Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2315 page)

Some incidents that belong specially to the three years that closed his residence in the home thus associated with not the least interesting part of his career, will farther show what now were his occupations and ways of life. In the summer of 1849 he came up from Broadstairs to attend a Mansion-house dinner, which the lord mayor of that day had been moved by a laudable ambition to give to “literature and art,” which he supposed would be adequately represented by the Royal Academy, the contributors to
Punch
, Dickens, and one or two newspaper men. On the whole the result was not cheering; the worthy chief magistrate, no doubt quite undesignedly, expressing too much surprise at the unaccustomed faces around him to be altogether complimentary. In general (this was the tone) we are in the habit of having princes, dukes, ministers, and what not for our guests, but what a delight, all the greater for being unusual, to see gentlemen like you! In other words, what could possibly be pleasanter than for people satiated with greatness to get for a while by way of change into the butler’s pantry? This in substance was Dickens’s account to me next day, and his reason for having been very careful in his acknowledgment of the toast of “the Novelists.” He was nettled not a little therefore by a jesting allusion to himself in the
Daily News
in connection with the proceedings, and asked me to forward a remonstrance. Having a strong dislike to all such displays of sensitiveness, I suppressed the letter; but it is perhaps worth printing now. Its date is Broadstairs, Wednesday 11th of July 1849. “I have no other interest in, or concern with, a most facetious article on last Saturday’s dinner at the Mansion-house, which appeared in your paper of yesterday, and found its way here to-day, than that it misrepresents me in what I said on the occasion. If you should not think it at all damaging to the wit of that satire to state what I did say, I shall be much obliged to you. It was this. . . . That I considered the compliment of a recognition of Literature by the citizens of London the more acceptable to us because it was unusual in that hall, and likely to be an advantage and benefit to them in proportion as it became in future less unusual. That, on behalf of the novelists, I accepted the tribute as an appropriate one; inasmuch as we had sometimes reason to hope that our imaginary worlds afforded an occasional refuge to men busily engaged in the toils of life, from which they came forth none the worse to a renewal of its strivings; and certainly that the chief magistrate of the greatest city in the world might be fitly regarded as the representative of that class of our readers.”

Of an incident towards the close of the year, though it had important practical results, brief mention will here suffice. We saw the Mannings executed on the walls of Horsemonger-lane gaol; and with the letter which Dickens wrote next day to the
Times
descriptive of what we had witnessed on that memorable morning, there began an active agitation against public executions which never ceased until the salutary change was effected which has worked so well. Shortly after this he visited Rockingham-castle, the seat of Mr. and Mrs. Watson, his Lausanne friends; and I must preface by a word or two the amusing letter in which he told me of this visit. It was written in character, and the character was that of an American visitor to England.

“I knew him, Horatio;” and a very kindly honest man he was, who had come to England authorised to make enquiry into our general agricultural condition, and who discharged his mission by publishing some reports extremely creditable to his good sense and ability, expressed in a plain nervous English that reminded one of the rural writings of Cobbett. But in an evil hour he published also a series of private letters to friends written from the various residences his introductions had opened to him; and these were filled with revelations as to the internal economy of English noblemen’s country houses, of a highly startling description. As for example, how, on arrival at a house your “name is announced, and your portmanteau immediately taken into your chamber, which the servant shows you, with every convenience.” How “you are asked by the servant at breakfast what you will have, or you get up and help yourself.” How at dinner you don’t dash at the dishes, or contend for the “fixings,” but wait till “his portion is handed by servants to every one.” How all the wines, fruit, glasses, candlesticks, lamps, and plate are “taken care of” by butlers, who have under-butlers for their “adjuncts;” how ladies never wear “white satin shoes or white gloves more than once;” how dinner napkins are “never left upon the table, but either thrown into your chair or on the floor under the table;” how no end of pains are taken to “empty slops;” and above all what a national propensity there is to brush a man’s clothes and polish his boots, whensoever and wheresoever the clothes and boots can be seized without the man.
This was what Dickens good-humouredly laughs at.

