostages to 
 respectability." 
 
 In " Leaves from a Life " quite a dramatic story is told 
 of a party given at Mr Frith's when Sala, who had just 
 returned from the American civil war, was present. The 
 writer says " we found him most enthrallingly interest- 
 ing, more especially as he knew all the battle-songs, 
 and sang ' Maryland, my Maryland,' in a way I have never 
 forgotten. I do not mean to say he sang in the accepted 
 or professional sense of the word, but he declaimed the 
 words to music in such a manner that one longed to go 
 out and fight, and I for one could have wept with sheer 
 delight at the melodies." Mr Frith had arranged the 
 
 1 Written in 1881. 
 M 177 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 dinner as a meeting between Bret Harte and Sala, think- 
 ing that the two would be dehghted to fraternise. The 
 Salas arrived first, and our authoress was chatting with 
 him in the inner drawing-room when Bret Harte was 
 announced ; "I noticed Mr Sala start and look out 
 eagerly into the other room ; but before he could move, 
 Papa came up with Bret Harte, saying, ' I want to intro- 
 duce my old friend Sala to you, Mr Harte.' Sala got up ; 
 but before anything else could be said, Bret Harte looked 
 straight at Sala, and remarked quite coolly, ' Sorry to 
 make unpleasant scenes, but I am not going to be intro- 
 duced to that scoundrel.' Imagine the sensation, if you 
 can ! Papa protested, and tried to make some sort of a 
 modus Vivendi between the two men, but it ended by 
 poor Sala and his wife going into the little library, and 
 waiting there until a cab could be fetched, and they left 
 us without their dinner." It transpired later that Bret 
 Harte's anger had been roused by something which Sala 
 had written about a lady who had carried despatches in 
 the war, and that he had sworn to shoot him at sight ! 
 As the writer pathetically adds, " the evening was naturally 
 not a success." 
 
 Sala was clever in verse as well as in prose, as may 
 be seen from the following verses written during his 
 " Journey Due North " to St Petersburg on a mission 
 from " Household Words," and pubhshed in " The Train," 
 appropriately enough : — 
 
 " The King of Prussia drinks champagne. 
 Old Person drank whate'er was handy ; 
 Maginn drank gin. Judge Blackstone port. 
 And many famous wits drank brandy. 
 Stern William Romer drinketh beer. 
 And so does Tennyson the rhymer ; 
 But I'll renounce all liquors for 
 My Caviar and RUdesheimer. 
 
 178 
 
EDMUND YATES 
 
 If some kind heart that beats for me 
 This troubled head could e'er be pressed on ; 
 If in the awful night, this hand 
 Outstretched a form I loved could rest on ; 
 If wife, or child, or friend, or dog 
 I called my own, in any clime — a. 
 This lyre I'd tune to other strains 
 Than Caviar and Riidesheimer." 
 
 Edmund Hodgson Yates, from whose delightful 
 " Recollections and Experiences " we have quoted more 
 than once, was born in 1831 in Edinburgh, where his father 
 Frederick Henry Yates and his mother Elizabeth Brunton 
 (Mrs Yates) were then acting. Of his mother and her acting 
 Dickens was a keen admirer ; " no one ahve," he wrote 
 in 1858, some years after she had left the boards, " can 
 have more delightful associations with the lightest sound 
 of your voice than I have ; and to give you a minute's 
 interest and pleasure, in acknowledgment of the uncount- 
 able hours of happiness you gave me, would honestly 
 gratify my heart." After her death in i860, he wrote to 
 Edmund Yates : " You know what a long and faithful 
 remembrance I always had of your mother as a part of 
 my youth, no more capable of restoration than my youth 
 itself. All the womanly goodness, grace and beauty of 
 my drama went out with her. To the last, I never could 
 hear her voice without emotion. I think of her as of a 
 beautiful part of my own youth, and the dream that we 
 are all dreaming seems to darken." 
 
 We meet Frederick Yates acting in " Nicholas 
 Nickleby " in 1838, and as Quilp in 1844. Of the first- 
 named Dickens wrote to the actor : " My general objection 
 to the adaptation of any unfinished work of mine simply 
 is that, being badly done and worse acted, it tends to 
 vulgarise the characters, to destroy or weaken in the 
 minds of those who see them the impressions I have 
 
 179 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 endeavoured to create, and consequently to lessen the 
 after interest in their progress. No such objection can 
 exist for a moment where the thing is so admirably done 
 in every respect as you have done it in this instance." 
 
 Edmund Yates is best remembered as the founder of 
 the first modem society journal, The World, and as the 
 writer of one of the most entertaining memoirs in the 
 language, a book full of pleasant memories of other days, 
 which are rapidly fading into the mists of the historic. 
 Turning once more to " Leaves from a Life," we obtain 
 many glimpses of Yates ; " he was a tall, finely-made man," 
 we are told, " with curly hair and a heavy moustache, 
 which concealed in a measure the fact that he was under- 
 hung, and he had a most powerful chin and jaw. He 
 was not good-looking, and naturally the old joke of 
 Beauty and the Beast was repeated more than once about 
 him and his beautiful wife. But he was anything but 
 a beast ; he was the truest, dearest, most honourable of 
 men and friends." 
 
 Of his knowledge of and friendship with Dickens, 
 Yates gives a full account. " I have heard Dickens 
 described by those who knew him as aggressive, imperious, 
 and intolerant, and I can comprehend the accusation ; 
 but to me his temper was always of the sweetest and 
 kindest. He would, I doubt not, have been easily bored, 
 and would not have scrupled to show it ; but he never 
 ran the risk. He was imperious in the sense that his life 
 was conducted on the sic volo, siic juheo principle, and that 
 everything gave way before him. The society in which 
 he mixed, the hours which he kept, the opinions which 
 he held, his hkes and dishkes, his ideas of what should 
 or should not be, were all settled by himself, not merely 
 for himself, but for all those brought into connection 
 
 i8o 
 
I 
 
 SAVED! 
 
 with him, and it was never imagined they could be called 
 in question. Yet he was never regarded as a tyrant ; 
 he had immense power of will, absolute mesmeric force." 
 
 One more quotation from these pages, to show the 
 readiness and kindliness of Dickens : — Yates was fre- 
 quently called upon at public dinners to propose Dickens's 
 health, " on one occasion — it was at one of the News- 
 vendors' dinners — I said nothing at all ! I duly rose, 
 but, after a few words, my thoughts entirely deserted me, 
 I entirely lost the thread of what I had intended saying, 
 I felt as though a black veil were dropped over my head ; 
 all I could do was to mutter ' health,' ' chairman,' and 
 to sit down. I was tolerably well known to the guests 
 at those dinners, and they were evidently much astonished. 
 They cheered the toast, as in duty bound, and Dickens was 
 on his feet in a moment. ' Often,' he said — ' often as I 
 have had the pleasure of having my health proposed by 
 my friend, who has just sat down, I have never yet seen 
 him so overcome by his affection and generous emotion 
 as on the present occasion ! ' These words turned what 
 would have been a fiasco into a triumph. ' I saved you 
 that time, I think, sir ! ' he said to me as I walked away 
 with him. ' Serves you well right for being over-con- 
 fident ! ' " 
 
 Yates was a capital after-dinner speaker ; we recall 
 him at a Literary Fund Dinner commencing his remarks 
 by pathetically saying that the gods looked down with 
 admiration on a brave man struggling with adversity, 
 but that " both gods and men should do so on a fat man 
 with a cold in his head struggling to make an after-dinner 
 speech " I 
 
 i8i 
 
XXVII 
 MORE PLAYING 
 
 IN the autumn of 1850 the family were once more 
 at Broadstairs, occupying for the first time " Fort 
 House," which Dickens had long coveted. Mrs 
 Dickens Ungered on in town for some time, and there is 
 a most amusing letter to her from her husband, dated 
 September 3, in which he mentions a walk taken with 
 Charles Knight, White, Forster and Charles junior to 
 the Roman Castle of Richborough, near to Sandwich, 
 one of the most interesting spots in the pleasant county of 
 Kent, which might almost be called Dickens's county, 
 so closely is his name connected with many places in it 
 — with Rochester, Chatham, Chalk, Cobham, Gad's Hill, 
 Canterbury, Broadstairs, and many another locality. 
 Then follows an account of the bold behaviour of his son 
 Sydney, who bravely set out by himself one Sunday even- 
 ing to see if the expected Forster had arrived. He was 
 pursued and brought back more than once, until at last, 
 instead of chasing him again, his father shut the gate, 
 and the party awaited developments, " Ally," who 
 accompanied Sydney, was dismayed, but his brother made 
 a ferocious onslaught upon the gate, demanding that it 
 should be opened and backing up his request by hurling 
 a huge stone into the garden. The garrison surrendered, 
 and the honours of war were with Sydney. 
 
 From Broadstairs Dickens wrote to Sir Edward 
 
 182 
 
LORD LYTTON 
 
 Bulwer Lytton anent a proposed performance of " Every 
 Man in His Humour " at Kneb worth. 
 
 Forster speaks most cordially of Lytton, but with some 
 extravagance, noting his burial in Westminster Abbey, 
 " which never opened 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." Dickens, too, held 
 him in very high esteem ; writing of him in 1845, he says, 
 " Bulwer Lytton's conduct is that of a generous and noble- 
 minded man, as I have ever thought him." At the 
 Macready dinner in 1851, when Lytton was in the chair, 
 Dickens in proposing his health said : — 
 
 " There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition 
 to the effect that authors are not a particularly united 
 body, that they are not invariably and inseparably 
 attached to each other. I am afraid I must concede half- 
 a-grain or so of truth to that superstition ; but this I 
 know, that there can hardly be — that there hardly can 
 have been — among the followers of literature, a man of 
 more high standing farther above these little grudging 
 jealousies, which do sometimes disparage its brightness, 
 than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 " And I have the strongest reason just at present to bear 
 my testimony to his great consideration for those evils 
 which are sometimes unfortunately attendant upon it, 
 though not on him. For, in conjunction with some other 
 gentlemen now present, I have just embarked in a design 
 with Sir Bulwer Lytton, to smoothe the rugged way of 
 young labourers, both in literature and the fine arts, 
 and to soften, but by no eleemosynary means, the de- 
 chning years of meritorious age. And if that project 
 
 183 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 prosper as I hope it will, and as I know it ought, it will 
 one day be an honour to England where there is now a 
 reproach ; originating in his sympathies, being brought 
 into operation by his activity, and endowed from its very 
 cradle by his generosity. There are many among you 
 who will have each his own favourite reason for drinking 
 our chairman's health, resting his claim probably upon 
 some of his diversified successes. According to the nature 
 of your reading, some of you will connect him with prose, 
 others will connect him with poetry. One will connect 
 him with comedy, and another with the romantic passions 
 of the stage, and his assertion of worthy ambition and 
 earnest struggle against 
 
 ' those twin gaolers of the human heart. 
 Low birth and iron fortune.' 
 
 Again, another's taste will lead him to the contemplation 
 of Rienzi and the streets of Rome ; another's to the re- 
 built and repeopled streets of Pompeii ; another's to the 
 touching history of the fireside where the Caxton family 
 learned how to discipline their natures and tame their 
 wild hopes down." 
 
 In 1861 Lytton arranged to contribute his weird 
 " Strange Story " to the pages of " All the Year Round," 
 and Dickens paid him a visit at Knebworth to consult 
 with him. He describes his host 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. He was 
 brilliantly talkative, anecdotical, and droll ; looked 
 young and welP; laughed heartily; and enjoyed with 
 great zest some games we played. In his artist character 
 
 * He was born in 1803, and died in 1873. 
 184 
 
AT BULWER'S 
 
 and talk, he was full of interest and matter, saying the 
 subtlest and finest things — but that he never fails in." 
 
 It is by no means incumbent upon us to write the life 
 of Lytton — which by the way yet remains to be and 
 should be written — and we will content ourselves with 
 two small peeps at him in earlier days. In 1831, in his 
 twenty-eighth year, he was appointed editor of the New 
 Monthly Magazine, to which Lady Blessington contri- 
 buted her " Journals of Conversations with Lord Byron " ; 
 he was described then as a " talented blue-eyed dandy," 
 who some three years previously had married Rosina 
 Doyle Wheeler, a beautiful Irishwoman, who was the cause 
 of the only quarrel between him and his mother, and from 
 whom he separated in 1836. It was in 1832 that Lady 
 Blessington first met him. 
 
 Benjamin Disraeli writes to his sister in February, 
 1832, " We had a very brilliant reunion at Bulwer's 
 last night. Among the notables were . . . Count 
 d'Orsay, the famous Parisian dandy ; there was a large 
 sprinkling of blues — Lady Morgan, Mrs Norton, L. E. L., 
 etc. Bulwer came up to me, said ' There is one blue who 
 insists upon an introduction.' ' Oh, my dear fellow, I 
 cannot really, the power of repartee has deserted me.' 
 ' I have pledged myself, you must come ' ; so he led me 
 up to a very sumptuous personage, looking like a full- 
 blown rose, Mrs Gore. ... I avoided L. E. L., who 
 looked the very personification of Brompton — pink satin 
 dress and white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and 
 hair a la Sappho." 
 
 Sumner speaks of him in 1838 " in his flash falsetto 
 dress, with high-heel boots, a white great coat, and a 
 flaming blue cravat," and at the Athenaeum ! 
 
 Rudolf Lehmann gives us a detailed picture of Lytton • 
 
 185 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " Tall, slim, with finely cut features, prominent among 
 which was a long aquiline nose, with an abundant crop 
 of curly brown hair and a full beard, the first impression 
 he produced, aided by a careful toilette, was one of 
 elegance and ease. . . . There was a certain naivete, 
 strange as that word may sound when applied to so 
 confirmed a man of the world, in his vain and very ap- 
 parent struggle against the irresistible encroachments 
 of age. He did not give in with that philosophical 
 resignation which might have been expected of one so 
 clever, and in some respects so wise. He fought against 
 it tooth and nail. Lord Lytton's hair seemed dyed, 
 and his face looked as if art had been called in aid to 
 rejuvenate it. A quack in Paris had pretended to cure 
 his growing deafness, a constant source of legitimate 
 grief to him." 
 
 Three performances of Ben Jonson's comedy took 
 place in November in the hall of Knebworth Park ; here 
 foUoweth the programme : — 
 
 KNEBWORTH. 
 
 On Monday, November i8th, 1850, 
 will be performed Ben Jonson's comedy of 
 
 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 
 
 Costumiers. — Messrs. Nathan, of Titchboume Street. 
 Perruquier. — Mr. Wilson, of the Strand. 
 
 Knowell (an old gentleman) 
 Edward Knowell (his son) 
 Brainworm (the father's man) 
 George Downright (a plain squire) 
 Wellbred (his half-brother) 
 Kitely (a merchant) . 
 Captain Bobadil (a Paul's man) 
 Master Stephen (a country gull) 
 Master Matthew (the town gull) . 
 Thomas Cash (Kitely' s cashier) . 
 
 Mr. Delme Radcliffe. 
 Mr. Henry Hawkins. 
 Mr. Mark Lemon. 
 Mr. Frank Stone. 
 Mr. Henry Hale. 
 Mr. John Forster. 
 Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 Mr. Douglas Jerrold. 
 Mr. John Leech. 
 Mr. Frederick Dickens. 
 
 186 
 
TRIUMPHANT NIGHTS 
 
 Oliver Cobb {a water-hearer) 
 
 Justice Clement (an old merry magistrate) 
 
 Roger .-Formal (his clerk) . 
 
 Dame Kitely (Kitely's wife) 
 
 Mistress Bridget (his sister) 
 
 Tib (Cob's wife) .... 
 
 (Who has kindly consented to act in lieu of Mrs. Charles Dickens 
 disabled by an accident.) 
 
 Mr. Augustus Egg. 
 The Hon. Eliot Yorke. 
 Mr. Phantom. 
 Miss Anne Romer. 
 Miss Hogarth. 
 Mrs. Mark Lemon. 
 
 The Epilogue by Mr. Delme Radcliffe. 
 
 To conclude with Mrs. Inchbald's farce of 
 
 ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 
 
 The Doctor 
 
 La Fleur 
 
 The Marquis de Lancy 
 
 Jeffery . 
 
 Constance 
 
 Lisette 
 
 Stage Manager 
 
 Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 Mr. Mark Lemon. 
 Mr. John Leech. 
 Mr. Augustus Egg. 
 Miss Hogarth. 
 Miss Anne Romer. 
 
 Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 
 The theatre will be open at half past six. The performance will 
 begin precisely at half-past seven. 
 
 GOD SAVE THE QUEEN ! 
 
 It had been hoped that Mary Boyle — " because she 
 is the very best actress I ever saw off the stage, and 
 immeasurably better than a great many I have seen on 
 it," wrote Dickens — would have taken the part of Mrs 
 Kitely and of Lisette in the farce, but unfortunately a 
 domestic bereavement prevented her so doing. Mrs 
 Dickens was the unfortunate victim of an accident 
 during a rehearsal, spraining her ankle in a trap-door, 
 and Mrs Mark Lemon came to the rescue. " The nights 
 at Knebworth," were, as Dickens was confident they 
 would be, " triumphant." 
 
 The " design " mentioned in Dickens's speech at the 
 Macready dinner above quoted, was the founding and 
 endowing of a *' Guild of Literature and Art," the scheme 
 
 187 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 originating at Kneb worth. As a means of raising at 
 any rate a portion of the necessary funds it was planned 
 to give a series of representations of a new comedy which 
 Lytton undertook to write, and of a farce by Dickens, 
 which latter, however, never saw the light of day, or rather 
 of the footlights, in its place being given a similar piece 
 by Lemon, to which Dickens, who acted in it, contributed 
 not a little of the fun. Dickens wrote to the Duke of 
 Devonshire, outlining the scheme to him, and telling him 
 what they hoped for, namely, to act their play at Devon- 
 shire House before the Queen and Court. The answer 
 was prompt and satisfactory : — " I have read with very 
 great interest the prospectus of the new endowment 
 which you have confided to my perusal. ... I'm truly 
 happy to offer you my earnest and sincere co-operation. 
 My services, my house, and my subscription wiU be at 
 your orders. And I beg you to let me see you before 
 long, not merely to converse upon this subject, but be- 
 cause I have long had the greatest wish to improve our 
 acquaintance, which has, as yet, been only one of crowded 
 rooms." 
 
 The kindly peer was every whit as good as his word ; 
 a theatre was built up in the great drawing-room and the 
 library converted into a green-room. 
 
 Richard Hengist Home, better known as " Orion " 
 Home, after his epic which he published at the price of 
 a farthing, took part in the comedy and has left us an 
 account of the performance and the preparations for it, 
 
 " The Duke gave us the use of his large picture gallery, 
 to be fitted up with seats for the audience ; and his 
 hbrary adjoining for the erection of the theatre. The 
 latter room being longer than required for the stage and 
 the scenery, the back portion of it was screened off for 
 
 i88 
 
AT DEVONSHIRE HOUSE 
 
 a ' green-room/ Sir Joseph Paxton was most careful 
 in the erection of the theatre and seats. There was a 
 special box for the Queen. None of the valuable paint- 
 ings in the picture gallery (arranged for the auditorium) 
 were removed ; but all were faced with planks, and 
 covered with crimson velvet draperies ; not a nail was 
 allowed to be hammered into the floor or walls, the lateral 
 supports being by the pressure from end to end, of padded 
 beams ; and the uprights, or stanchions, were fitted 
 with iron feet, firmly fixed to the floor by copper screws. 
 The lamps and their oil were well considered, so that the 
 smoke should not be offensive or injurious — even the oil 
 being slightly scented — and there was a profusion of 
 wax candles. Sir Joseph Paxton also arranged the venti- 
 lation in the most skilful manner ; and, with some assist- 
 ance from a theatrical machinist, he put up all the scenes, 
 curtains, and flies. Dickens was unanimously chosen 
 general manager, and Mark Lemon stage manager. We 
 had a professional gentleman for prompter, as none of 
 the amateurs could be entrusted with so technical, 
 ticklish, and momentous a duty. 
 
 " Never in the world of theatres was a better manager 
 than Charles Dickens. Without, of course, questioning 
 the superiority of Goethe (in the Weimar theatre) as a 
 manager in all matters of high-class dramatic literature, 
 one cannot think he could have been so excellent in all 
 general requirements, stage effects, and practical details. 
 Equally assiduous and unwearying as Dickens, surely 
 very few men ever were, or could possibly be. He ap- 
 peared almost ubiquitous and sleepless." 
 
 The opening night at Devonshire House was May 27 ; 
 the playbill being as follows when the performance was 
 repeated later on at the Hanover Square Rooms in June : — 
 
 189 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Ube Hmateur Company ot tbe (BuilO ot 
 Xiterature an& Hrt, 
 
 To encourage Life Assurance and other Provident habits among Authors 
 and Artists ; to render such assistance to both as shall never com- 
 promise their independence ; and to found a new Institution where 
 honourable rest from arduous labour shall still be associated with the 
 discharge of congenial duties ; 
 
 Will have the Honour of Performing, for the Third Time, a New 
 Comedy, in Five Acts, by Sir Edward Bulwer Lvtton, Bart., called 
 
 NOT SO BAD AS WE SEEM; 
 
 or, 
 
 MANY SIDES TO A CHARACTER : 
 
 ^ , ,,,.,,, { Peers attached to the\ ,, „ , „, 
 
 The Duke of Middlesex ^ ^^^ ^^ James II., I ^^- Frank Stone. 
 
 ^ , , _ „ \ commonly called the[^, t^ ji /- . ,. 
 
 The Earl of Loftus ^ p^^^f Pretender ) ^"- ^^^^^Y Costello. 
 
 Lord Wilmot (a young Man at the head of the 
 
 Mode more than a century ago, son to Lord 
 
 Loftus) ...... Mr. Charles Dickens, 
 
 Mr. Shadowly Softhead (a young gentleman 
 
 from the City, Friend and Double to Lord 
 
 Wilmot) ...... Mr. Douglas Jerrold. 
 
 Mr. Hardman (a rising Member of Parlia- 
 ment and Adherent to Sir Robert Walpole) . Mr. John Forster. 
 Sir Geoffrey Thornside (a gentleman of good 
 
 family and estate) .... Mr. Mark Lemon. 
 
 Mr. Goodenough Easy {in business, highly 
 
 respectable, and a friend of Sir Geoffrey) . Mr. F. W. Topham. 
 Lord Le Trimmer ..... Mr. Peter Cunningham. 
 Sir Thomas Timid ..... Mr. Westland Marston. 
 
 Colonel Flint Mr. R. H. Home. 
 
 Mr. Jacob Tonson (a bookseller) . . Mr. Charles Knight. 
 
 Smart {valet to Lord Wilmot) . Mr. Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Hodge {servant to Sir Geoffrey Thornside) Mr. John Tenniel. 
 
 Paddy O'SulUvan {Mr. Fallen's landlord) . Mr. Robert Bell. 
 Mr. David Fallen {Grub Street author and 
 
 pamphleteer) Mr. Augustas Egg. 
 
 Lord Strongbow, Sir John Bruin, Coffee-House Loungers, Drawers, 
 Watchmen and Newsmen. 
 
 Lucy {daughter to Sir Geoffrey Thornside) . Mrs. Henry Compton. 
 Barbara {daughter to Mr. Easy) . . Miss Young. 
 
 The Silent Lady of Deadman's Lane . . Mrs. Coe. 
 
 Scenery. 
 
 Lord Wilmot's Lodgings . Painted by Mr. Pitt. 
 
 " The Murillo " . . . . „ Mr. Absalom. 
 
 Sir Geoffrey Thornside's Library . „ Mr, Pitt. 
 
 190 
 
" NOT SO BAD AS WE SEEM " 
 
 Will's Coffee-house . . . Painted by Mr. Pitt. 
 
 The Streets and Deadman's Lane ,, Mr. Thomas Grieve. 
 
 The Distrest Poet's Garret {after 
 
 Hogarth) ., Mr. Pitt. 
 
 The Mall in the Park ... „ Mr. Telbin. 
 
 An Open Space near the River . „ 
 Tapestry Chamber in Deadman's 
 
 Lane ..... „ 
 The Act Drop .... 
 
 Mr. Stanfield. R.A. 
 
 Mr, Louis Haghe. 
 Mr. Roberts, R.A. 
 
 Previous to the Play, the Band will perform, under the direction 
 of Mr. Lund, an Overture, composed expressly for this occasion by 
 Mr. C. Coote, Pianist to His Grace the Duke of Devonshire. 
 
 The performance to conclude with (for the second time) an Original 
 Farce, in One Act, by Mr. Charles Dickens and Mr. Mark Lemon, 
 
 entitled 
 
 MR. NIGHTINGALE'S DIARY : 
 
 Mr. Nightingale .... 
 
 Mr. Gabblewig {of the Middle Temple) 
 Tip {his Tiger) .... 
 
 Slap {professionally Mr. Flormiville) . 
 Lithers {landlord of the " Water-Lily ") 
 Rosina ...... 
 
 Susan ...... 
 
 Mr. Dudley Costello. 
 Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 Mr. Augustus Egg. 
 Mr. Mark Lemon. 
 Mr. Wilkie Collins. 
 Miss Young. 
 Mrs. Coe. 
 
 The Proscenium by Mr. Crace. The Theatre constructed by Mr. 
 Sloman, machinist of the Royal Lyceum Theatre. The Properties and 
 Appointments by Mr. G. Foster. The Costumes (with the exception of 
 the Ladies' dresses, and the dresses of the Farce, which are by Messrs. 
 Nathan, of Titchborne Street) made by Mr. Bamett, of the Theatre 
 Royal, Haymarket. Under the superintendence of Mr. Augustus Egg, 
 K.YL.K. Perruquier, Mr. Wilson, of the Strand. Prompter, Mr. Coe. 
 
 The whole Produced under the Direction of Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 
 The Band will be under the Direction of Mr. Lund. 
 
 Tickets (all the seats being reserved), los. each, to be had of Mr, Sams, 
 I, St. James's Street). 
 
 Doors open at a Quarter before SEVEN ; commence at exactly a Quarter 
 before EIGHT. The whole of the audience are particularly recom- 
 mended to be seated before a Quarter to Eight. 
 
 IQI 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Of Dickens's acting Home says : — " The character 
 and costume of ' Lord Wilmot, a young man at the head 
 of the Mode, more than a century ago,' did not suit him. 
 His bearing on the stage, and the tone of his voice, were 
 too rigid, hard, and quarter-deck-hke, for such * rank 
 and fashion,' and his make-up, with the three-cornered, 
 gold-laced, cocked hat, black curled wig, huge sleeve 
 cuffs, long flapped waistcoat, knee-breeches and shoe- 
 buckles, were not carried off with the proper air ; so that 
 he would have made a good portrait of a captain of a 
 Dutch privateer, after having taken a capital prize. 
 When he shouted in praise of the wine of Burgundy it 
 far rather suggested fine kegs of Schiedam." 
 
 Of the Devonshire House performance, at which the 
 Queen, the Prince Consort and a very distinguished 
 audience were present, Dickens writes on April 28 : " the 
 scenery, furniture, etc., are rapidly advancing towards 
 completion, and will be beautiful. The dresses are a 
 perfect blaze of colour, and there is not a pocket-flap 
 or a scrap of lace that has not been made according to 
 Egg's drawings to the quarter of an inch. Every wig 
 has been made from an old print or picture. From the 
 Duke's snuff-box to Wills' coffee-house, you will find 
 everything in perfect truth and keeping." 
 
 In the latter part of the year there was a provincial 
 tour, when some changes were made in the cast. 
 
 This Guild of Literature and Art appears to us now-a- 
 days to have been a somewhat undignified and crazy 
 project, which achieved the failure that it deserved. 
 Dickens and Lord Lytton were the prime moving spirits 
 in the affair, which certainly cannot have added to the 
 dignity of men of letters in the eyes of a prosaic world. 
 Lytton gave a plot of ground at Stevenage, in Hertford- 
 
 192 
 
_^^^-*Zc.^^.^ 
 
 ■cCe/i> 
 
 THE EARL OF LYTTON. 
 
 From the Sketch by "Alfred Croguis" (D. Maclise, R.A.). 
 
DICKENS PRESIDES 
 
 shire for the projected " alms-houses," as well as pro- 
 viding " Not so Bad As We Seem." 
 
 The money accruing from these performances went to 
 build a semi-almshouse, semi-college, based on the plan 
 of that of the Home of the Turkey Merchants, Morden 
 College, at Blackheath, but the funds were not sufficient 
 to carry out the whole scheme. Of Lytton at this time, 
 HoUingshead says that he " was not one of those men 
 who had the art of growing old with grace. He had a 
 keen, Jewish look, and would have made an imposing 
 figure in a synagogue. Outside in a garden, in the bright 
 sunshine, with all his ' make-up ' — the remnant of his 
 ' dandy days,' which he had never altogether turned 
 his back upon — he was only imposing for his talent and 
 literary reputation." 
 
