V With Dickens in America22
When Mrs. Fields wrote the “Personal Recollections” of Oliver Wendell Holmes which appear in her “Authors and Friends,” she quoted, with a few changes prompted by modesty, this passage from a letter received from him at Christmas, 1881: “Except a few of my immediate family connections, no friends have seen me so often as a guest as did you and your husband. Under your roof I have met more visitors to be remembered than under any other. But for your hospitality I should never have had the privilege of personal acquaintance with famous writers and artists whom I can now recall as I saw them, talked with them, heard them in that pleasant library, that most lively and agreeable dining-room. How could it be otherwise with such guests as he entertained with his own unflagging vivacity and his admirable social gifts?”
One of the visitors thus encountered by Dr. Holmes was Charles Dickens. Here was a guest after the host’s own heart—and the hostess’s. The host stood alone among publishers as a friend of the authors with whom it was his business to deal. Out of them all there was none with whom he came to stand on terms of closer sympathy and friendship than with Dickens. They had first met when Dickens came to America in 1842, and Fields was by no means the conspicuous figure he was to become. When he visited Europe in 1859-60, with his young wife, whose personality was to contribute its own beauty and charm to the hospitality of 148 Charles Street for many years to come, they dined with Dickens in London, visited him at Gad’s Hill, and had much discussion of a plan, which Fields had been urging upon him in correspondence, for Dickens to come to America for a course of readings. As early as in one of the letters of this time, Dickens wrote to Fields: “Here I forever renounce ‘Mr.’ as having anything whatever to do with our communication, and as being a mere preposterous interloper.” From such beginnings grew the intimacy which caused Dickens, when he drew up the humorous terms of a walking-match between Dolby, his manager, and Osgood, Fields’s partner, while the Boston readings of 1868 were in progress, to define Fields as “Massachusetts Jemmy” and himself as the “Gad’s Hill Gasper” by virtue of his “surprising performances (without the least variation) on that true national instrument, the American catarrh.”
The visits of Dickens to America, first in 1842, then in the winter of 1867-68, have been the subject of abundant chronicle. For the first of them there is the direct record of his “American Notes,” besides those indirect reflections in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” which wrought an effect described by Carlyle in the characteristic saying that “all Yankee-doodledom blazed up like one universal soda bottle.” Many memorials of the second visit are preserved in Fields’s “Yesterdays with Authors,” and in John Forster’s “Life” both visits are of course recorded.
There is, besides, one source of intimate record of Dickens in America which hitherto has remained almost untouched.23 This is found in the diaries of Mrs. Fields, filled, as the preceding pages have shown, not merely with her own sympathetic observations, but with many things reported to her by her husband. To him it was largely due that Dickens crossed the Atlantic near the end of 1867. Landing in Boston, and soon beginning his extraordinarily popular readings, he found in the Charles Street house of the Fieldses a second home. “Steadily refusing all invitations to go out during the weeks he was reading,” wrote Fields in his “Yesterdays with Authors,” “he went only into one other house besides the Parker, habitually, during his stay in Boston.” In that house Mrs. Fields wrote the diaries from which the following passages are taken. There Dickens was not merely a warmly welcomed friend and guest at dinner, but for a time an inmate. Henry James, summoning after Mrs. Fields’s death his remembrances of her and of her abode, found in it “certain fine vibrations and dying echoes” of all the episode of Dickens’s second visit. “I liked to think of the house,” he wrote, “I couldn’t do without thinking of it, as the great man’s safest harborage through the tremendous gale of those even more leave-taking appearances, as fate was to appoint, than we then understood.”
In Dickens’s state of physical health while the Fieldses were thus seeing him, lay the only token of an end not far off. All else was gayety and delight. The uncontrollable laughter—where does one hear quite parallel notes to-day?—the simplicities of game and anecdote, the enthusiastic yielding of complete admiration, the glimpses of august figures of an earlier time—all these serve equally to take one back over more than half a century, into a state of society about which an element of myth begins to form, and to bring out of that past the living, human figure of Dickens himself.
For the most part these extracts from the diaries call for no explanations.
Several months before the great visitor’s arrival his coming was heralded by his business agent, of whom Mrs. Fields wrote:—
August 14, 1867.—Mr. Dolby arrived today from England (Mr. Dickens’s agent), a good, healthy, kindly natured man of whom Dickens seems really fond, having followed him to the steamer in Liverpool from London to see that all things were comfortably arranged for him. He says Dickens has lamed one of his feet with too much walking of late. He is here to arrange for 100 nights, for which he hears he may receive $200,000; the readings to begin the first of December and to be chiefly given in New York City.
August 15, 1867.—Our day was quiet enough, but when J. came down, he held us quite spellbound and magnetized all the evening with his account of Dickens, which Mr. Dolby had given him. He says Dolby himself is a queer creature when he talks. He has a stutter which leads him to become suddenly stately in the middle of a homely phrase and to give a queer intonation to his voice, so that he did not dare look at Osgood (who was a listener also) lest they should both explode with laughter.
Dickens now has five dogs; for these the cook prepares daily five plates of dinner. One day the plates were all ready when a small pup stole in and polished off the five plates. He fainted away immediately, and in this condition was discovered by the cook, who put him under the pump and revived him; but he had been going about looking like the figure 8 ever since.
Dickens is a warm friend of Fechter. One day, returning from a reading tour, his man met him at the station saying, “The fifty-eight boxes have come, sir.” “What?” said Mr. Dickens. “The fifty-eight boxes have come, sir.” “I know nothing of fifty-eight boxes,” said the other. “Well, sir,” said the man, “they are all piled up outside the gate and we shall soon see, sir.” They proved to be a Swiss chalet complete, handles, blinds, not a bit wanting, which Fechter had sent him. It is put up in a grove near the house, where it presents a very picturesque effect.
Dickens allows nothing to escape his attention and gives “one small corner of the white of one eye” to his household concerns, though he seems not to observe. His daughter Mary has the governance of the servants, Miss Hogarth of the cellar and provisions. There is a system in everything with which he has to do. When he gives a reading, he is present in the hall at half-past six, although the reading does not begin until eight; for Dickens cannot go about as other people do, he must go when the people do not press upon him. On reaching the private room, his servant brings his evening dress, reading desk, screen, lamps, when he arranges the hall, examines the copper gas-tubes to see if in order, dresses himself and is ready to begin. In Liverpool the other night he had advertised to read “Sergeant Buzfuz,” instead of which by accident he read “Bleak House.” Mr. Dolby spoke to him as soon as he had finished, telling him the mistake he had made. He at once returned to the desk, and said, “My friends, it is half-past ten o’clock and you see how tired I am, but I will still read Sergeant Buzfuz’s speech if you expect it.” “No, no,” the crowd shouted; “you’re tired. No, no, this ought to do for tonight.” One tall man raised himself up in the gallery and said, “Look here, we came to hear Pickwick and we ought to hef it.” “Very well, my friend,” replied Dickens, immediately, “I will read Sergeant Buzfuz for your accommodation solely”; and thereat he did read it to a breathless and delighted audience.
At length came Dickens himself, and the diary takes up the tale:—
November 18, 1867.—Today the steamer is telegraphed with Dickens on board, and the tickets for his readings have been sold. Such a rush! A long queue of people have been standing all day in the street—a good-humored crowd, but a weary one.24 The weather is clear but really cold, with winter’s pinch in it.
November 19.—... Yesterday I adorned Mr. Dickens’s room with flowers, which seemed to please him. He was in the best of good spirits with everything.
Thursday, November 21.—Mr. Dickens dined here. Agassiz, Emerson, Judge Hoar, Professor Holmes, Norton, Greene, dear Longfellow, last not least, came to welcome. Dickens sat on my right, Agassiz at my left. I never saw Agassiz so full of fun....
Dickens bubbled over with fun, and I could not help fancying that Holmes bored him a little by talking at him. I was sorry for this, because Holmes is so simple and lovely, but Dickens is sensitive, very. He is fond of Carlyle, seems to love nobody better, and gave the most irresistible imitation of him. His queer turns of expression often convulsed us with laughter, and yet it is difficult to catch them, as when, in speaking of the writer of books, always putting himself, his real self, in, “which is always the case,” he said; “but you must be careful of not taking him for his next-door neighbor.”
He spoke of the fineness of his Parisian audience:—“the most delicately appreciative of all audiences.” He also gave a most ludicrous account of a seasick curate trying to read the service on board ship last Sunday. He tells us Browning is really about to marry Miss Ingelow, and of Carlyle, that he is deeply saddened, irretrievably, by the death of his wife. Just as we were in a tempest of laughter over some witticism of his, he jumped up, seized me by the hand, and said good-night. He neither smoked nor drank. “I never do either from the time my readings ‘set in,’” he said, as if it were a rainy season....
