Yesterdays with Authors by James T. Fields

J >> James T. Fields >> Yesterdays with Authors

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35

C---- is no better, and no worse. M---- and G---- send all manner of
loves, and have already represented to me that the red-jacketed
post-boys must be turned out for a summer expedition to Canterbury,
and that there must be lunches among the cornfields, walks in Cobham
Park, and a thousand other expeditions. Pray give our pretty M----
to understand that a great deal will be expected of her, and that
she will have to look her very best, to look as I have drawn her. If
your Irish people turn up at Gad's at the same time, as they
probably will, they shall be entertained in the yard, with muzzled
dogs. I foresee that they will come over, haymaking and hopping, and
will recognize their beautiful vagabonds at a glance.

I wish Reverdy Johnson would dine in private and hold his tongue. He
overdoes the thing. C---- is trying to get the Pope to subscribe,
and to run over to take the chair at his next dinner, on which
occasion Victor Emmanuel is to propose C----'s health, and may all
differences among friends be referred to him. With much love always,
and in high rapture at the thought of seeing you both here,

Ever your most affectionate

C.D.

A few weeks later, while on his reading tour, he sent off the
following:--

Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, Friday, April 9, 1869.

My Dear Fields: The faithful Russia will bring this out to you, as a
sort of warrant to take you into loving custody and bring you back
on her return trip.

I have been "reading" here all this week, and finish here for good
to-night. To-morrow the Mayor, Corporation, and citizens give me a
farewell dinner in St. George's Hall. Six hundred and fifty are to
dine, and a mighty show of beauty is to be mustered besides. N----
had a great desire to see the sight, and so I suggested him as a
friend to be invited. He is over at Manchester now on a visit, and
will come here at midday to-morrow, and go back to London with us on
Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday I read in London, and on Wednesday
start off again. To-night is No. 68 out of one hundred. I am very
tired of it, but I could have no such good fillip as you among the
audience, and that will carry me on gayly to the end. So please to
look sharp in the matter of landing on the bosom of the used-up,
worn-out, and rotten old Parient. I rather think that when the 12th
of June shall have shaken off these shackles, there _will_ be borage
on the lawn at Gad's. Your heart's desire in that matter, and in the
minor particulars of Cobham Park, Rochester Castle, and Canterbury
shall be fulfilled, please God! The red jackets shall turn out again
upon the turnpike road, and picnics among the cherry-orchards and
hop-gardens shall be heard of in Kent. Then, too, shall the
Uncommercial resuscitate (being at present nightly murdered by Mr.
W. Sikes) and uplift his voice again.

The chief officer of the Russia (a capital fellow) was at the
Reading last night, and Dolby specially charged him with the care of
you and yours. We shall be on the borders of Wales, and probably
about Hereford, when you arrive. Dolby has insane projects of
getting over here to meet you; so amiably hopeful and obviously
impracticable, that I encourage him to the utmost. The regular
little captain of the Russia, Cook, is just now changed into the
Cuba, whence arise disputes of seniority, etc. I wish he had been
with you, for I liked him very much when I was his passenger. I like
to think of your being in _my_ ship!

---- and ---- have been taking it by turns to be "on the point of
death," and have been complimenting one another greatly on the
fineness of the point attained. My people got a very good impression
of ----, and thought her a sincere and earnest little woman.

The Russia hauls out into the stream to-day, and I fear her people
may be too busy to come to us to-night. But if any of them do, they
shall have the warmest of welcomes for your sake. (By the by, a very
good party of seamen from the Queen's ship Donegal, lying in the
Mersey, have been told off to decorate St. George's Hall with the
ship's bunting. They were all hanging on aloft upside down, holding
to the gigantically high roof by nothing, this morning, in the most
wonderfully cheerful manner.)

My son Charley has come for the dinner, and Chappell (my Proprietor,
as--isn't it Wemmick?--says) is coming to-day, and Lord Dufferin
(Mrs. Norton's nephew) is to come and make _the_ speech. I don't
envy the feelings of my noble friend when he sees the hall.
Seriously, it is less adapted to speaking than Westminster Abbey,
and is as large....

