Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2307 page)

Not so Bad as We Seem
was played for the first time at Devonshire-house on the 27th of May, 1851, before the Queen and Prince and as large an audience as places could be found for;
Mr. Nightingale’s Diary
being the name given to the farce. The success abundantly realised the expectations formed; and, after many representations at the Hanover-square Rooms in London, strolling began in the country, and was continued at intervals for considerable portions of this and the following year. From much of it, illness and occupation disabled me, and substitutes had to be found; but to this I owe the opportunity now of closing with a characteristic picture of the course of the play, and of Dickens amid the incidents and accidents to which his theatrical career exposed him. The company carried with them, it should be said, the theatre constructed for Devonshire-house, as well as the admirable scenes which Stanfield, David Roberts, Thomas Grieve, Telbin, Absolon, and Louis Haghe had painted as their generous free-offerings to the comedy; of which the representations were thus rendered irrespective of theatres or their managers, and took place in the large halls or concert-rooms of the various towns and cities.

“The enclosure forgotten in my last” (Dickens writes from Sunderland on the 29th of August 1852), “was a little printed announcement which I have had distributed at the doors wherever we go, knocking
Two o’ Clock in the Morning
bang out of the bills. Funny as it used to be, it is become impossible to get anything out of it after the scream of
Mr. Nightingale’s Diary
. The comedy is so far improved by the reductions which your absence and other causes have imposed on us, that it acts now only two hours and twenty-five minutes, all waits included, and goes ‘like wildfire,’ as Mr. Tonson
says. We have had prodigious houses, though smaller rooms (as to their actual size) than I had hoped for. The Duke was at Derby, and no end of minor radiances. Into the room at Newcastle (where Lord Carlisle was by the bye) they squeezed six hundred people, at twelve and sixpence, into a space reasonably capable of holding three hundred. Last night, in a hall built like a theatre, with pit, boxes, and gallery, we had about twelve hundred — I dare say more. They began with a round of applause when Coote’s white waistcoat appeared in the orchestra, and wound up the farce with three deafening cheers. I never saw such good fellows. Stanny is their fellow-townsman; was born here; and they applauded his scene as if it were himself. But what I suffered from a dreadful anxiety that hung over me all the time, I can never describe. When we got here at noon, it appeared that the hall was a perfectly new one, and had only had the slates put upon the roof by torchlight over night. Farther, that the proprietors of some opposition rooms had declared the building to be unsafe, and that there was a panic in the town about it; people having had their money back, and being undecided whether to come or not, and all kinds of such horrors. I didn’t know what to do. The horrible responsibility of risking an accident of that awful nature seemed to rest wholly upon me; for I had only to say we wouldn’t act, and there would be no chance of danger. I was afraid to take Sloman into council lest the panic should infect our men. I asked W. what he thought, and he consolingly observed that his digestion was so bad that death had no terrors for him! I went and looked at the place; at the rafters, walls, pillars, and so forth; and fretted myself into a belief that they really were slight! To crown all, there was an arched iron roof without any brackets or pillars, on a new principle! The only comfort I had was in stumbling at length on the builder, and finding him a plain practical north-countryman with a foot rule in his pocket. I took him aside, and asked him should we, or could we, prop up any weak part of the place: especially the dressing-rooms, which were under our stage, the weight of which must be heavy on a new floor, and dripping wet walls. He told me there wasn’t a stronger building in the world; and that, to allay the apprehension, they had opened it, on Thursday night, to thousands of the working people, and induced them to sing, and beat with their feet, and make every possible trial of the vibration. Accordingly there was nothing for it but to go on. I was in such dread, however, lest a false alarm should spring up among the audience and occasion a rush, that I kept Catherine and Georgina out of the front. When the curtain went up and I saw the great sea of faces rolling up to the roof, I looked here and looked there, and thought I saw the gallery out of the perpendicular, and fancied the lights in the ceiling were not straight. Rounds of applause were perfect agony to me, I was so afraid of their effect upon the building. I was ready all night to rush on in case of an alarm — a false alarm was my main dread — and implore the people for God’s sake to sit still. I had our great farce-bell rung to startle Sir Geoffrey instead of throwing down a piece of wood, which might have raised a sudden-apprehension. I had a palpitation of the heart, if any of our people stumbled up or down a stair. I am sure I never acted better, but the anxiety of my mind was so intense, and the relief at last so great, that I am half-dead to-day, and have not yet been able to eat or drink anything or to stir out of my room. I shall never forget it. As to the short time we had for getting the theatre up; as to the upsetting, by a runaway pair of horses, of one of the vans at the Newcastle railway station,
with all the scenery in it, every atom of which was turned over;
as to the fatigue of our carpenters, who have now been up four nights, and who were lying dead asleep in the entrances last night; I say nothing, after the other gigantic nightmare, except that Sloman’s splendid knowledge of his business, and the good temper and cheerfulness of all the workmen, are capital. I mean to give them a supper at Liverpool, and address them in a neat and appropriate speech. We dine at two to-day (it is now one) and go to Sheffield at four, arriving there at about ten. I had been as fresh as a daisy; walked from Nottingham to Derby, and from Newcastle here; but seem to have had my nerves crumpled up last night, and have an excruciating headache. That’s all at present. I shall never be able to bear the smell of new deal and fresh mortar again as long as I live.”