 Sir John R. Robinson, so long and so worthily con- 
 nected with the Daily News, gave in the " Comhill Maga- 
 zine " a very graphic description of Dickens presiding over 
 a meeting of the Guild : — " I can easily figure him in the 
 thick of the work ; writing a play, acting in it, bringing 
 men together, some with a command, some with an in- 
 timation that they were in it ; here a joke, there a pathetic 
 touch. His smile was enough ; Gradgrind could not 
 hold out against Charles Dickens. . . . As a chairman 
 he was as precise and accurate in carrying out the tradi- 
 tions of the post. Before business began, his happy 
 laugh rang through the room ; he had a word for every 
 friend, and generally they were his associates as well as 
 friends. Voices were high in merriment, and it looked 
 as though business would never begin ; but when Mr 
 Dickens did take his seat, ' Now, gentlemen. Wills will 
 read us the minutes of the last meeting. Attention, 
 please. Order ! ' it might have been the most experienced 
 
 N 193 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 chairman of the Guildhall, purpled by a hundred public 
 dinners." 
 
 Sir John relates later on, " On reaching Wellington 
 Street one day to attend a council meeting, I found Mr 
 Dickens alone. Though he was always most kind to me 
 ... I felt rather alarmed, for I knew he would insist 
 on business being done. The minute-book records three 
 resolutions as having been passed at that meeting. We 
 waited a while, talking about things in the papers, and 
 then Mr Dickens, in an inimitably funny way, remarked : 
 ' Will you move me into the chair ? ' 'I will,' I answered, 
 * I know you can be trusted to keep order in a large 
 gathering.' Then came resolutions, carried after dis- 
 cussion ; little speeches in the imitated voice of absent 
 members, the appropriate gravity never departed from. 
 My share was insignificant, but it served to supply Mr 
 Dickens with hints and texts to keep the fun going." 
 
 194 
 
XXVIII 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 OF Wilkie Collins, who will make further appear- 
 ances in these pages, it now behoves us to say 
 somewhat. William Wilkie, to give him his 
 full name, was the eldest son of William Collins, the 
 painter, and the elder brother of Charles Allston Collins — 
 whom we shall meet later on — and was born in the year 
 1824 in Tavistock Square. He was called after his 
 father's old friend Sir David Wilkie. His eariy travels 
 with his parents in Italy supplied him with material for 
 his first novel " Antonina," which work so pleased his 
 father that he was freed from " durance vile " in the tea- 
 warehouse in which he had been employed. Of his first 
 coming into contact with Dickens the following is the 
 record. On February 10, 1851, Dickens wrote asking 
 W. H. Wills to take a small part in " Not So Bad As We 
 Seem." Wills could not or would not, so Dickens re- 
 minded Egg that he had said that Wilkie Collins would 
 be glad to play any part in the piece and suggested for 
 him the character proposed to Wills. " Will you under- 
 take," he wrote, " to ask him if I shall cast him in this 
 part ? . . . I knew his father well, and should be very 
 glad to know him." 
 
 In 1849 a landscape of his was hung at the Royal 
 Academy, and " Antonina " was published in 1850. 
 He was a skilful painter of landscape. Holman Hunt 
 
 195 
 
 ■ 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 states that in his early days he had thought of being an 
 artist, and describes him in 1851 thus : — " He was a man 
 now, sHght of build, about five feet six inches in height, 
 with an impressive head, the cranium being noticeably 
 more prominent on the right side than on the left, which 
 inequality did not amount to a disfigurement ; perhaps 
 indeed it gave a stronger impression of intellectual power. 
 He was redundant in pleasant temperament. . . ." 
 
 He was highly gifted socially, blessed with unbounded 
 good humour and with a happy facility for relating good 
 stories. He was fond of foreign travel, including trips 
 to Paris ; was a bon vivant. A friend tells us that he 
 gained his impulse to write fiction from the perusal of 
 French novels, the art of which appealed strongly to 
 him. From the same source we gain two anecdotes 
 which throw light upon his habits. He was not a punctual 
 man ; Dickens was, and had not only ordained that 
 breakfast should be at nine o'clock, but that those who 
 were late for it might, or rather should, ' go without.' 
 The result was that once when staying at Boulogne with 
 Dickens, Collins was discovered breakfasting in solitary 
 state at the Casino off pdte de foie gras / Convivial 
 customs were more honoured in the observance than the 
 breach in those days. At a christening party Collins 
 arrived very late, after an excellent dinner. The happy 
 infant was produced by the mother for his admiration ; 
 Collins steadied himself, looked solemnly at it, and said, 
 " Ah ! Child's drunk. He's very drunk ! " 
 
 Rudolf Lehmann tells us that " in his moments of 
 good health he used to be a ready, amiable talker, but 
 unfortunately they were rare. He had found laudanum 
 most efficacious in soothing his excruciating nervous 
 pains. Like the tyrant of old who, to make himself 
 
 196 
 
WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 proof against being poisoned, swallowed a daily increased 
 portion of poison, Wilkie had gradually brought himself, 
 not only to be able, but absolutely to require, a daily 
 quantity of laudanum a quarter of which would have 
 been sufficient to kill any ordinary person." 
 
 It was he who said of Forster's " Life " that it was 
 " the Life of John Forster, with occasional Anecdotes 
 of Charles Dickens," a cynicism with just sufficient 
 semblance of truth to give it stinging power. 
 
 Holman Hunt writes of him about i860, " No one could 
 be more jolly than he as the lord of the feast in his own 
 house, where the dinner was prepared by a chef, the 
 wines plentiful, and the cigars of the choicest brand. 
 The talk became rolHcking and the most sedate joined 
 in the hilarity ; laughter long and loud crossed from 
 opposite ends of the room and all went home brimful 
 of good stories." 
 
 He sometimes would burst out, " Ah ! you might 
 well admire that masterpiece ; it was done by that 
 great painter Wilkie Collins, and it put him so completely 
 at the head of landscape painters that he determined 
 to retire from the profession in compassion for the rest," 
 and so on in good-humoured chaff of himself. 
 
 Motley describes him — at a dinner at Forster's in 1861 
 — as " a little man, with black hair, a large white fore- 
 head, large spectacles, and small features. He is very 
 unaffected, vivacious, and agreeable." 
 
 The following amusing story is told anent Dickens's 
 fondness for clothes more " coloured " than " plain " : — 
 A well-known artist was one day made a present of a 
 very gorgeous piece of stuff, and was puzzled as to what 
 use he could put it. " Oh, send it to Dickens," said 
 Wilkie CoUins, " he'll make a waistcoat of it." 
 
 197 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 He died in 1889. Whether his novels will live is a 
 matter which future generations only can determine, 
 but the past and passing generations Wilkie Collins 
 helped to spend many hours pleasantly over the pages 
 of "The Moonstone," " The Woman in White," and other 
 tales distinguished chiefly for the clever contrivance of 
 their plots. 
 
 198 
 
XXIX 
 
 OTHER FRIENDS 
 
 TO draw the portraits, even in miniature, of aU 
 the friends of Charles Dickens would call 
 for many volumes ; to some only can these 
 pages, therefore, give attention, and those picked out 
 at random rather than of deliberate selection, though 
 we have chiefly chosen those who taken together may be 
 said to be representative. It would indeed be a foolish 
 undertaking to write of all those who formed the wide 
 circle of Dickens's friends and acquaintances ; we con- 
 fine our attention principally to those upon whom we 
 may fairly infer that he had an influence or who influ- 
 enced him. It need scarcely be repeated that he was 
 a hospitable man, delighting in seeing his friends and 
 family happy around him. 
 
 At the close of 1847 he discovered to his surprise and 
 regret that the lease of the Devonshire Terrace house 
 had but two years more to run, and it is for the most 
 part with the " other friends " of the Devonshire Terrace 
 days that these pages next following wiU deal. 
 
 We must retell a pleasant anecdote from the pages 
 of Forster, of how he, Dickens, Talfourd, Edwin Landseer 
 and Stanfield sallied forth one summer evening in 1849 
 to see the Battle of Waterloo, at Astley's " over the 
 water," when whom should they see going in to witness 
 the performance but the " Duke " himself, with Lady 
 
 199 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Douro and the little Ladies Ramsay, and all the good folk 
 cheering him heartily. Forster's party do not seem to 
 have found the entertainment entertaining, and Talfourd 
 was heard to express a fervent wish that " the Prussians 
 would come up." 
 
 The Carlyles were among Dickens's firmest friends, 
 and it is quite delightful to know that when Dickens 
 inquired after the sage's health he rephed that he was 
 a lorn, lone creature and everything went contrary with 
 him. It is not called for here to set forth again the 
 events of Carlyle's life; we may content ourselves with 
 gaining some sight of him as he came into contact with 
 others who figure in these pages, and with the endeavour 
 to show somewhat of the happier side of his marriage, 
 which recent works have too greatly obscured or under- 
 rated. 
 
 We gain a glimpse of Leigh Hunt house-hunting with 
 Carlyle in 1834 in Chelsea ; " Hunt gave me dinner, 
 a pipe even and glass of ale ; was the blithest, helpfullest, 
 most loquacious of men ; yet his talk only fatigued me 
 vastly ; there was much, much of it ; full of airiness 
 indeed, yet with little but scepticising quibbles, crotchets, 
 fancies, and even Cockney wit, which I was all too earnest 
 to relish." 
 
 Carlyle first met Dickens at a dinner at the Stanleys' 
 in Dover Street, in March, 1840 : — " Pickwick, too, was 
 of the same dinner party, though they did not seem to 
 heed him over-much. He is a line little fellow — Boz, 
 I think. Clear blue, intelligent eyes, eyebrows that he 
 arches amazingly, large protrusive rather loose mouth, 
 a face of most extreme mobility, which he shuttles about 
 — eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all — in a very singular 
 manner while speaking. Surmount this with a loose 
 
 200 
 
MRS CARLYLE 
 
 coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small ccn- 
 pact figure, very small, and dressed a la D'Orsay rather 
 than well — this is Pickwick, For the rest a quiet, shrewd- 
 looking, httle fellow, who seems to guess pretty well 
 what he is and what others are." 
 
 Lady Ritchie thus describes Mrs Carlyle, and a visit 
 with her father to Cheyne Row : " In the dining-room 
 stood that enchanting screen covered with pictures, 
 drawings, prints, fashions, portraits, without end, which 
 my father liked so much ; upstairs was the panelled 
 drawing-room with its windows to the Row, and the 
 portrait of Oliver Cromwell hanging opposite the windows. 
 But best of all, there was Mrs Carlyle herself, a living 
 picture ; Gainsborough should have been alive to paint 
 her ; shm, bright, dark-eyed, upright, in her place. 
 She looked like one of the grand ladies our father used 
 sometimes to take us to call upon. She used to be 
 handsomely dressed in velvet and point lace. She sat 
 there at leisure, and prepared for conversation. She 
 was not familiar, but cordial, dignified, and interested 
 in everything as she sat installed in her comer of the 
 sofa by one of the little tables covered with nick-nacks 
 of silver and mother-of-pearl." And she said, " If you 
 wish for a quiet life, never you marry a dyspeptic man 
 of genius." 
 
 One of the most curious references to Carlyle is in a 
 letter of Charles Sumner, of June 14, 1838 : " I heard 
 Carlyle lecture the other day ; he seemed like an inspired 
 boy ; truth and thoughts that made one move on the 
 benches came from his apparently unconscious mind, 
 couched in the most grotesque style, and yet condensed 
 to a degree of intensity . . . childlike in manner and 
 feeling." 
 
 201 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Turn where we will, however, read what opinion of him 
 we may, there always is seen beneath the rough exterior 
 the sincerity and genuine goodness of the man ; of him, 
 as Goldsmith said of Johnson, it may truly be said that 
 there was nothing of the bear about him but the skin. 
 He and his wife called on Lady Eastlake, then Miss 
 Rigby, in 1844, of which visit she records, " Mr Carlyle 
 called, bringing with him his wife — certainly a more 
 refined half ; but he is an honest, true man, a character 
 such as he himself can alone describe. He is a kind of 
 Bums in appearance — the head of a thinker, the eye 
 of a lover, and the mouth of a peasant. His colours, 
 too, seem to have been painted on his high cheek-bones 
 at the plough's tail." Later she writes of him, " the 
 best laugh I ever heard. ... He has the thinnest possible 
 surface over his mind ; you can get through it at once. 
 . . . Mrs Carlyle interested me ; she is lively and clever, 
 and evidently very happy." 
 
 Mrs Browning in 1851 writes of Carlyle, " you come 
 to understand perfectly when you know him, that his 
 bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn, sensibility. 
 Highly picturesque, too, he is in conversation ; the 
 talk of writing men is very seldom so good." 
 
 From Forster in August, 1848, the Carlyles received 
 " an invaluable treat ; an opera box namely, to hear 
 Jenny Lind sing farewell. Illustrious indeed. We dined 
 with Fuz 1 at five, the hospitablest of men ; at eight, 
 found the Temple of the Muses all a-shine for Lind & Co., 
 — the piece. La Somnamhtda, a chosen bit of nonsense 
 from beginning to end, — and, I suppose, an audience 
 of some three thousand expensive-\oo]dng fools male and 
 female come to see this Swedish Nightingale ' hop the 
 
 ^ Forster. 
 202 
 
A DYSPEPTIC GENIUS 
 
 twig,' as I phrased it. ... * Depend upon it,' said I 
 to Fuz, ' the Devil is busy here to-night, wherever he may 
 be idle ! ' — Old Wellington had come staggering in to 
 attend the thing. Thackeray was there ; D'Orsay, 
 Lady Blessington, — to aU of whom (Wellington excepted !) 
 I had to be presented and give some kind of foolery, — 
 much against the grain." 
 
 But a dyspeptic man of genius, or indeed a dyspeptic 
 gifted with stupidity for the matter of that, does not 
 make a husband whose ways will tend toward a quiet 
 life, but we see no reason for overstating the unhappi- 
 nesses that arose in the Carlyles' lives, or to doubt that 
 beneath the surface storms there was a great depth of 
 content and joy. We will take three extracts from 
 Professor Masson's very pleasant book, " Memories of 
 London in the Forties," Of Mrs Carlyle he says : — 
 " Her conversation, which was more free and abundant 
 than it probably would have been had Carlyle been there, 
 impressed me greatly. She had, as I found then, and 
 as is proved by some of her now pubUshed letters, a real 
 liking for Robertson, though apt to make fun of him 
 when opportunity offered ; and Robertson's energetic 
 ways had always an inspiring effect on people he was 
 with, drawing them out admirably and starting topics. 
 At all events I shall never forget the first impression 
 made upon me by the appearance of this remarkable 
 lady as she sat, or rather reclined, in a corner of the 
 sofa, talking to the burly Robertson, herself so fragile 
 in form, with delicately cut and rather pained face of 
 pale hue, very dark hair, smoothed on both sides of an 
 unusually broad forehead, and large, soft lustrous eyes 
 of gypsy black. Something in her face and expression, 
 then and afterwards, would occasionally remind me of 
 
 203 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 portraits I had seen of the Young Voltaire ; and the 
 brilUance of her conversation, and even the style of it, 
 bore out the resemblance. She was, indeed, one of the 
 most brilliant of the witty talkers, fuU of hght esprit, 
 and though generally suppressing herself when her 
 husband was present, quite as delightfully copious as 
 he was both in theme and words when she had to be his 
 substitute. Though her style and manner of thinking 
 had undoubtedly been influenced by him, an original 
 difference had been preserved. Her most characteristic 
 vein was the satirical ; within this, the form to which 
 she tended most was satirical narrative ; and the narra- 
 tives in which she most excelled were stories of things 
 that had recently happened to herself or within the circle 
 of her acquaintance." 
 
 Of Carlyle he draws this portrait : — 
 
 " More vivid in my memory now than the matter of 
 the talk is the impression made on me by Carlyle's power- 
 ful head and face ; the hair then dark and thick, without 
 a sign of grizzle, the complexion a strong bilious ruddy, 
 the brow over-hanging and cliff-like, the eyes deep sunk 
 and aggressive, and the firm mouth and chin then closely 
 shaven. All in all, with his lean, erect figure, then 
 over five feet eleven inches in height, and the peculiar 
 bilious ruddy of his face, he was, apart from the fire 
 of genius in his eyes and flowing through his talk, not 
 unlike some Scottish farmer or other rustic of unusually 
 strong and wiry constitution, living much in the open 
 air. His Annandale accent contributed to the resem- 
 blance. His vocabulary and granmiar were of the purest 
 and most stately English ; and the Scotticism, which 
 was very marked, was wholly in the pronunciation and 
 intonation. Like Scotsmen generally, from whatever 
 
 204 
 
RUFFLES 
 
 district of Scotland, he enunciated each syllable of every 
 word with a deliberation and emphasis unusual with 
 English speakers, giving each, as it were, a good bite 
 before letting it go. The West Border intonation was 
 intensified, in his case, by a pecuHarity which was either 
 wholly his own, or a special characteristic of the Carlyles 
 of Ecclefechan. He spoke always with a distinct lyrical 
 chaunt ; not the monotonous and whining sing-song, 
 mainly of pulpit origin, one hears occasionally among 
 Scotsmen, and which is suggestive too often of hypocrisy 
 and a desire to cheat you, but a bold and varying chaunt, 
 as of a man not ashamed to let his voice rise and fall, 
 and obey by instinctive modulation every flexure of his 
 meaning and feeling. Mrs Carlyle had caught something 
 of this lyrical chaunt, by sympathy and companionship ; 
 and the slighter Scotticism of her voice was distinguished 
 also by a pleasant habit of lyrical rise and cadence." 
 
 The Professor sums up, too leniently perchance, but 
 a pleasant corrective to the corrosive of Froude : — 
 
 " My now far-back London memories of the year 1844 
 include some of my pleasant reminiscences of the de- 
 meanour of this famous couple to each other in their 
 domestic privacy. It was uniformly exemplary and loving 
 in all essential respects, with a kind of stately gallantry 
 on Carlyle's part when he turned to his Jane, or she 
 interposed one of her remarks ; and on her part the most 
 admiring affection for him in all that he said or did. If 
 there was ever a ruffle, it was superficial merely, and arose 
 from an occasional lapse of his into a mood of playful 
 teasing and persistence of rhetorical mastery even against 
 her. . . . She was fond of entertaining her friends with 
 sprightly stories of any recent misbehaviour of his, and 
 on such occasions he would listen most benignantly 
 
 205 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 and approvingly, with the pleased look of a lion whose 
 lioness was having her turn in the performance. How 
 different this from the picture drawn by Froude of Mrs. 
 Carlyle as a kind of intellectual Cinderella, the patient 
 drudge of a literary Diogenes whose barkings at the 
 human race were only relieved by croakings about his 
 health." 
 
 After her death, Monckton Milnes records that Carlyle 
 said to him : " She wrapped me round like a cloak, to 
 keep all the hard and cold world off me. . . . When I 
 came home, sick with mankind, there she was on the 
 sofa, always with a cheerful story of something or some- 
 body, and I never knew that she, poor darling ! had been 
 fighting with bitter pains all day. . . . She had never 
 a mean thought or word from the day I first saw her 
 looking like a flower out of the window of her mother's 
 old brick house, my Jeanie, my queen." Milnes' own 
 judgment — and he knew them both intimately — was 
 " that they were about as happy together as married 
 people of strong characters and temperaments usually 
 are." 
 
 Charles Buller once said a delightful thing to Carlyle : — 
 " I often think how puzzled your Maker must be to 
 account for your conduct." 
 
 Before turning to others it will interest those who believe 
 that they can trace the gradual acquirement by Carlyle 
 of his extraordinary style to ponder over this curious 
 statement of Lord Jeffrey, in reply to a remark made by 
 Charles Sumner that Carlyle had changed his style since 
 he wrote the essay on Burns, " Not at all, I will tell you 
 why that is different from his other articles : / altered it." 
 
 We will now turn to Monckton Milnes, whom we have 
 quoted above, and who was one of the most delightful 
 
 206 
 
BREAKFAST WITH MILNES 
 
 amiliars of this circle. In more ways than one he may 
 be said to have succeeded to the mantle of Rogers ; he 
 was a rich man, he was a minor poet, he was a wit and 
 he entertained his friends to breakfast. He had " break- 
 fasted " with Rogers, and himself instituted similar 
 functions in his Pall Mall chambers, where he acquired 
 the fame of " always bringing out some society curiosity." 
 It almost seems that the only qualification necessary 
 in a guest was notoriety, for Sir Henry Taylor relates 
 that at one of his breakfasts an inquiry was made as to 
 whether a certain murderer had been hanged that morning, 
 which drew the remark from the host's sister, " I hope 
 so, or Richard will have him at his breakfast-party next 
 Thursday." Carlyle writes in 1831, "I had designed to 
 be at one of your breakfasts again this season, and see 
 once more with eyes what the felicity of life is." 
 
 When the question of a pension for Tennyson was 
 being discussed, Carlyle said to Milnes, who was calling 
 at Cheyne Row, " Richard Milnes, when are you going 
 to get that pension for Alfred Tennyson ? " 
 
 " My dear Carlyle, the thing is not so easy as you 
 seem to suppose. What will my constituents say if I 
 do get the pension for Tennyson ? They know nothing 
 about him or his poetry, and they will probably think 
 he is some poor relation of my own, and that the whole 
 affair is a job." 
 
 To which Carlyle responded, 
 
 " Richard Milnes, on the Day of Judgment, when 
 the Lord asks you why you didn't get that pension for 
 Alfred Tennyson, it will not do to lay the blame on your 
 
 Kaents ; it is you that will be damned." 
 is entertaining " The Life, Letters and Friendships 
 hard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton," 
 207 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Sir Wemyss Reid writes : " Never, indeed, was there a 
 more delightful host than Milnes. Whether his guests 
 were famous or obscure, whether they belonged to the 
 great world or had merely for the moment emerged 
 from the masses, they could not be long in his company 
 without feeling the charm of his manner, and being 
 warmed and attracted by the tenderness of his heart. 
 His fame as a talker was world-wide. . . . But to hear 
 Milnes at his best, it was necessary to meet him at the 
 breakfast-table. ... It is with a great sadness indeed 
 that those who often had the privilege of meeting him 
 in this fashion in his own home must recall those break- 
 fasts, absolutely informal and unpretending, but made 
 memorable by the choice treasures of wit, of paradox, 
 of playful sarcasm, and of an apparently inexhaustible 
 store of reminiscences, which Milnes offered to his guests " ; 
 and of his house at Fryston, " No record, alas ! remains 
 of the talk with which the pleasant rooms of Fryston rang 
 in the days when their master was entertaining men and 
 women as distinguished as those whose names I have 
 given. The many good sayings, the shrewd views of 
 individuals and affairs, the stores of out-of-the-way 
 incidents in history, have all sunk into silence ; but so 
 long as any live who were privileged to partake of those 
 hospitalities, and to witness those meetings of men and 
 women of genius, their memory cannot fade, and the 
 name of Fryston will be cherished in the innermost 
 recesses of the heart." 
 
 A wit is distinguished from a mere merry-maker by 
 his wisdom, just as a wise man is from a philosopher 
 by his wit ; so it will not be mal-d-propos to quote a few 
 of the dicta of Monckton Milnes. 
 
 " What a rare thing is a grown-up mind ! " 
 
 208 
 
JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 
 
 Fiovi the Painting by Samuel Laurence, in the National 
 
 Portrait Gallery. Photograph by Emery Walker. 
 
 I 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Frotn the Painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the 
 
 National Portrait Gallery. 
 
WIT AND WISDOM 
 
 " No wonder we were friends, for we had found our- 
 selves in a moral quarantine together." 
 
 " He lost both dinners and flattery, both his bread 
 and his butter." 
 
 " I really have not room to pity everybody — I'm not 
 God Almighty." 
 
 " God has given us the gift of Faith, it is true, but 
 He has given us the gift of Doubt as well." 
 
 " I can be humble enough, but, alas ! I always know 
 that I am so." 
 
 " Good conversation is to ordinary talk what whist is 
 to playing cards," or we will add " bridge." 
 
 An amusing story is told of him in his old age. After 
 a dinner, a young lady thought to pay him a pretty and 
 pleasing comphment by singing his song, " The Beating 
 of my own Heart." He went peacefully to sleep, only 
 arousing himself for a moment when her memory failed 
 her to supply the missing word. He had, also, the happy 
 gift of being able to sleep soundly through dull after- 
 dinner speeches. 
 
 Sir Wemyss Reid gives an amusing letter from Wilkie 
 CoUins to Mrs Milnes : 
 
 " 12, Harley Street, W., May 17th. 1862. 
 
 " Dear Mrs Milnes, — I have always had a foreign 
 tendency to believe in Fate. That tendency has now 
 settled into a conviction. Fate sits on the doorstep at 
 16, Upper Brook Street, and allows all your guests the 
 happiness of accepting your hospitahty with the one 
 miserable exception of the Doomed Man who writes this 
 letter. When your kindness opened the door to me on 
 the occasion of your ' At Home,' Fate closed it again, 
 
 Kis the instrument of exclusion a neuralgic attack 
 209 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 in my head. Quinine and patience help me to get the 
 better of this, and Mrs Milnes (with an indulgence which 
 I am penitently conscious of not having deserved) offers 
 me a second chance. Fate, working with a postman 
 for an instrument on this occasion, sends me a dinner 
 invitation for Thursday, the 22nd, one day before I 
 receive Mrs Milnes's kind note. No guardian angel 
 warns me to pause. I accept the invitation, and find 
 myself engaged to dine on the 22nd, not in London, for 
 I might then have asked permission to come to Brook 
 Street in the evening, but at Richmond, where there is 
 no help for me. 
 
 " I think this ' plain statement ' really makes out my 
 case. I have not the audacity to ask you to accept 
 my apologies. My aspirations are limited to presenting 
 myself as a fit object for your compassion. The ancients, 
 in any emergency, were accustomed to mollify Fate by 
 a sacrifice. I am quite ready to try the experiment. 
 If I presented myself on the doorstep of your house 
 with a portable altar, a toga, a live sheep, and a sacrificial 
 knife, would it be convenient ? I fear not. A crowd 
 might collect ; the Animals' Protection Society might 
 interfere at the moment of divination, and Mr Milnes 
 might be subjected to annoying inquiries in the House 
 of Commons. My only resource left is to ask you to 
 exercise the Christian privilege of forgiveness, and to 
 assure you that I deserve it, by being really, and not as 
 a figure of speech, very sorry." 
 
 Parry the " entertainer," prototype of Comey Grain 
 and George Grossmith, was a firm friend of these days. 
 John Orlando Parry was bom in London in the year 
 1810, the only son of John Parry, the well-known Welsh 
 composer. He was a " prodigy," appearing at the age 
 
 210 
 
SIMS REEVES 
 
 of fifteen as a harpist, but his future lay in his voice, 
 a rich baritone, and his sense of fun. After spending 
 some time in Italy, where he was the pupil of Lablache, 
 he returned to England in 1834. Two years later he made 
 his appearance on the stage of the St James's Theatre 
 under John Braham, later on singing in " The Village 
 Coquettes," written by Dickens, with music by John 
 Hullah. After various experiences as a concert singer, 
 he produced at the Store Street Music Hall, near Bedford 
 Square, an " entertainment " written by Albert Smith, 
 " Notes Vocal and Instrumental," illustrated by large 
 water-colour drawings executed by himself. He had 
 now found his genre. In i860 he joined the famous 
 German Reeds at the Gallery of Illustration in Regent 
 Street. He was certainly an "all round " performer, 
 writing his songs, composing his music, singing and 
 accompanying himself. 
 
 Of another very famous singer we catch occasional 
 glimpses. Not any other tenor has ever so firmly won 
 and for so long held the affections of the British pubhc 
 as did John Sims Reeves, who, bom in 1818, lived on to 
 the end of the century. Edmund Yates tells the story 
 of his successful appearance in opera at Drury Lane in 
 1847, under the management of the great " Mons " 
 Jullien, when the orchestra was under the conductor- 
 ship of no less a person than Hector Berlioz ; " the 
 first production was Lucia di Lammermoor, and the next 
 day the town was ringing with the praises of the new 
 tenor, Mr Sims Reeves, who had proved himself more 
 than worthy of the great expectations which had been 
 raised concerning him, I perfectly recollect the tumul- 
 tuous roars of applause evoked by his great scene at the 
 end of the second act, and have a remembrance of roars 
 
 211 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 of another kind, occasioned by the very comic manner 
 in which, under the influence of great excitement, he 
 persisted in shaking his head. His ' Fra Poco ' — rendered, 
 I remember, ' From these fond arms they tore thee ' — 
 was enormously effective ; and when the curtain fell, 
 Mr Sims Reeves was enrolled as a first favourite with 
 the public, which for more than thirty-five years ^ has 
 never deserted him." 
 
 It will be within the memory of many that Sims Reeves 
 attained an unenviable celebrity for disappointing the 
 public. At a certain function Dickens, who was in the 
 chair, had to announce that Sims Reeves was unfor- 
 tunately unable to be present owing to a throat attack 
 and, therefore, that his promised song would not be 
 forthcoming. The news was received with incredulous 
 laughter by some sceptical and ill-mannered guests. 
 Dickens, very angry, added to his statement : — " My 
 friend, Mr Sims Reeves, regrets his inability to fulfil his 
 engagement owing to an unfortunately amusing and 
 highly facetious cold." Many a time, indeed, did this 
 great singer disappoint an expectant audience, but never, 
 so a personal friend of his has told us, without real cause ; 
 his throat was highly delicate and sensitive, and he has 
 even been present, ready and wilhng, in the artists' 
 room, but at the last moment could not sing ; the spirit 
 wilHng, but the flesh weak. 
 
