Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2300 page)

On the 30th he wrote to me that he had got his papers into order and hoped to begin that day. But the same letter told me of the unsettlement thus early of his half-formed Paris plans. Three months sooner than he designed he should be due in London for family reasons; should have to keep within the limit of four months abroad; and as his own house would not be free till July, would have to hire one from the end of March. “In these circumstances I think I shall send Charley to King’s-college after Christmas. I am sorry he should lose so much French, but don’t you think to break another half-year’s schooling would be a pity? Of my own will I would not send him to King’s-college at all, but to Bruce-castle instead. I suppose, however, Miss Coutts is best. We will talk over all this when I come to London.” The offer to take charge of his eldest son’s education had been pressed upon Dickens by this true friend, to whose delicate and noble consideration for him it would hardly become me to make other allusion here. Munificent as the kindness was, however, it was yet only the smallest part of the obligation which Dickens felt that he owed this lady; to whose generous schemes for the neglected and uncared-for classes of the population, in all which he deeply sympathised, he did the very utmost to render, through many years, unstinted service of his time and his labour, with sacrifice unselfish as her own. His proposed early visit to London, named in this letter, was to see the rehearsal of his Christmas story, dramatised by Mr. Albert Smith for Mr. and Mrs. Keeley at the Lyceum; and my own proposed visit to Paris was to be in the middle of January. “It will then be the height of the season, and a good time for testing the unaccountable French vanity which really does suppose there are no fogs here, but that they are all in London.”

The opening of his next letter, which bore date the 6th of December, and its amusing sequel, will sufficiently speak for themselves. “Cold intense. The water in the bedroom-jugs freezes into solid masses from top to bottom, bursts the jugs with reports like small cannon, and rolls out on the tables and wash-stands, hard as granite. I stick to the shower-bath, but have been most hopelessly out of sorts — writing sorts; that’s all. Couldn’t begin, in the strange place; took a violent dislike to my study, and came down into the drawing-room; couldn’t find a corner that would answer my purpose; fell into a black contemplation of the waning month; sat six hours at a stretch, and wrote as many lines, &c. &c. &c. . . . Then, you know what arrangements are necessary with the chairs and tables; and then what correspondence had to be cleared off; and then how I tried to settle to my desk, and went about and about it, and dodged at it, like a bird at a lump of sugar. In short I have just begun; five printed pages finished, I should say; and hope I shall be blessed with a better condition this next week, or I shall be behind-hand. I shall try to go at it — hard. I can’t do more. . . . There is rather a good man lives in this street, and I have had a correspondence with him which is preserved for your inspection. His name is Barthélemy. He wears a prodigious Spanish cloak, a slouched hat, an immense beard, and long black hair. He called the other day and left his card. Allow me to enclose his card, which has originality and merit.

Roche said I wasn’t at home.
Yesterday, he wrote me to say that he too was a ‘Littérateur’ — that he had called, in compliment to my distinguished reputation — ’qu’il n’avait pas été reçu — qu’il n’était pas habitué à cette sorte de procédé — et qu’il pria Monsieur Dickens d’oublier son nom, sa mémoire, sa carte, et sa visite, et de considérer qu’elle n’avait pas été rendu!’
Of course I wrote him a very polite reply immediately, telling him good-humouredly that he was quite mistaken, and that there were always two weeks in the beginning of every month when M. Dickens ne pouvait rendre visite à personne. He wrote back to say that he was more than satisfied; that it was his case too, at the end of every month; and that when busy himself, he not only can’t receive or pay visits, but — ’tombe, généralement, aussi, dans des humeurs noires qui approchent de l’anthropophagie!!!’ I think that’s pretty well.”

He was in London eight days, from the 15th to the 23rd of December;
and among the occupations of his visit, besides launching his little story on the stage, was the settlement of form for a cheap edition of his writings, which began in the following year. It was to be printed in double-columns, and issued weekly in three-halfpenny numbers; there were to be new prefaces, but no illustrations; and for each book something less than a fourth of the original price was to be charged. Its success was very good, but did not come even near to the mark of the later issues of his writings. His own feeling as to this, however, though any failure at the moment affected him on other grounds, was always that of a quiet confidence; and he had expressed this in a proposed dedication of this very edition, which for other reasons was ultimately laid aside. It will be worth preserving here. “This cheap edition of my books is dedicated to the English people, in whose approval, if the books be true in spirit, they will live, and out of whose memory, if they be false, they will very soon die.”