Among other interesting personal facts Dickens told us that he had last year burned all his private letters. An appeal from the daughter of Sydney Smith for some of his letters set him thinking on the subject, and one day when there was a big fire—[sentence unfinished].
Mr. Dickens left the table just as we were in a tempest of laughter. Dr. Holmes... was telling how inappreciative he had found some country audiences—one he remembered in especial when his landlady accompanied him to the lecture and her face, he observed, was the only one which relaxed its grimness! “Probably because she saw money enough in the house to cover your expenses,” rejoined Dickens. That was enough; the laughter was prodigious....
Wednesday, November 27.—What a pity that these days have flown while I have been unable to make any record of them. J. has been to walk each day with Dickens, and has come home full of wonderful things he has said.25 His variety is so inexhaustible that one can only listen in wonder.
Thursday, 28.—Thanksgiving Day. J. took Dickens to see the Aldriches’ house. He was very much amused by what he saw there and has written out a full account to his daughter, Mrs. Collins....
I have made no record of our supper party of Wednesday evening. We had Alfred to wait, and a pretty supper and more important by far (tho’ the first a consequent of the last) a pretty company. There were Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Helen Bell and Mrs. Silsbee, Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. Hillard and Louisa and Mr. Beal. Mrs. Bell sang a little before supper (“Douglas” for one) very gracefully with real feeling. At nine o’clock oysters and fun began; finally Mr. Dickens told several ghost stories, but none of them more interesting than a little bit of clairvoyance or what-you-will, which he let drop concerning himself. He said a story was sent to him for “All the Year Round,” which he liked and accepted; just after the matter had been put in type, he received a letter from another person altogether from the one who had forwarded it in the first place, saying that he and not the first man was the author, and in proof of his position he supplied a date which was wanting in the first paper. Curiously enough, Mr. Dickens, seeing the story hinged upon a date and the date being but a blank in the MS., had supplied one, as it were by chance, and, behold! it was the same date which the new man had sent.
Sunday.—Dined with Mr. Dickens at six o’clock. Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. Dolby and ourselves were the only guests.
After dinner we played two or three games which I will set down lest they should be forgotten.
Descriptions of “Buzz,” “Russian Scandal,” and another wholly innocent amusement may be omitted.
Monday night, December 2, 1867.—The first great reading! How we listened till we seemed turned into one eyeball! How we all loved him! How we longed to tell him all kinds of confidences! How Jamie and he did hug in the anteroom afterward! What a teacher he seemed to us of humanity as he read out his own words which have enchanted us from childhood! And what a house it was! Longfellow, Dana, Norton (Mrs. Dana, Jr., and the three little Andrews went with us), and a world of lovely faces and ardent admirers.
Tuesday came Miss Dodge and Mrs. Hawthorne, Julian, and Rose. The reading was quite as remarkable, tho’ more quiet than that of the night before. As usual, we went to speak to him at his request after it was over. Found him in the best of spirits, but very tired. “You can’t think,” he said, “what resolution it requires to dress again after it is over!”
Monday, December 9.—Left home at 8 A.M. for New York. The day was clear and cold, the journey somewhat long, but on the whole extremely agreeable. We only had each other to plague or amuse, as the case might be, and we had the new Christmas story of Dickens and Wilkie Collins (called “No Thoroughfare”) to read, and so by sufficient attention to the peculiarities or follies or troubles of our neighbors and some forgetfulness of our own, we came to the Westminster Hotel at night, in capital spirits but rather frozen physically. We had scant time to dress and dine and to go to the Dickens reading. We accomplished it, nevertheless. Saw the rapturous enthusiasm, heard the “Carol” far better read than in Boston, because the applause was more ready and he felt stimulated by it. Afterward Mr. D. sent for us to come to his room. He was fatigued, of course, but we sat at table with him and after a while he began to feel warmer as vigor returned. He brought out his jewels for us to see—a pearl Count D’Orsay once wore, set with diamonds, etc.—laughed and talked about the way we dress and other bits of nonsense suggested by the time, all turned towards the fine light of Charles Dickens’s lovely soul and returning with a fresh gleam of beauty. We left early lest we should overfatigue him.
Wednesday, December 11.—At four Dickens came to dinner in our room with Eythinge and Anthony, his American designer and engraver. Afterward we went to the “Black Crook” together, and then home to the hotel, where we sat talking until one o’clock. There is nothing I should like so much to do as to set down every word he said in that time, but much must go down to oblivion....
He talked of actors and acting—said if a man’s Hamlet was a sustained conception, it was not to be quarrelled with; the only question was, what a man of melancholy temperament would do under such circumstances. Talked of Charles Reade and the greatness of “Griffith Gaunt,” and the pity of it that he did not stand on his own bottom instead of getting in with Dion Boucicault, etc., etc. But after dinner he unbent, and while we were in the box at the theatre showed how true his sympathies were with the actors, was especially careful to make no sound which could hurt their feelings by apparent want of attention. The play was very dull, so we sat and talked. He told me that no ballet dancer could have pretty feet, and one dreadful thing was they could never wash them, as water renders the feet tender and they must become horny. He asked about Longfellow’s sorrow again and expressed the deepest sympathy, but said he was like a man purified by suffering.
We had punch in our room after the play, when he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks over Bob Sawyer’s party and the remembrance of the laughter he had seen depicted on the faces of people the night before. Jack Hopkins was such a favorite with J. that D. made up the face again and went over the necklace story until we roared aloud. At length he began to talk of Fechter and to describe the sensitive character of the man. He saw him first quite by accident in Paris, having strolled into a little theatre there one night. He was making love to a woman, and so elevated her as well as himself by the sentiment in which he enveloped her that they trod into purer ether and in another sphere quite lifted out of the present. “‘By heavens!’ I said, ‘a man who can do this can do anything!’ I never saw two people more purely and instantly elevated by the power of love. The manner in which he presses the hem of the dress of Lucy in the ‘Bride of Lammermoor’ is something surpassing speech and simply wonderful. The man has a thread of genius in him which is unmistakable, yet I should not call him a man of genius exactly, either.” Mr. Dickens described him as a man full of plans for plays, one who had lost much money as a manager, too. He was apt to come down to Gad’s Hill with his head full of plans about a play which he wished Mr. Dickens to write out and which Fechter would act in the writing-room, using Mr. Dickens’s small pillow for a baby in a manner to make the latter feel, if Fechter were but a writer, how marvellous his powers of representation would be. “I, who for so many years have been studying the best way of putting things, felt utterly amazed and distanced by this man.”
Before the end of our talk Mr. Dickens became penetrated by the memory of his friend and brought him before us in all the warmth of ardent sympathy. Fechter is sure to come to this country: we are sure to have the happiness of knowing him (if we all live), and in that event I shall consider last night as the beginning of a new friendship.
Sunday, December 22.—Another week has gone. We are again at home in our dear little nook by the Charles, and tonight the lover of Christmas comes to have dinner with us. We had a merry time last Sunday, and after we had separated the hotel must needs take fire—to be sure, I had been packing and was in my first sleep and knew nothing distinctly of it; but it was an escape all the same and Mr. Dickens rushed out to help, as he always seems to do....
At night came Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Mr. Lowell and Mabel, Mr. and Mrs. Dorr, to dinner. It was really a beautiful Christmas festival, as we intended it should be for the love of this new apostle of Christmas. Mr. Dickens talked all the time, as he always will do, generously, when the moment comes that he sees it is expected, of Sir Sam. Baker, of Froude, of Fechter again, this time as if he did not know the man, but spoke critically as if he were a stranger, seeing Lowell’s face when his name was mentioned, which inclined itself sneeringly.
We played games at table afterward, which turned out so queerly that we had storms of laughter.
What a shame it is to write down anything respecting one’s contact with Charles Dickens and have it so slight as my accounts are; but the subtle turns of conversation are so difficult to render—the way in which he represents the woman who will not on any account be induced to look at him while he is reading, and at whom he looks steadily, endeavoring to compel the eyes to move—all these queer turns are too delicate to be set down. I thought I should have had a convulsion of laughter when Mrs. Dorr said Miss Laura Howe sat down in her (Mrs. D.’s) room and wrote out a charade in such an unparalleled and brilliant manner that nobody could have outshone her—not even the present company. “In the same given time, I trust?” said Dickens. “No, no,” said the lady, persistently.
December 31.—The year goes out clear and cold. The moon was marvellously bright last night, and every time I woke there she was with her attendant star looking freshly in upon us sleeping mortals in her eternal, unwearied way. We received a letter from Charles Dickens yesterday, saying he was coming to stay with us when he returns. What a pleasure this will be to us! We anticipate his coming with continual delight! To have him as much as we can, at morning, noon, and night.
This letter, long preserved in an American copy of “A Christmas Carol” on the shelves of the Charles Street library, throws a light of its own on the physical handicaps with which Dickens was struggling through all this time.