I hope you will see Fechter in a really clever piece by Wilkie. Also
you will see the Academy Exhibition, which will be a very good one;
and also we will, please God, see everything and more, and
everything else after that. I begin to doubt and fear on the subject
of your having a horror of me after seeing the murder. I don't
think a hand moved while I was doing it last night, or an eye looked
away. And there was a fixed expression of horror of me, all over the
theatre, which could not have been surpassed if I had been going to
be hanged to that red velvet table. It is quite a new sensation to
be execrated with that unanimity; and I hope it will remain so!

[Is it lawful--would that woman in the black gaiters, green veil,
and spectacles, hold it so--to send my love to the pretty M----?]

Pack up, my dear Fields, and be quick.

Ever your most affectionate

C.D.

It will be remembered that Dickens broke down entirely during the month
of April, being completely worn out with hard work in the Readings. He
described to me with graphic earnestness, when we met in May, all the
incidents connected with the final crisis, and I shall never forget how
he imitated himself during that last Reading, when he nearly fell before
the audience. It was a terrible blow to his constitution, and only a man
of the greatest strength and will could have survived it. When we
arrived in Queenstown, this note was sent on board our steamer.

Loving welcome to England. Hurrah!

Office Of All The Year Round, Wednesday, May 5, 1869.

My Dear ----: I fear you will have been uneasy about me, and will
have heard distorted accounts of the stoppage of my Readings. It is
a measure of precaution, and not of cure. I was too tired and too
jarred by the railway fast express, travelling night and day. No
half-measure could be taken; and rest being medically considered
essential, we stopped. I became, thank God, myself again, almost as
soon as I could rest! I am good for all country pleasures with you,
and am looking forward to Gad's, Rochester Castle, Cobham Park, red
jackets, and Canterbury. When you come to London we shall probably
be staying at our hotel. You will learn, here, where to find us. I
yearn to be with you both again!

Love to M----.

Ever your affectionate C.D.

I hope this will be put into your hands on board, in Queenstown
Harbor.

We met in London a few days after this, and I found him in capital
spirits, with such a protracted list of things we were to do together,
that, had I followed out the prescribed programme, it would have taken
many more months of absence from home than I had proposed to myself. We
began our long rambles among the thoroughfares that had undergone
important changes since I was last in London, taking in the noble Thames
embankments, which I had never seen, and the improvements in the city
markets. Dickens had moved up to London for the purpose of showing us
about, and had taken rooms only a few streets off from our hotel. Here
are two specimens of the welcome little notes which I constantly found
on my breakfast-table:--

Office Of All The Year Round, London, Wednesday, May 19, 1869.

My Dear Fields: Suppose we give the weather a longer chance, and say
Monday instead of Friday. I think we must be safer with that
precaution. If Monday will suit you, I propose that we meet here
that day,--your ladies and you and I,--and cast ourselves on the
stony-hearted streets. If it be bright for St. Paul's, good; if not,
we can take some other lion that roars in dull weather. We will dine
here at six, and meet here at half past two. So IF you should want
to go elsewhere after dinner, it can be done, notwithstanding. Let
me know in a line what you say.

O the delight of a cold bath this morning, after those
lodging-houses! And a mild sniffler of punch, on getting into the
hotel last night, I found what my friend Mr. Wegg calls, "Mellering,
sir, very mellering."

With kindest regards, ever affectionately,

CHARLES DICKENS.

Office Of All The Year Round, London, Tuesday, May 25, 1869.

My Dear Fields: First, you leave Charing Cross Station, by North
Kent railway, on Wednesday, June 2d, at 2.10 for Higham Station, the
next station beyond Gravesend. Now, bring your lofty mind back to
the previous Saturday, next Saturday. There is only one way of
combining Windsor and Richmond. That way will leave us but two hours
and a half at Windsor. This would not be long enough to enable us to
see the inside of the castle, but would admit of our seeing the
outside, the Long Walk, etc. I will assume that such a survey will
suffice. That taken for granted, meet me at Waterloo Terminus (Loop
Line for Windsor) at 10.35, on Saturday morning.

The rendezvous for Monday evening will be _here at half past eight_.
As I don't know Mr. Eytinge's number in Guildford Street, will you
kindly undertake to let him know that we are going out with the
great Detective? And will you also give him the time and place for
Gad's?

I shall be here on Friday for a few hours; meantime at Gad's
aforesaid.

With love to the ladies, ever faithfully,

C.D.

