Charles Dickens: A Life (62 page)

There was very little sightseeing. On his birthday in February he met the President, Andrew Johnson, and commented on his look of courage, watchfulness and strength of purpose, but gave no account of their conversation; and when Johnson was impeached shortly afterwards, Dickens was chiefly concerned that it might damage the receipts for the readings. It didn’t, and Johnson was acquitted. In Baltimore he visited a model prison, where he was delighted to see prisoners working at their trades in communal workshops, paid for their work and altogether humanely treated, better than in any English prison he knew. In March he took Dolby and the rest of his team to Niagara for a two days’ break: the sun came out to cheer them all, making rainbows in the falling water, the spray and over the landscape – an effect that was better than Turner’s finest watercolours, he told Forster.
⁴³
Dolby’s efficiency and companionship pleased him so much that, when a telegram came announcing the birth of a son to Mrs Dolby at home in Herefordshire, Dickens arranged through Wills for a pony, together with all its trappings and panniers, to be delivered to the Dolby household, and for a photograph of it to be sent to Dolby; and Dickens agreed to stand as godfather to the boy.
⁴⁴

The day after his reading in Portland, a twelve-year-old girl who had not been able to attend, and who happened to be travelling on the same train, contrived to slip into an empty seat next to him. She was a spirited child and soon engaged him in conversation. She told him she had read almost all his books, some of them six times, adding, ‘Of course I do skip some of the very dull parts once in a while; not the short dull parts but the long ones.’ Dickens found her irresistible, pressed her on which were the dull bits and made notes of what she said, laughing all the time. They held hands, he put his arm round her waist, and she gazed at his face, ‘deeply lined, with sparkling eyes and an amused, waggish smile that curled the corners of his mouth under his grizzled moustache’. She told him that
David Copperfield
was her favourite, and he said it was his too. He asked her if she had minded missing his reading very much and, in telling him how much she had, tears came into her eyes, and to her astonishment she saw tears in his eyes too. Her flattery enchanted him and they talked all the way to Boston, where she remembered her mother was somewhere on the train and Dickens went with her to find her and introduce himself. The child’s name was Kate Douglas Wiggin. Dickens and Kate Wiggin walked hand in hand along the platform as far as the carriage sent to meet him before saying goodbye. This was the year Louisa May Alcott published
Little Women
, the novel that established New England girls as modern heroines, and Kate Wiggin was in the same mould. She grew up to become a successful writer herself, produced her own bestseller,
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
, and in 1912 published her account of the meeting with Dickens.
⁴⁵

With Wills he exchanged letters every few days about the business of the magazine, and in each of his went one for Nelly, to be forwarded. The letters have disappeared, but the few words to Wills that went with them are eloquent: ‘Enclosed is another letter for my dear girl’; ‘My spirits flutter woefully towards a certain place at which you dined one day not long before I left, with the present writer and a third (most drearily missed) person’; ‘I would give £3,000 down (and think it cheap) if you could forward
me
, for four and twenty hours only, instead of the letter’; ‘Another letter for my Darling, enclosed’; ‘You will have seen too (I hope) my dear Patient, and will have achieved in so doing what I would joyfully give a Thousand Guineas to achieve myself at this present moment!’; ‘Toujours from the same to the same’; ‘One last letter enclosed.’
⁴⁶
Wills also received a small box from Niagara, addressed by Dickens to himself, which he was told to put in his bedroom at Wellington Street – a present for someone unnamed, no doubt Nelly. It was probably Wills who paid the rates on Windsor Lodge in January 1868, on behalf of Charles Tringham. Wills was also asked to handle cheques, one for £250 in November, another for £1,000 on 10 January, and a third on 2 March for £1,100, in all likelihood to be passed on to Nelly, a generous amount to cover her travel and living expenses.
⁴⁷