Westminster Hotel, New York
Sunday, Twenty-Ninth December, 1867
My dear Fields:—
When I come to Boston for the two readings of the 6th and 7th I shall be alone, as Dolby must be selling elsewhere. If you and Mrs. Fields should have no other visitor, I shall be very glad indeed on this occasion to come to you. It is very likely that you may have some one with you. Of course you will tell me so if you have, and I will then reëmbellish the Parker House.
Since I left Boston last, I have been so miserable that I have been obliged to call in a Dr.—Dr. Fordyce Barker, a very agreeable fellow. He was strongly inclined to stop the Readings altogether for some few days, but I pointed out to him how we stood committed, and how I must go on if it could be done. My great terror was yesterday’s Matinée, but it went off splendidly. (A very heavy cold indeed, an irritated condition of the uvula, and a restlessly low state of the nervous system, were your friend’s maladies. If I had not avoided visiting, I think I should have been disabled for a week or so.)
I hear from London that the general question in society is, what will be blown up next by the Fenians.
With love to Mrs. Fields, Believe me,
Ever affectionately yours,
And hers,
Charles Dickens
Saturday night, January 4.—All in readiness. Mr. Dickens arrived punctually with Mr. Osgood at half-past nine. Hot supper was soon in order and we put ourselves at it. The dear “chief” was in the best of good humor in spite of a cold which hangs about him and stuffs up head and throat, only leaving him for two hours at night when he reads. ’Tis something to be in first-rate mood with such a cold....
The Readings have been so successful in New York he cannot fail to be pleased, and he does not fail to show it. Kate Field, New Year’s Eve, placed a basket of flowers on his table; he had seen her bright eyes and sensitive face, he said. I was glad for Kate, because he wrote her a little note, which pleased her, of course.
Wednesday, January 8, 12 A.M.—I take up the pen again, having bade our guest a most unwilling farewell. Last night he read “Copperfield” and the Trial from “Pickwick.” It was an enormous house, packed in every extremity, receipts in gold about five hundred and ten pounds!! He was pleased, naturally, and read marvellously well even for him. He was somewhat excited and a good deal tired when he returned, and in spite of a light supper and stiff glass of punch, which usually contains soporific qualities, he could not sleep until near morning. He has been in the best of spirits during this visit—when he came downstairs last night to take a cup of coffee before leaving, he turned to J., saying, “The hour has almost come when I to sulphurous and tormenting gas must render up myself!” He has been afflicted with catarrh, which comes and goes and distracts him with a buzzing in his head. It usually leaves him for the two reading hours. This is convenient, but it probably returns with worse force.
Sunday night dinner went off brilliantly. Longfellow, Appleton, Mr. and Mrs. Thaxter came to meet “the chief” and ourselves. Unfortunately there was one empty seat which Rowse, the artist, had promised to fill, but was ill at the last and could not—curiously enough we had asked Osgood, Miss Putnam, and Mr. Gay besides, all kept away by accident when they would have given their eyes to come. In the course of the day he had been to see (with O. W. H.) the ground of the Parkman murder which has lately been so clearly described by Sir Emerson Tennent in “All the Year Round”; in the evening the talk turned naturally enough that way, when, after much surmise with regard to the previous life of the man, Mr. Longfellow looked up and with an assured, clear tone, said: “Now I have a story to tell! A year or two before this event took place Dr. Webster invited a party of gentlemen to a dinner at this house, I believe to meet some foreigner who was interested in science. The doctor himself was a chemist, and after dinner he had a large bowl placed in the centre of the table with some chemical mixture in it which he set on fire after turning the lamp low. A lurid light came from the bowl which caused a livid look upon the faces of those who sat round the table, and while all were observing the ghastly effect, Dr. Webster rose and, pulling a bit of rope from somewhere about his person, put it around his neck, reached his head over the bowl to heighten the effect, hung it on one side, and lolled his tongue out to give the appearance of a man who had been hanged!!! The whole scene was terrible and ghastly in the extreme, and, remembered in the light of what followed, had a prescience frightful to contemplate.”26
Appleton did not talk as much as usual, and we were rather glad; but Mrs. Thaxter’s story took strong hold on Dickens’s fancy, and he told me afterward that when he awaked in the night he thought of her. I have seldom sat at dinner with a gentleman more careful and fine in his choice and taste of food and drink than C. D. The idea of his ever passing the bounds of temperance is an absurdity not to be thought of for a moment. In this respect he is quite unlike Mr. Thackeray, who at times both ate and drank inordinately, and without doubt shortened his life by his carelessness in these particulars. John Forster, C. D.’s old friend, is quite ill with gout and some other ails, so C. D. writes him long letters full of his experiences. We breakfast at half-past nine punctually, he on a rasher of bacon and an egg and a cup of tea, always preferring this same thing. Afterward we talk or play with the sewing-machine or anything else new and odd to him. Then he sits down to write until one o’clock, when he likes a glass of wine and biscuit, and afterward goes to walk until nearly four, when we dine. After dinner, reading days, he will take a cup of strong coffee, a tiny glass of brandy, and a cigar, and likes to lie down for a short time to get his voice in order. His man then takes a portmanteau of clothes to the reading hall, where he dresses for the evening. Upon our return we always have supper and he brews a marvellous punch, which usually makes us all sleep like tops after the excitement. The perfect kindliness and sympathy which radiates from the man is, after all, the secret never to be told, but always to be studied and to thank God for. His rapid eyes, which nothing can escape, eyes which, when he first appears upon the stage, seem to interrogate the lamps and all things above and below (like exclamation points, Aldrich says), are unlike anything before in our experience. There are no living eyes like them, swift and kind, possessing none of the bliss of ignorance, but the different bliss of one who sees what the Lord has done and what, or something of what, he intends. Such charity! Poor man! He must have learned great need for that.... He is a man who has suffered, evidently. Georgina Hogarth he always speaks of in the most affectionate terms, such as “she has been a mother to my children,” “she keeps the list of the wine cellar, and every few days examines to see what we are now in want of.”
I hardly know anything more amusing than when he begs not to be “set a-going” on one of his readings by a quotation or otherwise, and [it is] odd enough to hear him go on, having been so touched off. He has been a great student of Shakespeare, which appears often in his talk. His love of the theatre is something which never pales, he says, and the people who go upon the stage, however poor their pay or hard their lot, love it, he thinks, too well ever to adopt another vocation of their free will. One of the oddest sights a green room presents, he says, is when they are collecting children for a pantomime. For this purpose the prompter calls together all the women in the ballet and begins giving out their names in order, while they press about him, eager for the chance of increasing their poor pay by the extra pittance their children will receive. “Mrs. Johnson, how many?” “Two, sir.” “What years?” “Seven and ten.” “Mrs. B.”—and so on until the requisite number is made up. He says, where one member of a family obtains regular employment at the theatre, others are sure to come in after a time; the mother will be in the wardrobe, children in pantomime, elder sisters in the ballet, etc.
When we asked him to return to us, he said he must be loyal to “the show,” and, having three or four men with him, ought to be at an hotel where he could attend properly to the business. He never forgets the needs of those who are dependent upon him, is liberal to his servants (and to ours also), and liberal in his heart to all sorts and conditions of men.
I have one deeply seated hope, that he will read for the Freed people before he leaves the country; and I cannot help thinking he will....
For more than a month from the time of this entry Dickens was carrying the triumph of his readings into other cities than Boston. There he had left a faithful champion in the person of Mrs. Fields, who wrote in her diary on January 26, 1868: “It is odd how prejudiced people have allowed themselves to become about Dickens. I seldom make a call where his name is introduced that I do not feel the injustice done to him personally, as if mankind resented the fact that he had excited more love than most men.” As his return to Boston drew near, she wrote, February 18th: “We are anticipating and doorkeeping for the arrival of our friend. Whatever unpleasant is said of Charles Dickens I take almost as if said against myself. It is so hard to help this when you love a friend.” On February 21st there is the entry: “We go to Providence tonight to hear ‘Dr. Marigold.’ I have been full of plans for next week, which is to be a busy season with us of company.”
Saturday, February 22.—We have heard “Marigold”! To be sure, the audience was sadly stupid and unresponsive, but we were penetrated by it.... What a night we had in Providence! Our beds were comfortable enough, for which we were deeply thankful; but none of the party slept, I believe, except Mr. Dolby, and his rest was inevitably cut short in the morning by business. I believe I lay awake from pure pleasure after such a treat. Hearing “Marigold” and having supper afterward with the dear great man. We played a game at cards which was most curious—indeed, something more—so much more that I have forgotten to be afraid of him.
In writing the chapter, “Glimpses of Emerson,” in “Authors and Friends,” Mrs. Fields drew freely upon the entry that here follows in its fullness.