Manchester and Liverpool closed the trip with enormous success at both places; and Sir Edward Lytton was present at a public dinner which was given in the former city, Dickens’s brief word about it being written as he was setting foot in the train that was to bring him to London. “Bulwer spoke brilliantly at the Manchester dinner, and his earnestness and determination about the Guild was most impressive. It carried everything before it. They are now getting up annual subscriptions, and will give us a revenue to begin with. I swear I believe that people to be the greatest in the world. At Liverpool I had a Round Robin on the stage after the play was over, a place being left for your signature, and as I am going to have it framed, I’ll tell Green to send it to Lincoln’s-inn-fields. You have no idea how good Tenniel, Topham, and Collins have been in what they had to do.”

These names, distinguished in art and letters, represent additions to the company who had joined the enterprise; and the last of them, Mr. Wilkie Collins, became, for all the rest of the life of Dickens, one of his dearest and most valued friends.

CHAPTER XVIII.

SEASIDE HOLIDAYS.

1848-1851.

Louis Philippe dethroned — French Missive from C. D. — At Broadstairs — A Chinese Junk — What it was like — Perplexing Questions — A Type of Finality — A Contrast — Dickens’s View of Temperance Agitation — Cruikshank’s
Bottle:
and
Drunkard’s Children
— Realities of Cruikshank’s Pencil — Dickens on Hogarth — Exit of Gin-lane — Wisdom of the Great Painter — Originality of Leech — Superiority of his Method — Excuses for the Rising Generation — What Leech will be remembered for — Pony-chaise Accident — Fortunate Escape — Strenuous Idleness — Hint for Mr. Taine — At Brighton — A Name for his New Book — At Broadstairs — Summoned as Special Juror — A Male Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris — At Bonchurch — Rev. James White — First Impressions of the Undercliff — Talfourd made a Judge — Touching Letter from Jeffrey — The Comedian Regnier — Progress in Writing — A Startling Revelation — Effects of Bonchurch Climate — Mr. Browne’s Sketch for Micawber — Accident to Leech — Its Consequences — At Broadstairs — A
Copperfield
Banquet — Thoughts of a New Book.

The portion of Dickens’s life over which his adventures of strolling extended was in other respects not without interest; and this chapter will deal with some of his seaside holidays before I pass to the publication in 1848 of the story of
The Haunted Man
, and to the establishment in 1850 of the Periodical which had been in his thoughts for half a dozen years before, and has had foreshadowings nearly as frequent in my pages.

Among the incidents of 1848 before the holiday season came, were the dethronement of Louis Philippe, and birth of the second French republic: on which I ventured to predict that a Gore-house friend of ours, and
his
friend, would in three days be on the scene of action. The three days passed, and I had this letter. “Mardi, Février 29, 1848.
Mon Cher. Vous êtes homme de la plus grande pénétration! Ah, mon Dieu, que vous êtes absolument magnifique! Vous prévoyez presque toutes les choses qui vont arriver; et aux choses qui viennent d’arriver vous êtes merveilleusement au-fait. Ah, cher enfant, quelle idée sublime vous vous aviez à la tête quand vous prévîtes si clairement que M. le Comte Alfred d’Orsay se rendrait au pays de sa naissance! Quel magicien! Mais — c’est tout égal, mais — il n’est pas parti. Il reste à Gore-house, où, avant-hier, il y avait un grand dîner à tout le monde. Mais quel homme, quel ange, néanmoins! Mon ami, je trouve que j’aime tant la République, qu’il me faut renoncer ma langue et écrire seulement le langage de la République de France — langage des Dieux et des Anges — langage, en un mot, des Français! Hier au soir je rencontrai à l’Athenæum Monsieur Mack Leese, qui me dit que MM. les Commissionnaires des Beaux Arts lui avaient écrit, par leur secrétaire, un billet de remerciements à propos de son tableau dans la Chambre des Députés, et qu’ils lui avaient prié de faire l’autre tableau en fresque, dont on y a besoin. Ce qu’il a promis. Voici des nouvelles pour les champs de Lincoln’s Inn! Vive la gloire de France! Vive la République! Vive le Peuple! Plus de Royauté! Plus des Bourbons! Plus de Guizot! Mort aux traîtres! Faisons couler le sang pour la liberté, la justice, la cause populaire! Jusqu’à cinq heures et demie, adieu, mon brave! Recevez l’assurance de ma considération distinguée, et croyez-moi, concitoyen! votre tout dévoué, Citoyen Charles Dickens.”
I proved to be not quite so wrong, nevertheless, as my friend supposed.