During my stay in England in that summer of 1869, I made many excursions
with Dickens both around the city and into the country. Among the most
memorable of these London rambles was a visit to the General
Post-Office, by arrangement with the authorities there, a stroll among
the cheap theatres and lodging-houses for the poor, a visit to
Furnival's Inn and the very room in it where "Pickwick" was written, and
a walk through the thieves' quarter. Two of these expeditions were made
on two consecutive nights, under the protection of police detailed for
the service. On one of these nights we also visited the lock-up houses,
watch-houses, and opium-eating establishments. It was in one of the
horrid opium-dens that he gathered the incidents which he has related in
the opening pages of "Edwin Drood." In a miserable court we found the
haggard old woman blowing at a kind of pipe made of an old penny
ink-bottle. The identical words which Dickens puts into the mouth of
this wretched creature in "Edwin Drood" we heard her croon as we leaned
over the tattered bed on which she was lying. There was something
hideous in the way this woman kept repeating, "Ye'll pay up
according, deary, won't ye?" and the Chinamen and Lascars made
never-to-be-forgotten pictures in the scene. I watched Dickens intently
as he went among these outcasts of London, and saw with what deep
sympathy he encountered the sad and suffering in their horrid abodes. At
the door of one of the penny lodging-houses (it was growing toward
morning, and the raw air almost cut one to the bone), I saw him snatch a
little child out of its poor drunken mother's arms, and bear it in,
filthy as it was, that it might be warmed and cared for. I noticed that
whenever he entered one of these wretched rooms he had a word of cheer
for its inmates, and that when he left the apartment he always had a
pleasant "Good night" or "God bless you" to bestow upon them. I do not
think his person was ever recognized in any of these haunts, except in
one instance. As we entered a low room in the worst alley we had yet
visited, in which were huddled together some forty or fifty
half-starved-looking wretches, I noticed a man among the crowd
whispering to another and pointing out Dickens. Both men regarded him
with marked interest all the time he remained in the room, and tried to
get as near him, without observation, as possible. As he turned to go
out, one of these men pressed forward and said, "Good night, sir," with
much feeling, in reply to Dickens's parting word.

Among other places, we went, a little past midnight, into one of the
Casual Wards, which were so graphically described, some years ago, in an
English magazine, by a gentleman who, as a pretended tramp, went in on a
reporting expedition. We walked through an avenue of poor tired sleeping
forms, all lying flat on the floor, and not one of them raised a head to
look at us as we moved thoughtfully up the aisle of sorrowful humanity.
I think we counted sixty or seventy prostrate beings, who had come in
for a night's shelter, and had lain down worn out with fatigue and
hunger. There was one pale young face to which I whispered Dickens's
attention, and he stood over it with a look of sympathizing interest not
to be easily forgotten. There was much ghastly comicality mingled with
the horror in several of the places we visited on those two nights. We
were standing in a room half filled with people of both sexes, whom the
police accompanying us knew to be thieves. Many of these abandoned
persons had served out their terms in jail or prison, and would probably
be again sentenced under the law. They were all silent and sullen as we
entered the room, until an old woman spoke up with a strong, beery
voice: "Good evening, gentlemen. We are all wery poor, but strictly
honest." At which cheerful apocryphal statement, all the inmates of the
room burst into boisterous laughter, and began pelting the imaginative
female with epithets uncomplimentary and unsavory. Dickens's quick eye
never for a moment ceased to study all these scenes of vice and gloom,
and he told me afterwards that, bad as the whole thing was, it had
improved infinitely since he first began to study character in those
regions of crime and woe.