Tuesday morning, February 25.—Somewhat fatigued. The “Marigold” went off brilliantly. He never read better nor was more universally applauded. Mr. Emerson came down to go, and passed the night here; of course we sat talking until late, he being much surprised at the artistic perfection of the performance. It was queer enough to sit by his side, for when his stoicism did at length break down, he laughed as if he must crumble to pieces at such unusual bodily agitation, and with a face on as if it hurt him dreadfully—to look at him was too much for me, already full of laughter myself. Afterward we all went in to shake hands for a moment.
When we came back home Mr. Emerson asked me a great many questions about C. D. and pondered much. Finally he said, “I am afraid he has too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it nor set at rest. You see him quite wrong, evidently; and would persuade me that he is a genial creature, full of sweetness and amenities and superior to his talents, but I fear he is harnessed to them. He is too consummate an artist to have a thread of nature left. He daunts me! I have not the key.”
When Mr. Fields came in he repeated, “Mrs. Fields would persuade me he is a man easy to communicate with, sympathetic and accessible to his friends; but her eyes do not see clearly in this matter, I am sure.” “Look for yourself, dear Mr. Emerson,” I answered, laughing, “and then report to me afterward.”
While we were enjoying ourselves in this way, a great change has come to the country. The telegram arrived during the Reading bringing the news of the President’s impeachment, 126 against 47. Since Johnson is to be thrust out, and since another revolution is upon us (Heaven help us that it be a peaceful one), we can only be thankful that the majority is so large. Mr. Dickens’s account of the ability of Johnson, of his apparent integrity and of his present temperance, as contrasted with the present (reported) failures of Grant in this respect, have made me shudder, for I presume Grant is inevitably the next man. Mrs. Agassiz was evidently pleased with the appearance of General Grant and his wife. She liked their repose of manner and ease; but I think this rather a shallow judgment because poise and ease of manner belong to the coarsest natures and to the finest; in the latter it is conquest; and this is why these qualities have so high a place in the esteem of man; but it is likewise the gift of society people who neither feel nor understand the varied natures with whom they come in contact.
Longfellow is at work on a tragedy, of which no words are spoken at present. Today Mr. Dickens does not go out; he is writing letters home. Yesterday he and J. walked seven miles, which is about their average generally....
February 27.—Longfellow’s birthday. Last night Dickens went to a supper at Lowell’s and J. passed the evening with Longfellow. L.’s tragedy comes on apace. He looks to Fechter to help him. Dickens has doubtless done much to quicken him to write. He has two nearly finished in blank verse, both begun since this month came in. J. returned at half-past eleven, bringing an unread newspaper in his pocket which L. had lent him, telling him to read something to me about Dickens and return. Ah me! We could have cried as we read! It was the saddest of sad letters, written at the time the separation from his wife took place. The gentleman to whom he wrote it has died and the letter has stolen into print. I only hope the poor man may never see it.
Tonight he reads “Carol” and “Boots” and sups here with Longfellow afterward.
An entry in Mrs. Fields’s diary about two years later indicates with some clearness that she overestimated the sympathy between Longfellow and Dickens. After a visit from Longfellow, she wrote, May 24, 1870:—
When Mr. L. talks so much and so pleasantly, I am curiously reminded of Dickens’s saying to Forster, who lamented that he did not see Longfellow upon his return to London, “It was not a great loss this time, Forster; he had not a word to say for himself—he was the most embarrassing man in all England!” It is a difference of temperament which will never let those two men come together. They have no handle by which to take hold of each other. Longfellow told a gentleman at his table when J. was present that Dickens saved himself for his books, there was nothing to be learned in private—he never talked!!
To return to Dickens in Boston:—
Sunday, March 1.—What a week we have had! I feel utterly weary this morning, although I did start up with exceeding bravery and walked four miles just after breakfast, in order to see that the flowers were right at church and to ask some people to dinner today who could not, however, come. The air was very keen and exciting and I did not know I was tired until I came back and collapsed. Our supper came off Thursday, but without Dickens. His cold had increased upon him seriously and he was really ill after his long, difficult reading. But Longfellow was perfectly lovely, so easily pleased and so deeply pleased with my little efforts to make this day a festival time. Dickens and Whittier both sent affectionate and graceful notes when they found they really could not come. Our company stayed until two A.M., Emerson never more talkative and good. He is a noble purifier of the social atmosphere, always keeping the talk simple as possible but up to the highest pitch of thought and feeling.
Friday, the Dana girls, Sallie and Charlotte, passed the night with us and went to the reading and shook hands with Mr. Dickens afterward. They were perfectly happy when they went away yesterday....
[The walking match between Dolby and Osgood to which the following paragraph refers has already been mentioned. The elaborately humorous conditions of the contest, drawn up by Dickens, are printed in “Yesterdays with Authors.” “We have had such a funny paper from Dickens today,” Mrs. Fields had written in her diary, on February 5th, “that it can only describe itself—Articles drawn up arranging for a walk and dinner upon his return here, as if it were some fierce legal document.”]
I had barely time yesterday, after the girls left, to dress and prepare some flowers and some lunch and make my way in a carriage, first to the Parker House at Mr. Dickens’s kind request, to see if all the table arrangements were perfect for the dinner. I found he had done everything he could think of to make the feast go off well and had really left nothing for me to suggest, so I turned about and drove over the mill-dam, following Messrs. Dickens, Dolby, Osgood, and Fields, who had left just an hour before on a walking match of six miles out and six in. This agreement was made and articles drawn up several weeks ago, signed and sealed in form by all the parties, to come off without regard to the weather. The wind was blowing strong from the north-west, very cold, and the snow blowing, too. They had turned and were coming back when I came up with them. Osgood was far ahead and, after saluting them all and giving a cheer for America, discovering too that they had refreshed on the way, I drove back to Mr. Osgood, keeping near him and administering brandy all the way in town. The walk was accomplished in precisely two hours forty-eight minutes. Of course Mr. Dickens stayed by his man, who was beaten out and out. They were all exhausted, for the snow made the walking extremely difficult, and they all jumped into carriages and drove home with great speed to bathe and sleep before dinner.
At six o’clock we were assembled, eighteen of us, for dinner, looking our very best (I hope)—at least we all tried for that, I am sure—and sat punctually down to our elegant dinner. I have never seen a dinner more beautiful. Two English crowns of violets were at the opposite ends of the table and flowers everywhere arranged in perfect taste. I sat at Mr. Dickens’s right hand and next Mr. Lowell. Mrs. Norton sat the other side of our host, and he divided his attention loyally between us. He talked with me about Spiritualism as it is called, the humbug of which excites his deepest ire, although no one could believe more entirely than he in magnetism and the unfathomed ties between man and man. He told me many curious things about the traps which had been laid by well-meaning friends to bring him into “spiritual” circles. But he said, “If I go to a friend’s house for the purpose of exposing a fraud in which she believes, I am doing a very disagreeable thing and not what she invited me for. Forster and I were invited to Lord Dufferin’s to a little dinner with Home. I refused, but Forster went, saying beforehand to Lord Dufferin that Home would have no spirits about if he came. Lord Dufferin said, ‘Nonsense,’ and the dinner came off; but they were hardly seated at table when Home announced that there was an adverse influence present and the spirits would not appear. ‘Ah,’ said Forster, ‘my spirits in this case were clearer than yours, for they told me before I came that there would be no manifestations tonight.’”
Speaking of dreams, he said he was convinced that no man (judging from his own experience, which could not be altogether singular, but must be a type of the experience of others), he believed no writer, neither Shakespeare nor Scott nor any other who had ever invented a character, had ever been known to dream about the creature of his imagination. It would be like a man’s dreaming of meeting himself, which was clearly an impossibility. Things exterior to oneself must always be the basis of our dreams. This talk about characters led him to say how mysterious and beautiful the action of the mind was around any given subject. “Suppose,” he said, “this wine-glass were a character, fancy it a man, endue it with certain qualities, and soon fine filmy webs of thoughts almost impalpable coming from every direction, and yet we know not from where, spin and weave around it until it assumes form and beauty and becomes instinct with life....”
Mr. Lowell asked him some question in a low voice about the country, when I heard him say presently that it was very much grown up, indeed he should not know oftentimes that he was not in England, things went on so much the same and with very few exceptions (hardly worth mentioning) he was let alone precisely as he would have been there.
He loves to talk of Gad’s Hill and stopped joyfully from other talk to tell me how his daughter Mary arranged his table with flowers. He speaks continually of her great taste in combining flowers. “Sometimes she will have nothing but water-lilies,” he said, as if the memory were a fragrance.
Some one has said, “We cannot love and be wise.” I will gladly give away the inconsistent wisdom, for Jamie and I are truly penetrated with grateful love to C. D.
Wednesday, March 3.—Mr. Dickens came over last night with Messrs. Osgood and Dolby, to pass the evening and have a little punch and supper and a merry game with us....