Upon his return to Paris I had frequent report of his progress with his famous fifth number, on the completion of which I was to join him. The day at one time seemed doubtful. “It would be miserable to have to work while you were here. Still, I make such sudden starts, and am so possessed of what I am going to do, that the fear may prove to be quite groundless, and if any alteration would trouble you, let the 13th stand at all hazards.” The cold he described as so intense, and the price of fuel so enormous, that though the house was not half warmed (“as you’ll say, when you feel it”) it cost him very near a pound a day. Begging-letter writers had found out “Monsieur Dickens, le romancier célèbre,” and waylaid him at the door and in the street as numerously as in London: their distinguishing peculiarity being that they were nearly all of them “Chevaliers de la Garde Impériale de sa Majesté Napoléon le Grand,” and that their letters bore immense seals with coats of arms as large as five-shilling pieces. His friends the Watsons passed new year’s day with him on their way to Rockingham from Lausanne, leaving that country covered with snow and the Bise blowing cruelly over it, but describing it as nothing to the cold of Paris. On the day that closed the old year he had gone into the Morgue and seen an old man with grey head lying there. “It seemed the strangest thing in the world that it should have been necessary to take any trouble to stop such a feeble, spent, exhausted morsel of life. It was just dusk when I went in; the place was empty; and he lay there, all alone, like an impersonation of the wintry eighteen hundred and forty-six. . . . I find I am getting inimitable, so I’ll stop.”

The time for my visit having come, I had grateful proof of the minute and thoughtful provision characteristic of him in everything. My dinner had been ordered to the second at Boulogne, my place in the malle-poste taken, and these and other services announced in a letter, which, by way of doing its part also in the kindly work of preparation, broke out into French. He never spoke that language very well, his accent being somehow defective; but he practised himself into writing it with remarkable ease and fluency. “I have written to the Hôtel des Bains at Boulogne to send on to Calais and take your place in the malle-poste. . . . Of course you know that you’ll be assailed with frightful shouts all along the two lines of ropes from all the touters in Boulogne, and of course you’ll pass on like the princess who went up the mountain after the talking bird; but don’t forget quietly to single out the Hôtel des Bains commissionnaire. The following circumstances will then occur. My experience is more recent than yours, and I will throw them into a dramatic form. . . . You are filtered into the little office, where there are some soldiers; and a gentleman with a black beard and a pen and ink sitting behind a counter.
Barbe Noire
(to the lord of L. I. F.). Monsieur, votre passeport.
Monsieur.
Monsieur, le voici!
Barbe Noire.
Où allez-vous, monsieur?
Monsieur.
Monsieur, je vais à Paris.
Barbe Noire.
Quand allez-vous partir, monsieur?
Monsieur.
Monsieur, je vais partir aujourd’hui. Avec la malle-poste.
Barbe Noire.
C’est bien. (To Gendarme.) Laissez sortir monsieur!
Gendarme.
Par ici, monsieur, s’il vous plait. Le gendarme ouvert une très petite porte. Monsieur se trouve subitement entouré de tous les gamins, agents, commissionnaires, porteurs, et polissons, en général, de Boulogne, qui s’élancent sur lui, en poussant des cris épouvantables. Monsieur est, pour le moment, tout-à-fait effrayé et bouleversé. Mais monsieur reprend ses forces et dit, de haute voix: ‘Le Commissionnaire de l’Hôtel des Bains!’
Un petit homme
(s’avançant rapidement, et en souriant doucement). Me voici, monsieur. Monsieur Fors Tair, n’est-ce pas? . . . Alors. . . . Alors monsieur se promène
à
l’Hôtel des Bains, où monsieur trouvera qu’un petit salon particulier, en haut, est déjà préparé pour sa réception, et que son dîner est déjà commandé, aux soins du brave Courier,
à midi et demi
. . . . Monsieur mangera son dîner près du feu, avec beaucoup de plaisir, et il boirera de vin rouge à la santé de Monsieur de Boze, et sa famille intéressante et aimable. La malle-poste arrivera au bureau de la poste aux lettres à deux heures ou peut-être un peu plus tard. Mais monsieur chargera le commissionnaire d’y l’accompagner de bonne heure, car c’est beaucoup mieux de l’attendre que de la perdre. La malle-poste arrivé, monsieur s’assiéra, aussi confortablement qu’il le peut, et il y restera jusqu’à son arrivé au bureau de la poste aux lettres à Paris. Parceque, le convoi (
train
) n’est pas l’affaire de monsieur, qui continuera s’asseoir dans la malle-poste, sur le chemin de fer, et après le chemin de fer, jusqu’il se trouve à la basse-cour du bureau de la poste aux lettres à Paris, où il trouvera une voiture qui a été dépêché de la Rue de Courcelles, quarante-huit. Mais monsieur aura la bonté d’observer — Si le convoi arriverait à Amiens après le départ du convoi à minuit, il faudra y rester jusqu’à l’arrivé d’un autre convoi à trois heures moins un quart. En attendant, monsieur peut rester au buffet (
refreshment room
), où l’on peut toujours trouver un bon feu, et du café chaud, et des très bonnes choses à boire et à manger, pendant toute la nuit. — Est-ce que monsieur comprend parfaitement toutes ces règles pour sa guidance? — Vive le Roi des Français! Roi de la nation la plus grande, et la plus noble, et la plus extraordinairement merveilleuse, du monde! A bas des Anglais!