Between eleven and twelve o'clock on one of the evenings I have
mentioned we were taken by Dickens's favorite Detective W---- into a
sort of lock-up house, where persons are brought from the streets who
have been engaged in brawls, or detected in the act of thieving, or who
have, in short, committed any offence against the laws. Here they are
examined for commitment by a sort of presiding officer, who sits all
night for that purpose. We looked into some of the cells, and found them
nearly filled with wretched-looking objects who had been brought in that
night. To this establishment are also brought lost children who are
picked up in the streets by the police,--children who have wandered away
from their homes, and are not old enough to tell the magistrate where
they live. It was well on toward morning, and we were sitting in
conversation with one of the officers, when the ponderous door opened
and one of these small wanderers was brought in. She was the queerest
little figure I ever beheld, and she walked in, holding the police
officer by the hand as solemnly and as quietly if she were attending her
own obsequies. She was between four and five years old, and had on what
was evidently her mother's bonnet,--an enormous production, resembling a
sort of coal-scuttle, manufactured after the fashion of ten or fifteen
years ago. The child had, no doubt, caught up this wonderful head-gear
in the absence of her parent, and had gone forth in quest of adventure.
The officer reported that he had discovered her in the middle of the
street, moving ponderingly along, without any regard to the horses and
vehicles all about her. When asked where she lived, she mentioned a
street which only existed in her own imagination, and she knew only her
Christian name. When she was interrogated by the proper authorities,
without the slightest apparent discomposure she replied in a steady
voice, as she thought proper, to their questions. The magistrate
inadvertently repeated a question as to the number of her brothers and
sisters, and the child snapped out, "I told ye wunst; can't ye hear?"
When asked if she would like anything, she gayly answered, "Candy, cake
and _candy_." A messenger was sent out to procure these commodities,
which she instantly seized on their arrival and began to devour. She
showed no signs of fear, until one of the officers untied the huge
bonnet and took it off, when she tearfully insisted upon being put into
it again. I was greatly impressed by the ingenious efforts of the
excellent men in the room to learn from the child where she lived, and
who her parents were. Dickens sat looking at the little figure with
profound interest, and soon came forward and asked permission to speak
with the child. Of course his request was granted, and I don't know when
I have enjoyed a conversation more. She made some very smart answers,
which convulsed us all with laughter as we stood looking on; and the
creator of "little Nell" and "Paul Dombey" gave her up in despair. He
was so much interested in the little vagrant, that he sent a messenger
next morning to learn if the rightful owner of the bonnet had been
found. Report came back, on a duly printed form, setting forth that the
anxious father and mother had applied for the child at three o'clock in
the morning, and had borne her away in triumph to her home.

It was a warm summer afternoon towards the close of the day, when
Dickens went with us to visit the London Post-Office. He said: "I know
nothing which could give a stranger a better idea of the size of London
than that great institution. The hurry and rush of letters! men up to
their chin in letters! nothing but letters everywhere! the air full of
letters!--suddenly the clock strikes; not a person is to be seen, _nor_
a letter: only one man with a lantern peering about and putting one
drop-letter into a box." For two hours we went from room to room, with
him as our guide, up stairs and down stairs, observing the myriad clerks
at their various avocations, with letters for the North Pole, for the
South Pole, for Egypt and Alaska, Darien and the next street.

The "Blind Man," as he was called, appeared to afford Dickens as much
amusement as if he saw his work then for the first time; but this was
one of the qualities of his genius; there was inexhaustibility and
freshness in everything to which he turned his attention. The ingenuity
and loving care shown by the "Blind Man" in deciphering or guessing at
the apparently inexplicable addresses on letters and parcels excited his
admiration. "What a lesson to all of us," he could not help saying, "to
be careful in preparing our letters for the mail!" His own were always
directed with such exquisite care, however, that had he been brother to
the "Blind Man," and considered it his special work in life to teach
others how to save that officer trouble, he could hardly have done
better.

Leaving the hurry and bustle of the Post-Office behind us, we strolled
out into the streets of London. It was past eight o'clock, but the
beauty of the soft June sunset was only then overspreading the misty
heavens. Every sound of traffic had died out of those turbulent
thoroughfares; now and then a belated figure would hurry past us and
disappear, or perhaps in turning the corner would linger to "take a good
look" at Charles Dickens. But even these stragglers soon dispersed,
leaving us alone in the light of day and the sweet living air to
heighten the sensation of a dream. We came through White Friars to the
Temple, and thence into the Temple Garden, where our very voices echoed.
Dickens pointed up to Talfourd's room, and recalled with tenderness the
merry hours they had passed together in the old place. Of course we
hunted out Goldsmith's abode, and Dr. Johnson's, saw the site of the
Earl of Essex's palace, and the steps by which he was wont to descend to
the river, now so far removed. But most interesting of all to us there
was "Pip's" room, to which Dickens led us, and the staircase where the
convict stumbled up in the dark, and the chimney nearest the river
where, although less exposed than in "Pip's" days, we could well
understand how "the wind shook the house that night like discharges of
cannon, or breakings of a sea." We looked in at the dark old staircase,
so dark on that night when "the lamps were blown out, and the lamps on
the bridges and the shore were shuddering," then went on to take a peep,
half shuddering ourselves, at the narrow street where "Pip" by and by
found a lodging for the convict. Nothing dark could long survive in our
minds on that June night, when the whole scene was so like the airy work
of imagination. Past the Temple, past the garden to the river, mistily
fair, with a few boats moving upon its surface, the convict's story was
forgotten, and we only knew this was Dickens's home, where he had lived
and written, lying in the calm light of its fairest mood.