They left punctually before eleven, having promised the driver they would not keep him waiting in the cold. Jamie has every day long walks with him. He has told him much regarding the forms and habits of his life. He is fond of “Gad’s Hill,” and his “dear daughters” and their aunt, Miss Hogarth, make his home circle. What a dear one it is to him can be seen whenever his thought turns that way; and if his letters do not come punctually, he is in low spirits. He is a great actor and artist, but above all a great and loving and well-beloved man. (This I cling to in memory of Mr. Emerson’s dictum.)
I am deep in Carlyle’s history and every little thing I hear chimes in with that. After the dinner (at the Parker) the other night, Mr. Dickens thought he would take a warm bath; but, the water being drawn, he began playing the clown in pantomime on the edge of the bath (with his clothes on) for the amusement of Dolby and Osgood; in a moment and before he knew where he was, he had tumbled in head over heels, clothes and all. A second and improved edition of “Les Noyades,” I thought. Surely this book is a marvel of thought and labor. Why, why have I left it unknown to myself until now? I fear, unlike Lowell, it is because I could not read eighteen uninterrupted hours without apoplexy or some other ’exy, which would destroy what power I have forever.
March 6.—Mr. Dickens dined here last night without company except Messrs. Dolby and Osgood and Howells. We had a very merry time. They had been to visit the Cambridge Printing Office in the afternoon and had been shown so many things that “the chief” said he began to think he should have a bitter hatred against any mortal who undertook to show him anything else in the world, and laughed immoderately at J.T.F.’s proposition to show him the new fruit house afterward. We all had a game of Nincomtwitch and separated rather early because we were going to a party; and as C. D. shook me by the hand to say good-bye, he said he hoped we would have a better time at this party than he ever had at any party in all his life. A part of the dinner-time was taken up by half guess and half calculation of how far Mr. Dickens’s manuscript would extend in a single line. Mr. Osgood said 40 miles. J. said 100,000 (!!). I believe they are really going to find out. C. D. said he felt as if it would go farther than 40 miles, and was inclined to be “down” on Osgood until he saw him doing figures in his head after a fearful fashion. All this amusing talk served to give one a strange, weird sensation of the value of words over time and space; these little marks of immeasurable value covering so slight a portion of the rough earth! Howells talked a little of Venice, thought the Ligurians lived better than the Venetians. C. D. said they ate but little meat when he lived in Genoa; chiefly “pasta” with a good soup poured over it....
He leaves Boston today, to return the first of April, so I will end this poor little surface record here, hoping always that the new sheet shall have something written down of a deeper, simpler, and more inseeing nature.
On the return of Dickens to Boston, Mrs. Fields dined with him at the Parker House, March 31, 1868, and, commenting on his lack of “talent” for sleeping, wrote in her diary:—
I remember Carlyle says, “When Dulness puts his head upon his mattresses, Dulness sleeps,” referring to the apathetic people who went on their daily habits and avocations in Paris while men were guillotined by thousands in the next street. Mr. Dickens talked as usual, much and naturally—first of the various hotels of which he had late experience. The one in Portland was particularly bad, the dinner, poor as it was, being brought in small dishes, “as if Osgood and I should quarrel over it,” everything being very bad and disgusting which the little dishes contained.
At last they came to the book, “Ecce Homo,” in which Dickens can see nothing of value, any more than we. He thinks Jesus foresaw and guarded as well as he could against the misinterpreting of his teaching, that the four Gospels are all derived from some anterior written Scriptures—made up, perhaps, with additions and interpolations from the “Talmud,” in which he expressed great interest and admiration. Among other things which prove how little the Gospels should be taken literally is the fact that broad phylacteries were not in use until some years after Jesus lived, so that the passage in which this reference occurs, at least, must only be taken as conveying the spirit and temper, not the actual form of speech, of our Lord. Mr. Dickens spoke reverently and earnestly, and said much more if I could recall it perfectly.
Then he came to “spiritualism” again, and asked if he had ever told us his interview with Colchester, the famous medium. He continued that, being at Knebworth one day, Lytton, having finished his dinner and retired to the comfort of his pipe, said: “Why don’t you see some of these famous men? What a pity Home has just gone.” (Here Dickens imitated to the life Lytton’s manner of speaking, so I could see the man.) “Well,” said D., “he went on to say so much about it that I inquired of him who was the next best man. He said there was one Colchester, if possible better than Home. So I took Colchester’s address, got Charley Collins, my son-in-law, to write to him asking an interview for five gentlemen and for any day he should designate, the hour being two o’clock. A day being fixed, I wrote to a young French conjuror, with whom I had no acquaintance but had observed his great cleverness at his business before the public, to ask him to accompany us. He acceded with alacrity. Therefore, with poor Chauncey Townshend, just dead, and one other person whom I do not at this moment recall, we waited upon Mr. Colchester. As we entered the room, I leading the way, the man, recognizing me immediately, turned deadly pale, especially when he saw me followed by the conjuror and Townshend, who, with his colored imperial and beard and tight-fitting wig, looked like a member of the detective police. He trembled visibly, became livid to the eyes, all of which was visible in spite of paint with which his face was covered to the eyes. He withdrew for a few minutes, during which we heard him in hot discussion with his accomplice, telling him how he was cornered and trying to imagine some way in which to get out of the trap, the other evidently urging him to go through with it now the best way he could. He returned, therefore, and placed himself with his back to the light, while it shone upon our faces. We sat awhile in silence until he began, insolently turning to me: ‘Take up the alphabet and think of somebody who is dead, pass your hands over the letters, and the spirit will indicate the name.’ I thought of Mary and took the alphabet, and when I came to M, he rapped; but I was sure that I had unconsciously signified by some movement and determined to be more skilful the next time.
For the next letter, therefore, he went on to H, and then asked me if that was right. I told him I thought the spirits ought to know. He then began with some one else, but doing nothing he became hotter and hotter, the perspiration pouring from his face, until he got up, said the spirits were against him, and was about to withdraw. I then rose and told him that it was the most shameless imposition, that he had got us there with the intent to deceive and under false pretences, that he had done nothing and could do nothing. He offered to return our money—I said the fact of his taking the money at all was the point. At last the wretch said, turning to the Frenchman, ‘I did tell you one name, Valentine.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the young conjuror, with a sudden burst of English, ‘Yes, but I showed it to you!’ indicating with a swift movement of the hand how he had given him a chance.” Then it was all up with Colchester, and more scathing words than those spoken by Dickens to him have been seldom spoken by mortal.
It was the righteous anger of one trying to avenge and help the world. Mr. Dickens always seems to me like one who, working earnestly with his eyes fixed on the immutable, nevertheless finds to his own surprise that his words place him among the prophets. He does not arrogate a place to himself there; indeed he is singularly humble (as it seems to us) in the moral position he takes; but for all that is led by the Divine Hand to see what a power he is and in an unsought-for manner finds himself among the teachers of the earth. He says nowhere is a man placed in such an unfair position as at church. If one could only be allowed to get up and state his objections, it would be very well, but under the circumstances he declines being preached to.
A few days later Mrs. Fields heard Dickens read the “Christmas Carol” for the last time in Boston.
Such a wonderful evening as it was!! We were on fire with enthusiasm and in spite of some people who went with us... looking, as C. D. said, as if they were sorry they had come, they were really filled with enthusiasm, and enjoying as fully as their critical and crossed natures would allow. He himself was full of fun and put in all manner of queer things for our amusement; but what he put in, involuntarily, when he turned on a man who was standing staring fixedly at him with an opera glass, was almost more than we could bear. The stolidity of the man, the fixed glass, the despairing, annihilating look of Dickens were too much for our equanimity.
Thursday.—Anniversary of C. D.’s marriage day and of John Forster’s birthday. C. D. not at all well, coughing all the time and in low spirits. Mr. Dolby came in when J. was there in the morning to say there were two gentlemen from New Bedford (friends of Mr. Osgood’s) who wished to see him. Would he allow them to come in? “No, I’ll be damned if I will,” he said, like a spoiled child, starting up from his chair! J. was equally amused and astonished at the outburst, but sleeplessness, narcotics, and the rest of the crew of disturbers have done their worst. My only fear is he may be ill. However, they had a walk together towards noon and he revived, but coughed badly in the evening. I think, too, only $1300 in the house was bad for his spirits!
April 7.—Dickens... told Jamie the other day in walking that he wrote “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Oliver Twist” at the same time for rival magazines from month to month. Once he was taken ill, with both magazines waiting for unwritten sheets. He immediately took steamer for Boulogne, took a room in an inn there, secure from interruption, and was able to return just in season for the monthly issues with his work completed. He sees now how the work of both would have been better done had he worked only upon one at a time.
