Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2248 page)

Of the innumerable tributes the story has received, and to none other by Dickens have more or more various been paid, there is one, the very last, which has much affected me. Not many months before my friend’s death, he had sent me two
Overland Monthlies
containing two sketches by a young American writer far away in California, “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” in which he had found such subtle strokes of character as he had not anywhere else in late years discovered; the manner resembling himself, but the matter fresh to a degree that had surprised him; the painting in all respects masterly, and the wild rude thing painted a quite wonderful reality. I have rarely known him more honestly moved. A few months passed; telegraph-wires flashed over the world that he had passed away on the 9th of June; and the young writer of whom he had then written to me, all unconscious of that praise, put his tribute of gratefulness and sorrow into the form of a poem called
Dickens in Camp
.
It embodies the same kind of incident which had so affected the master himself, in the papers to which I have referred; it shows the gentler influences which, in even those Californian wilds, can restore outlawed “roaring camps” to silence and humanity; and there is hardly any form of posthumous tribute which I can imagine likely to have better satisfied his desire of fame than one which should thus connect, with the special favorite among all his heroines, the restraints and authority exerted by his genius over the rudest and least civilized of competitors in that far fierce race for wealth.

“Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow:
“The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;
“Till one arose, and from his pack’s scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew;
“And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the fire-light fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of ‘Little Nell:’
“Perhaps ‘twas boyish fancy, — for the reader
Was youngest of them all, —
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;
“The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp with ‘Nell’ on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.
“And so in mountain solitudes — o’ertaken
As by some spell divine —
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
“Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire;
And he who wrought that spell? —
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
“Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vines’ incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
“And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, —
This spray of Western pine!
“July, 1870.”

CHAPTER XIII.

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE AND BROADSTAIRS.

1840.

A Good Saying — Landor mystified — The Mirthful Side of Dickens — Extravagant Flights — Humorous Despair — Riding Exercise — First of the Ravens — The Groom Topping — The Smoky Chimneys — Juryman at an Inquest — Practical Humanity — Publication of
Clock’s
First Number — Transfer of
Barnaby
settled — A True Prediction — Revisiting Old Scenes — C. D. to Chapman & Hall — Terms of Sale of
Barnaby
— A Gift to a Friend — Final Escape from Bondage — Published Libels about him — Said to be demented — To be insane and turned Catholic — Begging Letter-Writers — A Donkey asked for — Mr. Kindheart — Friendly Meetings — Social Talk — Reconciling Friends — Hint for judging Men.

It was an excellent saying of the first Lord Shaftesbury, that, seeing every man of any capacity holds within himself two men, the wise and the foolish, each of them ought freely to be allowed his turn; and it was one of the secrets of Dickens’s social charm that he could, in strict accordance with this saying, allow each part of him its turn; could afford thoroughly to give rest and relief to what was serious in him, and, when the time came to play his gambols, could surrender himself wholly to the enjoyment of the time, and become the very genius and embodiment of one of his own most whimsical fancies.

Turning back from the narrative of his last piece of writing to recall a few occurrences of the year during which it had occupied him, I find him at its opening in one of these humorous moods, and another friend, with myself, enslaved by its influence. “What on earth does it all mean?” wrote poor puzzled Mr. Landor to me, inclosing a letter from him of the date of the 11th of February, the day after the royal nuptials of that year. In this he had related to our old friend a wonderful hallucination arising out of that event, which had then taken entire possession of him. “Society is unhinged here,” thus ran the letter, “by her majesty’s marriage, and I am sorry to add that I have fallen hopelessly in love with the Queen, and wander up and down with vague and dismal thoughts of running away to some uninhabited island with a maid of honour, to be entrapped by conspiracy for that purpose. Can you suggest any particular young person, serving in such a capacity, who would suit me? It is too much perhaps to ask you to join the band of noble youths (Forster is in it, and Maclise) who are to assist me in this great enterprise, but a man of your energy would be invaluable. I have my eye upon Lady . . . , principally because she is very beautiful and has no strong brothers. Upon this, and other points of the scheme, however, we will confer more at large when we meet; and meanwhile burn this document, that no suspicion may arise or rumour get abroad.”

The maid of honour and the uninhabited island were flights of fancy, but the other daring delusion was for a time encouraged to such whimsical lengths, not alone by him, but (under his influence) by the two friends named, that it took the wildest forms of humorous extravagance; and of the private confidences much interchanged, as well as of the style of open speech in which our joke of despairing unfitness for any further use or enjoyment of life was unflaggingly kept up, to the amazement of bystanders knowing nothing of what it meant, and believing we had half lost our senses, I permit myself to give from his letters one further illustration. “I am utterly lost in misery,” he writes to me on the 12th of February, “and can do nothing. I have been reading
Oliver
,
Pickwick
, and
Nickleby
to get my thoughts together for the new effort, but all in vain:

“My heart is at Windsor,
My heart isn’t here;
My heart is at Windsor.
A following my dear.

I saw the Responsibilities this morning, and burst into tears. The presence of my wife aggravates me. I loathe my parents. I detest my house. I begin to have thoughts of the Serpentine, of the Regent’s Canal, of the razors up-stairs, of the chemist’s down the street, of poisoning myself at Mrs. —
 
— ’s table, of hanging myself upon the pear-tree in the garden, of abstaining from food and starving myself to death, of being bled for my cold and tearing off the bandage, of falling under the feet of cab-horses in the New Road, of murdering Chapman & Hall and becoming great in story (She must hear something of me then — perhaps sign the warrant: or is that a fable?), of turning Chartist, of heading some bloody assault upon the palace and saving Her by my single hand — of being anything but what I have been, and doing anything but what I have done. Your distracted friend, C. D.” The wild derangement of asterisks in every shape and form, with which this incoherence closed, cannot here be given.