 Charles Kemble and his daughters were among 
 Dickens's very good friends, a courtly, handsome old 
 man, but deaf withal, for it is related of him that at the 
 Garrick Club during a terrific thunderstorm he mildly 
 remarked, " I think we are going to have some thunder ; 
 I feel it in my knees." Leigh Hunt wrote of him, " Were 
 
 1 Written in 1884. 
 212 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 
 
 he not personally gifted as he is, it would be a sad thing 
 to lose the last of the Kembles from Covent Garden — 
 to look in vain for the living and vigorous representative 
 of that truly noble house which has laid on us all a great 
 debt of gratitude, and with which he seemed still to 
 connect us. John Kemble and Mrs Siddons had not quite 
 left this their proper seat while he remained there, for 
 we had associated him with them in their most signal 
 triumphs, to which he lent all the grace and vigour of 
 youth, which were theirs no longer ... he was endowed 
 with rich and various faculties, which can be found in 
 no one else in the same perfection and harmony. Where 
 now shall we seek the high Roman fashion of look, and 
 gesture, and attitude ? Where shall old chivalry retain 
 her Hving image, and high thoughts, ' seated in a heart 
 of courtesy,' have adequate expression ? Where shall 
 the indignant honesty of a young patriot spirit ' show 
 fiery off ' ? Whither shall we look for gentlemanly mirth, 
 for gallant ease, for delicate raillery, and gay, glittering 
 enterprise ? " 
 
 In 1839 we find Charles Dickens writing, " I wish 
 you would tell Mr Sydney Smith that of all the men 
 I ever heard of and never saw, I have the greatest curi- 
 osity to see and the greatest interest to know him." 
 
 He did see and know the witty canon of St Paul's, 
 whom all men honoured for his upright manliness. He 
 was another Doughty Street man, taking up his residence 
 there at No. 8 in 1804, when he was evening preacher 
 at the Foundling Hospital with a stipend of £50 per annum. 
 Many another London house is connected with his name, 
 but we only need mention two. In 1806 he was in Orchard 
 Street, Oxford Street, and Lady Holland says : — " the 
 pleasantest society at his house was to be found in the 
 
 k2I3 
 
 I 
 I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 little suppers which he established once a week ; giving 
 a general invitation to about twenty or thirty persons, 
 who used to come as they pleased. ... At these suppers 
 there was no attempt at display, nothing to tempt the 
 palate ; but they were most eagerly sought after, and 
 were I to begin enumerating the guests usually to be 
 found there, no one would wonder that they were so," 
 
 When he was given a " stall " in St Paul's in 1809, 
 he writes : — "I have just taken possession joi my pre- 
 ferment. The house is in Amen Comer, — an awkward 
 name on a card, and an awkward annunciation to the 
 coachman on leaving any fashionable mansion. I find 
 too (sweet discovery !) that I give a dinner, every Sunday 
 for three months in the year, to six clergymen and six 
 singing-men, at one o'clock." 
 
 Of his wit these pages have already given samples ; 
 we add but two more : — when advised by his doctor to 
 take a walk upon an empty stomach, he solemnly asked 
 " Whose ? " We like, too, his remark, " What a pity 
 it is that in England we have no amusements but vice 
 and religion." 
 
 Another Doughty Street personality : — 
 
 Charles William Shirley Brooks was bom on April 
 29, 1815, at number 52, being the eldest son of William 
 Brooks and Elizabeth Sabine. As a young man he was 
 distinctly a good-looking fellow — how many of the young 
 literary lions of those days seem to have been handsome ! 
 — with well-cut features, bright eyes concerning whose 
 colour evidence is contradictory, and hands and feet 
 of which he was not a little proud. Says Edmund Yates 
 of him at a much later date, " Even at the last, when his 
 hair was silvery-white and his beard grizzled, he retained 
 his freshness, which, combined with his hearty, genial 
 
 214 
 
SHIRLEY BROOKS 
 
 manner, his appreciation of, and promptitude to enter 
 into, fun, made him look considerably younger than his 
 real age. He was hearty and hospitable, fond of dining 
 at the dinners of rich City companies, where he would 
 make excellent speeches ; fond of enjoying the company 
 of a friend at the Garrick Club, or at a comer table in a 
 coffee-room at one of the old hotels in Co vent Garden." 
 
 There was Peter, the son of Allan, Cunningham, who 
 earned the eternal gratitude of all lovers of London and 
 students of its history by his " Hand-Book of London. 
 Past and Present." He was a scholar and a good fellow. 
 There was Henry Fothergill Chorley, the critic, to whom 
 a newspaper writer who had lost both his manners and 
 his temper once pleasingly referred as " the Chorleys 
 and the chawbacons of literature." We meet him again 
 in the Gad's Hill days ; there he was a frequent and most 
 welcome visitor ; good company he seems to have 
 been, a walker of great powers despite his " apparently 
 weak physique " ; always ready for a game or a romp or a 
 charade. Miss Dickens describes him as " doing all sorts of 
 good and generous deeds in a quiet, unostentatious way." 
 
 Charles Knight, of whom Shirley Brooks said, " it 
 is an honour to have been his friend." He lives in history 
 as one of the pioneers of cheap literature for what was 
 then called " the masses." He was a man of quick 
 temper, but never morose ; in appearance strong, of 
 middle height and with well-cut features. 
 
 Dickens, as did so many others, owned to a real affec- 
 tion for the Procter family, " our dear good Procter " 
 he calls " Barry Cornwall," whom Forster somewhat 
 exuberantly dubs " a poet as genuine as old Fletcher 
 or Beaumont." We hear of Dickens coming up from 
 Gad's Hill to help to celebrate the poet's eighty-second 
 
 215 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 birthday. Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel had been 
 among his schoolmates at Harrow ; he had known 
 Keats, Lamb, Shelley, Coleridge, Landor, Leigh Hunt, 
 and Rogers ; he was a poet and a friend of poets. He died 
 in October, 1874, aged eighty-seven. 
 
 Charles Sumner writes of him in 1839, he " is about 
 forty-two or forty-five, and is a conveyancer by pro- 
 fession. His days are spent in the toilsome study of 
 abstracts of titles ; and when I saw him last Sunday, 
 at his house, he was poring over one which press of business 
 had compelled him to take home. 
 
 " He is a small, thin man, with a very dull countenance, 
 in which, nevertheless, — knowing what he has written,— 
 I could detect the ' poetical frenzy.' His manner is 
 gentle and quiet, and his voice low. He thought if he 
 could live life over again he would be a gardener. . . . 
 Mrs Procter is a sweet person ; she is the daughter of 
 my friend, Mrs Basil Montagu, and has much of her 
 mother's information and intelligence." 
 
 " Dined at Procter's in the summer of 1859," Hawthorne 
 relates, " to meet Charles Sumner, Leigh Hunt, J. T. 
 Fields, * Eothen ' Kinglake and others." Fields thus 
 describes the scene : " Adelaide Procter did not reach 
 home in season to begin the dinner with us, but she came 
 later in the evening, and sat for some time in earnest 
 talk with Hawthorne. It was a ' goodly companie,' 
 long to be remembered. As the twilight deepened around 
 the table, which was exquisitely decorated with flowers, 
 the author of * Rimini ' recalled to Procter's recollection 
 other memorable tables where they used to meet in 
 vanished days with Lamb, Coleridge, and others of their 
 set long since passed away. ... I cannot remember 
 all the good things I heard that day. . . . Hunt . . . 
 
 216 
 
THE PROCTERS 
 
 speaking of Landor's oaths . , . said ' They are so 
 rich, they are really nutritious.' " 
 
 J. T. Fields called on him in 1869 and found him feeble, 
 but kindly and genial, " his speech was somewhat diffi- 
 cult to follow, for he had been slightly paralyzed not 
 long before ... he spoke with warm feeling of Long- 
 fellow, who had been in London during that season, and 
 had called to see his venerable friend. . . . ' Wasn't 
 it good of him,' said the old man, in his tremulous voice, 
 ' to think of me before he had been in town twenty-four 
 hours ? ' " 
 
 " In the spring of the year 1853," writes Dickens, 
 " I observed a short poem among the proffered contribu- 
 tions,! very different, as I thought, from the shoal of 
 verses perpetually setting through the office of such a 
 periodical." It was not until the Christmas of the follow- 
 ing year that he discovered that his contributor " Mary 
 Berwick" was none other than Adelaide Anne Procter, 
 the eldest child of his old friend, known to us to-day as 
 the authoress of " Legends and Lyrics." Hawthorne 
 called her ** the lovely daughter of Barry Cornwall." 
 
 She was born in Bedford Square on October 30, 1825, 
 and early showed a fondness for poetry. She was cheer- 
 ful, full of fun and humour, laughter ever ready. She 
 lay dying, with sweetest patience, fifteen long months. 
 
 " At length, at midnight on the second of February, 
 1864, she turned down a leaf of a little book she was 
 reading, and shut it up. 
 
 " The ministering hand . . . was soon around her 
 neck, and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the stroke 
 of one : 
 
 " ' Do you think I am dying, mamma ? * 
 
 1 To " All the Year Round " 
 217 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " ' I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear.' 
 
 " ' Send for my sister. My feet are so cold. Lift me 
 up!' 
 
 " Her sister entering as they raised her, she said : ' It 
 has come at last ! ' and with a bright and happy smile, 
 looked upward, and departed." 
 
 Is not that truly Dickensian ? 
 
 Thackeray writes to her in June, i860, " Why are your 
 verses so very, very grey and sad ? . . . I don't like 
 to think you half so sad as your verses. I hke some of 
 them very much indeed, especially the little tender bits." 
 
 " The first and only time I met Miss Adelaide Procter, 
 of poetic fame, was at Eastlake's," * writes Frith, " and 
 I had the pleasure of taking her down to dinner. Miss 
 Procter was very charming, but nature had been very 
 unkind to her in respect of personal appearance. I 
 fear it could not be denied that the authoress of the 
 ' Lost Chord,' and so many other beautiful poems, was 
 a very plain person indeed, but her conversation was 
 dehghtful. Photography, at the time of which I am 
 speaking, was a new art ; the conversation turned upon 
 it at dinner, and, as I looked at Miss Procter, I thought 
 how fearfully she would suffer if she ventured to submit 
 herself to its uncompromising ' justice without mercy ' 
 treatment. As if she read my thoughts, she said : 
 
 " ' I had my photograph taken the other day, and you 
 never saw such an ugly wretch as they made of me.' 
 
 " I forget what I said in reply, but I muttered something, 
 and the lady continued : 
 
 " ' I remonstrated with the man, and what do you think 
 he said ? — ' Very sorry, miss, but we can't alter nature.' " 
 
 Tom Taylor was a frequent visitor ; Hawthorne says 
 
 » Sir Charles Eastlake. P.R.A. 
 218 
 
MILNER-GIBSON 
 
 of him — " a humorous way of showing up men and matters, 
 but without originaUty or much imagination or dance of 
 fancy," and again — " liked him very well this evening ; 
 but he is a gentleman of very questionable aspect, — 
 un-English, tall, slender, colourless, with a great beard 
 of soft black, and, methinks, green goggles over his eyes." 
 
 The last of the friends with whom we shall deal here, 
 and among the less known now to fame, were Mr and 
 Mrs Milner-Gibson. Of Thomas Milner-Gibson we need 
 only note that he was one of Lord Beaconsfield's school- 
 mates at Higham ; that after serving as the Conserva- 
 tive member for Ipswich, he became one of the strongest 
 supporters of the Anti-Corn Law League, a Liberal and 
 President of the Board of Trade under Palmerston and 
 Russell. In January, 1870, Dickens rented his house, 
 5 Hyde Park Place, nearly opposite the Marble Arch. 
 The Milner-Gibson suppers were a great " institution," 
 where were to be met — mentioning chietiy those whose 
 names appear in our pages — Mazzini, Planch^, Sir Charles 
 and Lady Eastlake, Monckton Milnes, Albert and Arthur 
 Smith, Landseer, Leech, Chorley, the Procters, and Mr 
 and Mrs Charles Dickens, " It was no mere affair of 
 small-talk," says Edmund Yates, " ices, and lemonade. 
 A substantial supper was a feature of the evening, and 
 the foreigners had a pleasant way of rushing down directly 
 that meal was served and sweeping the table. It was 
 here that Leech, returning flushed from an encounter 
 with the linkman, told me laughingly he would not 
 have minded if ' Mr Leech's carriage ' had been called, 
 but that the fellow would roar out, ' The keb from Nottin' 
 '111 ! ' " 
 
 In Mr Layard's " The Life of Mrs Lynn Linton " 
 tliere is an amusing account of Mrs Milner-Gibson 's 
 
 219 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 penchant for spiritualism, and an interesting letter from 
 Dickens to Mrs Linton, in which he says, referring to 
 the then very popular stances, " I hold personal inquiry 
 on my part into these proceedings to be out of the question 
 for two reasons. Firstly, because the conditions under 
 which such inquiries take place — as I know in the recent 
 case of two friends of mine, with whom I discussed them 
 — are preposterously wanting in the commonest securities 
 against deceit or mistake. Secondly, because the people 
 lie so very hard, both concerning what did take place 
 and what impression it made at the time on the inquirer. 
 
 " Mr Hume, or Home (I rather think he has gone 
 by both names), I take the liberty of regarding as an 
 impostor. If he appeared on his own behalf in any con- 
 troversy with me, I should take the further liberty of 
 letting him know pubhcly why. But be assured that if 
 he were demonstrated a humbug in every microscopic 
 cell of his skin and globule of his blood, the disciples 
 would still believe and worship. 
 
 " Mrs Gibson is an impulsive, compassionate, affection- 
 ate woman. But as to the strength of her head ; — would 
 you be very much surprised by its making a mistake ? 
 Did you never know it much mistaken in a person or two 
 whom it devoutly believed in ? — Believe me ever faithfully 
 your true friend, 
 
 Charles Dickens." 
 
 220 
 
XXX 
 
 TAVISTOCK HOUSE 
 
 IN 1851 Dickens left Devonshire Terrace, where he 
 had lived since 1839, moving to Tavistock House, 
 Tavistock Square, which he purchased, and which 
 had previously been the home of his friend Frank Stone, 
 the A.R.A., of whom we may say a few words. He was 
 described to Frith by Dickens as " a better fellow than 
 Stone never lived, but he is always in the right about 
 every earthly thing, and if you talk till Doomsday you 
 will never convince him to the contrary." 
 
 He was bom in 1800 at Manchester, the son of a cotton- 
 spinner, to which calling he himself was brought up, 
 soon, however, turning to art, being entirely self-taught. 
 In 1 83 1 he came to London, and among his first work 
 were pencil drawings for the " Book of Beauty." He 
 first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837, and there 
 is to be seen in his paintings much of the rather too sweet 
 sentimentality which is characteristic of the productions 
 of his son Marcus Stone. He was the friend of many 
 literary men, among others of Rogers, Thackeray and 
 Dickens, who makes Sairey Gamp speak of him as " a 
 fine-looking, portly gentleman, with a face like an amiable 
 full moon." He died in November, 1859, and was buried 
 at Highgate. He was a tall, good-looking fellow. It 
 is said that Mrs Frank Stone was bom on the field of 
 Waterloo, while the battle was in fuU swing ! 
 
 221 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 There is a delightful story of him in " Leaves from a 
 Life " : — " I have a picture in my gallery of Mr Stone's 
 short way with a dreadful cook my mother had in the 
 year of the great comet, 1858, when we were at Weymouth 
 and Papa was detained in town. . . . Mama suspected 
 the cook of theft, and was certain she drank, but was at 
 her wit's end what to do. She confided in Mr Stone ; 
 he got a policeman in hiding, and then commanded the 
 cook to pack her boxes and go. She must have suspected 
 something, for they were packed, and all she had to do 
 was to go to her room and assume her bonnet and shawl. 
 The boxes were brought down, and then the policeman 
 appeared, and to her rage and consternation demanded 
 the keys. We were in the front room, divided from 
 the other room by folding doors, and through the crack 
 we commanded the whole scene, Mr Stone towering over 
 cook and policeman alike. Mama and Mrs Stone cowering 
 in a comer, while article after article came out of the 
 boxes, some of them ours, more belonging evidently 
 to former mistresses, and all obviously belonging to any 
 one save the cook. Mama took her belongings, the 
 policeman all that was marked with a coronet or a name, 
 and finally she was on the point of being allowed to 
 depart, without her wages, when Mr Stone, with a howl, 
 leaped at her and turned her shawl back over her shoulders. 
 Will it be beheved that she was hung round with bags 
 of groceries, and had a large bar of yellow soap under 
 each arm ? Even the policeman smiled, while we children 
 simply roared with laughter, while the cook turned and 
 fled, soap and all, and never came near us again ! " 
 
 From the same pages we quote the account of his 
 death : — "One morning in the autumn, Mrs Stone went 
 downstairs to get him his breakfast, leaving him to read 
 
 222 
 
TAVISTOCK HOUSE 
 
 the Times, and then get up quietly to his work when he 
 had had some food. When she returned he was dead, his 
 glasses still on his nose and the Times in his hand ; he 
 had simply ' fallen on sleep ' without a cry or a movement. 
 When the model came, to be sent away because Mr 
 Stone was dead, she remarked, with all the inconsequence 
 of her class, ' Well ! he might 'a let me know ! ' " 
 
 At Tavistock House many additions and improvements 
 were made by Dickens, concerning which there are highly 
 entertaining letters to his brother-in-law Henry Austin, 
 an architect, who was superintendent of " the works " ; 
 written from Broadstairs, where Dickens stayed from 
 May until November. Of these we will quote but one : — 
 
 " My dear Henry, O ! O ! O ! D the Pantechnicon. 
 
 O ! . . . The infamous says the stoves shall be 
 
 fixed to-morrow. O ! if this were to last long ; the 
 distraction of the new book, the whirling of the story 
 through one's mind, escorted by workmen, the imbecUity, 
 the wild necessity of beginning to write, the not being 
 
 able to do so, the, O ! I should go O ! 
 
 " P.S. None. I have torn it off." 
 But in November the workmen were out and the 
 family in. 
 
 Holman Hunt gives a most interesting account of a 
 
 visit he paid to Dickens at Tavistock House, which was 
 
 brought about by their common friend Wilkie Collins : — 
 
 " He was then forty-eight years of age. By his early 
 
 [^■portraits he had appeared to be a good-looking beau 
 
 ^K>f the last Georgian days, and the portrait painters 
 
 ^Biad Sviized little that bespoke firmness under a light and 
 
 ^Jcheerful exterior ; but in these later days all the bones 
 
 of his face showed, giving it truly statuesque dignity, 
 
 d every line on his brow and face were the records 
 
 223 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 of past struggle and of present power to paint humanity 
 in its numberless phases." 
 
 We now meet quite one of the most charming characters 
 among Dickens's friends — Hans Christian Andersen, who 
 we find writing from Copenhagen to a friend in London 
 in 1846, " How I should like to shake the hand of ' Boz.' " 
 He paid his first visit to London in 1847, putting up at the 
 Sabloniere Hotel, of which building at any rate a portion 
 had once been Hogarth's house, and which was largely 
 frequented by foreigners. It was pulled down in 1870, 
 and the Tenison school now occupies the site. He arrived 
 in the middle of June. He met Dickens at Lady Blessing- 
 ton's, whither he was taken by Jerdan — " I was yesterday 
 at Lady Blessington's ... a man came into the room 
 ... we took each other by the hand, looked into each 
 other's eyes, and laughed for joy ; we knew each other 
 so well, although this was our first meeting — it was 
 Charles Dickens. . . . Outside the house is a pretty 
 verandah which runs along its whole length . . . here 
 we stood for a long time and talked — talked in English, 
 but he understood me, and I him." 
 
 Lady Eastlake mentions a visit from Andersen in this 
 year, when he was, " a long, thin, fleshless, boneless 
 man, wriggling and bending like a lizard with a lantern- 
 jawed, cadaverous visage. Simple and childhke, and 
 simpletonish in his manner. We had a great deal of talk, 
 and after so recently reading his fife, he seems no stranger 
 to me. His whole address and manner are irresistibly 
 ludicrous." But second impressions were better ; a 
 few days later we read, " Andersen dined with us. He 
 had one stream of interesting talk — perhaps rather too 
 much of himself, but to me that was novel and enter- 
 taining. . . . Altogether he left a most agreeable im- 
 
 224 
 
HANS ANDERSEN 
 
 pression on mind and heart ; especially on the latter, for 
 his own seemed so affectionate. No wonder he finds 
 people kind ; all stiffness is useless with him, as he is so 
 evidently a simple child himself," 
 
 On his journey home he caught the Ostend boat from 
 Ramsgate, en route dining with Dickens and his family 
 at Broadstairs. Dickens saw him safely aboard : — " We 
 pressed each other's hands, and he looked at me so 
 kindly with his shrewd, sympathetic eyes, and as the ship 
 went off, there he stood, waving his hat, and looking so 
 gallant, so youthful, and so handsome. Dickens was the 
 last who sent me a greeting from dear England's shore." 
 Dickens wrote to him, " Come again to England, soon ! 
 But whatever you do, do not stop writing, because we 
 cannot bear to lose a single one of your thoughts. They 
 are too true and simply beautiful to be kept safe only 
 in your own head." 
 
 In 1851 Andersen visited Dickens in Tavistock Square, 
 and has given us an account of the house. 
 
 " In Tavistock Square stands Tavistock House. This 
 and the strip of garden in front of it are shut out from 
 the thoroughfare by an iron railing. A large garden 
 with a grass plat and high trees stretches behind the house, 
 and gives it a countrified look in the midst of this coal 
 and gas-steaming London. In the passage from street 
 to garden hung pictures and engravings. Here stood 
 a marble bust of Dickens, so hke him, so youthful and 
 handsome ; and over a bedroom door and a dining-room 
 door were inserted the bas-reliefs of Night and Day, 
 after Thorwaldsen. On the first floor was a rich library 
 with a fireplace and a writing-table, looking out on the 
 garden ; and here it was that in winter Dickens and his 
 
 I friends acted plays to the satisfaction of all parties. 
 P 225 
 
 L 
 
 I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 The kitchen was underground, and at the top of the house 
 were the bedrooms. I had a snug room looking out on 
 the garden ; and over the tree-tops I saw the London 
 towers and spires appear or disappear as the weather 
 cleared or thickened." 
 
 In 1857 Andersen was a delighted and delightful 
 visitor at Gad's Hill, arriving early in June and staying 
 until the middle of July. He crossed from Calais to 
 Dover, and rushed up to town in the mail train, and 
 down again to Higham Station on the North Kent line, 
 where he was greeted by a porter with " Are you the 
 foreign gentleman who is going to Mr Dickens's ? " 
 
 " Before me," he writes, " lay on the broad high road 
 Dickens's country-house, whose tower, with its gilded 
 weathercock, I had seen for some time over the tops 
 of the trees. It was a handsome new house, with brick 
 walls and a projecting entrance, supported by small 
 pillars ; a thick hedge of cherry-trees joined the house, 
 in front of which was a carefully-tended grass-plot, 
 in the rear two splendid cedar trees, whose crooked 
 branches spread their green shade over a garden fenced 
 in with ivy and wild grape. As I entered the house 
 Dickens came to meet me, so happy, so cordial ; he looked 
 somewhat older than when we parted ten years before, 
 but this was partly owing to the beard he wore ; his eyes 
 glistened as formerly, the same smile played round his 
 mouth, the same clear voice sounded so cheerily, even 
 more affectionate than heretofore. Dickens was now 
 in his best years, so youthful, lively, eloquent, and rich 
 in humour, through which the warmest cordiality ever 
 shone. I cannot find more characteristic words to describe 
 him than a quotation from the first letter I wrote home. 
 * Select the best of Charles Dickens's works, form from 
 
 226 
 
LADY BOUNTIFUL 
 
 them the image of a man, and you have Dickens.' Just 
 as he stood before me in the first hour, he remained 
 unchanged during all the weeks I passed with him, ever 
 jovial, merry, and sympathising." 
 
 Of Miss Burdett Coutts Andersen gives a charming 
 account : — " On my first stay at Gadshill I met there an 
 elderly lady dressed in black and another younger ; 
 they remained a week there, and were most amiable, 
 straightforward, and kind ; we walked together up to 
 the monument ; I drove with them to Rochester, and 
 when they quitted us the younger lady said that I must 
 stay at her house when I visited London. From Dickens 
 I learned that she was Miss Coutts ; he spoke with the 
 utmost veneration of her, and of the glorious Christian 
 use to which she apphed her enormous fortune ; I should 
 have an opportunity of seeing an English mansion ap- 
 pointed with all possible wealth. I visited her, and it 
 was not the rich pictures, the bedizened language, the 
 palatial resources, which imparted to the house grandeur 
 and a pecuUar brilliancy, but the noble, feminine, amiable 
 Miss Coutts herself, she offered such a simple and touching 
 contrast to her richly-attired servants. She had noticed 
 that I had felt cold while in the country ; it was not yet 
 thoroughly warm, hence a fire burned cheerily in my 
 chimney. How comfortable I felt then ! There were 
 books, cozy arm-chairs, sofas, and rococco furniture, and 
 from the window a perfect view over the garden of Picca- 
 dilly and the Green Park. Close to London are Miss 
 Coutts's country-house and garden ; here are long alleys 
 of rhododendrons, which shook their blue petals over 
 the carriage in which I was seated ; here were magni- 
 ficent cedars and rare exotics, while the hothouses were 
 filled with tropical vegetation. From all these splendours 
 
 227 
 
 I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 the owner led me to a small kitchen-garden, where she 
 seemed fondest of being ; it seemed as if these plants, 
 which possessed such value for the poor, harmonised 
 best with her nature." 
 
 Of some of the high- jinks at Tavistock House we must 
 give a brief description. 
 
 Miss Mary Boyle describes a merry New Year's Eve : — 
 " It seemed like a page cut out of the ' Christmas Carol,' 
 as far, at least, as fun and frolic went : authors, actors, 
 friends from near and far, formed the avenues of two long 
 English country dances, in one of which I had the honour 
 of going up and down the middle, almost ' interminably ' 
 as it seemed, with Charles Dickens for my partner. The 
 Keeleys were there, husband and wife, the former de- 
 clining to dance ; but when Sir Roger de Coverley struck 
 up, he was loudly called upon to do so, and a vehement 
 dispute began between the two sets, which should secure 
 him in their ranks. That inimitable comedian showed 
 so much fun in the apparent hesitation of his choice as to 
 elicit roars of laughter, which were followed by thunders 
 of applause, when the winning side claimed Keeley as 
 their own." 
 
 In 1854, o^ Twelfth Night, and in 1855, there were 
 theatricals with the children as the " company," " sup- 
 ported " by a few grown-ups ; Henry Fielding's burlesque 
 " Tom Thumb " was one of the pieces performed, and 
 " Fortunio " another. " Uncle " Mark Lemon was the 
 giantess Glumdalca in the former, and Dickens the ghost 
 of Galfer Thumb. Thackeray, who was among the 
 audience, rolled off his seat in uncontrollable laughter, 
 so great was his amusement at one of the songs. In] 
 " Fortunio " Lemon appeared as the dragon, and Dickens 
 as the irascible Baron. The " bill " contained manyj 
 
 228 
 
" THE LIGHTHOUSE " 
 
 funniments, such as the announcement of the " Re- 
 engagement of that irresistible comedian Mr Ainger," 
 and such names for the performers as Mr Passe (Dickens), 
 Mr Mudperiod, Mr Measly Servile, and Mr Wilkini 
 Collini. 
 
 Of the year 1855, Edmund Yates writes, " Visiting 
 relations had . . . been established between us and the 
 Dickens family, and we were invited to Tavistock House, 
 on the i8th of June, to witness the performance of Wilkie 
 CoUins's drama. The Lighthouse, in which the author 
 and Dickens, Frank Stone, Augustus Egg, Mark Lemon 
 and the ladies of the family took part. My mother, 
 who went with us, told me that Dickens, in intensity, 
 reminded her of Lemaitre in his best days. I was much 
 struck by the excellence of Lemon's acting, which had 
 about it no trace of the amateur. ... It was a great 
 night for my mother. She renewed her acquaintance 
 with Stanfield and Roberts, and was addressed in very 
 complimentary terms by the great John Forster. 
 Thackeray and his daughters, Leech, Jerrold, Lord 
 Campbell, and Carlyle were there." 
 
 Stanfield was the scene-painter, and Dickens, who 
 was " Mr Crummies, lessee and manager," writes to 
 him, " I have a little lark in contemplation, if you 
 will help it to fly. Collins has done a melodrama (a 
 regular old-style melodrama), in which there is a 
 very good notion. . . . Now there is only one scene 
 in the piece, and that, my tarry lad, is the inside of a 
 lighthouse. . . . We mean to burst on an astonished 
 world with the melodrama, without any note of pre- 
 paration. So don't say a syllable to Forster if you should 
 happen to see him." 
 
 After the show, ** we then turned to at Scotch reels 
 
 229 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 (having had no exercise), and danced in the maddest 
 way until five. . . ." 
 