After the exertion of last evening he looked pale and exhausted. Longfellow and Norton joined with us in trying to dissuade him from future Readings after these two. He does not recover his vitality after the effort of reading, and his spirits are naturally somewhat depressed by the use of soporifics, which at length became a necessity.... “Copperfield” was a tragedy last night—less vigor but great tragic power came out of it.
April 8.—In spite of a deluge of rain last night there was a large audience to hear Dickens, and Longfellow came as usual. He read with more vigor than the night before and seemed better.... The time approaches swiftly for our flight to New York. We dread to leave home and would only do it for him, besides, the pleasure must be much in the fact of trying to do something rather than in really doing anything, for I fear he will be too ill and utterly fatigued to care much about anything but rest.
Friday, April 10.—Left home at eight o’clock in the morning, found our dearly beloved friend C. D. already awaiting us, with two roses in his coat and looking as fresh as possible. It was my first ride in America in a compartment car. Mr. Dolby made the fourth in our little party and we had a table and a game of “Nincom” and “Casino” and talked and laughed and whiled away the time pleasantly until we arrived here at the Westminster Hotel in time for dinner at six. I was impressed all day long with the occasional languor which came over C. D. and always with the exquisite delicacy and quickness of his perception, something as fine as the finest woman possesses, which combined itself wondrously with the action of the massive brain and the rapid movement of those strong, strong hands. I felt how deeply we had learned to love him and how hard it would be for us to part.
At dinner he gave us a marvellous description of his life as a reporter. It seems he invented (in a measure) a system of stenography for himself; this is to say he altered Gurney’s system to suit his own needs. He was a very young man, not yet 20, when at seven guineas a week he was engaged as reporter on the “Morning Chronicle,” then a very large and powerful paper. At this period the present Lord Derby, then Mr. Stanley, was beginning his brilliant career, and O’Connell, Shiel, and others were at the height of their powers. Wherever these men spoke a corps of reporters was detailed to follow them and with the utmost expedition forward verbatim reports to the “Chronicle.” Often and often he has gone by post-chaise to Edinburgh, heard a speech or a part of it (having instructions, whatever happened, to leave the place again at a certain hour, the next reporter taking up his work where he must leave it), and has driven all the way back to London, a bag of sovereigns on one side of his body and a bag of slips of paper on the other, writing, writing desperately all the way by the light of a small lamp. At each station a man on horseback would stand ready to seize the sheets already prepared and ride with them to London. Often and often this work would make him deadly sick and he would have to plunge his head out of the window to relieve himself; still the writing went steadily forward on very little slips of paper which he held before him, just resting his body on the edge of the seat and his paper on the front of the window underneath the lamp. As the station was reached, a sudden plunge into the pocket of sovereigns would pay the postboys, another behind him would render up the completed pages, and a third into the pocket on the other side would give him the fresh paper to carry forward the inexorable, unremitting work.
At this period there was a large sheet started in which all the speeches of Parliament were reported verbatim in order to preserve them for future reference—a monstrous plan which fell through after a time. For this paper it was especially desired to have a speech of Mr. Stanley accurately reported upon the condition of Ireland, containing suggestions for the amelioration of the people’s suffering. It was a very long and eloquent speech and took many hours in the delivery. There were eight reporters upon the work, each to work three-quarters of an hour and then to retire to write out his portion and be succeeded by the next. It happened that the roll of reporters was exhausted before the speech came to an end and C. D. was called in to report the last portions, which were very eloquent. This was on Friday, and on Saturday the whole was given to the press and the young reporter ran down to the country for a Sunday’s rest. Sunday morning had scarcely dawned “when my poor father, who was a man of immense energy, surprised me by making his appearance. The speech had come into Mr. Stanley’s hands, who was most anxious to have it correctly given in order to have it largely circulated in Ireland, and he found it all bosh, hardly a word right, except at the beginning and the end. Sending immediately to the office, he had obtained my sheets, at the top of which, according to custom, the name of the reporter was written, and, finding the name of Dickens, had immediately sent in search of me. My father, thinking this would be the making of me, came immediately, and I followed him back to London. I remember perfectly the look of the room and of the two gentlemen in it as I entered—Mr. Stanley and his father. They were extremely courteous, but I could see their evident surprise at the appearance of so young a man. For a moment as we talked I had taken a seat extended to me in the middle of the room. Mr. Stanley told me he wished to go over the whole speech, and if I was ready he would begin. Where would I like to sit? I told him I was very well where I was and we would begin immediately. He tried to induce me to sit elsewhere or more comfortably, but at that time in the House of Commons there was nothing but one’s knees to write upon and I had formed the habit of it. Without further pause then he began, and went on hour after hour to the end, often becoming very much excited, bringing down his hand with violence upon the desk near which he stood and rising at the end into great eloquence.
“In these later years we never meet without that scene returning vividly to my mind, as I have no doubt it does to his also, but I, of course, have never referred to it, leaving him to do so if he shall ever think fit.
“Shiel was a small man with a queer high voice and spoke very fast. O’Connell had a fine brogue which he cultivated, and a magnificent eye. He had written a speech about this time upon the wrongs of Ireland, and, though he repeated it many, many times during three months when I followed him about the country, I never heard him give it twice the same, nor ever without being himself deeply moved.”27
Mr. Dickens’s imitation of Bulwer Lytton is so vivid that I feel as if it were taking a glimpse at the man himself. His deaf manner of speaking he represents exactly. He says he is very brilliant and quick in conversation, and knows everything!! He is a conscientious and unremitting student and worker. “I have been surprised to see how well his books wear. Lately I have reread ‘Pelham’ and I assure you I found it admirable. His speech at the dinner given to me just before leaving was well written, full of good things, but delivered execrably. He lacks a kind of confidence in his own powers which is necessary in a good speaker.”
Speaking of O’Connell, Mr. Dickens said there had been nobody since who could compare with him but John Bright, who is at present the finest speaker in England. Cobden was fond of reasoning, and hardly what would be called a brilliant speaker; but his noble truthfulness and devotion to the cause to which he had pledged himself made him one of the grandest of England’s great men. I asked about Mrs. Cobden. He told me she had been made very comfortable and in a beautiful manner. After her husband’s death, his affairs having become involved by some bad investment he had made, a committee of six gentlemen came together to consider what should be done to commemorate his great and unparalleled devotion to his country. The result was, instead of having a public subscription for Mrs. Cobden with the many unavoidable and disagreeable features of such a step, each of these gentlemen subscribed about £12,000, thus making £70,000, a sufficient sum to make her most comfortable for life....
I have forgotten to say how in those long rides from Edinburgh the mud dashed up and into the opened windows of the post-chaise, nor how they would be obliged to fling it off from their faces and even from the papers on which they wrote. As Dickens told us, he flung the imaginary evil from him as he did the real in the days long gone, and we could see him with the old disgust returned. He said, by the way, that never since those old days when he left the House of Commons as a Reporter had he entered it again. His hatred of the falseness of talk, of bombastic eloquence, he had heard there made it impossible for him ever to go in again to hear anyone.
Sunday, April 12.—Last night we went to the circus together, C. D., J., and I. It is a pretty building. I was astonished at the knowledge C. D. showed of everything before him. He knew how the horses were stenciled, how tight the wire bridles were, etc. The monkey was, however, the chief attraction. He was rather drunk or tired last night and did not show to good advantage, but he knew how to do all the things quite as well as the men. When the young rope-dancer slipped (he was but an apprentice at the business, without wages, C. D. thought), he tried over and over again to accomplish a certain somersault until he achieved it. “That’s the law of the circus,” said C. D.; “they are never allowed to give up, and it’s a capital rule for everything in life. Doubtless this idea has been handed down from the Greeks or Romans and these people know nothing about where it came from. But it’s well for all of us.”...
At six o’clock Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby came in to dinner. He seemed much revived both in health and spirits, in spite of the weather....
Dickens talked of Frédérick Lemaître; he is upwards of sixty years old now; but he has always lived a wretched life, a low, poor fellow; yet he will surprise the actors continually by the new points he will make. He will come in at rehearsal, go about the stage in an abject wretched manner, with clothes torn and soiled as he has just emerged from his vulgar, vicious haunts, and without giving sign or glimmer of his power. Presently he says to the prompter, who always has a tallow candle burning on his box, “Give me your candle”; then he will blow it out and with the snuff make a cross upon his book. “What are you going to do, Frédérick?” the actors say. “I don’t know yet; you’ll see by and by,” he says, and day after day perhaps will pass, until one night when he will suddenly flash upon them some wonderful point. They, the actors, watching him, try to hold themselves prepared, and if he gives them the least hint will mould their parts to fit his. Sometimes he will ask for a chair. “What will you do with it, Frédérick?” He does not reply, but night after night the chair is placed there until he makes his point. He often comes hungry to the theatre, and the manager must give him a dinner and pay for it before he will go on. Fechter, from whom these particulars come, tells Dickens that there can be nothing more wonderful than his acting in the old scene of the miserable father who kills his own son at the inn. The son, coming in rich and handsome, and seeing this old sot about to be driven from the porch by the servant, tells the man to give him meat and wine. While he eats and drinks, the wretch sees how freely the rich man handles his gold and resolves to kill him. Fechter’s description, with his own knowledge of Lemaître, had so inspired Dickens that he was able to reproduce him again for us.