Some ailments which dated from an earlier period in his life made themselves felt in the spring of the year, as I remember, and increased horse-exercise was strongly recommended to him. “I find it will be positively necessary to go, for five days in the week, at least,” he wrote to me in March, “on a perfect regimen of diet and exercise, and am anxious therefore not to delay treating for a horse.” We were now in consequence, when he was not at the sea-side, much on horseback in suburban lanes and roads; and the spacious garden of his new house was also turned to healthful use at even his busiest times of work. I mark this, too, as the time when the first of his ravens took up residence there; and as the beginning of disputes with two of his neighbours about the smoking of the stable-chimney, which his groom Topping, a highly absurd little man with flaming red hair, so complicated by secret devices of his own, meant to conciliate each complainant alternately and having the effect of aggravating both, that law-proceedings were only barely avoided. “I shall give you,” he writes, “my latest report of the chimney in the form of an address from Topping, made to me on our way from little Hall’s at Norwood the other night, where he and Chapman and I had been walking all day, while Topping drove Kate, Mrs. Hall, and her sisters, to Dulwich. Topping had been regaled upon the premises, and was just drunk enough to be confidential. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but the genelman next door sir, seems to be gettin’ quite comfortable and pleasant about the chimley.’ — ’I don’t think he is, Topping.’ — ’Yes he is sir I think. He comes out in the yard this morning and says,
Coachman
he says’ (observe the vision of a great large fat man called up by the word)
is that your raven
he says,
Coachman? or is it Mr. Dickens’s raven?
he says. My master’s sir, I says. Well, he says, It’s a fine bird.
I think the chimley ‘ill do now Coachman, — now the jint’s taken off the pipe
he says. I hope it will sir, I says; my master’s a genelman as wouldn’t annoy no genelman if he could help it, I’m sure; and my missis is so afraid of havin’ a bit o’ fire that o’ Sundays our little bit o’ weal or wot not, goes to the baker’s a purpose. —
Damn the chimley, Coachman
, he says,
it’s a smokin’ now
. — It ain’t a smokin’ your way sir, I says; Well he says
no more it is, Coachman, and as long as it smokes anybody else’s way, it’s all right and I’m agreeable
.’ Of course I shall now have the man from the other side upon me, and very likely with an action of nuisance for smoking into his conservatory.”

A graver incident, which occurred to him also among his earliest experiences as tenant of Devonshire Terrace, illustrates too well the always practical turn of his kindness and humanity not to deserve relation here. He has himself described it in one of his minor writings, in setting down what he remembered as the only good that ever came of a beadle. Of that great parish functionary, he says, “having newly taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan parish, a house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class family mansion involving awful responsibilities, I became the prey.” In other words, he was summoned, and obliged to sit, as juryman at an inquest on the body of a little child alleged to have been murdered by its mother; of which the result was, that, by his persevering exertion, seconded by the humane help of the coroner, Mr. Wakley, the verdict of himself and his fellow-jurymen charged her only with concealment of the birth. “The poor desolate creature dropped upon her knees before us with protestations that we were right (protestations among the most affecting that I have ever heard in my life), and was carried away insensible. I caused some extra care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained for her defense when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence was lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was right.” How much he felt the little incident, at the actual time of its occurrence, may be judged from the few lines written to me next morning: “Whether it was the poor baby, or its poor mother, or the coffin, or my fellow-jurymen, or what not, I can’t say, but last night I had a most violent attack of sickness and indigestion, which not only prevented me from sleeping, but even from lying down. Accordingly Kate and I sat up through the dreary watches.”

The day of the first publication of
Master Humphrey
(Saturday, 4th April) had by this time come, and, according to the rule observed in his two other great ventures, he left town with Mrs. Dickens on Friday, the 3d. With Maclise we had been together at Richmond the previous night; and I joined him at Birmingham the day following with news of the sale of the whole sixty thousand copies to which the first working had been limited, and of orders already in hand for ten thousand more! The excitement of the success somewhat lengthened our holiday; and, after visiting Shakspeare’s house at Stratford and Johnson’s at Lichfield, we found our resources so straitened in returning, that, employing as our messenger of need his younger brother Alfred, who had joined us from Tamworth, where he was a student-engineer, we had to pawn our gold watches at Birmingham.

At the end of the following month he went to Broadstairs, and not many days before (on the 20th of May) a note from Mr. Jordan on behalf of Mr. Bentley opened the negotiations formerly referred to,
which transferred to Messrs. Chapman & Hall the agreement for
Barnaby Rudge
. I was myself absent when he left, and in a letter announcing his departure he had written, “I don’t know of a word of news in all London, but there will be plenty next week, for I am going away, and I hope you’ll send me an account of it. I am doubtful whether it will be a murder, a fire, a vast robbery, or the escape of Gould, but it will be something remarkable no doubt. I almost blame myself for the death of that poor girl who leaped off the monument upon my leaving town last year. She would not have done it if I had remained, neither would the two men have found the skeleton in the sewers.” His prediction was quite accurate, for I had to tell him, after not many days, of the potboy who shot at the queen. “It’s a great pity,” he replied, very sensibly, “they couldn’t suffocate that boy, Master Oxford, and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between two feather beds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of whom may perchance be better shots and use other than Brummagem firearms.” How much of this actually came to pass, the reader knows.