 The most famous performance was the production of 
 " The Frozen Deep," by Wilkie Collins, on Twelfth Night, 
 1857, the birthday of Charles Dickens the younger. In 
 1874, when the play was published as a story, Collins 
 wrote in the introduction : — 
 
 " As long ago as the year 1856 I wrote a play called 
 * The Frozen Deep.' 
 
 "The work was first represented by amateur actors, 
 at the house of the late Charles Dickens, on the 6th of 
 January, 1857. Mr. Dickens himself played the principal 
 part, and played it with a truth, vigour, and pathos never 
 to be forgotten by those who were fortunate enough to 
 witness the performance. The other personages of the 
 story were represented by the ladies of Mr. Dickens's 
 family, by the late Mark Lemon (editor of Punch), by 
 the late Augustus Egg, R.A. (the artist), and by the author 
 of the play. 
 
 " The next appearance of * The Frozen Deep ' (played 
 by the amateur company) took place at the Gallery 
 of Illustration, Regent Street, before the Queen and the 
 Royal Family, by the Queen's own command. After 
 this special performance other representations of the work 
 were given — first at the Gallery of Illustration, subse- 
 quently (with professional actresses) in some of the prin- 
 cipal towns in England — for the benefit of the family 
 of a well-beloved friend of ours, who died in 1857 — 
 the late Douglas Jerrold. At Manchester the play was 
 twice performed — on the second evening in the presence 
 of three thousand spectators. This was, I think, the 
 finest of all the representations of ' The Frozen Deep.' 
 The extraordinary intelUgence and enthusiasm of the 
 
 230 
 
" THE FROZEN DEEP " 
 
 great audience stimulated us all to do our best. Dickens 
 surpassed himself. The trite phrase is the true phrase 
 to describe that magnificent piece of acting. He literally 
 electrified the audience. 
 
 In Remembrance of the late Mr. Douglas Jcrrold 
 
 FREE TRADE HALL 
 
 Under the Management of Mr. Charles Dickens 
 
 On FRIDAY Evening, Aug. 21, and on SATURDAY Evening. 
 Aug. 22, 1857, 
 
 at eight o'clock exactly 
 
 Will be presented an entirely new Romantic Drama, in 
 Three Acts, by 
 
 MR. WILKIE COLLINS 
 called 
 
 THE FROZEN DEEP 
 
 The Overture composed expressly for this Piece by Mr. FRANCESCO 
 BERGER. who will conduct the ORCHESTRA 
 
 The Dresses by Messrs. Nathan, of Titchboume Street, Haymarket, 
 and Miss Wilkins, of Carburton Street, Fitzroy Square. 
 Perruquier, Mr. Wilson, of the Strand. 
 
 Captain Ebsworth {of the ' Sea-Mew ') 
 
 Captain Helding {of the ' Wanderer ') 
 
 Lieutenant Crayford 
 
 Frank Aldersley 
 
 Richard Wardour . 
 
 Lieutenant Steventon 
 
 John Want {Ship's Cook) 
 
 dSS" ) ('""' °f *^ ' •5««-J^'5»'s' people) 
 
 (Officers and Crews of the 'Sea-Mew' and 'Wanderer.') 
 Mrs. Steventon ..... Mrs. George Vining 
 
 Mr. Edward Pigott 
 Mr. Alfred Dickens 
 Mr. Mark Lemon 
 Mr. Wilkie Collins 
 Mr. Charles Dickens 
 Mr. Young Charles *• 
 Mr. Augustus Egg 
 /Mr. Shirley Brooks 
 \Mr. Charles Collins 
 
 Rose Ebsworth 
 Lucy Crayford 
 Clara Burnham 
 Nurse Esther . 
 Maid 
 
 Miss Ellen Sabine 
 Miss Ellen Teman 
 Miss Maria Teman 
 Mrs. Teman 
 Miss Mewte * 
 
 The Scenery and Scenic Effects of the First Act by Mr. Telbin. 
 The Scenery and Scenic Effects of the Second and Third Acts by 
 Mr. Stanfield, R.A. 
 
 ^ A facetious nickname, invented by Dickens for his eldest son. 
 * Another nickname by Dickens for a young lady who had nothing 
 to say. 
 
 231 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " I present here, as ' a curiosity ' which may be welcome 
 to some of my readers, a portion of the original playbill 
 of the performance at Manchester. To me it has now 
 become one of the saddest memorials of the past that I 
 possess. Of the nine amateur actors who played the men's 
 parts (one of them my brother, all of them my valued 
 friends) but two are now living besides myself — Mr 
 Charles Dickens, junr., and Mr Edward Pigott. 
 
 " The country performances being concluded, nearly ten 
 years passed before the footlights shone again on ' The 
 Frozen Deep.' In 1866 I accepted a proposal, made to 
 me by Mr Horace Wigan, to produce the play (with certain 
 alterations and additions) on the public stage, at the 
 Olympic Theatre, London. The first performance took 
 place (while I was myself absent from England) on the 
 27th of November, in the year just mentioned. Mr H. 
 Neville acted the part * created ' by Dickens. 
 
 " Seven years passed after the production of the play 
 at the Olympic Theatre, and then ' The Frozen Deep ' 
 appealed once more to pubHc favour, in another country 
 than England, and under a totally new form. 
 
 " I occupied the autumn and winter of 1873-74 most 
 agreeably to myself, by a tour in the United States of 
 America, receiving from the generous people of that 
 great country a welcome which I shall remember proudly 
 and gratefully to the end of my life. During my stay 
 in America I read in public, in the principal cities, one 
 of my shorter stories (enlarged and rewritten for the 
 purpose), called ' The Dream- Woman.' Concluding my 
 tour at Boston, I was advised by my friends to give, 
 if possible, a special attraction to my farewell reading 
 in America, by presenting to my audience a new work. 
 Having this object in view, and having but a short space 
 
 232 
 
GAGGING 
 
 of time at my disposal, I bethought myself of * The 
 Frozen Deep.' The play had never been published, 
 and I determined to rewrite it in narrative form for a 
 public reading. The experiment proved, on trial, to be 
 far more successful than I had ventured to anticipate. 
 Occupying nearly two hours in its dehvery, the trans- 
 formed ' Frozen Deep * kept its hold from first to last 
 on the interest and sympathies of the audience." 
 
 " I think the last time I went to the Tavistock House 
 theatricals," writes Mrs Keeley, "was at the coming of 
 age of the eldest son, Charley. I sat in a nice place, and in 
 front of me was Macready, with Lord Lyndhurst resting 
 against the tragedian's legs. Edwin Landseer was also 
 present among the audience, together with George 
 Cruikshank, Augustus Egg, Stanfield (who painted the 
 scenery), and, I think, John Forster. I recollect that 
 Dickens ' gagged ' a good deal, as usual, in a piece called 
 ' Uncle John,' and that Mac, who disapproved of such 
 things, kept growling out, soUo voce, ' Oh, you shouldn't 
 
 gag!'" 
 
 Tavistock House was relinquished in September, i860, 
 thenceforward Gad's Hill being Dickens's home. 
 
 233 
 
XXXI 
 
 ON THE CONTINENT— 1853-6 
 
 IN the summer of 1853 Dickens was at Boulogne, 
 to which place we shall return later on, and in 
 October started thence with Wilkie Collins and 
 Augustus Egg for a run through Switzerland and Italy. 
 The expedition nearly came to an untimely end upon the 
 Mer de Glace — " we were . . . going along an immense 
 height like a chimney-piece, with sheer precipice below, 
 when there came rolling from above, with fearful velocity, 
 a block of stone about the size of one of the fountains 
 in Trafalgar Square, which Egg, the last of the party, 
 had preceded by not a yard, when it swept over the 
 ledge, breaking away a tree, and rolled and tumbled 
 down into the valley." 
 
 In the " Letters " there is a deUghtful account of this 
 trip, from which we will take a few extracts to prove 
 the quality of the remainder. To Miss Hogarth he writes 
 from Milan on October 25 : "On the Swiss side of the 
 Simplon, we slept at the beastliest little town, in the 
 wildest kind of house, where some fifty cats tumbled 
 into the corridor outside our bedrooms all at once in the 
 middle of the night — whether through the roof or not, I 
 don't know, for it was dark when we got up — and made 
 such a horrible and terrific noise that we started out of 
 our beds in a panic. . . . We continue to get on very well 
 together. We really do admirably. I lose no opportunity 
 
 234 
 
A QUAINT BLUNDER 
 
 of inculcating the lesson that it is of no use to be out of 
 temper in travelling, and it is very seldom wanted for 
 any of us. Egg is an excellent fellow, and full of good 
 qualities ; I am sure a generous and staunch man at heart, 
 and a good and honourable nature." 
 
 From Genoa to Naples the voyage was more exciting 
 than pleasant, though it was rendered less disagreeable 
 by meeting with his old friends the Emerson Tennents — 
 Sir James, the first baronet, a famous traveller and a 
 not unknown politician. 
 
 George Dolby tells a quaint little story of Dickens 
 at the funeral of this old friend : — " ' Of course I made 
 an ass of myself,' Dickens said, ' and did the wrong 
 thing, as I invariably do at a funeral.' He proceeded to 
 explain that, arriving at the house of his late friend, he 
 was met in the hall by an elderly gentleman, who extended 
 his hand. Presuming this to be a friend of Sir James's, 
 whom he had met somewhere but had forgotten, he shook 
 the gentleman by the hand, saying at the same time — 
 
 " ' We meet on a sad occasion.' 
 
 " * Yes, indeed,' was the reply, * Poor dear Sir James.' 
 
 " (This with a long-drawn sigh.) 
 
 " Dickens passed on to the dining-room where several 
 other friends were congregated, and where for a time he 
 quite forgot his friend in the hall ; but presently he was 
 reminded of that affecting meeting by the entrance of 
 the elderly gentleman carrying before him a trayful of 
 hats adorned with long mourning bands, and so high was 
 the pile as to almost hide him from view. 
 
 " The elderly gentleman's position in society was now 
 made manifest. He was the undertaker's man, and wanted 
 Dickens's hat for the purpose of funereal decoration ; 
 hence his object in holding out his hand." 
 
 235 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 As we have said the voyage to Naples was excessively 
 uncomfortable, which is not to be marvelled at, as the 
 ship was overcrowded abominably, and there was no sleep- 
 ing accommodation of any kind : " the scene on board 
 beggars description. Ladies on the tables, gentlemen 
 under the tables, and ladies and gentlemen lying indis- 
 criminately on the open deck, arrayed like spoons on a 
 sideboard. . . . We were all gradually dozing off when 
 a perfectly tropical rain fell, and in a moment drowned 
 the whole ship. . . . Emerson Tennent, with the greatest 
 kindness, turned his son out of his state room (who, 
 indeed, volunteered to go in the most amiable manner), 
 and I got a good bed there. The store-room down by the 
 hold was opened for Egg and Collins, and they slept 
 with the moist sugar, the cheese in cut, the spices, the 
 cruets, the apples and pears — in a perfect chandler's 
 
 shop ; in company with what the 's would call a 
 
 ' hold gent.' ... a cat, and the steward — who dozed 
 in an armchair, and all night long fell headforemost, 
 once in every five minutes, on Egg, who slept on the 
 counter or dresser." 
 
 Winding up our brief account, we quote an amusing 
 description of a visit to the opera at Rome : — " All the 
 seats are numbered arm-chairs, and you buy your number 
 at the 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 caffe which is part of 
 the theatre), one of them said ' Waal I dunno — I expect 
 we aint no call to set so nigh to one another neither — will 
 you scatter Kernel, will you scatter sir ? ' — Upon this 
 
 236 
 
BOULOGNE 
 
 the Kernel * scattered ' some twenty benches off ; and 
 they distributed themselves (for no earthly reason appa- 
 rently 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 Wcis a dead silence all over the house, 
 unwonted sounds of disturbance broke out from a dis- 
 tant comer of the pit, and here and there a head got up 
 to look. ' What is it neow, sir ? ' said one of the Americans 
 to another ; * some person seems to be getting along, 
 again streem.' ' 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." 
 
 Broadstairs was " Our Enghsh Boulogne," " Our 
 French Watering Place," in which latter place Dickens 
 resided from June to September, 1853, from June until 
 October, 1854, and from June until September, 1856, 
 
 Boulogne is one of the most misunderstood places 
 in the world, at least by those who have not resided there 
 for some little time. It is looked upon as almost the 
 French equivalent of our English Margate, whereas in 
 reahty it is a most interesting and in many ways most 
 picturesque town. We need not enter into its ancient 
 history, but would rather recall that it has for long years 
 
 237 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 been one of the gates of France through which has ebbed 
 and flowed a constant stream of wayfarers from and to 
 our coasts. In May, 1822, the Rob Roy, the first of the 
 Boulogne steam packets, brought over six passengers, 
 since then the traffic has grown to its present enormous 
 extent. But the days that most appeal to us are 
 those before the so-called abolition of imprisonment for 
 debt, when many a poor exile from England haunted its 
 hilly and not seldom smeUy streets. There was a club 
 at which they used to play whist at franc points — no 
 credit given ! They were on the whole a fairly cheerful 
 crew, certainly so considering that most of them had 
 seen better days, and not a few lie sleeping in the cemetery 
 upon the hill, up beyond the old walls of the old town, 
 from which it is possible almost to see the distant white 
 cliffs of " home." A visit to this cemetery, beside the 
 St Omer Road, brings home to the Enghsh eye how sad 
 a part his countrymen have played in the history of the 
 town, dying there on alien soil. Of the more famous names 
 we may mention Sir Nicolas Harris Nicolas, the anti- 
 quarian, who began life in the navy in the stirring days 
 at the opening of last century ; Basil Montagu, friend of 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth, and editor of Bacon ; Kathe- 
 rine. Lady Dundonald, widow of the tenth earl, the fiery 
 sailor ; Smithson Tennant, the Cambridge chemist ; Sir 
 William Ouseley, the Orientalist. No fewer than eighty- 
 two bodies from the female convict ship, the Amphitrite, 
 which was wrecked off Boulogne in 1833, all hands being 
 lost, are interred here ; as also Thomas Green, the captain, 
 and many of the officers, passengers, and crew of the 
 Reliance, wrecked in 1812, seven souls only out of 116 
 being saved. But it is the tombstones, many of them 
 of the humblest description, bearing unknown names 
 
 238 
 
M. BEAUCOURT 
 
 that are the saddest ; here he many exiles, who died 
 heartbroken, hopeless, and poor. 
 
 The old town of Boulogne is as picturesque a walled 
 city as we need desire to see, and from it a brief walk 
 takes us out into the countryside. 
 
 In 1853, Dickens rented a house high up, near the 
 Calais Road ," a doll's country-house of many rooms, 
 in a delightful garden," he calls it in a letter to Wilkie 
 Colhns. He writes to Forster, " If this were but 300 
 miles farther off how the Enghsh would rave about it ! 
 I do assure you that there are picturesque people, and 
 town, and country, about this place, that quite fill up 
 the eye and fancy." And, " this house is on a great 
 hill-side, backed up by woods of young trees. It faces 
 the Haute Ville with the ramparts and the unfinished 
 cathedral. . . . On the slope in front, going steep down 
 to the right, all Boulogne is piled and jumbled about in a 
 very picturesque manner." Dickens quite fell in love 
 with his landlord, M. Beaucourt, whom in " Our French 
 Watering-Place " he describes as M. Loyal Devasseur : — 
 " We can never henceforth separate our French water- 
 ing-place from our own landlord of two summers, M. Loyal 
 Devasseur, citizen and town-councillor. Permit us to have 
 e pleasure of presenting M. Loyal Devasseur. 
 " His own family name is simply Loyal ; but, as he is 
 married, and as in that part of France a husband always 
 adds to his own name the family name of his wife, he 
 ^■writes himself Loyal Devasseur. He owns a compact 
 ^Bittle estate of some twenty or thirty acres on a lofty 
 ^■hillside, and on it he has built two country-houses, which 
 ^|ne lets furnished. They are by many degrees the best 
 houses that are so let near our French watering-place ; 
 l^twe have had the honour of living in both, and can testify. 
 
 K 239 
 
 De 
 Hthc 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " The entrance-hall of the first we inhabited was orna- 
 mented with a plan of the estate, representing it as 
 about twice the size of Ireland ; insomuch that when we 
 were yet new to the property (M. Loyal always speaks 
 of it as ' La propriete ') we went three miles straight 
 on end in search of the Bridge of Austerlitz — which 
 we afterwards found to be immediately outside the 
 window. The Chateau of the Old Guard, in another 
 part of the grounds, and, according to the plan, about 
 two leagues from the little dining-room, we sought in 
 vain for a week, until, happening one evening to sit 
 upon a bench in the forest (forest in the plan), a few yards 
 from the house door, we observed at our feet, in the 
 ignominious circumstances of being upside down and 
 greenly rotten, the Old Guard himself, that is to say, 
 the painted effigy of a member of that distinguished 
 corps, seven feet high, and in the act of carrying arms, 
 who had had the misfortune to be blown down in the 
 previous winter. It will be perceived that M. Loyal is 
 a staunch admirer of the great Napoleon. He is an old 
 soldier himself — captain of the National Guard, with a 
 handsome gold vase on his chimney-piece, presented 
 to him by his company — and his respect for the memory 
 of the illustrious general is enthusiastic. Medallions 
 of him, portraits of him, busts of him, pictures of him, 
 are thickly sprinkled all over the property. During the 
 first month of our occupation, it was our affliction to be 
 constantly knocking down Napoleon : if we touched 
 a shelf in a dark comer, he toppled over with a crash ; 
 and every door we opened, shook him to the soul. Yet 
 M. Loyal is not a man of mere castles in the air, or, as he 
 would say, in Spain. He has a specially practical, con- 
 triving, clever, skilful eye and hand. His houses are 
 
 240 
 
"M. LOYAL" 
 
 delightful. He unites French elegance and English 
 comfort, in a happy manner quite his own. He has 
 an extraordinary genius for making tasteful httle bed- 
 rooms in angles of his roofs, which an Englishman 
 would as soon think of turning to any account as he 
 would think of cultivating the desert. We have ourself 
 reposed deliciously in an elegant chamber of M. Loyal's 
 construction, with our head as nearly in the kitchen 
 chimney-pot as we can conceive it likely for the head of 
 any gentleman, not by profession a sweep, to be. And, 
 into whatsoever strange nook M. Loyal's genius pene- 
 trates, it, in that nook, infallibly constructs a cupboard 
 and a row of pegs. In either of our houses, we could 
 have put away the knapsacks and hung up the hats of 
 the whole regiment of Guides. 
 
 "Aforetime, M. Loyal was a tradesman in the town. 
 You can transact business with no present tradesman 
 in the town, and give your card ' chez M. Loyal,' but 
 a brighter face shines upon you directly. We doubt 
 if there is, ever was, or ever will be, a man so universally 
 pleasant in the minds of people as M. Loyal is in the 
 minds of the citizens of our French watering-place. 
 They rub their hands and laugh when they speak of him. 
 Ah, but he is such a good child, such a brave boy, such a 
 generous spirit, that Monsieur Loyal ! It is the honest 
 truth. M. Loyal's nature is the nature of a gentleman. 
 He cultivates his ground with his own hands (assisted 
 by one little labourer, who falls into a fit now and then) ; 
 and he digs and delves from morn till eve in prodigious 
 perspirations — ' works always,' as he says — but, cover 
 him with dust, mud, weeds, water, any stains you will, 
 [you never can cover the gentleman in M. Loyal. A 
 portly, upright, broad-shouldered, brown-faced man, 
 
 241 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 whose soldierly bearing gives him the appearance of being 
 taller than he is ; look into the bright eye of M. Loyal, 
 standing before you in his working blouse and cap, not 
 particularly well shaved, and, it may be, very earthy, 
 and you shall discern in M. Loyal a gentleman whose true 
 politeness is ingrain, and confirmation of whose word by 
 his bond you would blush to think of. Not without 
 reason is M. Loyal when he tells that story, in his own 
 vivacious way, of his travelling to Fulham, near London, 
 to buy all these hundreds and hundreds of trees you now 
 see upon the property, then a bare, bleak hill ; and of his 
 sojourning in Fulham three months ; and of his jovial 
 evenings with the market-gardeners ; and of the crowning 
 banquet before his departure, when the market-gardeners 
 rose as one man, clinked their glasses all together (as 
 the custom at Fulham is), and cried, ' Vive Loyal ! ' 
 
 " M. Loyal has an agreeable wife, but no family ; and 
 he loves to drill the children of his tenants, or run races 
 with them, or do anything with them, or for them, that 
 is good-natured. He is of a highly convivial tempera- 
 ment, and his hospitahty is unbounded. Billet a soldier 
 on him, and he is dehghted. Five-and-thirty soldiers 
 had M. Loyal billeted on him this present summer, and 
 they all got fat and red-faced in two days. It became 
 a legend among the troops that whosoever got billeted 
 on M. Loyal rolled in clover ; and so it fell out that the 
 fortunate man who drew the biUet ' M. Loyal Devasseur ' 
 always leaped into the air, though in heavy marching 
 order. M. Loyal cannot bear to admit anything that 
 might seem by any impUcation to disparage the military 
 profession. We hinted to him once, that we were con- 
 scious of a remote doubt arising in our mind, whether 
 a sou a day for pocket-money, tobacco, stockings, 
 
 242 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 drink, washing, and social pleasures in general, left a very 
 large margin for a soldier's enjoyment. Pardon ! said 
 Monsieur Loyal, rather wincing. It was not a fortune, 
 but — k la bonne heure — it was better than it used to be ! 
 What, we asked him on another occasion, were all those 
 neighbouring peasants, each living with his family in one 
 room, and each having a soldier (perhaps two) billeted 
 on him every other night, required to provide for those 
 soldiers ? ' Faith ! ' said M. Loyal reluctantly ; ' a bed, 
 monsieur, and fire to cook with, and a candle. And they 
 share their supper with those soldiers. It is not possible 
 that they could eat alone.' — ' And what allowance do 
 they get for this ? ' said we. Monsieur Loyal drew him- 
 self up taller, took a step back, laid his hand upon his 
 breast, and said, with majesty, as speaking for himself and 
 all France, ' Monsieur, it is a contribution to the State ! ' 
 
 " It is never going to rain, according to M. Loyal. When 
 it is impossible to deny that it is now raining in torrents, he 
 says it will be fine — charming — magnificent — to-morrow. 
 It is never hot on the property, he contends. Likewise 
 it is never cold. The flowers, he says, come out, dehghting 
 to grow there ; it is like Paradise this morning ; it is hke 
 the Garden of Eden. He is a little fanciful in his language : 
 smiHngly observing of Madame Loyal, when she is absent 
 at vespers, that she is ' gone to her salvation ' — all^e 
 a son salut. He has a great enjoyment of tobacco, but 
 nothing would induce him to continue smoking face to 
 face with a lady. His short black pipe immediately 
 goes into his breast pocket, scorches his blouse, and 
 nearly sets him on fire. In the town council and on 
 occasions of ceremony, he appears in a full suit of black, 
 
 twith a waistcoat of magnificent breadth across the chest, 
 and a shirt-coUar of fabulous proportions. Good M. 
 243 
 I 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Loyal ! Under blouse or waistcoat, he carries one of 
 the gentlest hearts that beats in a nation teeming with 
 gentle people. He has had losses, and has been at his 
 best under them. Not only the loss of his way by night 
 in the Fulham times — when a bad subject of an English- 
 man, under pretence of seeing him home, took him into 
 all the night public-houses, drank ' arf anarf ' in every 
 one at his expense, and finally fled, leaving him ship- 
 wrecked at Cleefeeway, which we apprehend to be Rat- 
 cliffe Highway — but heavier losses than that. Long ago, 
 a family of children and a mother were left in one of his 
 houses without money, a whole year. M. Loyal — anything 
 but as rich as we wish he had been — had not the heart 
 to say ' you must go ' ; so they stayed on and stayed on, 
 and paying-tenants who would have come in couldn't 
 come in, and at last they managed to get helped home 
 across the water ; and M. Loyal kissed the whole group, 
 and said, ' Adieu, my poor infants ! ' and sat down in 
 their deserted salon and smoked his pipe of peace. — 
 ' The rent, M, Loyal ? ' * Eh ! well ! The rent ! ' 
 M. Loyal shakes his head, ' Le bon Dieu,* says M, 
 Loyal presently, ' will recompense me,' and he laughs 
 and smokes his pipe of peace. May he smoke it on the 
 property, and not be recompensed, these fifty years ! " 
 
 We feel assured that we shall be granted forgiveness for 
 this lengthy quotation, not only because the picture is so 
 deUghtful in itself, but because it shows us one of Dickens's 
 humbler friends. We add to it this view of the old town : — 
 
 " We have an old walled town, rich in cool public 
 wells of water, on the top of a hill within and above 
 the present business-town ; and if it were some hundreds 
 of miles farther from England, instead of being, on a 
 clear day, within sight of the grass growing in the crevices 
 
 244 
 
" BILKINS " 
 
 of the chalk-cliffs of Dover, you would long ago have 
 been bored to death about that town. It is more pictur- 
 esque and quaint than half the innocent places which 
 tourists, following their leader like sheep, have made 
 impostors of. To say nothing of its houses with grave 
 courtyards, its queer by-corners, and its many-windowed 
 streets white and quiet in the sunlight, there is an ancient 
 belfry in it that would have been in all the annuals and 
 albums, going and gone, these hundred years, if it had 
 but been more expensive to get at. Happily it has escaped 
 so well, being only in our French watering-place, that you 
 may like it of your own accord in. a natural manner, with- 
 out being required to go into convulsions about it. We 
 regard it as one of the later blessings of our life, that 
 BiLKiNS, the only authority on taste, never took any 
 notice that we can find out, of our French watering- 
 place. Bilkins never wrote about it, never pointed out 
 anything to be seen in it, never measured anything in it, 
 always left it alone. For which relief, Heaven bless the 
 town and the memory of the immortal Bilkins likewise ! 
 " There is a charming walk, arched and shaded by trees, 
 on the old walls that form the four sides of this high town, 
 whence you get glimpses of the streets below, and changing 
 views of the other town and of the river, and of the hills 
 and of the sea. It is made more agreeable and peculiar 
 by some of the solemn houses that are rooted in the deep 
 streets below, bursting into a fresher existence atop, 
 and having doors and windows, and even gardens, on 
 these ramparts. A child going in at the courtyard gate 
 of one of these houses, climbing up the many stairs, and 
 coming out at the fourth-floor window, might conceive 
 himself another Jack, alighting on enchanted ground 
 from another bean-stalk. It is a place wonderfully 
 
 245 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 populous in children ; English children, with governesses 
 reading novels as they walk down the shady lanes of 
 trees, or nursemaids interchanging gossip on the seats ; 
 French children with their smiling bonnes in snow- 
 white caps, and themselves — if little boys — in straw 
 head-gear like beehives, work-baskets and church hassocks. 
 Three years ago, there were three weazen old men, one 
 bearing a frayed red ribbon in his threadbare button- 
 hole, always to be found walking together among these 
 children, before dinner-time. If they walked for an 
 appetite, they doubtless lived en pension — were contracted 
 for — otherwise their poverty would have made it a rash 
 action. They were stooping, blear-eyed, dull old men, 
 slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted, short-waisted 
 coats and meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility 
 hovering in their company. They spoke little to each 
 other, and looked as if they might have been politically 
 discontented if they had had vitality enough. Once, 
 we overheard red-ribbon feebly complain to the other 
 two that somebody, or something, was ' a robber ' ; 
 and then they all three set their mouths so that they 
 would have ground their teeth if they had had any. The 
 ensuing winter gathered red-ribbon unto the great com- 
 pany of faded ribbons, and next year the remaining two 
 were there — getting themselves entangled with hoops 
 and dolls — familiar mysteries to the children — probably 
 in the eyes of most of them, harmless creatures who had 
 never been like children, and whom children could never 
 be like. Another winter came, and another old man 
 went, and so, this present year, the last of the triumvirate 
 left off walking — it was no good, now — and sat by himself 
 on a little solitary bench, with the hoops and the dolls 
 as lively as ever about him." 
 
 246 
 
COMFORTABLE QUARTERS 
 
 There is scarce anything in Goldsmith or Lamb that 
 is more charming. 
 
 Here, as everywhere else that he went, Dickens gathered 
 his friends around him, among his visitors being Wilkie 
 CoUins, the Leechs, the Wards, and the Frank Stones. 
 We find him writing to Peter Cunningham, " If you ever 
 have a holiday that you don't know what to do with, do 
 come and pass a little time here. We live in a charming 
 garden in a very charming country, and should be de- 
 lighted to receive you. Excellent light wines on the 
 premises, French cookery, millions of roses, two cows 
 (for milk punch), vegetables cut for the pot, and handed 
 in at the kitchen window ; five summer-houses, fifteen 
 fountains (with no water in 'em), and thirty-seven clocks 
 (keeping, as I conceive, Australian time ; having no 
 reference whatever to the hours on this side of the 
 globe)." 
 