“Charles Dickens,
“Français naturalisé, et Citoyen de Paris.”

We passed a fortnight together, and crowded into it more than might seem possible to such a narrow space. With a dreadful insatiability we passed through every variety of sight-seeing, prisons, palaces, theatres, hospitals, the Morgue and the Lazare, as well as the Louvre, Versailles, St. Cloud, and all the spots made memorable by the first revolution. The excellent comedian Regnier, known to us through Macready and endeared by many kindnesses, incomparable for his knowledge of the city and unwearying in friendly service, made us free of the green-room of the Français, where, on the birthday of Molière, we saw his “Don Juan” revived. At the Conservatoire we witnessed the masterly teaching of Samson; at the Odéon saw a new play by Ponsard, done but indifferently; at the Variétés “Gentil-Bernard,” with four grisettes as if stepped out of a picture by Watteau; at the Gymnase “Clarisse Harlowe,” with a death-scene of Rose Cheri which comes back to me, through the distance of time, as the prettiest piece of pure and gentle stage-pathos in my memory; at the Porte St. Martin “Lucretia Borgia” by Hugo; at the Cirque, scenes of the great revolution, and all the battles of Napoleon; at the Comic Opera, “Gibby”; and at the Palais Royal the usual new-year’s piece, in which Alexandre Dumas was shown in his study beside a pile of quarto volumes five feet high, which proved to be the first tableau of the first act of the first piece to be played on the first night of his new theatre. That new theatre, the Historique, we also saw verging to a very short-lived completeness; and we supped with Dumas himself, and Eugène Sue, and met Théophile Gautier and Alphonse Karr. We saw Lamartine also, and had much friendly intercourse with Scribe, and with the kind good-natured Amedée Pichot. One day we visited in the Rue du Bac the sick and ailing Chateaubriand, whom we thought like Basil Montagu; found ourselves at the other extreme of opinion in the sculpture-room of David d’Angers; and closed that day at the house of Victor Hugo, by whom Dickens was received with infinite courtesy and grace. The great writer then occupied a floor in a noble corner-house in the Place Royale, the old quarter of Ninon l’Enclos and the people of the Regency, of whom the gorgeous tapestries, the painted ceilings, the wonderful carvings and old golden furniture, including a canopy of state out of some palace of the middle age, quaintly and grandly reminded us. He was himself, however, the best thing we saw; and I find it difficult to associate the attitudes and aspect in which the world has lately wondered at him, with the sober grace and self-possessed quiet gravity of that night of twenty-five years ago. Just then Louis Philippe had ennobled him, but the man’s nature was written noble. Rather under the middle size, of compact close-buttoned-up figure, with ample dark hair falling loosely over his close-shaven face, I never saw upon any features so keenly intellectual such a soft and sweet gentility, and certainly never heard the French language spoken with the picturesque distinctness given to it by Victor Hugo. He talked of his childhood in Spain, and of his father having been Governor of the Tagus in Napoleon’s wars; spoke warmly of the English people and their literature; declared his preference for melody and simplicity over the music then fashionable at the Conservatoire; referred kindly to Ponsard, laughed at the actors who had murdered his tragedy at the Odéon, and sympathized with the dramatic venture of Dumas. To Dickens he addressed very charming flattery, in the best taste; and my friend long remembered the enjoyment of that evening.