The tour ended with more readings in Boston and New York. In April, Boston was almost blotted out in ‘a ceaseless whirl of snow and wind’, and Annie Fields found Dickens’s Copperfield reading ‘a tragedy last night – less vigor but great tragic power came out of it … I should hardly have known it for the same reading and reader.’ A week later she was in New York to hear him again, and this time he called for punch ingredients afterwards, his spirits rising rapidly, and the rest of the evening was given to drinking, laughing and singing comic songs. ‘We did not separate until 12, and felt the next morning (as he said) as if we had had a regular orgy.’
⁴⁸
This was on 15 April, and on the 18th he was due to address the New York press at a banquet given in his honour. As he dressed for it his foot was so swollen and sore that he and Dolby agreed there was no question of getting a boot on. Dolby went out to find a gout-stocking to put over the bandages and finally managed to borrow one from an obliging English gentleman. Arriving an hour late, and in great pain, Dickens had to be helped up the stairs of Delmonico’s, but by nine o’clock he was able to rise and deliver a speech that gave the assembly everything they wanted. He reminded them that he had started as a newspaper reporter himself, and praised the changes he had seen in America since his first visit. He spoke of the politeness and the sweet-tempered reception he had received this time, and promised to have his present praise printed as an appendix in every reprint of his two books about America (meaning
American Notes
and
Martin Chuzzlewit
).
⁴⁹
In a rousing finish he told them that the people of England and America were essentially one, that it rested with them to uphold the great Anglo-Saxon race and all its achievements, that both had striven for freedom and that it was inconceivable that they should ever go to war against one another – a cue for rapturous cheers and applause as he hobbled off.

There was still the ordeal of the last reading, and there were farewells to make. Dolby narrowly escaped being arrested by the US tax men as they embarked on 23 April. During their last few moments in America, they had a glimpse of Anthony Trollope arriving in New York. Three days into the voyage the bad foot was much improved, Dickens was able to leave his cabin to exercise on the deck, and his appetite returned. On 1 May they were in Liverpool, the next morning on the train that arrived at 3 p.m. at Euston. Dolby ends his account of the great American tour by describing his Chief walking away alone with his small bag. He was making a magical disappearance, because he did not arrive at Gad’s Hill until 9 May. Since Nelly had left Florence for England on 24 April, it seems likely that Mr Tringham and Madame spent the week together at Windsor Lodge, entertaining one another with travellers’ tales, walking and perhaps riding together, and taking pleasure in the English spring.

‘Things look like work again’

Returning to Gad’s Hill on 9 May, Dickens was greeted with flags and welcoming villagers. Almost at once he began to prepare for the ‘Farewell Tour’ he would be starting in October with Dolby. He also arranged a passage to Australia for sixteen-year-old Plorn. A shy boy with no idea of what he wanted to do in life, he had been taken out of school at fifteen and was currently at an agricultural college in Cirencester. Dickens wrote to Alfred, now farming in Australia, telling him to expect his younger brother at the end of the year, adding that Plorn could ride, do a little carpentering and make a horse shoe, but admitting it was not possible to know whether he would take to life in the bush.
¹
He gave Alfred other news of family and friends: that Katey’s husband Charles Collins was seriously ill with asthma and brain disease, that Wills had suffered a hunting accident that forced him to give up work, that Wilkie Collins and Fechter were both ill and even Henry, in his last year at school and due to go up to Cambridge in the autumn, had damaged his knee and was in bed – ‘all the rest of us being in a flourishing condition’ he added drily. Soon there was worse, as Charley’s paper business failed, leaving him bankrupt and with personal debts of £1,000 and five children to support.

Charley was always given special treatment, and Dickens took him on to the staff of
All the Year Round
, contriving to convince himself that he was a good man of business and subeditor; and although the loss of Wills was serious, he sacked Henry Morley, who had been with him since joining the staff of
Household Words
in 1851, to make way for Charley. Dickens wrote Morley a friendly letter of explanation, saying he hoped he would continue to contribute, but Morley chose not to, and lost a small steady income. He went on to an academic career and later in life gave interestingly mixed testimonials to his onetime employer, describing him as a man possessed of ‘great genius, but not a trained and cultivated reason’, lacking in sound literary taste, but always remembered with affection as someone he had worked with happily through ‘nineteen years of goodwill’.
²