 In 1854 M. Beaucourt was again Dickens's landlord, 
 the house this time being the Villa du Camp de Droite, 
 on the summit of the hill, not far from the Napoleon 
 Column, of which the foundation-stone was laid by 
 Soult in 1804, and which commemorates the encampment 
 of the army that was to conquer perfidious Albion, 
 whose white shores can be seen gleaming across the 
 channel. " We have a most charming place here," 
 he writes to W. H. Wills, " it beats the former residence 
 all to nothing. We have a beautiful garden, with all 
 its fruits and flowers, and a field of our own, and a road 
 of our own away to the Column, and everything that is 
 airy and fresh. ... If the weather ever should be fine, 
 it might do you good sometimes to come over with the 
 proofs 1 on a Saturday, when the tide serves well, before 
 
 1 Of Household Words. 
 247 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 you and Mrs W. make your annual visit. Recollect 
 there is always a bed, and no sudden appearance will 
 put us out." 
 
 The visit of the Prince Consort and Napoleon III 
 to the great Northern Camp was the event of this year ; 
 " The day came at last, and all Boulogne turned out 
 for its holiday," says Forster, then proceeds to quote a 
 letter of Dickens's : — " but I had by this cooled down a 
 little, and, reserving myself for the illuminations, I . . . 
 set off upon my usual country walk. See my reward. 
 Coming home by the Calais road, covered with dust, 
 I suddenly find myself face to face with Albert and 
 Napoleon, jogging along in the pleasantest way, a little 
 in front, talking extremely loud about the view, and 
 attended by a brilliant staff of some sixty or seventy 
 horsemen, with a couple of our royal grooms with their 
 red coats riding oddly enough in the midst of the magnates. 
 I took off my wide-awake without stopping to stare ; 
 whereupon the Emperor pulled off his cocked hat ; and 
 Albert (seeing, I suppose, that it was an EngUshman) 
 pulled off his. Then we went our several ways. The 
 Emperor is broader across the chest than in the old times 
 when we used to see him so often at Gore House, and 
 stoops more in the shoulders," 
 
 The Leechs were among the visitors this year. After 
 an exceeding stormy crossing, poor Leech, who had 
 suffered severely, was uproariously greeted by the hard- 
 hearted throng of idlers who always watch the arrivals 
 by boat, whereupon he explained to Dickens that he now 
 understood what an actor's feelings must be when his 
 efforts are rewarded with applause ; " I felt," he said, 
 " that I had made a great hit." 
 
 In 1856 Dickens was back again at the Villa des 
 248 
 
G. A. A BECKETT 
 
 Moulineaux, and among those who went over to see him 
 were Douglas Jerrold and Wilkie ColHns, who for many 
 weeks lived in a Httle cottage in the garden of the villa. 
 
 Dickens avoided, as far as possible, his fellow-country- 
 men on tour, and of some of them he had hard words to 
 say. After a visit to the pier, he writes, " The said pier 
 at evening is a phase of the place we never see, and which 
 I hardly know. But I never did behold such specimens 
 of the youth of my country, male and female, as pervade 
 that place. They are really, in their vulgarity and in- 
 solence, quite disheartening. One is so fearfully ashamed of 
 them, and they contrast so unfavourably with the natives." 
 
 Great sorrow was caused by the death here of his friend, 
 Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, one of the original " Punch " 
 staff, a metropolitan police magistrate, and the author 
 of numerous comic works and plays. Mr M. H. Spiel- 
 mann, in his " History of Punch," relates how when 
 mere lads, a Beckett and his chum, Henry Mayhew, started 
 a satirical paper The Cerberus, with a capital of three 
 pounds ! To " Punch " he was a facile contributor. 
 *' I recollect well," writes the Hon. T. T, a Beckett, 
 in his " Reminiscences," " my brother — who wrote for 
 it from the first number to the last that appeared in his 
 life-time — bringing me away from my office on an assur- 
 ance that if I accompanied him as far as the Strand, 
 he would show me something that would fill me at once 
 with gratification and amazement. He kept me in sus- 
 pense until I reached Catherine Street, when he stopped 
 short and said, ' Now you shall see me draw a pound from 
 Punch, and if that don't amaze and gratify you, you 
 must have but a poor sense of the marvellous and very 
 little brotherly sympathy.' " 
 
 Of his nimble wit Mr Spielmann gives a pretty example, 
 
 249 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " when the election of Louis Napoleon appeared likely, 
 the policy of Punch in respect to it was anxiously discussed 
 at the Table. One of the Staff — Thackeray most Ukely 
 — declared that it would be wise to be indefinite. * Non- 
 sense,' said a Beckett, ' if you're not definite, you'd better 
 be dumb in it ! ' " 
 
 An epidemic had broken out in Boulogne, and among 
 many children attacked by it was a Beckett's favourite 
 son ; the father hastened from Paris, and himself died 
 only two days after his boy. 
 
 Turning to happier matters ; Albert and Arthur 
 Smith were two jolly fishermen, and used to go a-fishing 
 in the harbour. Dr Elliotson was also among the visitors 
 to Boulogne, and Ballantine gives a comic description of 
 a " crossing." Upon one occasion the doctor, Charles 
 Dickens, and Ballantine " started together in the packet 
 from Boulogne, for Folkestone. Neither of my comrades 
 was a good sailor, and they knew it themselves. The 
 illustrious author armed himself with a box of homoeo- 
 pathic globules ; and the doctor, whose figure was rotund, 
 having a theory that by tightening the stomach the 
 internal movements which caused the sickness might be 
 prevented, waddled down to the boat with his body 
 almost divided by a strap. The weather was stormy, 
 and neither remedy proved of any avail." 
 
 We will say " farewell " to " Our French Watering- 
 Place " with one more quotation : — 
 
 " The English form a considerable part of the popula- 
 tion of our French watering-place, and are deservedly 
 addressed and respected in many ways. Some of the 
 surface-addresses to them are odd enough, as when a 
 laundress puts a placard outside her house announcing 
 her possession of that curious British instrument, a 
 
 250 
 
PARIS 
 
 * Mingle * ; or when a tavern-keeper provides accom- 
 modation for the celebrated English game of ' Nokemdon.' 
 But, to us, it is not the least pleasant feature of our 
 French watering-place that a long and constant fusion 
 of the two great nations there, has taught each to like 
 the other, and to learn from the other, and to rise superior 
 to the absurd prejudices that have lingered among the 
 weak and ignorant in both countries equally. 
 
 " Drumming and trumpeting, of course, go on for ever in 
 our French watering-place. Flag-flying is at a premium, 
 too ; but we cheerfully avow that we consider a flag a 
 very pretty object, and that we take such outward signs 
 of innocent liveliness to our heart of hearts. The people 
 in the town and in the country are a busy people who 
 work hard ; they are sober, temperate, good-humoured, 
 light-hearted, and generally remarkable for their engaging 
 manners. Few just men, not moderately bilious, could 
 see them in their recreations without very much respecting 
 the character that is so easily, so harmlessly, and so 
 simply pleased." 
 
 In October, 1855, after an autumn spent at Folkestone, 
 Dickens spent the winter in Paris, taking an appartement 
 at 49 Avenue de Champs Elysees, where he remained 
 until the following May. Wilkie Collins lodged hard by, 
 the Reverend James White and his family also stayed 
 for the winter, and among the visitors was the ever welcome 
 Macready. 
 
 Dickens had a " most awful job to find a place that 
 would in the least suit " him and his family, but at last 
 settled at the address above given, where, he writes 
 to Wills, " I have two floors . . . entresol and first — 
 in a doll's house, but really pretty within, and the view 
 without astounding." 
 
 251 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 He seems to have devoted considerable time to the 
 theatre ; renewed his friendship with M. Regnier of the 
 Frangais, and writes to Forster a brilHant account of 
 Frederic Lemaitre's acting. 
 
 There on January ig, 1856, we have him writing to 
 Wilkie Collins, noting that he is "sitting" to Ary Scheffer, 
 and that he has met Georges Sand at Madame Viardot's, 
 noting of her — " the human mind cannot conceive any 
 one more astonishingly opposed to all my preconceptions. 
 If I had been shown her in a state of repose, and asked 
 what I thought her to be, I should have said : ' The 
 Queen's monthly nurse.' Au reste, she has nothing of the 
 bas bleu about her, and is very quiet and agreeable." 
 Ary Scheffer he describes as a " frank and noble fellow," 
 but with regard to the portrait he writes sadly to Forster, 
 " The nightmare portrait is nearly done. ... It is a fine 
 spirited head, painted at his very best. . . . But it does not 
 look to me at all like, nor does it strike me that if I saw 
 it in a gallery I should suppose myself to be the original. 
 It is always possible that I don't know my own face." 
 
 Forster gives brief notes of some pleasant dinner parties ; 
 at Scribe's, to meet Auber, " a stolid little elderly man, 
 rather petulant in manner " ; at M. Pichot's, where was 
 Lamartine, " frank and unaffected," and " Scribe and his 
 wife were of the party, but had to go away at the ice- 
 time," to be at the opening performance of Scribe 
 and Auber's opera " Manon Lescaut " ; Mdme. Scribe — 
 " the most extraordinary woman I ever beheld ; for her 
 eldest son must be thirty, and she has the figure of five 
 and twenty, and is strikingly handsome. So graceful, 
 too, that her manner of rising, curtseying, laughing, and 
 going out after him, was pleasanter than the pleasantest 
 thing I have ever seen done on the stage." 
 
 252 
 
XXXII 
 
 MRS CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 BEFORE entering upon the one unpleasant task 
 which the writing of this book compels us to 
 perform, namely, the account of the separation 
 between Charies Dickens and his wife, it will be well to 
 gain a more close acquaintance with the latter than we 
 have yet done. The pages of Forster contain but very 
 fleeting and scanty glimpses of her. She was the eldest 
 daughter of George Hogarth, Dickens's fellow-worker 
 on the Morning Chronicle, and was married on April 2, 
 1836. The honeymoon was spent at the little village 
 of Chalk, on the road between Rochester and Gravesend. 
 E. Laman Blanchard tells us that he used frequently 
 to meet Dickens walking on this road, usually near Chalk, 
 at a point where a pretty lane branched off in the direction 
 of Shorne and Cobham, " here the brisk walk of Charles 
 Dickens was always slackened, and he never failed to 
 glance meditatively for a few moments at the windows 
 of a comer house on the southern side of the road, ad- 
 vantageously situated for commanding views of the 
 river and the far-stretching landscape beyond. It was 
 in that house he lived immediately after his marriage." 
 Soon after the birth of their first son they stayed there 
 again. In the early years, at any rate, of their married 
 life, Dickens used to take his wife into his confidence as 
 to the progress of the work in hand, for when writing 
 
 253 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " Nicholas Nickleby " he says in a letter to Forster, 
 " 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 augur well." 
 
 We have already noted many trips and tours upon 
 which Mrs Dickens accompanied her husband, not always, 
 however, starting in very high spirits, as to America, 
 when Dickens says in referring to his anxiety to go 
 there, " Kate cries dismally if I mention the subject," 
 not altogether an unnatural thing for a mother to do ; 
 later on he writes, " Kate is quite reconciled. Anne " 
 (her maid) " goes, and is amazingly cheerful and Hght 
 of heart upon it." Of which Anne Dickens wrote at a 
 very different time as, "an attached woman servant 
 (more friend to both of us than a servant), who lived 
 with us sixteen years, and is now married, and who was, 
 and still is, in Mrs Dickens's confidence and in mine. . . ." 
 
 Here are two accounts of Mrs Dickens's personal 
 appearance at this period : — 
 
 " I was first introduced to his wife," writes E. E. C. 
 " in the sanctuary of the bedroom, where I was arranging 
 my hair before the glass. I thought her a pretty little 
 woman, with the heavy-hdded large blue eyes so much 
 admired by men. The nose was a little retrousse, the 
 forehead good, the mouth small, round, and red-lipped, 
 with a pleasant smiling expression, notwithstanding the 
 sleepy look of the slow-moving eyes. The weakest part 
 of her face was the chin, which melted too suddenly into 
 the throat." 
 
 Of her, during the visit to America in 1842, here is a 
 description, " Mrs Dickens is a large woman, having a 
 great deal of color, and is rather coarse ; but she has a 
 good face and looks amiable. She seemed to think that 
 
 254 
 
MRS CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Mr Dickens was the attraction, and was perfectly satisfied 
 to play second, happy in the knowledge that she was 
 his wife. She wore a pink silk dress, trimmed with a 
 white blond flounce, and a pink cord and tassel wound 
 about her head. She spoke but Httle, yet smiled pleasantly 
 at all that was said." 
 
 Chief Justice Ellis Lewis, of Philadelphia, writes, 
 " I was much pleased with the social and genial dis- 
 position of Mr Dickens, and was impressed with the 
 great difference which appeared to exist, at that early 
 time, in their lives, between the husband and wife. She 
 was good looking, plain and courteous in her manners, 
 but rather taciturn, leaving the burthen of the con- 
 versation to fall upon her gifted husband." What else 
 could the poor lady be expected to do ? 
 
 Dickens writes on April 24, 1842, of their arrival at 
 Cincinnati, where they landed at night, " as we made 
 our way on foot over the broken pavement, Anne measured 
 her length upon the ground, but didn't hurt herself. 
 I say nothing of Kate's troubles — but you recollect her 
 propensity ? She falls into, or out of, every coach or 
 boat we enter ; scrapes the skin off her legs ; brings 
 great sores and swellings on her feet ; chips large fragments 
 out of her ankle-bones ; and makes herself blue with 
 bruises. She reaUy has, however, since we got over 
 the first trial of being among circumstances so new and 
 so fatiguing, made a most admirable traveller in every 
 respect. She has never screamed or expressed alarm under 
 circumstances that would have fully justified her doing so, 
 even in my eyes ; has never given way to despondency 
 or fatigue, though we have now been traveUing incessantly, 
 through a very rough country, for more than a month, and 
 have been at times, as you may readily suppose, most 
 
 255 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 thoroughly tired ; has always accommodated herself, 
 well and cheerfully, to everything ; and has pleased me 
 very much, and proved herself perfectly game." The 
 " even in my eyes," and " has pleased me very much " 
 smack somewhat of the sultanesque. 
 
 An American visitor, Miss Clarke, described Mrs Dickens 
 in 1852 as " a plump, rosy, English, handsome woman, 
 with a certain air of absent-mindedness, yet gentle 
 and kindly." 
 
 On Continental tours and sojournings we catch faint 
 glimpses of her now and again in Forster's pages ; 
 we read, too, of her ill-health more than once and of 
 visits to Malvern and elsewhere for its betterment, but 
 she is permitted — rightly or wrongly, who knows ? — by the 
 biographer to make but little figure until we reach the 
 chapter headed somewhat melodramatically, " What 
 Happened At This Time." Before studying this sad 
 chapter, we will give some further portraits of Mrs Dickens. 
 
 An old friend of hers has told us that she must have 
 been extremely pretty as a girl ; a sweet-natured, easy- 
 going, amiable woman ; without, perhaps, any very 
 strong character. A thorough-going admirer of her 
 husband, whom she loved very sincerely. Once at 
 Boulogne, our informant was driving with Mrs Dickens, 
 who told of her husband's intense fondness for babies, 
 and how he liked them as " new " as possible. Then we 
 have Hans Andersen writing, " I had previously heard 
 many people remark that Agnes in * David Copperfield ' 
 was like Dickens's own wife ; and although he may not 
 have chosen her deliberately as a model for Agnes, yet 
 still I can think of no one else in his books so near akin 
 to her in all that is graceful and amiable, Mrs Dickens 
 had a certain soft, womanly repose and reserve about 
 
 256 
 
A JOHN LEECH WOMAN 
 
 her ; but whenever she spoke there came such a light 
 into her large eyes, and such a smile upon her lips, and 
 there was such a charm in the tones of her voice, that 
 henceforth I shall always connect her and Agnes together." 
 
 In 1853 Mrs Beecher Stowe describes Mrs Dickens 
 as " a good specimen of a truly English woman ; tall, 
 large, and well developed, with fine, healthy colour, 
 and an air of frankness, cheerfulness, and rehabihty. 
 A friend whispered to me that she was as observing and 
 fond of humour as her husband." 
 
 Another has told us that she was a typical, crinoliny 
 early - Victorian woman, a John Leech woman, which 
 conveys much to those famihar with the earlier volumes 
 of " Punch." She was a domestic wife in the days when 
 wives were expected to be so, and, as was also expected, 
 made little figure in her husband's public life. She was 
 a sweet, kind, charming woman. " She was a kind, 
 good woman," we are told by one who heartily sympathised 
 with her, " good in every sense of the word, and when 
 she left her husband's house, she left her heart behind 
 her." 
 
 Lady Ritchie writes of a children's party at the 
 Dickens's, " One special party I remember, which seemed 
 to me to go on for years with its kind, gay hospitaUty, 
 its music, its streams of children passing and re-passing. 
 We were a little shy coming in alone in all the conscious- 
 ness of new shoes and ribbons, but Mrs Dickens called 
 us to sit beside her till the long sweeping dance was over, 
 and talked to us as if we were grown up, which is always 
 flattering to little children." 
 
 As Dickens himself insisted on making public some 
 details, at any rate, of the causes that led to his separating 
 from Mrs Dickens, we are not trespassing on a matter 
 R 257 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 which he considered did not concern the public ; moreover, 
 the method of his deahng with it casts a considerable 
 light upon his character. He has told his story with 
 not a little fullness ; it must be borne in mind that 
 Mrs Dickens chose the more dignified part — silence. 
 
 Forster was a man who weighed well his written words, 
 and there are many pregnant sentences in the chapter 
 to which we have alluded, and this tale had best be 
 told, for the most part, in his words, and those of Dickens, 
 taken from that same chapter, and from a letter written 
 by Dickens to Arthur Smith, " as an authority for correc- 
 tion of false rumours and scandals." This letter was 
 published in the New York Tribune of August i6, 1858, 
 and Dickens always called it his " violated letter " ; 
 but, having been written as an " authority," we do not 
 see that we can do better than quote portions of it. 
 
 Forster begins his chapter by noting that a change 
 had gradually been coming over Dickens, and that " the 
 satisfactions which home should have supplied, and which 
 indeed were essential requirements of his nature, he had 
 failed to find in his home." His nervous system had un- 
 doubtedly become strained ; " too late to say, put the curb 
 on," he writes, " and don't rush at hills — the wrong man to 
 say it to. I 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 spared 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 pre- 
 scribed to me." Then later, " Why is it, that as with 
 poor David, a sense comes always cnishing on me now, 
 when I fall into low spirits, as of one happiness I have 
 
 258 
 
COMING EVENTS 
 
 missed in life, and one friend and companion I have 
 never made ? " 
 
 Edmund Yates tells us, " it had been obvious to those 
 visiting at Tavistock House that, for some time, the 
 relations between host and hostess had been somewhat 
 strained ; but this state of affairs was generally ascribed 
 to the irritability of the literary temperament on Dickens's 
 part, and on Mrs Dickens's side to a little love of indolence 
 and ease, such as, however, provoking to their husbands, 
 is not uncommon among middle-aged matrons with large 
 families ! . . . Dickens, the master of humour and 
 pathos, the arch-compeller of tears and laughter, was 
 in no sense an emotional man." 
 
 Forster writes that, though not altogether unsus- 
 pecting, he was shocked at receiving a letter from Dickens, 
 of which this is the main portion : " Poor Catherine 
 and I are not made for each other, and there is no help 
 for it. R is not only that she makes me uneasy and un- 
 happy, 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 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 
 kind 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 thinking 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 grieved 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 
 
 259 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 mattered not so much when we had only ourselves to 
 consider, but reasons have 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." Then further on, "I claim no im- 
 munity 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 everything." 
 
 In the " Letter," he writes, " Mrs Dickens and I have 
 lived unhappily together for many years. Hardly any- 
 one who has known us intimately can fail to have known 
 that we are, in all respects of character and temperament, 
 wonderfully unsuited to each other. I suppose that no 
 two people, not vicious in themselves, ever were joined 
 together, who had a greater difficulty in understanding 
 one another, or who had less in common." And, " For 
 some years past Mrs Dickens has been in the habit of 
 representing to me that it would be better for her to go 
 away and live apart ; . . . that she felt herself unfit for 
 the life she had to live as my wife, and that she 
 would be better far away, I have uniformly replied 
 that we must bear out our misfortune, and fight the 
 fight out to the end ; that the children were the first 
 consideration, and that I feared they must bind us 
 together ' in appearance.' " 
 
 Then follows a statement which seems to point to a 
 very curious omission on the part of Forster in his 
 account of the separation : — " At length, within these 
 three weeks, it was suggested to me by Forster that even 
 for their sakes, it would surely be better to reconstruct 
 
 260 
 
" PERSONAL " 
 
 and rearrange their unhappy home. I empowered him 
 to treat with Mrs Dickens, as the friend of both of us 
 for one and twenty years. Mrs Dickens wished to add 
 on her part, Mark Lemon, and did so. On Saturday 
 last Lemon wrote to Forster that Mrs Dickens, ' gratefully 
 and thankfully accepted ' the terms I proposed her." 
 
 In May, 1858, the separation took place, the eldest 
 son going with his mother, the other children with their 
 father. 
 
 Irritated by scandalous gossip, Dickens took the 
 unwise step of taking the public into his confidence, 
 acting against the advice of discreet friends and upon 
 that of one — ^usually discreet — John Delane, the editor 
 of The Times. In Household Words for June 12, under 
 the heading " Personal," Dickens addressed his readers 
 in a short paper, from which we give the following 
 extracts : — 
 
 " My conspicuous position has often made me the 
 subject of fabulous stories and unaccountable statements." 
 
 " Some domestic trouble of mine, of long-standing, 
 on which I will make no further remark than that it 
 claims to be respected, as being of a sacredly private 
 nature, has lately been brought to an arrangement, 
 which involves no anger or ill-will of any kind, and the 
 whole origin, progress, and surrounding circumstances 
 of which have been, throughout, within the knowledge 
 of my children. It is amicably composed, and its de- 
 tails have now but to be forgotten by those concerned 
 in it." 
 
 " I most solemnly declare, then — and this I do, both 
 in my own name and in my wife's name — that all the 
 lately whispered rumours touching the trouble at w^hich 
 I have glanced, are abominably false." 
 
 261 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 He quarrelled with Mark Lemon because a similar 
 statement was not published in Punch ! 
 
 Two more quotations, and we turn gladly from this 
 unhappy incident. 
 
 " I well recollect," says the writer of " Leaves from a 
 Life," speaking of a time after the separation, " being 
 in a box at the theatre one evening with my mother 
 and Mrs Dickens : the latter burst into tears suddenly 
 and went back into the box. Charles Dickens had come 
 into the opposite box with some friends, and she could 
 not bear it. My mother took her back to her house in 
 Gloucester Road, Regent's Park, telUng me to sit quietly 
 until she returned. When she did she said nothing to 
 me, but I heard her teU Papa about it, and add ' I thought 
 I should never be able to leave her ; that man is a brute.' 
 Papa shrugged his shoulders and said nothing." 
 
 Shirley Brooks makes this entry in his diary, under 
 date July nth, 1870, " E " (Mrs Shirley Brooks) " caUed 
 on Mrs Dickens, first time since the death. Describes 
 her as looking well, being calm, and speaking of matters 
 with a certain becoming dignity. Is resolved not to 
 allow Forster, or any other biographer, to allege that she 
 did not make D. a happy husband, having letters after 
 the birth of her ninth child, in which D. writes like a 
 lover. Her eldest daughter visited her and declared that 
 the separation between them had resulted solely from 
 her, Mary's, own self-will. Miss H. (Hogarth) has also 
 visited her — I will not write about this, but the affair is 
 to the honour of Mrs D.'s heart." 
 
 So we must leave the story, unable to pronounce judg- 
 ment upon either party, one of whom spoke too much, 
 the other being silent. It has only been told again 
 — as far as it can yet be told — because it helps us to 
 
 262 
 
THE CONCLUSION 
 
 understand the character of Charles Dickens. In con- 
 clusion, we cannot do better than quote with entire 
 approbation Dr A. W. Ward's summing-up, " If he 
 had ever loved his wife with that affection before 
 which so-called incompatibilities of habits, temper, or 
 disposition fade into nothingness, there is no indication 
 of it in any of his numerous letters addressed to her. 
 Neither has it ever been pretended that he strove in the 
 direction of that resignation which love and duty together 
 made possible to David Copperfield, or even that he 
 remained in every way master of himself, as many men 
 have known how to remain, the story of whose wedded 
 life and its disappointments has never been written 
 in history or figured in fiction." 
 
 263 
 
XXXIII 
 GAD'S HILL 
 
 THIS day," March 14, 1856, writes Dickens, 
 " I have paid the purchase money for Gad's 
 Hill Place." We need not do more than 
 remind the reader of the story of the queer little boy 
 who had hoped that one day this house might be his, 
 which boy was Dickens. Nor does it come within our 
 plan to give the events of Dickens's life during the years 
 that Gad's Hill was his home ; they have already been 
 fully told in the pages of Forster ; we shall merely glance 
 at some of them. 
 
 Gad's Hill Place is situated on the old Dover Road, 
 about half-way between Gravesend and Rochester. 
 Until 1855 it was the home of the Reverend James Lynn, 
 father of Mrs Lynn Linton. " Of the Lynn girls at Gad's 
 Hill," writes Mr Layard, " we catch a pretty glimpse 
 from no less a personage than one whom Mrs Linton 
 believed to be the prototype of Dickens's creation, Tony 
 Weller. His name was Chomley, and he was driver of 
 the Rochester coach. When passing Gads' Hill House, 
 he was wont to crack his long whip and say to the pas- 
 sengers, * Now, gentlemen, I will show you the prettiest 
 sight in all the country.' At the sound of the well- 
 known crack, a bevy of bright, pretty young girls would 
 appear at the window, nodding and smihng and kissing 
 their hands to the dehghted old Jehu." 
 
 264 
 
GAD'S HILL 
 
 In February, 1857, Dickens actually entered upon his 
 new possession, of which we will give his own description, 
 written to M de Cerjat in July, 1858 ; " At this present 
 moment I am on my little Kentish freehold {not in top- 
 boots, and not particularly prejudiced that I know of), 
 looking on as pretty a view out of my study window 
 as you will find in a long day's English ride. My httle 
 place is a grave red brick house (time of George the First, 
 I suppose 1), which I have added to and stuck bits upon 
 in all manner of ways, so that it is as pleasantly irregular, 
 and as violently opposed to all architectural ideas, as 
 the most hopeful man could possibly desire. It is on 
 the summit of Gad's Hill. The robbery was committed 
 before the door, on the man with the treasure, and Falstaif 
 ran away from the identical spot of ground now covered 
 by the room in which I write. A little rustic alehouse, 
 called The Sir John Falstaff, is over the way — has been 
 over the way, ever since, in honour of the event. Cobham 
 woods and Park are behind the house ; the distant 
 Thames in front ; the Medway, with Rochester, and its 
 old castle and cathedral, on one side." 
 
 In George Dolby's " Charles Dickens as I Knew Him " 
 we find much interesting information concerning Gad's 
 Hill and life there, which throws light upon the character 
 of the master of the house. In the hall was prominent 
 a capacious box for the reception of letters and so forth 
 for the post, with the postal hours painted in big figures 
 upon it. "A peculiarity of the household was the fact 
 that, except at table, no servant was ever seen about. 
 This was because the requirements of life were always 
 ready to hand, especially in the bed-rooms. Each of 
 these rooms contained the most comfortable of beds, 
 
 * Built in 1779. 
 265 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 a sofa, and easy-chair, cane-bottomed chairs — in which 
 Mr Dickens had a great behef, always preferring to use 
 one himself — a large-sized writing-table, profusely sup- 
 plied with paper and envelopes of every conceivable 
 size and description, and an almost daily change of new 
 quill pens. There was a miniature library of books in 
 each room, a comfortable fire in winter, with a shining 
 copper kettle in each fireplace ; and on a side-table, 
 cups, saucers, tea-caddy, teapot, sugar and milk. . . ." 
 Edmund Yates tells us that " Life at Gadshill for visitors, 
 I speak from experience, was dehghtful. You breakfasted 
 at nine, smoked your cigar, read the papers, and pottered 
 about the garden until luncheon at one.^ All the morning 
 Dickens was at work. . . . After luncheon (a substantial 
 meal, though Dickens generally took little but bread and 
 cheese and a glass of ale) the party would assemble in the 
 hall, which was hung round with a capital set of Hogarth 
 prints. . . . Some walked, some drove, some pottered. 
 ... It was during one of these walks that Dickens showed 
 me, in Cobham Park, the stile close by which, after a 
 fearful struggle, Mr Dadd had been murdered by his 
 lunatic son in 1843. Dickens acted the whole scene with 
 his usual dramatic force. I had heard something of the 
 story before from Frith, who is an excellent raconteur. 
 The murderer then escaped, but was afterward secured : 
 he had been travelling on a coach, and his homicidal 
 tendencies had been aroused by regarding the large 
 neck, disclosed by a very low collar, of a fellow-passenger, 
 who, waking from a sleep, found Dadd's finger's {sic) 
 playing round his throat. On searching Dadd's studio, 
 after his arrest, they found, painted on the wall behind 
 a screen, portraits of Egg, Stone, and Frith, Dadd's 
 
 ^ Dolby says 1,30. 
 266 
 
I 
 
 A BRIGHT HOME 
 
 intimate associates, all with their throats cut — a pleasant 
 suggestion of their friend's intentions." 
 