Wednesday, April 15.—[On returning from a reading in “Steinway Hall, than which nothing could be worse for reading or speaking”]: He soon came up after a little soup, when he called for brandy and lemons and made such a burnt brandy punch as has been seldom tasted this side of the “pond.” As the punch blazed his spirits rose and he began to sing an old-fashioned comic song such as in the old days was given between the plays at the theatre. One song led to another until we fell into inextinguishable laughter, for anything more comic than his renderings of the chorus cannot be imagined. Surely there is no living actor who could excel him in these things if he chose to exert his ability. His rendering of “Chrush ke lan ne chouskin!!” or a lingo which sounded like that (the refrain of an old Irish song) was something tremendous. We laughed till I was really afraid he would make himself too hoarse to read the next night. He gave a queer old song full of rhymes, obtained with immense difficulty and circumlocution, to the word “annuity,” which it appeared has been sought by an old woman with great assiduity and granted with immense incongruity. The negro minstrels have in great part supplanted these queer old English, Irish, and Scotch ballads, but they are sure to come up again from time to time. We did not separate until 12, and felt the next morning (as he said) as if we had had a regular orgy. They did not forget, Dolby and he, to pay a proper tribute to “Maryland, My Maryland,” and “Dixie” as very stirring ballads.
[After another reading, from which Dickens came home extremely tired]: We ran in at once to talk with him and he soon cheered up. When I first pushed open the door he was a perfect picture of prostration, his head thrown back without support on the couch, the blood suffusing his throat and temples again where he had been very white a few minutes before. This is a physical peculiarity with Dickens which I have never seen before in a man, though women are very subject to that thing. Excitement and exercise of reading will make the blood rush into his hands until they become at times almost black, and his face and head (especially since he has become so fatigued) will turn from red to white and back to red again without his being conscious of it.
Friday, April 17.—Weather excessively warm, sky often overcast. Last evening Mr. Dickens read again and for the last time “Copperfield” and “Bob Sawyer.” He was much exhausted and said he watched a man who was carried out in a fainting condition to see how they managed it, with the lively interest of one who was about to go through the same scene himself. The heat from the gas around him was intolerable. After the reading we went into his room to have a little soup, “broiled bones,” and a sherry cobbler. His spirits were good in spite of fatigue, the thought of home and the memories of England coming back vividly. We, finally, from talk of English scenery, found ourselves in Stratford. He says there is an inn at Rochester, very old, which he has no doubt Shakespeare haunted. This conviction came forcibly upon him one night as he was walking that way and discovered Charles’s Wain setting over the chimney just as Shakespeare has described. “When you come to Gad’s Hill, please God, I will show you Charles’s Wain setting over the old roof.”
We left him early, hoping he would sleep, but he hardly closed his eyes all night. Whether he was haunted by visions of home, or what the cause was, we cannot discover, but whatever it may be, his strength fails under such unnatural and continual excitement.
Saturday, April 18.—Mr. Dickens has a badly sprained foot. We like our rooms at his hotel—47 is the number. Last night was “Marigold” and “Gamp” for the last time. He threw in a few touches for our amusement and a great deal of vigor into the whole. Afterward we took supper together, when he told us some remarkable things. Among others he rehearsed a scene described to him years ago by Dr. Eliotson of London of a man about to be hanged. His last hour had approached as the doctor entered the cell of the criminal, who was as justly sentenced as ever a wretch was for having cut off the end of his own illegitimate child. The man was rocking miserably in his chair back and forth in a weak, maudlin condition, while the clergyman in attendance, who had spoken of him as repentant and religious in his frame of mind, was administering the sacrament. The wine stood in a cup at one side until the sacred words were said, when at the proper moment the clergyman gave it to the man, who was still rocking backward and forward, muttering, “What will my poor mother think of this?” Finding the cup in his hands, he looked into it for a moment as if trying to collect himself, and then, putting on his regular old pothouse manner, he said, “Gen’lemen, I drink your health,” and drained the cup in a drunken way. “I think,” said C. D., “it is thirty years since I heard Dr. Eliotson tell me this, but I shall never forget the horror that scene inspired in my mind.” The talk had taken this turn from the fact of a much-dreaded Press dinner which is to come off tonight and which jocosely assumed the idea of a hanging to their minds. C. D. said he had often thought how restricted one’s conversation must become with a man who was to be hanged in half an hour. “You could not say, if it rains, ‘We shall have fine weather tomorrow!’ for what would that be to him? For my part, I think I should confine my remarks to the times of Julius Cæsar and King Alfred!!” He then related a story of a condemned man out of whom no evidence could be elicited. He would not speak. At last he was seated before a fire for a few moments, just before his execution, when a servant entered and smothered what fire there was with a huge hodful of coal. “In half an hour that will be a good fire,” he was heard to murmur.
Mr. Dickens has now read 76 times. It seems like a dream.
Sunday, April 19.—Last night the great New York Press dinner came off. It was a close squeeze with Mr. Dickens to get there at all. He had been taken lame the night before, his foot becoming badly swollen and painful. In spite of a skilful physician he grew worse and worse every hour, and when the time for the dinner arrived he was unable to bear anything upon his foot. So long as he was above ground, however, it was a necessity he should go, and an hour and a half after the time appointed, with his foot sewed up in black silk, he made his way to Delmonico’s. Poor man! Nothing could be more unfortunate, but he bore this difficult part off in a stately and composed manner as if it were a sign of the garter he were doffing for the first time instead of a badge of ill health. The worst of it is that the papers will telegraph news of his illness to England. This seems to disturb him more than anything else. Ah! What a mystery these ties of love are—such pain, such ineffable happiness—the only happiness. After his return he repeated to me from memory every word of his speech without dropping one. He never thinks of such a thing as writing his speeches, but simply turns it over in his mind and “balances the sentences,” when he is all right. He produced an immense effect on the Press of New York, tremendous applause responding to every sentence. Curtis’s speech was very beautiful. “I think him the very best speaker I ever heard,” said C. D. “I am sure he would produce a great effect in England from the sympathetic quality he possesses.” I have seldom seen a finer exercise of energy of will than Mr. Dickens’s attendance on this dinner. It brought its own reward, too, for he returned with his foot feeling better. He made a rum punch in his room, where we sat until one o’clock. After repeating his speech, he gave us an imitation of old Rogers as he would repeat a quatrain:—
“The French have sense in what they do
Which we are quite without,
For what in Paris they call goût
In England we call gout.”
Mr. Dolby sat at dinner near a poor bohemian of great keenness of mind, Henry Clapp, by name, who said some things worthy of Rivarol or any other wittiest Frenchman we might choose to select. Speaking of Horace Greeley (the chairman at the dinner), he said: “He was a self-made man and worshipped his creator.” Of Dr. O——, a vain and popular clergyman, that “he was continually looking for a vacancy in the Trinity.” Of Mr. Dickens, that “nothing gave him so high an idea of Mr. Dickens’s genius as the fact that he created Uriah Heep without seeing a certain Mr. Young (who sat near them), and Wilkins Micawber without being acquainted with himself (Henry Clapp).” Of Henry T—— that “he aimed at nothing and always hit the mark precisely.”
This speech of Mr. Dickens will make a fine effect, a reactionary effect, in the country. The enthusiasm for him knew no bounds. Charles Norton spoke for New England. I had a visit from him this morning as well as from Mr. Osgood, Dolby, etc. C. D. lunched at the Jockey Club with Dr. Barker and Donald Mitchell and returned to dine with us. He talked of actors, artists, and the clergy—church and religion—but was evidently suffering more or less all the time with his foot, yet kept up a good heart until nine o’clock, when he retired to the privacy of his own room. He feels bitterly the wrong under which English dissenters have labored for years in being obliged not only to support their own church interests in which they do believe, but also the abuses of the English Church against which their whole lives are a continual protest. He spoke of the beauty of the landscape through which we had both been walking and driving under a grey sky, with the eager spring looking out among leafless branches and dancing in the red and yellow sap. He said it had always been a fancy of his to write a story, keeping the whole thing in the same landscape, but picturing its constantly varying effects upon men and things and chiefly, of course, upon the minds of men. He asked me if I had ever read Crabbe’s “Lover’s Ride.” We became indignant over a tax of five per cent which had just been laid upon the entire proceeds of his Readings, telegraphed to Washington, and found that it was unjust and had been taken off.