At the end of May, Dickens spent three days in Paris seeing Fechter and contributing to the preparations for the opening of
L’Abîme
, the French version of
No Thoroughfare
, in which Fechter was to star. The French critics had reservations about the play, ‘un mélodrame assez vulgaire’, but Paris was thrilled to welcome the great Dickens
,
audiences were pleased, and it gave Fechter a success. In July, Longfellow and his daughter arrived at Gad’s for a visit, and Dickens had two postilions dressed up in old-fashioned red jackets to go with the carriage along the Dover Road to see the sights of Kent: ‘it was like a holiday ride in England fifty years ago,’ Dickens said, much taken with his idea of a heritage tour.
³
He put on the same show for other visitors, American and English, the Fieldses, Bulwer, Layard, the Tennents and Lady Molesworth.
⁴
The Nortons came to Gad’s in August, Mrs Norton looking about with a sharp eye, declaring ‘the house itself not in any respect pretty’, and Dickens an excellent host, although he made it clear he must work in his study each morning. She got a glance at the study, which was also his bedroom, observed its perfect neatness and the ‘brilliant bit of Oriental covering’ on his bed, another present from Fechter. Gad’s was his delight, and during the summer he began negotiations to buy the freehold of the meadow and arable adjoining it, twenty-eight acres of land, for which he agreed to pay £2,500.

In September, Plorn was taken to Portsmouth by Henry. ‘He went away, poor dear fellow, as well as could possibly be expected. He was pale, and had been crying, and (Harry said) had broken down in the railway carriage after leaving Higham station; but only for a short time.’
⁵
Georgina gave him a parting present of cigars. Dickens also wept at parting but reminded him in a letter of how he himself had to ‘win my food’ at a younger age, recommended him to say his prayers and hoped that he would be able to say in after life ‘that you had a kind father’.
⁶
To Dolby he wrote complaining of the costs and charges of ‘these boys’: ‘Why was I ever a father? Why was
my
father ever a father!’
⁷
To others, he spoke of his grief at parting with Plorn, but it is hard not to see in this something of the ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’ of a severe and unrelenting schoolmaster. Then, after taking advice, he allowed Henry £250 a year and ordered what he supposed to be necessary supplies for his room in Trinity Hall: three dozen sherry, two dozen port, three dozen light claret and six bottles of brandy.

Ten days after Henry left for Cambridge on 10 October, news came of the death of Dickens’s brother Fred in County Durham. They had hardly been in touch since 1858, although Fred had turned up in Canterbury in the autumn of 1861 asking for a free pass for an acquaintance to one of Dickens’s events, and early in 1865 Dickens wrote to him to express his hope that he was doing well, while not offering any help.
⁸
Fred had been in prison, and bankrupt; and he died in grim poverty, living on ‘a penny bun and a glass of ginger beer’ for his breakfast and otherwise mostly cold gin, according to George Sala, and not able even to afford to smoke. Fred had shared in much of Dickens’s early married life, looking after the children during the first American trip and joining them for holidays in Italy as well as in Broadstairs; but when Dickens cast someone off he did not relent. He asked Dolby to go to Darlington, where Fred had died, and then wrote to the doctor who had looked after him, saying he had been his favourite when he was a child; but he did not go to the funeral, sending Charley as his representative.
⁹

Katey’s situation troubled Dickens, because Charles Collins was an invalid and it was not much of a marriage; and Dickens showed his disappointment and disapproval of Charles, which led to strained relations with Wilkie, and the two men seeing less of one another. The only children officially at home now were Henry, during the Cambridge vacations, and Mamie, who was increasingly away visiting friends. Even before Plorn’s ship had put to sea – it was delayed by adverse weather – Dickens wrote buoyantly to Dolby, ‘Things in general look like work again,’ and fixed dinner with him at Verrey’s on 1 October. He wanted to look forward, to be making plans for the future, and to talk about the new reading he had prepared, taken from
Oliver Twist
, ‘Sikes and Nancy’, giving the murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes – ‘very horrible, but very dramatic’.
¹⁰
It was meant to be sensational, and he was pleased to have made something so powerful, as he told Forster when writing to him for advice on whether he should perform it in public or not.
¹¹
Forster was against, and so was Dolby, but Dickens was also consulting with Chappells, who were putting up the money, and they suggested a trial reading. This was arranged for November, when the new tour was already under way, to be given in London, with oysters and champagne served to the select audience afterwards. Dickens wrote to Fields boasting about how horrible it was, and, after hearing it, Forster was even more strongly against further public performances. One critic said he had felt an irresistible desire to scream, and a physician warned of the danger of contagious hysteria in the audience, but an actress encouraged Dickens by telling him the public had been ‘looking out for a sensation these last fifty years, and now they have got it’.
¹²
Dickens had every intention of going ahead and told Forster, ‘I wanted to leave behind me the recollection of something very passionate and dramatic, done with simple means, if the art would justify the theme.’
¹³