 When in most houses the soup, the fish, in fact the whole 
 " bill of fare " was placed upon the table at once and 
 growing sodden under the covers, the dinner table at 
 Gad's Hill was bright with flowers and the dishes were 
 handed round. Marcus Stone says that it was the sweetest, 
 cleanliest house he had ever been in, and, we know, that 
 there was not a detail of household management in which 
 Dickens did not take a personal interest. He was master 
 of his house. 
 
 Of Dickens at Gad's Hill, Fields says, " on the lawn 
 playing at bowls, ki the Swiss summer-house charmingly 
 shaded by green leaves, he always seemed the best part 
 of summer, beautiful as the season is in the dehghtful 
 region where he lived. ... At his own table, surrounded 
 by his family, and a few guests, old acquaintances from 
 town, — among them sometimes Forster, Carlyle, Reade, 
 Collins, Layard, Maclise, Stone, Macready, Talfourd, — 
 he was always the choicest and liveliest companion. He 
 was not what is called in society a professed talker, 
 but he was something far better and rarer." 
 
 He, also, tells us, what is evident from other sources, 
 that " Bright colours were a constant delight to him ; 
 and the gay hues of flowers were those most welcome 
 to his eye. When the rhododendrons were in bloom 
 in Cobham Park, the seat of his friend and neighbour. 
 Lord Damley, he always counted on taking his guests 
 there to enjoy the magnificent show." 
 
 Holman Hunt gives a charming record of a conversation 
 with Dickens at Gad's Hill in i860. They got to talking 
 about Shakespeare, and the painter asked the writer 
 which was to him the most interesting passage in the works 
 
 267 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 of the dramatist. Dickens replied that the question was 
 one difficult to answer, for that he loved so many, and then 
 went on to speak of an incident in Henry IV., in Justice 
 Shallow's house and orchard, and the arrival of Falstaff 
 to enrol recruits ; " and at last the scene," Dickens 
 continued, " in Shallow's garden, with Justice Slender 
 added to the party, and Falstaff returning from the 
 Northern wars. As I read I can see the soft evening 
 sky beneath the calm twilight air, and I can smell the 
 steaming pippins as they are brought on to the table, 
 and when I have ended my reading I remember all as 
 if I had been present, and heard Falstaff and the whole 
 company receiving the news of the King's death," 
 
 Across the road that runs in front of the house, was a 
 shrubbery, to which access from the garden was gained 
 by an underground passage, made by Dickens in 1859, 
 and in this shrubbery was placed the Swiss chalet, given 
 to him by Fechter, which came from Paris in ninety- 
 four pieces ; "I have put five mirrors in the chalet 
 where I write," he says, " and they reflect and refract, 
 in all kinds of ways, the leaves that are quivering at the 
 windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the 
 sail-dotted river. My room is up among the branches 
 of the trees ; and the birds and the butterflies fly in and 
 out, and the green branches shoot in at the open windows, 
 and the hghts and the shadows of the clouds come and 
 go with the rest of the company. The scent of the 
 flowers, and indeed of everything that is growing for 
 miles and miles, is most delicious." 
 
 When American friends came to see him here, there 
 were high jinks and tremendous jauntings. Dolby 
 mentions one such gathering — in the latter days, in June, 
 1869 — when amongst others there were gathered together 
 
 268 
 
A ROYAL PROGRESS 
 
 Mr and Mrs J. T. Fields, Miss Mabel Lowell, a daughter 
 of James Russell Lowell, and Mr and Mrs Childs of 
 Philadelphia, who were astonished at the wonderful 
 singing of the nightingales. " One of the most dehghtful 
 days of this visit was occupied by a drive from Gad's 
 Hill to Canterbury, a distance of twenty-nine miles, 
 over the old Dover Road, through Rochester, Chatham, 
 Sittingboume, and Faversham. 
 
 " We were to make an early start, so as to give plenty 
 of time for luncheon, in a beautiful spot already chosen, 
 and allow for a ramble afterwards. 
 
 " Two post carriages were turned out with postillions, 
 in the red jackets of the old Royal Dover Road, buckskin 
 breeches, and top-boots into the bargain. 
 
 " The preparations for this new pilgrimage to Canterbury 
 were of the most lavish description, and I can see now 
 the hampers and wine baskets blocking the steps of the 
 house before they were packed in the carriages. 
 
 " Every one was in the best of spirits, the weather was 
 all that could be desired, and the ladies did honour 
 to it by the brightness of their costumes. We were 
 all glad, too, that the restoration of the Chief's health 
 enabled him to enjoy as much pleasure himself as he 
 was giving to his friends. 
 
 " We started sharp to time, and travelled merrily over 
 the road, with hop gardens on either side, until we reached 
 Rochester, our horses making such a clatter in this 
 slumbrous old city that all the shopkeepers in the main 
 street turned out to see us pass. 
 
 " Mr Dickens rode in the foremost carriage, and having 
 occasion to pull up at the shop of one of the tradesmen 
 in the main street of Rochester, a small crowd collected 
 round the carriages. It seemed to be pretty generally 
 
 269 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 known amongst them that Dickens was of the party, 
 and we got a good deal of fun out of the mistake made 
 by a man in the crowd, who pointed up at Mr James T. 
 Fields, and called out, ' That's Dickens ! ' Poor Fields 
 was in great confusion, especially when Mr Dickens, 
 to complete the deception, handed up a small parcel 
 to him, with the request, * Here you are, Dickens, take 
 charge of this for me.' 
 
 " Away we went again through Rochester, and, skirting 
 Chatham, were soon again in the open country on the 
 road to Sittingboume, where a relay of horses was awaiting 
 us. 
 
 " A short rest in the brick-making town was quite 
 sufficient for us, and we sped on to that haven of rest 
 where it had been arranged that we should lunch. A 
 more suitable spot could not have been found. It lay 
 in the deep shades of a wood, with a rippling stream 
 running through. 
 
 " The breakfast hour had been an early one, and the 
 long drive had given an excellent edge to our appetites. 
 We turned to with a ready will to unload the carriages, 
 and carry the baskets into the wood. Everybody did 
 something, and the cloth was speedily laid. An hour 
 was the time allowed for luncheon, and out of this we 
 had to let the postillions get their meal when we had 
 finished. Dickens would not let us start again until 
 every vestige of our visit to the wood in the shape of 
 lobster shells and other d/bris, had been removed. 
 
 " We drove into Canterbury in the early afternoon, 
 just as the bells of the Cathedral were ringing for after- 
 noon service. Entering the quiet city under the old 
 gate at the end of the High Street, it seemed as though 
 its inhabitants were indulging in an afternoon's nap 
 
 270 
 
IN CANTERBURY 
 
 after a midday dinner. But our entry and the clatter 
 of our horses' hoofs roused them as it had done the 
 people of Rochester, and they came running to their 
 windows and out into the streets to learn what so much 
 noise might mean. 
 
 " We turned into the bye-street in which the Fountain 
 Hotel is situated, where the carriages and horses were 
 to be put up while we explored the city. . . . We took 
 tea at the hotel, and then at about six o'clock started 
 on our homeward journey, Canterbury having by this 
 time quite got over the effects of its day-sleep. The 
 people were enjoying their stroll in the cool of the evening, 
 and the streets presented a much more animated appear- 
 ance than they had done on our arrival. 
 
 " In the interval between drowsiness and wakefulness, 
 Canterbury had evidently summoned sufficient energy 
 to make inquiries about our party ; and learning that 
 no less a person than Charles Dickens was responsible 
 for having disturbed their slumbers earher in the day, 
 the good people at once forgave us all, and were quite 
 hearty in their salutations as we left the town. 
 I " There was never a more delightful ride on a summer's 
 evening than the one we took then. The day was fast 
 closing in, and as there was no reason for loitering on 
 the road, we sped along at a rattling pace. 
 
 " The journey from Gad's Hill to Canterbury had taken 
 nearly five hours, including the time allowed for luncheon 
 and loitering. The journey home was made in less 
 than three, and we forgot our fatigue in the enjoyment 
 kOf supper. It seems to me, as I look back over the 
 years that have intervened, that I enjoyed a great privilege, 
 no less than a rare pleasure, in being in the company of 
 my dear old Chief when he took this his last visit to 
 
 271 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Canterbury, in the streets of which he had so often 
 wandered in his earlier days." 
 
 On another occasion, really a business meeting, W. H. 
 Palmer, the manager of Niblo's Theatre, New York, and 
 Benjamin Webster, the EngUsh actor, were present, 
 and in the billiard room a match was arranged between 
 the two, Dickens acting as marker. 
 
 " The disparity between the players appeared to be 
 very great, for the American was in the prime of life, 
 whereas the Englishman was far advanced in years and 
 very feeble. Dickens, however, who knew Mr Webster's 
 ' form,' opened the betting by backing him to win. 
 Fechter backed his new manager, and the rest of the 
 company held aloof from the market for a time. It must 
 be said that the bets were of a very trifling description, 
 for Dickens always set his face against gambling. 
 
 " The game was closely contested, but Webster carried 
 it off. Notwithstanding his great age and infirmity, it 
 was most entertaining to see with what unerring cer- 
 tainty he made his strokes, although before each one it 
 took him some moments to make his bridge. Dickens 
 was dehghted at his old friend's success, but to me he 
 said — ' Bless you ! that's nothing. Ben, as a young 
 man, was in the habit of tossing in the streets with pie- 
 men for pies, and invariably won ! ' " 
 
 A semi-theatrical friend, who gave to Dickens Linda, 
 the splendid St Bernard that was one of the ornaments 
 of Gad's Hill Place, was Albert Smith, Albert Richard 
 being his full name. He was bom in 1816, and educated 
 at Merchant Taylor's School, afterward studying at the 
 Middlesex Hospital, in these student days sharing rooms 
 with Leech. Edmund Yates has much to tell us of 
 Albert Smith, whose initials Jerrold unkindly said were 
 
 272 
 
ALBERT SMITH 
 
 only " two thirds of the truth." He writes, " A man of 
 thirty-five years of age, with large head, large body, 
 short legs ; long hair, long reddish-brown beard and 
 moustache, small keen deep-set gray eyes, good acquiline 
 nose, small hands and feet ; always badly dressed : when 
 at home at work, he wore a short blue blouse, such as is 
 to be seen on all the Swiss peasants, and an old pair of 
 trousers ; in the street he was given to gaudy neck- 
 kerchiefs, and had a festoon of ' charms ' danghng from 
 his watch-chain." His famous Mont Blanc entertain- 
 ment was produced on March 15, 1852, at the Egyptian 
 Hall, Piccadilly, and was an immense success. His wife 
 was Miss Mary Keeley, daughter of the famous actress. 
 
 Sala paid a visit to Albert Smith, in Percy Street, 
 Tottenham Court Road, when he, the latter, was about 
 thirty, and gives in his " Life and Adventures " a capital 
 account of the event : — "I can recall him, as a sturdy- 
 looking, broad-shouldered, short-necked man, with grey 
 eyes, and flowing locks of hght brown, and large side- 
 whiskers ; later in life he wore a beard. . . . His voice 
 was a high treble ; his study was like a curiosity shop. . . . 
 Littered about the room, which was on the ground floor, 
 were piles of French novels, in yellow paper covers, dolls, 
 caricatures, toys of every conceivable kind, a d/bardeuse 
 silk shirt, crimson sash, and velvet trousers, the white 
 hnen raiment of a Pierrot, cakes of soap from Vienna, 
 made in the similitude of fruit, iron jewellery from Beriin, 
 . . . miniature Swiss chalets, porcelain and meerschaum 
 pipes — although Albert was no smoker — and the model 
 of a French diligence. The owner of this queer assemblage 
 of odds and ends was clad in a blue blouse. ... He was 
 one of the kindest and cheeriest of mankind." 
 
 Serjeant Ballantine, who was a close friend of his, 
 S 273 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 goes so far as to credit Albert Smith with genius, to which 
 length few will accompany him who have read his novels, 
 which, though full of life and humour, are not works which 
 give him a claim to such a lofty standing. With the 
 rest of the Serjeant's description of him it is easier to 
 agree : — " As a companion he was full of fun, and bubbled 
 over with high spirits. He had passed some years of his 
 early life in Paris in the study of medicine, and could 
 record many an amusing scene of the Quartier Latin. 
 He spoke French fluently, and the good-looking, fair- 
 haired young Englishman must have been a favoured 
 partner at the dances, when grisettes, now a departed 
 class, after the honest labour of the day, indulged in 
 much joyousness without coarseness or crime." 
 
 It was a time of great rejoicing when, in the summer 
 of i860. Miss Kate Dickens married Charles Alston 
 Collins, younger brother of Wilkie. He was bom in 
 1828. He had studied art, joining the Pre-Raphaehtes, 
 and given proofs of rare abilities, but his health was not 
 strong, and he turned to hterature, contributing some 
 charming essays to All The Year Round. He died 
 in 1873, and, as Forster says, " until then it was not 
 known, even by those nearest to him, how great must 
 have been the suffering which he had borne, through 
 many trying years, with uncomplaining patience." 
 
 Among those present at the wedding were Holman 
 Hunt, as best man, Mary Boyle, Marguerite Power, 
 Fechter, Edmund Yates, Percy Fitzgerald, W. H. Wills 
 and his wife, Henry Chorley, Chauncey Hare Townshend, 
 and Wilkie Collins. 
 
 274 
 
XXXIV 
 
 CHARLES ALBERT FECHTER 
 
 NEXT after Macready it is safe to count Charles 
 Fechter as Dickens's most intimate friend 
 among the players. He used to say of himself 
 that his father was a German, his mother French, and 
 that he " breathed " in Hanway Yard, Oxford Street, 
 where he saw the light in the year 1824. He received 
 some education as an artist, but the stage attracted 
 him too strongly to resist the call, and he first trod the 
 boards, as an amateur, at the Salle Moliere in " Le Mari 
 de la Veuve." After studying at the Conservatoire, 
 he toured in Italy, and between 1844-60 made various 
 appearances at the Comedie Fran9aise, Vaudeville, Ambigu 
 Comique, Varietes, Porte St Martin, Odeon. By all 
 accounts he was an actor of rare romantic charm and 
 sincerity. His first striking success appears to have been 
 made in " La Dame aux Camelias " and he was the 
 original Luis and Fabien in " The Corsican Brothers." 
 In 1845 he appeared with a French troupe in London, 
 in 1846 acted in Berlin, and made his first appearance 
 in English at the Princess's Theatre on October 27, i860, 
 in " Ruy Bias," To complete this brief sketch of his 
 biography, before turning to the man and the actor : 
 he first acted " Hamlet " in March, 1861 ; undertook 
 the management of the Lyceum Theatre in 1863, opening 
 with " The Duke's Motto." Four years later he went 
 
 275 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 to the Adelphi Theatre, where he produced and acted 
 the leading part in Charles Dickens's and Wilkie CoUins's 
 " No Thoroughfare." In 1870 he went to the United 
 States, where he died in 1879 on his farm near Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 John Hollingshead states that if he had any private 
 financial supporter — a " backer " — it was Dickens, and 
 that when Fechter went to America he owed him several 
 thousand pounds, a debt every farthing of which was 
 paid off. 
 
 Socially he was a genial, blustering, kind fellow, with 
 a very good conceit of himself. Of small talk he had 
 no great supply, but was possessed of a wonderful gift 
 of mimicry, which afforded high entertainment. In 
 " Leaves from a Life " he is described as " a stout, fleshy- 
 looking man, with rather long hair and very beautiful 
 hands, feet, and legs ; and his voice, despite his extremely 
 strong accent, was very delightful." Edmund Yates 
 says of him, he " was singularly abstemious in those days, 
 eating little and drinking nothing but weak claret-and- 
 water, though he had a good cellar, and was especially 
 proud of some 1820 port, which he was always offering 
 to his friends ; a man of singular fascination, and amia- 
 bility, though intolerant of humbug, and savage where 
 he disliked." The following from Herman Charles 
 Merivale's entertaining volume, " Bar, Stage and Plat- 
 form " is too good to quote otherwise than in full : — 
 
 " Fechter's appearance as an English actor followed 
 shortly after Charles Kean's retirement from management, 
 and, too soon, from life. And Kean was more amusing 
 about ' that Frenchman ' than about anything else. 
 His own French, it must be admitted, was purest Captain 
 of the Boats. * Shattow-Reddow,' with a strong emphasis 
 
 276 
 
FECHTER 
 
 on the first syllables, was his way of dwelling on the 
 duelUst, whom Fechter dismissed as ' Chateaurenaud ' 
 all in one syllable, as the man of Killarney contrived to 
 do, they say, with McGillicuddy's Reeks. That any 
 Frenchman should act in English at all was too much 
 for that Etonian spirit. But that he should act any of 
 his — Kean's — parts, was sacrilege. Why, it was worse 
 than ' Dillod.* Some rash intruder accused Kean of 
 having had hints from Fechter about his Mephistopheles 
 — a strong stage picture of the popular fiend from the 
 jocular stand-point, but memorable — and he admitted 
 it with a reservation. When he grew excited, his m's 
 and n's were wont to get more mixed than ever with him. 
 * Taught me, did he ? Dab his impudence. I went 
 to see him in Paris, and he showed me how to bake by 
 dose.' 
 
 " Nevertheless, it is by right of his Hamlet and lago 
 that Fechter takes his rank with me. Of all my actors 
 of romance he was the best, and in that light he made 
 those parts quite daringly his own. It has been told of 
 ' W. G.' the cricketer, that when he made his first 
 appearance at Brighton with his new methods, Alfred 
 Shaw the bowler, after the match was over, complained 
 to an old chum — the umpire, who had not seen Grace 
 before — that he never bowled so well in his hfe, and 
 that he was always being hit for four or six against the 
 rules. ' It's all very well,' he said, ' but it ain't cricket.' 
 ' Well, Alfred, I dunno,' answered the pal. * If you 
 bowls him all you knows, and he cobs you out of the ground 
 
 every time, I calls it cricket, and good cricket too.' 
 
 So did an astonished world remark of Fechter's Hamlet 
 that it was very wonderful, but wasn't Shakespeare. 
 Well, perhaps not, though only Shakespeare knows. 
 
 277 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 But if a Hamlet fairly sweeps you off your feet in a whirl 
 of new excitement, in the scenes in which you have been 
 most accustomed to methods of quite another kind, I 
 
 call it Shakespeare, and good Shakespeare too. 
 
 My umpire in this case was a quaint old box-keeper who 
 had served under Kean, and remained at the Princess's 
 when Fechter was there. Of course we were old friends, 
 and when I went to see the Frenchman's Hamlet, I 
 asked him what he thought about it before the play 
 began. ' Sir ! ' he said, ' it's wonderful. We all know 
 Mr Kean. Mr Kean was great. But with 'im, 'Amlet 
 was a tragedy, with Mr Fechter it's quite another thing. 
 He has raised it to a mellerdram.' And in its stirring 
 sense of action, with his vivid stage-management, and 
 with his romantic, volcanic, lawless personality, that is 
 exactly what Mr Fechter did." 
 
 Dickens first saw him act in Paris, " He was making 
 love to a woman, and he so elevated her as well as himself 
 by the sentiment in which he enveloped her, that they 
 trod in a purer ether, and in another sphere, quite lifted 
 out of the present. ... I never saw two people more 
 purely and instantly elevated by the power of love. . . . 
 The man has genius in him which is unmistakeable." 
 
 The friendship and admiration of the two, each for 
 the other, became firm and strong ; Forster tells us 
 that Dickens was " his helper in disputes, adviser on 
 hterary points, referee in matters of management ; and 
 for some years no face was more familiar than the French 
 comedian's at Gad's Hill or in the office of his journal." 
 
 Dickens contributed to the Atlantic Monthly a paper 
 " On Mr Fechter's Acting," from which quotation will 
 serve the double purpose of showing Dickens as a dramatic 
 critic and Fechter as an actor. " The first quality obser- 
 
 278 
 
DICKENS AS CRITIC 
 
 vable in Mr Fechter's acting," he writes, " is, that it is 
 in the highest degree romantic. However elaborated in 
 minute details, there is always a peculiar dash and vigor 
 in it, like the fresh atmosphere of the story whereof it 
 is a part. When he is on the stage, it seems to me as 
 though the story were transpiring before me for the 
 first and last time. Thus there is a fervor in his love- 
 making — a suffusion of his whole being with the rapture 
 of his passion — that sheds a glory on its object and 
 raises her, before the eyes of the audience, into the light 
 in which he sees her." Again, " Picturesqueness is a 
 quality above all others pervading Mr Fechter's assump- 
 tions. Himself a skilled painter and sculptor, learned 
 in the history of costume, and informing those accom- 
 plishments and that knowledge with a similar infusion 
 of romance (for romance is inseparable from the man), 
 he is always a picture, — always a picture in its right 
 place in the group, always in true composition with the 
 background of the scene." Lastly, " Mr Fechter has been 
 in the main more accustomed to speak French than to 
 speak English, and therefore he speaks our language with 
 a French accent. But whosoever should suppose that 
 he does not speak English fluently, plainly, distinctly, 
 and with a perfect understanding of the meaning, weight, 
 and value of every word, would be greatly mistaken." 
 
 279 
 
XXXV 
 THE WEARING OF A BEARD 
 
 IN 1859, Forster commissioned from Frith a portrait 
 of Dickens, which he had suggested some time 
 before, but the painting had been postponed until 
 such time as Dickens should see fit to shave off his mous- 
 tache, an ornament which on the author's face Forster 
 considered a disfigurement. But to the moustache was 
 added a " door-knocker " beard, and in terror lest 
 whiskers should also appear, the portrait was put in hand. 
 The painter describes the alteration that had taken 
 place in Dickens's appearance since Maclise had painted 
 him some twenty-five years before ; the complexion had 
 grown florid, the long hair shorter and darker, and, he 
 adds, " the expression settled into that of one who had 
 reached the topmost rung of a very high ladder, and was 
 perfectly aware of his position." Dickens proved to be 
 a capital sitter, chatty and anecdotal. Speaking of the 
 surprise expressed by many who on meeting him for the 
 first time found him to be unlike their preconceived 
 ideas, " for instance," he said, " Scheffer, who is a big 
 man — said, the moment he saw me, ' You are not at all 
 like what I expected to see you ; you are like a Dutch 
 skipper.' As for the picture he did of me, I can only say 
 that it is neither like me nor a Dutch skipper." Frith 's 
 portrait may, on the whole, be considered a success, 
 though Dickens says of it, "It is a little too much (to 
 
 280 
 
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 CHARLES DICKENS (1859). 
 
 From the Oil Sketch by W. F. Frith, R.A., for the Portrait in the Forster 
 Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum. 
 
A QUESTION OF HAIR 
 
 my thinking) as if my next-door neighbour were my 
 deadly foe, uninsured, and I had just received tidings 
 of his house being afire ; otherwise very good." While 
 Edwin Landseer said, " I wish he looked less eager and 
 busy, and not so much out of himself, or beyond himself. 
 I should like to catch him asleep and quiet now and 
 then." 
 
 But to return to the beard. 
 
 When remonstrated with upon this " disfigurement," 
 Dickens responded that " the beard saved him the trouble 
 of shaving, and much as he admired his own appearance 
 before he allowed his beard to grow, he admired it much 
 more now, and never neglected, when an opportunity 
 offered, to gaze his fill at himself. If his friends didn't 
 like his looks, he was not at all anxious for them to waste 
 their time in studying them ; and as to Frith, he would 
 surely prefer to save himself the trouble of painting 
 features which were so difficult as a mouth and chin. 
 Besides, he had been told by some of his friends that they 
 highly approved of the change, because they now saw 
 less of him." He was, indeed, delighted with these 
 adornments, and says, " the moustaches are glorious, 
 glorious. I have cut them shorter, and trimmed them a 
 little at the ends to improve their shape. They are 
 charming, charming. Without them, life would be a 
 blank." But Sir Richard Owen speaks of him in 1862 
 as " not improved in appearance by the scanty beard he 
 has now grown. I think his face is spoiled by it." 
 
 The background was painted at Tavistock House. Not 
 only was the beard a stumbling-block, but there were 
 also questions of dress. Dickens arrived at the artist's 
 studio in a sky-blue overcoat with red cuffs ! The artist 
 protested, the sitter succumbed, remarking that he was 
 
 281 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 " very fond of colour." One of the artist's daughters 
 has described Dickens at this period as " rather florid 
 in his dress, and gave me an impression of gold chain 
 and pin and an enormous tie, and he too, as did so many 
 men then, wore his hair long, with the usual waving 
 lock above his forehead." 
 
 On the other hand, the American historian Motley met 
 Dickens at Forster's in 1861 ; "his hair is not much grizzled 
 and is thick, although the crown of his head is getting 
 bald. His features are very good, the nose rather high, 
 the eyes largish, greyish, and very expressive. He wears 
 a moustache and beard, and dresses at dinner in exactly 
 the same uniform which every man in London or the 
 civilized world is bound to wear. ... I mention this 
 because I had heard that he was odd and extravagant 
 in his costume. I liked him exceedingly. We sat next 
 each other at table, and I found him genial, sympathetic, 
 agreeable, unaffected, with plenty of light easy talk and 
 touch-and-go fun without any effort or humbug of any 
 kind." 
 
 Here again is a contrary view, given by James Hain 
 Friswell's daughter Laura, who was passing the office of 
 Household Words in Wellington Street, " when a hansom 
 cab stopped, and out stepped a gaily-dressed gentleman ; 
 his bright green waistcoat and vivid scarlet tie anyone 
 would have noticed, but the size of the nosegay in his 
 buttonhole rivetted my attention." 
 
 While upon the subject of costume, this is a quaint 
 sketch of one worn by Mr Frith, who was seated near the 
 altar at the Prince of Wales's wedding (in 1863), G. A, 
 Sala noting the difference between the Court dress of then 
 and now. Frith " was in shorts, silk stockings, a snuff- 
 coloured coat, with cut steel buttons, a brocaded waistcoat, 
 
 282 
 
FRITH 
 
 a black silk bag without a wig to it and a jabot with 
 ruffles." 
 
 Of Wilham Powell Frith, R.A., painter of " The Derby 
 Day," " Ramsgate Sands," " The Railway Station," 
 and many another picture that lingers in the memory, 
 what shall be said but that those who would know him 
 should turn to his deUghtful volumes of reminiscences, 
 which are a gold mine to all students of Victorian social 
 life and a treasure house to lovers of anecdote ? It will 
 suffice, here, to note that he was born in 1819 at Old- 
 field, in Yorkshire, to which we may add the detail — 
 amusing to lovers of "Nicholas Nickleby " — that on coming 
 up to London town he alighted at the Saracen's Head, 
 upon Snow Hill. 
 
 At Dickens's request Frith, in 1842, painted a " DoUy 
 Varden " and a " Kate Nickleby," of which Dickens 
 said, " All I can say is, they are exactly what I meant " ; 
 he paid the artist £40 for the pair, which after his death 
 were sold for thirteen hundred guineas. Frith describes 
 Dickens as then " a pale young man with long hair, a 
 white hat, a formidable stick in his left hand." 
 
 283 
 
XXXVI 
 THE READINGS 
 
 JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD gives an interesting ac- 
 count of a dinner with Dickens at the office of 
 Household Words in WeUington Street, Strand, 
 in January, 1858, on the day of the marriage of the 
 Princess Royal, when the town was thronged with visitors 
 and profusely illuminated in the evening. Besides Dickens 
 and HoUingshead there were present W. H. Wills, Wilkie 
 Collins, quietly amiable, Mark Lemon, " a fat, cheery 
 man, not very refined, with eyes not as keen as Dickens's 
 
 but with a similar twinkle," and the Hon. Towns- 
 
 hend,^ a man of money and of poetic gifts. Dickens 
 was clad in a velvet smoking jacket, and HoUingshead 
 writes, " I noticed, as I thought then, a slight lisp, the 
 deep lines on his face — almost furrows, and the keen 
 twinkling glance of his eye." 
 
 Mrs Keeley used to teU an anecdote of Dickens, in 
 which mention is made of this lisp, " I remember 
 Dickens telling me, in his rapid, earnest way, and with 
 a slight lisp which he had, ' Ah ! when you're young 
 you want to be old; when you're getting old you want 
 to be young; and when you're really old you're proud 
 of your years.' " The dining-room was on the ground 
 floor, and the menu simple but excellent, including 
 oysters, brought in from Rule's, hard by in Maiden Lane, 
 and a baked leg of mutton, minus the bone which was 
 
 ^ Query — the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend ? 
 2S4 
 
GIN PUNCH 
 
 replaced by a stuff of oysters and veal. The talk appa- 
 rently did not rise to any very high level, but was bright 
 and amusing. Food was one of the topics, and Wilkie 
 Collins gave vent to the truly British opinion that not 
 only was there not much in the art of cooking, but that, 
 there was not anything among French or Itahan dishes 
 "that could beat a well-made, well-cooked apple 
 pudding." Theatrical affairs coming upon the carpet. 
 Dickens lamented the existence of the " star " system. 
 After dinner Dickens compounded some of his famous 
 " Gin Punch," the making of which delectable drink was 
 apparently a serious ceremony : — " The preparations for 
 this drink were elaborate and ostentatious. The kettle 
 was put on the fire ; lemons were carefully cut and peeled ; 
 a jug was produced, and well rubbed with a napkin, 
 inside and out ; glasses were treated in the same manner ; 
 the bottle was produced, the gin tasted and approved of, 
 and the brew then began. The boiUng water was poured 
 in, the sugar, carefully calculated, was added, the 
 spirit, also carefully calculated, was poured in, the lemon 
 was dropped on the top, the mouth of the jug was then 
 closed by stuffing in the napkin rolled up like a ball, 
 and then the process of perfect production was timed 
 with a watch. Dickens's manner all this time was that 
 of a comic conjurer, with a little of the pride of one who 
 had made a great discovery for the benefit of humanity." 
 