* * * * *

Dickens had timed our visit to his country house in Kent, and arranged
that we should appear at Gad's Hill with the nightingales. Arriving at
the Higham station on a bright June day in 1869, we found his stout
little pony ready to take us up the hill; and before we had proceeded
far on the road, the master himself came out to welcome us on the way.
He looked brown and hearty, and told us he had passed a breezy morning
writing in the chalet. We had parted from him only a few days before in
London, but I thought the country air had already begun to exert its
strengthening influence,--a process he said which commonly set in the
moment he reached his garden gate.

It was ten years since I had seen Gad's Hill Place, and I observed at
once what extensive improvements had been made during that period.
Dickens had increased his estate by adding quite a large tract of land
on the opposite side of the road, and a beautiful meadow at the back of
the house. He had connected the front lawn, by a passageway running
under the road, with beautifully wooded grounds, on which was erected
the Swiss chalet, a present from Fechter. The old house, too, had been
greatly improved, and there was an air of assured comfort and ease about
the charming establishment. No one could surpass Dickens as a host; and
as there were certain household rules (hours for meals, recreation,
etc.), he at once announced them, so that visitors never lost any time
"wondering" when this or that was to happen.

Lunch over, we were taken round to see the dogs, and Dickens gave us a
rapid biographical account of each as we made acquaintance with the
whole colony. One old fellow, who had grown superannuated and nearly
blind, raised himself up and laid his great black head against Dickens's
breast as if he loved him. All were spoken to with pleasant words of
greeting, and the whole troop seemed wild with joy over the master's
visit. "Linda" put up her shaggy paw to be shaken at parting; and as we
left the dog-houses, our host told us some amusing anecdotes of his
favorite friends.

Dickens's admiration of Hogarth was unbounded, and he had hung the
staircase leading up from the hall of his house with fine old
impressions of the great master's best works. Observing our immediate
interest in these pictures, he seemed greatly pleased, and proceeded at
once to point out in his graphic way what had struck his own fancy most
in Hogarth's genius. He had made a study of the painter's _thought_ as
displayed in these works, and his talk about the artist was delightful.
He used to say he never came down the stairs without pausing with new
wonder over the fertility of the mind that had conceived and the hand
that had executed these powerful pictures of human life; and I cannot
forget with what fervid energy and feeling he repeated one day, as we
were standing together on the stairs in front of the Hogarth pictures,
Dr. Johnson's epitaph, on the painter:--

"The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew the essential form of grace;
Here closed in death the attentive eyes
That saw the manners in the face."

Every day we had out-of-door games, such as "Bowls," "Aunt Sally," and
the like, Dickens leading off with great spirit and fun. Billiards came
after dinner, and during the evening we had charades and dancing. There
was no end to the new divertisements our kind host was in the habit of
proposing, so that constant cheerfulness reigned at Gad's Hill. He went
into his work-room, as he called it, soon after breakfast, and wrote
till twelve o'clock; then he came out, ready for a long walk. The
country about Gad's Hill is admirably adapted for pedestrian exercise,
and we went forth every day, rain or shine, for a stretcher. Twelve,
fifteen, even twenty miles were not too much for Dickens, and many a
long tramp we have had over the hop-country together. Chatham,
Rochester, Cobham Park, Maidstone,--anywhere, out under the open sky and
into the free air! Then Dickens was at his best, and talked. Swinging
his blackthorn stick, his lithe figure sprang forward over the ground,
and it took a practised pair of legs to keep alongside of his voice. In
these expeditions I heard from his own lips delightful reminiscences of
his early days in the region we were then traversing, and charming
narratives of incidents connected with the writing of his books.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35