Monday, April 20.—Attended a meeting of a new “institution” just on foot, first called “Sorosis” and afterwards “Woman’s League” for the benefit and mutual support of women. It was the first official meeting, but it proved so unofficial that I was entertained, and amused as well, and was able on my return to make Mr. Dickens laugh until he declared if anything could make him feel better for the evening that account of the Woman’s League would.
Tuesday.—I find it very difficult today to write at all. Mr. Dickens is on his bed and has been unable to rise, in spite of efforts all day long.... Mr. Norton has been here and we have been obliged to go out, but our hearts have been in that other room all the time where our dear friend lies suffering.... Oh! these last times—what heartbreak there is in the words. I lay awake since early this morning (though we did not leave him until half-past twelve) feeling as if when I arose we must say good-bye. How relieved I felt to brush the tears away and know there was one more day, but even that gain was lessened when I found he could not rise and even this must be a day of separation too. When Jamie told him last night he felt like erecting a statue to him because of his heroism in doing his duty so well, he laughed and said, “No, don’t; take down one of the old ones instead!”
The diary goes on to express the genuine sorrow of Mrs. Fields and her husband at parting from a friend who had so completely absorbed their affection, but in terms which the diarist herself would have been the first to regard as more suitable for manuscript than for print. The pages that contain them throw more light upon Mrs. Fields—a warm and tender light it is—than upon Dickens. There is, however, one paragraph, written after the Fieldses had returned to Boston from New York, which tells something both of Dickens and of Queen Victoria, in whose personality the public interest appears to be perpetual; and with this passage the quotations from the diary shall end.
Friday, April 24.—After the Press dinner in New York Mr. Dickens repeated all his speech to me, as I believe I have said above, never dropping a word. “I feel,” he said, “as if I were listening to the sound of my own voice as I recall it. A very curious sensation.” Jamie asked him if Curtis was quite right in the facts of his speech. He said, “Not altogether, as, for instance, in that matter about the Queen and our little play, ‘Frozen Deep.’ We had played it many times with considerable success, when the Queen heard of it and Colonel Phipps (?) called upon me and said he wished the Queen could see the play. Was there no hall which would be appropriate for the occasion? What did I think of Buckingham Palace? I replied that could not be, for my daughters played in the piece and I had never asked myself to be presented at court nor had I ever taken the proper steps to introduce them there, and of course they could not go as amateur performers where they had never been as visitors. This seemed to trouble him a good deal, so I said I would find some hall which would be appropriate for the purpose and would appoint an evening, which I did immediately, taking the Gallery of Illustration and having it fitted up for the purpose. I then drew up a list of the company, chiefly of artists, literary and scientific men, and interesting ladies, which I caused to be submitted to the Queen, begging her to reject or add as she thought proper, setting aside forty seats for the royal party. The whole thing went off finely until after the first play was over, when the Queen sent round a request that I would come and see her. This was considered an act of immense condescension and kindness on her part, and the little party behind the scenes were delighted. Unfortunately, I had just prepared myself for the farce which was to follow and was already standing in motley dress with a red nose. I knew I could not appear in that plight, so I begged leave to be excused on that ground. However, that was forgiven and all passed off well, although the large expense of the whole thing of course fell on me, which amounted to one hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds. Several years after, when Prince Albert died, the Queen sent to me for a copy of the play. I told Colonel Phipps the play had never been printed and was the property of a gentleman, Mr. Wilkie Collins. Then would I have it copied? So I had a very beautiful copy made and bound in the most perfect manner, and presented to her Majesty. Whereupon the Princess of Prussia, seeing this, asked for another for herself. I said I would again ask the permission of Mr. Collins and again I had a beautiful copy made with great labor. Then the Queen sent to ask the price of the books. I sent word that my friend, Mr. Wilkie Collins, was a gentleman who would, I was sure, hear to nothing of the kind and begged her acceptance of the volumes.” “How has the Queen shown her gratitude for such favors?” I said. “We have never heard anything more from her since that time.” Good Mr. Dolby said quietly, “You know in England we call her ‘Her Ungracious Majesty.’” Certainly one would not have believed it possible for even a queen’s nature to have become so hardened as this to the kindly acts of any human being, not to speak of the efforts of one of her most noble subjects and perhaps the greatest genius of our time.
If any reader wishes to follow the further course of the friendship between Dickens and the Fieldses, he has only to turn to “Yesterdays With Authors,” in which many letters written by Dickens after April, 1868, are quoted, and many remembrances of their intercourse when the Fieldses visited England in 1869, the year before Dickens’s death, are presented. Here it will suffice to quote one out of several passages in Mrs. Fields’s diary relating to Dickens, and to bring to light a single characteristic little note from Dickens, not hitherto printed.
On Wednesday, May 12, 1869, Mrs. Fields wrote of Dickens:—
He drove us through the Parks in the fashionable afternoon hour and afterward to dine with him at the St. James, where Fechter and Dolby were the only outsiders. Mrs. Collins was like one of Stothard’s pictures. I felt this more even after refreshing my memory of Stothard’s coloring at the Kensington Museum yesterday. C. D. told me that the book of all others which he read perpetually and of which he never tired, the book which always appeared more imaginative in proportion to the fresh imagination he brings to it, a book for inexhaustiveness to be placed before every other book, is Carlyle’s “French Revolution.” When he was writing “A Tale of Two Cities,” he asked Carlyle if he might see some book to which he referred in his history. Whereat Carlyle sent down to him all his books, and Dickens read them faithfully; but the more he read the more he was astounded to find how the facts but passed through the alembic of Carlyle’s brain and had come out and fitted themselves each as a part of the one great whole, making a compact result, indestructible and unrivalled, and he always found himself turning away from the books of reference and rereading this marvellous new growth from those dry bones with renewed wonder.
The note from Dickens read:—
Gad’s Hill Place
Higham by Rochester, Kent
Wednesday Sixth October, 1869
My dear Fields:—
Delighted to enjoy the prospect of seeing you and yours on Saturday. Wish you had been at Birmingham. Wish you were not going home. Wish you had had nothing to do with the Byron matter.28 Wish Mrs. Stowe was in the pillory. Wish Fechter had gone over when he ought. Wish he may not go under when he oughtn’t.
With love,
Ever affectionately yours,
Charles Dickens
Among the papers preserved by Mrs. Fields there are, besides the manuscript letters of Dickens himself, many letters written after his death by his sister-in-law, Miss Georgina Hogarth. From bits of these, and especially from a letter written by Dickens’s daughter, while his death was still a poignant grief, the affection in which he was held in his own household is touchingly imaged forth.
“All the Old World,” wrote Miss Dickens, “all the New World loved him. He never had anything to do with a living soul without attaching them to him. If strangers could so love him, you can tell a little what he must have been to his own flesh and blood. It is a glorious inheritance to have such blood flowing in one’s veins. I’m so glad I have never changed my name.”
From one of Miss Hogarth’s letters a single passage may be taken, since it adds something of first-hand knowledge to the accessible facts about one piece of Dickens’s writing which—in so far as the editor of these pages is aware—has never seen the light of print. This letter was written in the September after Dickens’s death:
“I must now tell you about the beautiful little New Testament which he wrote for his children. I am sorry to say it is never to be published. It happens that he expressed that decided determination only last autumn to me, so we have no alternative. He wrote it years ago when his elder children were quite little. It is about sixteen short chapters, chiefly adapted from St. Luke’s Gospel, most beautiful, most touching, most simple, as such a narrative should be. He never would have it printed and I used to read it to the little boys in MS. before they were old enough to read writing themselves. When Charley’s children became old enough to have this kind of teaching, I promised Bessy (his wife) that I would make her a copy of this History, and I determined to do it as a Christmas Gift for her last year, but before I began my copy I asked Charles if he did not think it would be well for him to have it printed, at all events for private circulation, if he would not publish it (though I think it is a pity he would never do that!). He said he would look over the MS. and take a week or two to consider. At the end of the time he gave it back to me and said he had decided never to publish it—or even have it privately printed. He said I might make a copy for Bessy, or for any one of his children, but for no one else, and that he also begged that we would never even lend the MS., or a copy of it, to any one to take out of the house; so there is no doubt about his strong feeling on the subject, and we must obey it. I made my copy for Bessy and gave it to her last Christmas. After his death the original MS. became mine. As it was never published, of course it did not count as one of Mr. Forster’s MSS., and therefore it was one of his private papers, which were left to me. So I gave it at once to Mamie, who was, I thought, the most natural and proper possessor of it, as being his eldest daughter. You must come to England and read it, dear Friend! as we must not send it to you! We should be glad to see you and to show it to you and Mr. Fields in our own house.”
Miss Hogarth must have known full well that, if this manuscript Gospel according to Charles Dickens was to be shown to anybody outside his immediate circle, he himself would have chosen the Charles Street friends from what he called—to them—his “native Boston.”