Somewhat earlier than usual this summer, on the close of the Shakespeare-house performances, he tried Broadstairs once more, having no important writing in hand: but in the brief interval before leaving he saw a thing of celebrity in those days, the Chinese Junk; and I had all the details in so good a description that I could not resist the temptation of using some parts of it at the time. “Drive down to the Blackwall railway,” he wrote to me, “and for a matter of eighteen-pence you are at the Chinese Empire in no time. In half a score of minutes, the tiles and chimney-pots, backs of squalid houses, frowsy pieces of waste ground, narrow courts and streets, swamps, ditches, masts of ships, gardens of dockweed, and unwholesome little bowers of scarlet beans, whirl away in a flying dream, and nothing is left but China. How the flowery region ever came into this latitude and longitude is the first thing one asks; and it is not certainly the least of the marvel. As Aladdin’s palace was transported hither and thither by the rubbing of a lamp, so the crew of Chinamen aboard the Keying devoutly believed that their good ship would turn up, quite safe, at the desired port, if they only tied red rags enough upon the mast, rudder, and cable. Somehow they did not succeed. Perhaps they ran short of rag; at any rate they hadn’t enough on board to keep them above water; and to the bottom they would undoubtedly have gone but for the skill and coolness of a dozen English sailors, who brought them over the ocean in safety. Well, if there be any one thing in the world that this extraordinary craft is not at all like, that thing is a ship of any kind. So narrow, so long, so grotesque; so low in the middle, so high at each end, like a China pen-tray; with no rigging, with nowhere to go to aloft; with mats for sails, great warped cigars for masts, gaudy dragons and sea-monsters disporting themselves from stem to stern, and
on
the stern a gigantic cock of impossible aspect, defying the world (as well he may) to produce his equal, — it would look more at home at the top of a public building, or at the top of a mountain, or in an avenue of trees, or down in a mine, than afloat on the water. As for the Chinese lounging on the deck, the most extravagant imagination would never dare to suppose them to be mariners. Imagine a ship’s crew, without a profile among them, in gauze pinafores and plaited hair; wearing stiff clogs a quarter of a foot thick in the sole; and lying at night in little scented boxes, like backgammon men or chess-pieces, or mother-of-pearl counters! But by Jove! even this is nothing to your surprise when you go down into the cabin. There you get into a torture of perplexity. As, what became of all those lanterns hanging to the roof when the Junk was out at sea? Whether they dangled there, banging and beating against each other, like so many jesters’ baubles? Whether the idol Chin Tee, of the eighteen arms, enshrined in a celestial Punch’s Show, in the place of honour, ever tumbled out in heavy weather? Whether the incense and the joss-stick still burnt before her, with a faint perfume and a little thread of smoke, while the mighty waves were roaring all around? Whether that preposterous tissue-paper umbrella in the corner was always spread, as being a convenient maritime instrument for walking about the decks with in a storm? Whether all the cool and shiny little chairs and tables were continually sliding about and bruising each other, and if not why not? Whether anybody on the voyage ever read those two books printed in characters like bird-cages and fly-traps? Whether the Mandarin passenger, He Sing, who had never been ten miles from home in his life before, lying sick on a bamboo couch in a private china closet of his own (where he is now perpetually writing autographs for inquisitive barbarians), ever began to doubt the potency of the Goddess of the Sea, whose counterfeit presentment, like a flowery monthly nurse, occupies the sailors’ joss-house in the second gallery? Whether it is possible that the said Mandarin, or the artist of the ship, Sam Sing, Esquire, R.A. of Canton,
can
ever go ashore without a walking-staff of cinnamon, agreeably to the usage of their likenesses in British tea-shops? Above all, whether the hoarse old ocean could ever have been seriously in earnest with this floating toy-shop; or had merely played with it in lightness of spirit — roughly, but meaning no harm — as the bull did with another kind of china-shop on St. Patrick’s day in the morning.”