 It is acknowledged on all hands that the actor's act 
 is ephemeral, and that it is impossible to convey to any- 
 one not present at the performance anything approaching 
 the actuality of an actor's personahty, ability, and 
 charm. Dickens's readings were practically a theatrical 
 performance, without costumes or scenery, in which the 
 performer enacted all the characters of the play. We 
 
 285 
 
CHARLES DICkENS 
 
 cannot hope, therefore, to do more than convey some 
 vague idea of the nature of the entertainment and of the 
 effect it produced upon those who witnessed it. 
 
 When Dickens reahsed the immense popularity of 
 unpaid readings, given mostly in the cause of charity, 
 it occurred naturally enough to him to undertake paid 
 readings for his own profit. The question was raised 
 by him, not for the first time, in a letter from Gad's 
 Hill to Forster, in which he says, " What do you think 
 of my paying for this place, by reviving that old idea of 
 some Readings from my books. I am very strongly 
 tempted." Forster was, we hold quite wisely, opposed 
 to the notion ; "it was," he writes, " a substitution 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 gentleman." 
 We agree with Forster's conclusion, but not with his 
 reasoning ; this anxiety about gentlemanliness smacks 
 sadly of snobbery. The arguments against Dickens 
 pursuing the course he proposed, were, we hold, that 
 it would, if a success, prove a serious and probably 
 dangerous strain upon his bodily health, and that the 
 vividness of the actor's life — for such it really would be 
 — would have a tendency to exaggerate the already too 
 strong leaning toward theatricalism and sentimentality 
 that was already a weakness in both the man and his art. 
 Almost simultaneously came three great changes in his 
 life, the separation from his wife, the acquirement of a 
 country house, and this plunge into the life of a public 
 entertainer. 
 
 We shall make no attempt to trace the various reading 
 
 286 
 
> 
 
 DICKENS AS SAM WELLER 
 
 tours in detail ; the first series took place in 1858-59, 
 the second in 1861-63, the third in 1864-67, and the 
 final readings in 1868-70. 
 
 Hollingshead gives a vivid picture of him at his ' desk,' 
 which in some details differs from any other we have : — 
 " He stood erect before his audience, with his head 
 thrown back, his large eyes bright with a sense of enjoy- 
 ment of what he was doing, confident, unfaltering, with 
 one hand resting firmly on a paper-knife planted upright 
 on the table. He was a comparatively small man, with 
 long thin hair, beard, and a face prematurely furrowed, 
 a bronzed complexion, earned by much walking in the 
 open air, and a voice with a slight dash of lisping hoarse- 
 ness. Though a very bad sailor, he might have been taken 
 for a sea captain. His first words sounded like a trumpet 
 blast of assured victory. ' Marly was dead ! There 
 was no mistake about that \ ' " 
 
 Of April 28, 1863, Carlyle records that " I had to go 
 . . . to Dickens's Reading, 8 p.m., Hanover Rooms, 
 to the complete upsetting of my evening habitudes and 
 spiritual composure. Dickens does it capitally, such as 
 it is ; acts better than any Macready in the world ; a 
 whole trajic, comic, heroic theatre visible, performing under 
 one hat, and keeping us laughing — in a sorry way, some 
 of us thought — the whole night. He is a good creature, 
 too, and makes fifty or sixty pounds by each of these 
 readings." 
 
 When Dickens was sitting to Frith for his portrait, 
 the painter ventured, greatly daring, to criticise the 
 novelist's rendering of Sam Weller, which to him seemed 
 wrong, Sam's quaint sayings being delivered with lowered 
 voice, as though the utterer of them were afraid that his 
 freedom might call down reproof. Dickens listened, 
 
 287 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 smiled, made no comment. But Frith was informed 
 by a friend, who shortly afterward heard Dickens read, 
 that Sam's sayings were delivered " like pistol-shots." 
 
 Edmund Yates says that Arthur Smith, Dickens's 
 " manager," " a timid man by nature," was among 
 those who were nervous as to the success of the Readings, 
 " but the moment Dickens stepped upon the platform,^ 
 walking rather stiffly, right shoulder well forward, as usual, 
 bud in button-hole, and gloves in hand, all doubt was 
 blown into the air. He was received with a roar of 
 cheering which might have been heard at Charing Cross, 
 and which was again and again renewed. Whatever he 
 may have felt, Dickens showed no emotion. He took 
 his place at his reading-desk, and made a short prefatory 
 speech, in which he said that, though he had read one of 
 his books to a London audience more than once, this 
 was the first time he had ventured to do so professionally ; 
 that he had considered the matter, and saw no reason 
 against his doing so, either in deterioration of dignity 
 or anything else ; and that, therefore, he took his place 
 on the platform with as much composure as he should 
 at his own desk." 
 
 Of Arthur Smith, Dickens wrote to Yates, " Arthur 
 is something between a Home Secretary and a furniture- 
 dealer in Rathbone Place, He is either always corres- 
 ponding in the genteelest manner, or dragging rout-seats 
 about without his coat," and again, of a famous night 
 at Liverpool, " Arthur, bathed in checks, took headers 
 into tickets, floated on billows of passes, dived under 
 weirs of shillings, staggered home faint with gold and 
 silver." From Scarborough to Miss Hogarth, he writes, 
 " Yesterday, at Harrogate, two circumstances occurred 
 
 ^ At St Martin's Hall, Long Acre. 
 
 288 
 
ARTHUR SMITH 
 
 which gave Arthur great dehght. Firstly, he chafed 
 his leg sore with his black bag of silver. Secondly, the 
 landlord asked him as a favour, ' If he could obHge 
 him with a little silver,' He obliged him directly with 
 some forty pounds' worth, " and, " Arthur told you, 
 I suppose, that he had his shirt-front and waistcoat 
 torn off last night? He was perfectly enraptured in 
 consequence." 
 
 Yates, who knew him well, describes Arthur Smith 
 as " a man full of cleverness of a quaint kind, of a re- 
 markably sweet disposition and winning manner, and 
 of . . . singular aptitude for business. He, too, had 
 been a medical student, but up to this period had made 
 no particular mark in life,^ the only incident in his 
 career worth mention having been his marriage with an 
 heiress." 
 
 In 1861, he was attacked with an illness, which in the 
 autumn took a serious turn. Forster gives an account 
 by Dickens of an interview with the sick man ; "his 
 wakings and wanderings so perpetually turn on his arrange- 
 ments for the Readings, and he is so desperately unwilling 
 to relinquish the idea of ' going on with the business ' 
 to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, that I had not 
 the heart to press him for the papers." He died in 
 October ; " it is as if my right arm were gone," Dickens 
 wrote to Forster, and from Ispwich, in November, to Miss 
 Hogarth, " I miss poor Arthur dreadfully. It is scarcely 
 possible to imagine how much. It is not only that his 
 loss to me socially is quite irreparable, but that the 
 sense I used to have of compactness and comfort about 
 me when I was reading is quite gone. And when I come 
 
 ^ He had his first opportunity of showing his business qualities in 
 managing the Mont Blanc show of his brother Albert. 
 
 T 289 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 out for the ten minutes, when I used to find him alwaj^ 
 ready for me with something cheerful to say, it is forlorn." 
 
 Arthur Smith was a bom show-man and acting 
 manager. When his brother Albert's " Show " was on 
 at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly — now gone — he delayed 
 the opening of the doors until some few minutes after the 
 advertised time, so creating an uproar and block of the 
 traffic, and when remonstrated with, expressed himself 
 as quite ready to pay fifty pounds for five minutes more ! 
 
 A few episodes " on the road " may be mentioned here. 
 From York Dickens writes to Forster," I was brought very 
 near to what I sometimes dream may be my Fame, 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." 
 At Newcastle there was nearly a disaster, " An extra- 
 ordinary 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 rush to the stairs would have caused. Fortunately a lady 
 in the front 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." 
 
 Forster tells a sorry story of the damaging effect wrought 
 upon Dickens's health of this hfe of wild and exhausting 
 excitement, and his nerves were still further shaken by the 
 terrible railway accident at Staplehurst, in which he was 
 involved, on June 9, 1865. Ten people were killed and 
 fifty-two injured out of one hundred and ten passengers in 
 the " Tidal " train from Folkestone, in which Dickens 
 was travelling. The bridge, between Headcom and Staple- 
 
 290 
 
THE STAPLEHURST ACCIDENT 
 
 hurst, was being repaired ; the permanent way was under 
 repair, and the ganger in charge of the workmen mis- 
 calculated the hour at which the " Tidal " was due to pass. 
 It was a blazing hot day, and the flagman instead of going 
 out the regulation one thousand yards went but five 
 hundred. The train tore up along the straight stretch — 
 to destruction ; the engine, the tender, the guard's van, 
 and one carriage escaped safely, but the rest of the train 
 broke over the bridge, falling in an awful heap of wreck 
 into the field below, with the one exception of the carriage 
 in which Dickens was riding, which " hung suspended and 
 balanced in an apparently impossible manner," wrote 
 Dickens in a letter to Thomas Mitton ; " Two ladies were 
 my fellow-passengers, an old one and a young one. This 
 is exactly what passed — you may judge of the precise 
 length of the suspense. Suddenly we were off the rail 
 and beating the ground as the car of a half-emptied 
 balloon might. The old lady cried out, ' My God ! ' 
 and the young one screamed. I caught hold of them both 
 (the old lady sat opposite and the young one on my left) 
 and said : ' We can't help ourselves, but we can be quiet 
 and composed. Pray don't cry out.' The old lady 
 immediately answered, ' Thank you ; rely on me. Upon 
 my soul, I win be quiet.' We were then aU tilted together 
 down in a comer of the carriage, and stopped. I said to 
 them thereupon : * You may be sure nothing worse can 
 happen. Our danger must be over. Will you remain here 
 without stirring while I get out of the window ? ' They 
 both answered quite collectedly, ' Yes,' and I got out 
 without the least notion of what had happened. Fortu- 
 nately I got out with great caution, and stood upon the 
 steps. Looking down, I saw the bridge gone and nothing 
 below me but the line of rails. Some people in the two 
 
 291 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 other compartments were madly trjnng to plunge out of 
 the window, and had no idea that there was an open, 
 swampy field below them and nothing else. The two 
 guards (one with his face cut) were running up and down, 
 on the down side of the bridge, quite wildly. I called out 
 to them, ' Look at me. Do stop an instant and look at 
 me and teU me whether you don't know me.' One of them 
 answered, ' We know you very well, Mr Dickens.' ' Then,' 
 I said, ' my good fellow, for God's sake give me your key 
 and send me one of those labourers here and I'll empty 
 this carriage.' We did it quite safely by means of a plank 
 or two, and when it was done I saw all the rest of the train, 
 except the two baggage-vans, down in the stream. I got 
 into the carriage again for my brandy flask, took off my 
 travelling hat for a basin, climbed down the brickwork, 
 and filled my hat with water. Suddenly I came upon a 
 staggering man covered with blood (I think he must have 
 been flung clean out of his carriage) with such a frightful 
 cut across his skull that I couldn't bear to look at him. 
 I poured some water over his face and gave him some 
 brandy, and laid him down on the grass, and he said, 
 ' I am gone ! ' and afterwards died. 
 
 " Then I stumbled over a lady lying on her back against 
 a Httle pollard tree, with the blood running over her face 
 (which was lead colour) in a number of distinct little 
 streams from her headv I asked her if she could swallow 
 a little brandy, and she just nodded, and I gave her some, 
 and left her for somebody else. The next time I passed 
 her she was dead. 
 
 " Then a man who was examined at the inquest yester- 
 day (who had evidently not the least remembrance of what 
 really passed) came running up to me and implored me to 
 help to find his wife, who was afterwards found dead. 
 
 292 
 
VAGUE TERRORS 
 
 " No imagination can conceive the ruin of the carriages 
 or the extraordinary weights under which people were 
 lying, or the complications into which they were twisted up 
 among iron and wood and mud and water." 
 
 Of the dreadful effect the accident had upon him we 
 obtain a vivid picture in a letter written by Dickens in 
 August, 1868, to M de Cerjat ; " My escape in the 
 Staplehurst accident of three years ago is not to be 
 obliterated from my nervous system. To this hour, I have 
 sudden vague rushes of terror, even when riding in a 
 hansom cab, which are perfectly unreasonable but quite 
 insurmountable. I used to make nothing of driving a 
 pair of horses habitually through the most crowded parts 
 of London. I cannot now drive, with comfort to myself, 
 on the County roads here ^ ; and I doubt if I could ride at 
 all in the saddle. My reading secretary and companion 
 knows so well when one of these odd momentary seizures 
 comes upon me in a railway carriage, that he instantly 
 produces a dram of brandy, which rallies the blood to the 
 heart and generally prevails." 
 
 1 Gad's HUl. 
 
 293 
 
XXXVII 
 
 AMERICA REVISITED 
 
 A FEW days after Stanfield's death, Dickens wrote 
 to Forster, " Poor dear Stanfield ! I cannot 
 think even of him, and of our great loss, for 
 this spectre of doubt and indecision that sits at the board 
 with me and stands at the bedside. I am in a tempest- 
 tossed condition, and can hardly believe that I stand at 
 bay at last on the American question. The difficulty of 
 determining amid the variety of statements made to me is 
 enormous, and you have no idea how heavily the anxiety 
 of it sits upon my soul. But the prize looks so large ! " 
 The spectre was the proposal that he should give the 
 Readings in America ; eventually he decided to do so, and 
 in November, 1867, he arrived at Boston, accompanied by 
 George Dolby, upon whom had fallen the mantle of 
 Arthur Smith, and of whom Dickens speaks as " an 
 agreeable companion, an excellent manager, and a good 
 fellow." He died in October, 1900, To him all 
 Dickensians owe a debt of gratitude for his volume, 
 "Charles Dickens as I Knew Him*, The Story of the Reading 
 Tours in Great Britain and America (1866-1870)," 
 
 Financially, artistically, socially, the tour was im- 
 mensely successful, but there cannot be any doubt that it 
 had a most deleterious effect upon Dickens's breaking 
 health. Almost the whole time he was suffering from a 
 distressing catarrh. Indeed, he was at times seriously 
 
 294 
 
AMERICA REVISITED 
 
 ill, as for example at Baltimore, of which he writes, 
 " That afternoon of my birthday, my catarrh was in such 
 a state that Charles Sumner coming in at five o'clock, 
 and finding me covered with mustard poultice, and ap- 
 parently voiceless, turned to Dolby and said : ' Surely, 
 Mr Dolby, it is impossible that he can read to-night ! ' 
 Says Dolby : * Sir, I have told Mr Dickens so, four times 
 to-day, and I have been very anxious. But you have no 
 idea how he will change, when he gets to the little table.' 
 After five minutes of the Uttle table I was not (for the 
 time) even hoarse. The frequent experience of this 
 return of force when it is wanted, saves me a vast amount 
 of anxiety ; but I am not at times without the nervous 
 dread that I may some day sink altogether." In one of 
 his last letters from America, to his daughter Mary, 
 from Boston, he says, " 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. . . . 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." 
 
 During the visit Dickens refreshed many old and made 
 many new friendships, though he avoided social festivities 
 as far as possible. In New York he met Henry Ward 
 Beecher, whom he described as "an unostentatious, 
 evidently able, straightforward, and agreeable man ; 
 
 2q5 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 extremely well informed, and with a good knowledge of 
 art." At Washington he spent an evening with Charles 
 Sumner, " he was specially pleased with his intercourse 
 with Mr Stanton, who on being started with a chapter 
 from any of Mr Dickens's books, could repeat the whole 
 of the chapter from memory, and, as the author confessed, 
 knew more about his works than he himself did. This 
 was accounted for by the fact that during the war, when 
 Mr Stanton was Commander-in-Chief of the Northern 
 forces, he never went to bed at night without first reading 
 something from one of Mr Dickens's books." Of Pre- 
 sident Andrew Johnson, Dickens writes, " I was very much 
 surprised by the President's face and manner. It is, 
 in its way, one of the most remarkable faces I have ever 
 seen. Not imaginative, but very powerful in its firmness 
 (or, perhaps, obstinacy), strength of will, and steadiness 
 of purpose. There is a reticence in it, too, curiously at 
 variance with that first unfortunate speech of his. A 
 man not to be turned or trifled with. A man (I should say) 
 who must be killed to be got out of the way. His manner 
 is perfectly composed. We looked at one another pretty 
 hard. There was an air of chronic anxiety upon him ; 
 but not a crease or a ruffle in his dress, and his papers 
 were as composed as himself." 
 
 At a dinner at Longfellow's there were present beside 
 " mine host " and the " guest of the evening," Agassiz, 
 Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bayard Taylor, and 
 Dolby, " and the fun flew fast and furious." 
 
 Dolby gives an interesting reminiscence of Dickens and 
 the art of speech making : — 
 
 " I remember in England on one occasion, when Mr 
 Wilkie CoUins joined us at supper after a Reading in a 
 small country town, the conversation at supper turned 
 
 296 
 
SPEECH-MAKING 
 
 on the subject of speech-making. Mr Wilkie Collins 
 remarked that he had invariably felt a difficulty when 
 called upon for a speech either at a public meeting or 
 after dinner, adding that for important occasions his 
 habit was to make notes of what he had to say, and 
 keep them before him for reference during the progress 
 of the speech. 
 
 " As is well known, Mr Dickens was one of the happiest 
 of speakers, and on all occasions without any notes to 
 assist him in this most difficult of arts. Declaring that 
 to make a speech was the easiest thing in the world, he 
 said the only difficulty that existed was in introducing 
 the subject to be dealt with. ' Now suppose I am the 
 president of a rowing club and Dolby is the honorary 
 secretary. At our farewell dinner, or supper, for the 
 season, I, as president, should propose his health in these 
 words ' : 
 
 " Here he made a speech of the most flattering descrip- 
 tion, calling on the subject of it for a reply. As I did not 
 feel equal to a response I asked Mr Collins to try his skill 
 first. He handed the responsibility over to Mr Wills, 
 who in his turn handed it back to Mr Dickens, who then 
 told us in a ludicrous speech what the honorary secretary 
 ought to have said, though I am certain no ordinary 
 honorary secretary would ever have dreamt of such a 
 performance. Then I asked Mr Dickens if he could 
 explain to us his modus operandi of preparing an important 
 speech, Mr Wilkie Collins adding that it would be curious 
 to know what (besides the speech) was passing in his mind 
 during its delivery. He told us that, supposing the speech 
 was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take 
 a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide 
 on the various heads to be dealt with. Thes^ being 
 
 297 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 arranged in their proper order, he would in his ' mind's 
 eye,' Hken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel — 
 he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run 
 as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and 
 during the progress of the speech he would deal with each 
 spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the 
 wheel ; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, 
 and nothing but the tire and space remained, he would 
 know that he had accomplished his task, and that his 
 speech was at an end. 
 
 " Mr Wills suggested that if he were in this position, the 
 wheel would whiz round with such rapidity that he 
 would see nothing but space to commence with, and that, 
 without notes or memoranda, in space he would be left 
 — a conclusion in which Mr Wilkie Collins and I fully 
 concurred." 
 
 Pleasant as it would be so to do, we must not linger over 
 the oft-told tale of this American visit. A pubhc banquet 
 of " farewell " was given to Dickens at New York, under 
 the Presidency of Horace Greeley, at Delmonico's famous 
 restaurant, on April i8, 1868. There were two hundred 
 guests present, including such well-known literary men as 
 George WiUiam Curtis, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry John 
 Raymond and many others equally eminent. The scene 
 was brilliant, the speaking — as ever at a dinner of 
 Americans — admirable. 
 
 After the final reading Dickens uttered a few words of 
 " good-bye " ; from which we quote : — 
 
 " When I was reading ' David Copperfield ' a few 
 evenings since, I felt there was more than usual signifi- 
 cance in the words of Peggotty, ' My future life lies over 
 the sea ; ' and when I closed this book just now, I felt 
 most keenly that I was shortly to establish such an alibi 
 
 298 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 as would have satisfied even the elder Mr Weller. The 
 relations which have been set up between us, while they 
 have involved for me something more than mere devotion 
 to a task, have been by you sustained with the readiest 
 sympathy and the kindest acknowledgment. 
 
 "These relations must now be broken for ever. Be 
 assured, however, that you will not pass from my mind. 
 I shall often realise you as I see you now, equally by my 
 winter fireside, and in the green English summer weather. 
 I shall never recall you as a mere pubhc audience, but 
 rather as a host of personal friends, and ever with the 
 greatest gratitude, tenderness, and consideration. Ladies 
 and gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell. God bless you, 
 and God bless the land in which I leave you." 
 
 Dickens sailed for home from New York upon the 
 Cunarder " Russia " on April 22, and the New York 
 Tribune gave the next day a vivid account of the 
 departure : — 
 
 " It was a lovely day — a clear blue sky overhead — as 
 he stood resting on the rail, chatting with his friends, and 
 writing an autograph for that one, the genial face all 
 aglow with delight, it was seemingly hard to say the word 
 ' Farewell,' yet the tug-boat screamed the note of warning, 
 and those who must return to the city went down the 
 side. 
 
 " All left save Mr Fields. * Boz ' held the hand of the 
 publisher within his own. There was an unmistakable 
 look in both faces. The lame foot came down from the rail, 
 and the friends were locked in each other's arms. 
 
 " Mr Fields then hastened down the side, not daring 
 to look behind. The hues were ' cast off.' 
 
 " A cheer was given for Mr Dolby, when Mr Dickens 
 patted him approvingly upon the shoulder, saying, 
 
 299 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 ' Good boy.' Another cheer for Mr Dickens, and the 
 tug steamed away. 
 
 " ' Good-bye, Boz.' 
 
 " ' Good-bye,' from Mr Fields, who stood the central 
 figure of a group of three, Messrs Du Chaillu and Childs 
 upon each side. Then ' Boz ' put his hat upon his cane, 
 and waved it, and the answer came ' Good-bye,' and 
 * God bless you every one.' " 
 
 300 
 
XXXVIII 
 LAST DAYS AND DEATH 
 
 THE journey home worked a most beneficial effect 
 upon his health, which, however, Dickens dis- 
 counted by toiling strenuously at further 
 Readings, until at length there came a complete break- 
 down and doctors' orders for rest. Of these last days we 
 have already seen somewhat in the account given by 
 Dolby of the trip from Gad's Hill to Canterbury. For 
 the final London Readings he took the house of the 
 Milner Gibsons at 5 Hyde Park Place. Of the Farewell 
 Reading on Tuesday, March 15th, we must give a brief 
 account. St James's HaU, Piccadilly, was thronged with a 
 gathering representative of all conditions of men and 
 women, numbering over 2000, the whole of the platform 
 being screened off for the " reader." The " readings " 
 chosen were the " Christmas Carol " and the " Trial from 
 Pickwick." Punctually to the moment, eight o'clock, but 
 evidently affected by the excitement of the occasion, 
 Dickens appeared, and the huge audience sprang to their 
 feet, greeting him with an uproar of cheers. After the 
 readings he was " called " again and again, and at last 
 nerved himself to say " good-bye." Charles Kent, one 
 of his closest friends, who was present, thus describes the 
 closing scene, " the manly, cordial voice only faltered 
 once at the very last, the mournful modulation of it in the 
 utterance of the words, ' From these garish lights I vanish 
 
 301 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 now for evermore/ linger . . . like a haunting melody in 
 our remembrance. ... As he moved from the plat- 
 form after the utterance of the last words of the address, 
 and, with his head drooping in emotion, passed behind 
 the screen on the way to his retiring-room, a cordial hand 
 (my own !) was placed for one moment with a sympathetic 
 grasp upon his shoulder." Dolby relates that he left the 
 platform at last " with quite a mournful gait, and tears 
 rolling down his cheeks. But he had to go forward yet 
 once again, to be stunned by a more surprising outburst 
 than before." 
 
 Altogether between April 29, 1858, at St Martin's Hall, 
 and March 15, 1870, at St James's Hall, he had in Great 
 Britain, Ireland and America, given 423 Readings, clearing 
 profit to the amount of, at least, £45,000. 
 
 Dickens now looked forward to enjoying complete 
 freedom to devote himself to " Edwin Drood," of which, 
 however, only six monthly parts were issued by Messrs 
 Chapman and Hall, beginning in April, 1870. The illus- 
 trations were drawn by Sir Luke FUdes, R.A., who was 
 brought to Dickens's notice by Millais, and the cover 
 designed by Charles AUston Collins. Sir Luke Fildes, 
 R.A., was born upon Saint Luke's day in the year 1844, 
 and settled in London in 1862. In 1869 Millais went to 
 Dickens, who was searching vainly to find an artist for 
 " Edwin Drood," and exclaimed, " I've found your man," 
 showing him the picture of " The Casuals," in the first 
 issue of The Graphic. " Yes, but can he draw a pretty 
 girl ? " asked Dickens. The artist saw much of Dickens, 
 who was then staying at Hyde Park Place, opposite the 
 Marble Arch, and was ready to start on a visit to Gad's 
 Hill, when he picked up a newspaper and read the 
 announcement "Death of Charles Dickens." "The 
 
 302 
 
HER MAJESTY 
 
 death of Dickens," he says, " had an extraordinary effect 
 upon me. It seemed as though the cup of happiness had 
 Deen dashed from my lips." It is not necessary to touch 
 upon the aggravating controversy that is still raging 
 round the " Mystery." 
 
 They were happy and not uneventful days, these last 
 in London. The situation suited him ; the bright 
 view over Hyde Park, the noise of traffic from 
 early morning to late hours of the night, all were to 
 his taste. 
 
 One evening when entertaining Sir Arthur Helps, 
 Dickens showed to him a collection of photographs of the 
 battlefields of the American Civil War ; these Sir Arthur 
 chanced to mention to Queen Victoria, who expressed a 
 wish to see them, whereupon the book containing them 
 was forwarded to Her Majesty. Desiring to see Dickens, 
 he attended one March afternoon at Buckingham Palace. 
 Dolby gives a good account of the interview : — 
 
 " The Queen was in London only for a day or two, and 
 Dickens imagined, not unnaturally, that the innumerable 
 calls on the time and attention of Her Majesty would 
 leave space for an interview of about a quarter of an hour. 
 So, as the time appointed was five in the afternoon, he 
 engaged me to meet him in the Burlington Arcade at 
 half-past, when we were to dine together at the ' Blue 
 Posts,' in Cork Street. However, the Chief had grievously 
 miscalculated the probable duration of that interview, 
 for instead of lasting ten or fifteen minutes, it was pro- 
 longed for an hour and a half. It was half-past six when 
 he put in an appearance at our place of meeting. 
 
 " When his brougham pulled up at the Piccadilly end of 
 the Arcade, I could see that the interview had been an 
 agreeable one, for he was radiant with smiles. Stepping 
 
 303 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 out of his carriage, he gave hasty instructions to his 
 servant to drive straight home, and to take particular 
 care of a book he had left inside, which was to be 
 given to Miss Dickens the moment he arrived at Hyde 
 Park Place. 
 
 " Slipping his arm in mine, we passed through the Arcade 
 and proceeded at once to our dining-place, where I had 
 caused his favourite comer to be kept for him. Having 
 settled down to our dinner, I was naturally anxious to hear 
 from his own lips what Her Majesty and the Chief could 
 have foimd to talk about for an hour and a half. 
 
 " ' Tell me everything,' I said, modestly. 
 
 " ' Everything ! my dear feUow, everything ! I tell 
 you what, it would be difficult to say what we did not 
 talk about,' was his reply. 
 
 " 'Well, then,' I said, ' let me have some of it, unless 
 they were all State secrets.' 
 
 " He then went on to teU me that Her Majesty had re- 
 ceived him most graciously, and that, as Court etiquette 
 requires that no one, in an ordinary interview with the 
 Sovereign, should be seated. Her Majesty had remained 
 the whole time leaning over the head of a sofa. There was 
 a little shyness on both sides at the commencement, but 
 this wore away as the conversation proceeded. 
 
 " Her Majesty expressed her deep regret at not having 
 heard one of the Readings, and although highly flattered 
 at this, Dickens could only express his sorrow that, as 
 these were now finally done with, and as, moreover, a 
 mixed audience was absolutely necessary for their success, 
 it would be impossible to gratify Her Majesty's wishes 
 in this particular. This, he said, the Queen fully appreci- 
 ated, quoting to Mr Dickens his own words in his farewell 
 speech : ' From these garish lights I vanish now for 
 
 304 
 
A ROYAL WRITER 
 
 evermore," and remarking that even if such a thing were 
 possible, there would be inconsistency in it, which was 
 evidently not one of Mr Dickens's characteristics. After 
 referring in complimentary terms to the pleasure Her 
 Majesty had derived in witnessing Mr Dickens's acting 
 in the * Frozen Deep,' as far back as the year 1857, 
 the conversation took a general turn. The Queen showed 
 much interest and curiosity in regard to Mr Dickens's 
 recent American experiences, and some reference was 
 made to a supposed discourtesy that had been shown in 
 America on one occasion to Prince Arthur. This, Dickens 
 was very anxious to explain away, assuring the Queen that 
 no true-hearted Americans were in sympathy with the 
 Fenian body in that country ; and that nowhere in the 
 world was there a warmer feeling towards the English 
 Queen than existed throughout the whole of the United 
 States (a sentiment which Her Majesty was pleased to 
 hear from so observant an authority). The Chief told me, 
 with a good deal of unction, that Her Majesty had then 
 graciously asked his opinion on the ' servant question.' 
 Could he account for the fact * that we have no good 
 servants in England as in the olden times ' ? Mr 
 Dickens regretted that he could not account for this fact, 
 except perhaps on the hypothesis that our system of 
 education was a wrong one. On this same subject of 
 national education, he added, he had his own ideas, but 
 saw no likelihood of their being carried into effect. The 
 price of provisions, the cost of butchers' meat, and bread, 
 were next lightly touched upon, and so the conversation 
 rippled on agreeably to an agreeable end. But the inter- 
 view did not close until the Queen, with gracious modesty, 
 had begged Mr Dickens's acceptance at her own hands 
 of a copy of the ' Journal in the Highlands,' in which Her 
 u 305 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Majesty had placed an autograph inscription, and her 
 own sign manual. This was the book which the coach- 
 man had been so particularly enjoined to give into Miss 
 Dickens's own hands. 
 
 " The Queen, on handing the book to Mr Dickens, 
 modestly remarked that she felt considerable hesitation in 
 presenting so humble a literary effort to one of the fore- 
 most writers of the age. She had. Her Majesty said, 
 requested Mr Helps to present it for her ; but as he had 
 suggested that the gift would be more highly prized by 
 Mr Dickens if he received it from Her Majesty's own hands, 
 she had resolved herself on this bold act. After asking 
 Mr Dickens to look kindly on any literary faults of her 
 book, Her Majesty expressed a desire to be the possessor 
 of a complete set of Mr Dickens's works, and added 
 that, if possible, she would like to receive them that 
 afternoon. 
 
 " Mr Dickens, of course, was only too pleased to gratify 
 the wishes of the Queen, but begged to be allowed to defer 
 sending his books until he had had a set specially bound 
 for Her Majesty's acceptance. This was done in due 
 course, and the receipt of the books was acknowledged 
 in the name of the Queen by Mr Helps, in a letter written 
 from Balmoral, dated and posted on the day of Mr 
 Dickens's death ! " 
 
 By the Queen's command he attended a levee held by 
 the Prince of Wales in April, and there was much fun over 
 the " fancy dress." A few friends lunched with him on the 
 day, " just to see how he looked in his cocked hat and 
 sword." " We got a good deal of fun out of the ' make- 
 up,' " says Dolby, " in which Dickens heartily joined, 
 but the climax was his utter bewilderment on the subject 
 of the cocked hat. Fancy Dickens in a cocked hat 1 
 
 306 
 
APPEARANCE 
 
 " What on earth am I to do with it ? " he asked, 
 handing it about in a woe-begone manner. 
 
 " Why wear it of course," suggested one of the party. 
 
 " But how ? " cried the Chief. 
 
 " Yes, that's exactly what I have been wondering," 
 said another. 
 
 " What do you mean, sir ? " said Dickens, with mock 
 indignation, " What difference can it make to you which 
 way I wear it ? " 
 
 " Oh ! none at all. I was merely wondering whether 
 you intended to wear it ' fore and aft,' or ' th'wart ships ' ; 
 and I thought I would mention that those I had seen were 
 generally worn ' fore and aft.' " 
 
 Mr Dickens's reception of this lesson on the wearing 
 of a cocked hat was comic in the extreme ; for some had 
 said, ' it was not intended to be worn, and was a mere 
 appendage any way,' others were of opinion that ' it 
 was to be carried under the arm,' and so on. However, 
 as it was time to start, Dickens tucked the thing under his 
 arm, and, turning to me, said, * Come along, Dolby, drive 
 down to Buckingham Palace with me, and leave me in 
 good society, where at least I shall be free of these 
 ignorant people ! " ' 
 
 The last time he dined out in London was at Lord 
 Houghton's, to meet the King of the Belgians and the 
 Prince of Wales ; Lady Houghton recorded that she had 
 never seen Dickens " more agreeable than at a dinner at 
 our house about a fortnight before his death." Forster 
 records a luncheon at Hyde Park Place on May 22, on 
 which day Dickens had heard of the death of Mark Lemon, 
 and, referring to his many comrades in art and letters who 
 had already fallen out of the ranks, said, " and none 
 beyond his sixtieth year, very few even fifty." 
 
 307 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 At the end of May he returned to Gad's Hill Place. 
 
 During these last years he seems to have changed greatly 
 in appearance. He was, says Sala of this time, " a 
 bronzed, weatherworn, hardy man, with somewhat of a 
 seaman's air about him. His carriage was remarkedly 
 upright, his mien almost aggressive in its confidence. 
 . . . His appearance in wallcing dress in the streets, 
 during his later years, was decidedly ' odd,' and almost 
 eccentric, being marked by strongly-pronounced colours, 
 and a fashioning of the garments which had somewhat 
 of a sporting and somewhat of a theatrical guise. To 
 those who did not know that he was Charles Dickens, 
 he might have been some prosperous sea-captain home 
 from a long voyage, some Western senator on a tour in 
 Europe, some country gentleman of Devon or York- 
 shire." 
 
 " I had met him about the middle of May,^ at Charing 
 Cross, and had remarked that he had aged very much in 
 appearance. The thought-lines of his face had deepened, 
 and the hair had whitened. Indeed, as he approached 
 me I thought for a moment I was mistaken, and that it 
 could not be Dickens : for that was not the vigorous, 
 rapid walk, with the stick lightly held in the alert hand, 
 which had always belonged to him. It was he, however : 
 but with a certain solemnity of expression in the face, and 
 a deeper earnestness in the dark eyes. However, when 
 he saw me and shook my hand, the deUghtful brightness 
 and sunshine swept over the gloom and sadness," so wrote 
 Blanchard Jerrold. 
 
 His daughter " Mamie " writes, " although happy and 
 contented, there was an appearance of fatigue and weari- 
 ness about him very unlike his usual air of fresh activity." 
 
 ^ 1870. . 
 308 
 
LAST LETTERS 
 
 The weather was beautifully fine, the house had never 
 worn a brighter aspect, the garden was full of the brilliant 
 flowers he loved. Of the many improvements that he had 
 made, the addition of a conservatory was the last ; " Here, 
 Katie," he said to his daughter, " you behold the last 
 improvement." Of Sunday, June 5, Miss Dickens writes, 
 " We had been having most lovely weather, and in con- 
 sequence, the outdoor plants were wonderfully forward in 
 their bloom, my father's favourite red geraniums making 
 a blaze of colour in the front garden. The syringa shrubs 
 filled the evening air with sweetest fragrance as we sat 
 in the porch and walked about the garden on this last 
 Sunday of our dear father's hfe." 
 
 On Monday the sisters, Kate and " Mamie " left for 
 London. Of leave-takings, her father had ever a dislike, 
 but some impulse compelled Kate to say, " I must say 
 good-bye to papa." He was at work in the chalet in the 
 shrubbery, and there — at his wish — she bade him farewell. 
 
 On Tuesday, he went for his last walk in Cobham Park, 
 and in the evening, talking with Miss Hogarth, spoke of his 
 affection for Gad's Hill Place, of his gladness that he had 
 not given it up and returned to hve in London, of his hope 
 that his name might be associated with it, and of his wish 
 to be buried there. 
 
 On the Wednesday, the 8th, he was busily working at 
 " Edwin Drood " all day in the chalet, going across to the 
 house for luncheon, when he appeared well and cheerful. 
 After a cigar in the conservatory, he returned to his desk. 
 Dinner was fixed for six o'clock, and when he came again 
 to the house about five, he appeared " tired, silent, and 
 abstracted," which was not unusual with him after 
 a stiff day's work. He wrote some letters, including one 
 to Charles Kent, making an appointment with him in 
 
 309 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 London for the next day, which as one of the two last he 
 wrote, we will quote in full : — 
 
 " Gad's Hill Place, 
 
 " HiGHAM BY Rochester, 
 
 " Wednesday eighth June 1870. 
 
 " My dear Kent, 
 
 To-morrow is a very bad day for me to make a call, 
 as, in addition to my usual office business, I have a mass 
 of accounts to settle with Wills. But I hope I may be 
 ready for you at 3 o'clock. If I can't be — why, then I 
 shan't be. 
 
 You must really get rid of these Opal enjoyments. 
 They are overpowering. 
 
 ' These violent delights have violent ends.' 
 
 I think it was a father of your church who made the 
 wise remark to a young gentleman who got up early (and 
 stayed out late) at Verona ? 
 
 Ever affectionately, 
 
 C. D." 
 
 The other of these two letters is in itself more interest- 
 ing as it is in reply to one addressed to him in reference 
 to a passage in the tenth chapter of " Edwin Drood," 
 where the Reverend Septimus yields himself up to his 
 mother's medicaments, " like the highly popular lamb who 
 has so long and unresistingly been led to the slaughter," 
 which, according to the writer, " was distasteful to some 
 of his admirers," being drawn from Holy Writ, and 
 prophetic of the sacrifice of Christ. Dickens very rightly 
 expressed amazement that anyone could attach a scriptural 
 reference to the passage, concluding, " I have always 
 striven in my writings to express veneration for the life 
 and lessons of our Saviour ; because I feel it ; and because 
 I re-wrote that history for my children — every one of 
 
 310 
 

 
 THE LAST LETTER. 
 
» • • • • 5 »* <i • 
 
SUDDEN DEATH 
 
 whom knew it from having it repeated to them — long 
 before they could read, and almost as soon as they could 
 speak. 
 
 " But I have never made proclamation of this from the 
 house-tops." 
 
 When Miss Hogarth and he sat down to dinner, she 
 noticed, soon after the meal had commenced, a " striking 
 change in the colour and expression of his face." She 
 asked him if he were ill, and he replied, " Yes, very ill ; 
 I have been very ill for the last hour." He refused to 
 permit a doctor to be summoned, and continued to talk, 
 though incoherently, speaking of a sale at a neighbouring 
 house, of Macready, of his own departure to London ; 
 then rising from his seat, staggered and was only saved 
 from falling by the prompt aid of his sister-in-law. She 
 begged him to lie down ; " Yes, on the ground," were his 
 last words. 
 
 " This was at a few minutes after six o'clock," says Miss 
 Dickens, " I was dining at a house some little distance 
 from my sister's home. Dinner was half over when I 
 received a message that she wished to speak to me. I 
 found her in the hall with a change of dress for me and a 
 cab in waiting. Quickly I changed my gown, and we begun 
 the short journey which brought us to our so sadly- 
 altered home. Our dear aunt was waiting for us at the 
 open door, and when I saw her face I think the last faint 
 hope died within me." He remained in the same un- 
 conscious condition until a few minutes past six o'clock 
 the next evening, that of Thursday, June 9, " when . . 
 the watchers saw a shudder pass over him, heard him give 
 a deep sigh, saw one tear roll down his cheek, and he was 
 gone from them." 
 
 It is said that he had always desired to die jSuddenly, 
 
 311 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 and the story is told of his walking through Kensington 
 Gardens when a thunderstorm broke overhead and 
 proposing to the friend with him to shelter under a tree. 
 " No," said the friend, " that is too dangerous. Many 
 people have been killed beneath trees from the effect of 
 lightning." To which Dickens responded, " of all the 
 fears that harass a man on God's earth, the fear of sudden 
 death seems to me the most absurd, and why we pray 
 against it in the Litany I cannot make out. A death by 
 lightning most resembles the translation of Enoch." 
 
 When she read the announcement of his death, " the 
 sun seemed suddenly blotted out," says Mrs Cowden 
 Clarke. Carlyle wrote to Gad's Hill, " It is almost 
 thirty years since my acquaintance with him began ; and 
 on my side, I may say, every new meeting ripened it into 
 more and more dear discernment of his rare and great worth 
 as a brother man ; a most cordial, sincere, clear-sighted, 
 quietly decisive, just, and loving man : tiU at length he 
 had grown to such a recognition with me as I have rarely 
 had for any man of my time." 
 
 312 
 
XXXIX 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 THAT " you may know a man by his friends " 
 is an old and true saying, and we cannot but 
 feel that we know Charies Dickens the more 
 thoroughly by reason of the intimate converse that we 
 have held with him and with some of his friends in these 
 pages. 
 
 But for our part we would count as among a man's 
 best friends the books and pictures which appeal to him 
 and which he loves. Let us take a glance at the outward 
 seeming of his books as they appeared to a friend of his. 
 G. H. Lewes called on him in Doughty Street, " those who 
 remember him at that period," he writes, " will understand 
 the somewhat disturbing effect produced on my en- 
 thusiasm for the new author by the sight of his book- 
 shelves, on which were ranged nothing but three-volume 
 novels and books of travel, aU obviously the presentation 
 copies from authors and publishers, with none of the 
 treasures of the bookstall, each of which has its history, 
 and all giving the collection its individual physiognomy. 
 A man's Hbrary expresses much of his hidden life. . . . 
 He shortly came in, and his sunny presence quickly 
 dispelled all misgivings. He was then, as to the last, a 
 delightful companion, full of sagacity as well as animal 
 spirits ; but I came away more impressed with the fullness 
 of life and energy than with any sense of distinction. 
 
 313 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 Then of a later visit, " while waiting in his library (in 
 Devonshire Terrace) I, of course glanced at the books. 
 The well-known paper boards of the three-volume novel 
 no longer vulgarised the place ; a goodly array of standard 
 works, well-bound, showed a more respectable and con- 
 ventional ambition ; but there was no physiognomy in 
 the collection. A greater change was visible in Dickens 
 himself. In these two years he had remarkably developed. 
 His conversation turned on graver subjects than theatres 
 and actors, periodicals and London life. His interest in 
 public affairs, especially in social questions, was keener. 
 He stiU remained completely outside philosophy, science, 
 and the higher literature, and was too unaffected a man 
 to pretend to feel any interest in them." 
 
 Of the book-loves of his childhood Forster tells us that 
 a passage in " David Copperfield " is literally true, and we 
 may quote it with advantage : — " My father had left 
 a small collection of books in a little room upstairs to 
 which I had access . . . 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." Other books there were, the Arabian Nights 
 and the Tales of the Genii, of all which the influence can 
 be traced in his own works. 
 
 In a letter to George Cattermole in 1838 he mentions 
 " Kenilworth," " which I have just been reading with 
 greater delight than ever," and adds that among other 
 books he has with him at Petersham are Goldsmith, 
 Swift, Fielding, Smollett and the British Essayists. 
 Writing to M de Cerjat, he says, " Let me recommend you, 
 as a brother-reader of high distinction, two comedies, both 
 Goldsmith's — ' She Stoops to Conquer ' and ' The Good- 
 
 314 
 
ART CRITICISM 
 
 natured Man.' Both are so admirably and so delightfully 
 written that they read wonderfully." 
 
 We may note in passing that of Shakespeare he says, 
 "It is a great comfort, to my way of thinking, that so 
 little is known concerning the poet. It is a fine mystery ; 
 and I tremble every day lest something should come out. 
 If he had had a Boswell, society wouldn't have respected 
 his grave." 
 
 Of Smollett : — " ' Humphrey Clinker ' is certainly 
 SmoUett's best. I am rather divided between ' Peregrine 
 Pickle ' and ' Roderick Random,' both extraordinarily 
 good in their way, which is a way without tenderness." 
 Turning to a contemporary writer, he says of Tennyson, 
 " How fine the ' Idylls ' are ! Lord ! What a blessed thing 
 it is to read a man who can write ! I thought nothing 
 could be grander than the first poem till I came to the 
 third ; but when I had read the last, it seemed to be 
 absolutely unapproached and unapproachable." 
 
 J. T. Fields tells us of him, " There were certain books 
 of which Dickens liked to talk during his walks. Among 
 his special favourites were the writings of Cobbett, De 
 Quincey, the ' Lectures on Moral Philosophy ' by Sydney 
 Smith, and Carlyle's ' French Revolution.' " 
 
 In short, with regard to Art, Literature, and Music, 
 Dickens was in no sense of the words an expert critic 
 but an impressionist, without any other standard than his 
 own likings. For his writings upon pictures we had best 
 turn to the " Pictures from Italy," in which he says : — 
 
 " I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of 
 painting, and have no other means of judging of a picture 
 than as I see it resembling and refining upon nature, and 
 presenting graceful combinations of forms and colours. I 
 am, therefore, no authority whatever, in reference to the 
 
 315 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 ' touch ' of this or that master ; though I know very weK 
 (as anybody may, who chooses to think about the matter) 
 that few very great masters can possibly have painted, in 
 the compass of their Uves, one-half of the pictures that bear 
 their names, and that are recognised by many aspirants to 
 a reputation for taste, as undoubted originals. But this, 
 by the way. Of the Last Supper, I would simply observe, 
 that in its beautiful composition and arrangement, there it 
 is, at Milan, a wonderful picture ; and that, in its original 
 colouring, or in its original expression of any single face or 
 feature, there it is not. Apart from the damage it has 
 sustained from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as 
 Barry shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and that 
 so clumsily, that many of the heads are, now, positive 
 deformities, with patches of paint and plaster sticking upon 
 them like wens, and utterly distorting the expression. 
 Where the original artist set that impress of his genius on 
 a face, which, almost in a line or touch, separated him 
 from meaner painters and made him what he was, suc- 
 ceeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams and 
 cracks, have been quite unable to imitate his hand ; and 
 putting in some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of their 
 own, have blotched and spoiled the work. This is so well 
 established as an historical fact, that I should not repeat it, 
 at the risk of being tedious, but for having observed an 
 English gentleman before the picture, who was at great 
 pains to fall into what I may describe as mild convulsions, 
 at certain minute details of expression which are not left 
 in it. Whereas, it would be comfortable and rational for 
 travellers and critics to arrive at a general understanding 
 that it cannot fail to have been a work of extraordinary 
 merit, once : when, with so few of its original beauties 
 remaining, the grandeur of the general design is yet 
 
 316 
 
RELIGION 
 
 sufficient to sustain it, as a piece replete with interest 
 and dignity." 
 
 It will be remembered that he made a biting and quite 
 foolish onslaught upon one of the most famous of Pre- 
 RaphaeUte paintings. Of English art — in his own day — 
 compared with French, he thought but poorly on the 
 whole of our painters : — " there is a horrible respecta- 
 bility about most of the best of them — a Uttle, finite, 
 systematic routine in them, strangely expressive to me 
 of the state of England itself." 
 
 Of music he says and writes but little, and indeed 
 appears to have cared not much for it, save in the form of 
 jovial or sentimental songs, and as incidental music to 
 melodramas, though when in Paris, in 1863, he heard 
 Gounod's " Faust," writing of it, " It is a splendid work, 
 in which that noble and sad story is most nobly and sadly 
 rendered, and perfectly deUghted me." 
 
 Dickens was in essence a profoundly religious. Christian 
 man, and here, as elsewhere, we think it by far the better 
 way to allow him to speak for himself. This is from his 
 letter to his youngest son on his leaving for Australia in 
 1868, " You wUl remember that you have never at home 
 been wearied about religious observances or mere for- 
 malities, I have always been anxious not to weary my 
 children with such things before they are old enough to 
 form opinions respecting them. You will therefore 
 understand the better that I now most solemnly impress 
 upon you the truth and beauty of the Christian religion, 
 as it came from Christ Himself, and the impossibiHty of 
 your going far wrong if you humbly but heartily respect 
 it." 
 
 Earlier, in 1864, he wrote to M de Cerjat, " As to the 
 Church, my friend, I am sick of it. The spectacle pre- 
 
 317 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 sented by the indecent squabbles of priests of most 
 denominations, and the exemplary unfairness and rancour 
 with which they conduct their differences, utterly repel 
 me. And the idea of the Protestant Estabhshment, in 
 the face of its own history, seeking to trample out dis- 
 cussion and private judgement, is an enormity so cool, that 
 I wonder the Right Reverends, Very Reverends, and all 
 other Reverends, who commit it, can look in one another's 
 faces without laughing, as the old soothsayers did. Per- 
 haps they can't and don't. How our sublime and so- 
 different Christian religion is to be administered in the 
 future I cannot pretend to say, but that the Church's 
 hand is at its own throat I am fully convinced. Here, 
 more Popery, there, more Methodism — as many forms of 
 consignment to eternal damnation as there are articles, 
 and all in one for ever quarrelling body — the Master of the 
 New Testament put out of sight, and the rage and fury 
 almost always turning on the letter of obscure parts of the 
 Old Testament, which itself has been the subject of 
 accommodation, adaptation, varying interpretation with- 
 out end — these things cannot last. The Church that is to 
 have its part in the coming time must be a more Christian 
 one, with less arbitrary pretensions and a stronger hold 
 upon the mantle of our Saviour, as He walked and talked 
 upon this earth." 
 
 " Do you ever pray ? " Ada, Lady Lovelace, asked him 
 on her death-bed ; " Every morning and evening," he 
 answered. 
 
 As to Dickens's political views, he may be described 
 as a sentimental, rather than a practical. Radical. It 
 was personal sympathy with the lot of the suffering that 
 stirred him, but of practical and effective reform he had 
 but vague ideas. He wrote to Forster, in 1855, " a country 
 
 318 
 
 i 
 
CONVERSATION 
 
 which is discovered to be in this tremendous condition as to 
 its war affairs ; with an enormous black cloud of poverty 
 in every town which is spreading and deepening every 
 hour, and not one man in two thousand knowing anything 
 about, or even beheving in, its existence ; with a non- 
 working aristocracy, and a silent parliament, and every- 
 body for himself and nobody for the rest ; this is the 
 prospect, and I think it is a very deplorable one." 
 
 As to the personal appearance and character of the man 
 30 much evidence has already been brought together in 
 these pages that we need add but little more. 
 
 During the first visit to America, in 1842, Longfellow 
 describes him " a gay, free-and-easy character ; with a 
 fine bright face, blue eyes, and long dark hair," and a 
 Cincinnati lady wrote of him, " He is young and hand- 
 some, has a mellow beautiful eye, fine brow, and abundant 
 hair. . . . His manner is easy — negligent — but not 
 elegant. His dress was foppish ; in fact, he was over- 
 dressed, yet his garments were worn so easily they ap- 
 peared to be a necessary part of him." 
 
 Richard Hengist Home, in 1844, gave in " A New Spirit 
 of the Age " a somewhat breathless account of Dickens : — 
 " He talks much or little according to his sympathies. 
 His conversation is genial. He hates argument ; in fact, 
 he is unable to argue — a common case with impulsive 
 characters who see the whole truth, and feel it crowding 
 and struggling at once for immediate utterance. He never 
 talks for effect, but for the truth or for the fun of the 
 thing. He tells a story admirably, and generally with 
 humorous exaggerations. His sympathies are of the 
 broadest, and his literary tastes appreciate all excellence. 
 He is a great admirer of the poetry of Tennyson. Mr 
 Dickens has singular personal activity, and is fond of 
 
 319 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 games of practical skill. He is also a great walker, and 
 very much given to dancing Sir Roger de Coverley. 
 In private, the general impression of him is that of a first- 
 rate practical intellect, with ' no nonsense ' about him." 
 
 Thomas Adolphus TroUope was an enthusiastic admirer 
 of Dickens's personality ; "he was a hearty man, a large- 
 hearted man that is to say. He was perhaps the largest- 
 hearted man I ever knew," he says. 
 
 For an unfavourable view of Dickens's character Dr 
 John Brown may be quoted. He writes to Ruskin, in 
 1873, " My reasons for saying he was hard-hearted are — 
 ist, my personal knowledge of him many years ago, and 
 my seeing then his intense, adamantine egoism. 2nd, 
 the revelation of his nature given so frankly, and let us 
 hope unconsciously, in his friend's huge and most exag- 
 gerated life (Forster is a ' heavy swell,' and has always 
 been to me offensive, and he has no sense or faculty of 
 humour, and is, as the boy called him, a ' harbitrary 
 cove ')..,. He was a man softest outside, hardest at 
 the core." George Henry Lewes said to Mrs Lynn 
 Linton, " Dickens would not give you a farthing of money, 
 but he would take no end of trouble for you. He would 
 spend a whole day, for instance, in looking for the most 
 suitable lodgings for you, and would spare himself neither 
 time nor fatigue." 
 
 George Eliot says of Dickens in 1852, " His appearance 
 is certainly disappointing, no benevolence in the face, and, 
 I think, little in the head ... in fact, he is not distin- 
 guished-looking in any way — neither handsome nor ugly, 
 neither fat nor thin, neither tall nor short." 
 
 To conclude : — One who knew him intimately for many 
 years describes him as full of fun, charming in manner ; 
 equipped with bonhomie and considerable shrewdness ; a 
 
 320 
 
INDISCREET ADMIRERS 
 
 man to whom a woman would go for advice ; but a 
 domineering man, fond of his own way and not over fond 
 of those who tried to deny it to him. 
 
 It may be taken as written of himself that which we 
 read in " David Copperfield," " I never could have done 
 what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, 
 and diligence ; without the determination to concentrate 
 myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly 
 its successor should come upon its heels. . . . My 
 meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, 
 I have tried with all my heart to do well ; that whatever 
 I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to com- 
 pletely ; that, in great aims and in small, I have always 
 been thoroughly in earnest. . . . Never to put one hand 
 to anything on which I could throw my whole self ; and 
 never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was ; 
 I find, now, to have been my golden rules." 
 
 ***** 4: 
 
 It has not come within the scope of this book to deal 
 critically or otherwise with Dickens as a man of letters, 
 and it would be a too curious inquiry to ask whether his 
 personality would have been worth studying or not had he 
 not been one of the most influential as well as famous of 
 Enghsh writers. An author's works can be, and many 
 hold should be, studied apart from the biography of 
 their creator, but be that as it may, there cannot be 
 any doubt that a knowledge of the writer, intimate if 
 possible, adds zest to the pleasure of the reader and not 
 seldom, also, to his understanding. 
 
 We leave it to our readers to form, with the evidence 
 
 here provided them, what idea they may of the physical 
 
 personality of Charles Dickens ; of his character we will 
 
 say a few words. It is indubitable that much damage 
 
 V 321 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 has been done to his fame both as a man and as a writer 
 by indiscreet admirers, who, dazzled by his genius, have 
 been unable to see any fault in his writings or any flaw 
 in his character. To set him up on a pedestal as a 
 minor god only detracts from his high standing as 
 a great man ; not only that, but the virtues of a 
 human being shine aU the brighter by contrast with his 
 failings. 
 
 Of few men is the opinion of their contemporaries so 
 strongly favourable as it is in the case of Dickens, and the 
 evidence is all the more powerful in that it comes from all 
 sorts and conditions of men and women, chiefly, however, 
 from the former. Few women of any great strength of 
 character or power of wiU appear to have been among his 
 intimates. Among his men friends, too, he was a leader, 
 rather than an equal, with some rare exceptions, such as 
 Carlyle and Lytton. We can trace all through his life, 
 even after his first taste of success, a tendency toward 
 despotism. He was a managing, masterful man, so much 
 so that at times he would quarrel with those who quite 
 rightly opposed his wishes. 
 
 He was in a sense a superficial man ; his emotions were 
 easily stirred, and — as with easily stirred waters — were 
 not very profound ; sentiment with him was apt to 
 degenerate into sentimentaUty, tragedy to become melo- 
 drama, comedy to become farce ; these things both in his 
 life and in his books. He was not a scholar, for which, 
 of course, he was in no way to blame, and his judgments 
 of literature and the arts cannot be called otherwise 
 than middle-class. In all his instincts and ambitions 
 he was of the state of life in which he was bom, middle- 
 class ; he showed this in his art as well as in his life. It 
 must not be thought that we are using the term middle- 
 
 322 
 
THE END 
 
 class as one of opprobrium, but it is distinctly, and in this 
 case truly, definitive. 
 
 Set in the balance against these defects his gifts weigh 
 far the heavier. We cannot sum them up better than by 
 repeating Carlyle's eulogium, " The good, the gentle, 
 high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickens — every inch of 
 him an Honest Man." How great praise that from how 
 great a source ! 
 
 * * ♦ « ♦ 4> 
 
 We send forth these pages, with all their sins of omission 
 and commission, in full confidence that they will prove 
 welcome to many a lover of Charles Dickens. To our 
 critical readers we would say that we have made no 
 pretence of completeness ; all our aim has been to gather 
 together sufficient facts concerning Charles Dickens and 
 some of his Friends, and so to join them together as to 
 make it possible to form a true picture of a strenuous man 
 and of the strenuous life he led. 
 
 THE ENDC 
 
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