“Rockingham Castle: Friday, thirtieth of November, 1849. Picture to yourself, my dear F, a large old castle, approached by an ancient keep, portcullis, &c., &c., filled with company, waited on by six-and-twenty servants; the slops (and wine-glasses) continually being emptied; and my clothes (with myself in them) always being carried off to all sorts of places; and you will have a faint idea of the mansion in which I am at present staying. I should have written to you yesterday, but for having had a very busy day. Among the guests is a Miss B, sister of the Honourable Miss B (of Salem, Mass.), whom we once met at the house of our distinguished literary countryman Colonel Landor. This lady is renowned as an amateur actress, so last night we got up in the great hall some scenes from the
School for Scandal;
the scene with the lunatic on the wall, from the
Nicholas Nickleby
of Major-General the Hon. C. Dickens (Richmond, Va.); some conjuring; and then finished off with country-dances; of which we had two admirably good ones, quite new to me, though really old. Getting the words, and making the preparations, occupied (as you may believe) the whole day; and it was three o’clock before I got to bed. It was an excellent entertainment, and we were all uncommonly merry. . . . I had a very polite letter from our enterprising countryman Major Bentley
(of Lexington, Ky.), which I shall show you when I come home. We leave here this afternoon, and I shall expect you according to appointment, at a quarter past ten a.m. to-morrow. Of all the country-houses and estates I have yet seen in England, I think this is by far the best. Everything undertaken eventuates in a most magnificent hospitality; and you will be pleased to hear that our celebrated fellow citizen General Boxall (Pittsburg, Penn.) is engaged in handing down to posterity the face of the owner of the mansion and of his youthful son and daughter. At a future time it will be my duty to report on the turnips, mangel-wurzel, ploughs, and live stock; and for the present I will only say that I regard it as a fortunate circumstance for the neighbouring community that this patrimony should have fallen to my spirited and enlightened host. Every one has profited by it, and the labouring people in especial are thoroughly well cared-for and looked after. To see all the household, headed by an enormously fat housekeeper, occupying the back benches last night, laughing and applauding without any restraint; and to see a blushing sleek-headed footman produce, for the watch-trick, a silver watch of the most portentous dimensions, amidst the rapturous delight of his brethren and sisterhood; was a very pleasant spectacle, even to a conscientious republican like yourself or me, who cannot but contemplate the parent country with feelings of pride in our own land, which (as was well observed by the Honourable Elias Deeze, of Hertford, Conn.) is truly the land of the free. Best remembrances from Columbia’s daughters. Ever thine, my dear F, — C.H.” Dickens, during the too brief time this excellent friend was spared to him, often repeated his visits to Rockingham, always a surpassing enjoyment; and in the winter of 1851 he accomplished there, with help of the country carpenter, “a very elegant little theatre,” of which he constituted himself manager, and had among his actors a brother of the lady referred to in his letter, “a very good comic actor, but loose in words;” poor Augustus Stafford “more than passable;” and “a son of Vernon Smith’s, really a capital low comedian.” It will be one more added to the many examples I have given of his untiring energy both in work and play, if I mention the fact that this theatre was opened at Rockingham for their first representation on Wednesday the 15th of January; that after the performance there was a country dance which lasted far into the morning; and that on the next evening, after a railway journey of more than 120 miles, he dined in London with the prime minister, Lord John Russell.

A little earlier in that winter we had together taken his eldest son to Eton, and a little later he had a great sorrow. “Poor dear Jeffrey!” he wrote to me on the 29th January, 1850. “I bought a
Times
at the station yesterday morning, and was so stunned by the announcement, that I felt it in that wounded part of me, almost directly; and the bad symptoms (modified) returned within a few hours. I had a letter from him in extraordinary good spirits within this week or two — he was better, he said, than he had been for a long time — and I sent him proof-sheets of the number only last Wednesday. I say nothing of his wonderful abilities and great career, but he was a most affectionate and devoted friend to me; and though no man could wish to live and die more happily, so old in years and yet so young in faculties and sympathies, I am very very deeply grieved for his loss.” He was justly entitled to feel pride in being able so to word his tribute of sorrowing affection. Jeffrey had completed with consummate success, if ever man did, the work appointed him in this world; and few, after a life of such activities, have left a memory so unstained and pure. But other and sharper sorrows awaited Dickens.

The chief occupation of the past and present year,
David Copperfield
, will have a chapter to itself, and in this may be touched but lightly. Once fairly in it, the story bore him irresistibly along; certainly with less trouble to himself in the composition, beyond that ardent sympathy with the creatures of the fancy which always made so absolutely real to him their sufferings or sorrows; and he was probably never less harassed by interruptions or breaks in his invention. His principal hesitation occurred in connection with the child-wife Dora, who had become a great favourite as he went on; and it was shortly after her fate had been decided, in the early autumn of 1850,
but before she breathed her last, that a third daughter was born to him, to whom he gave his dying little heroine’s name. On these and other points, without forestalling what waits to be said of the composition of this fine story, a few illustrative words from his letters will properly find a place here. “
Copperfield
half done,” he wrote of the second number on the 6th of June. “I feel, thank God, quite confident in the story. I have a move in it ready for this month; another for next; and another for the next.” “I think it is necessary” (15th of November) “to decide against the special pleader. Your reasons quite suffice. I am not sure but that the banking house might do. I will consider it in a walk.” “Banking business impracticable” (17th of November) “on account of the confinement: which would stop the story, I foresee. I have taken, for the present at all events, the proctor. I am wonderfully in harness, and nothing galls or frets.” “
Copperfield
done” (20th of November) “after two days’ very hard work indeed; and I think a smashing number. His first dissipation I hope will be found worthy of attention, as a piece of grotesque truth.” “I feel a great hope” (23rd of January, 1850) “that I shall be remembered by little Em’ly, a good many years to come.” “I begin to have my doubts of being able to join you” (20th of February), “for
Copperfield
runs high, and must be done to-morrow. But I’ll do it if possible, and strain every nerve. Some beautiful comic love, I hope, in the number.” “Still undecided about Dora” (7th of May), “but must decide to-day.”
“I have been” (Tuesday, 20th of August) “very hard at work these three days, and have still Dora to kill. But with good luck, I may do it to-morrow. Obliged to go to Shepherd’s-bush to-day, and can consequently do little this morning. Am eschewing all sorts of things that present themselves to my fancy — coming in such crowds!” “Work in a very decent state of advancement” (13th of August) “domesticity notwithstanding. I hope I shall have a splendid number. I feel the story to its minutest point.” “Mrs. Micawber is still” (15th of August), “I regret to say, in statu quo. Ever yours, Wilkins Micawber.” The little girl was born the next day, the 16th, and received the name of Dora Annie. The most part of what remained of the year was passed away from home.

The year following did not open with favourable omen, both the child and its mother having severe illness. The former rallied however, and “little Dora is getting on bravely, thank God!” was his bulletin of the early part of February. Soon after, it was resolved to make trial of Great Malvern for Mrs. Dickens; and lodgings were taken there in March, Dickens and her sister accompanying her, and the children being left in London. “It is a most beautiful place,” he wrote to me (15th of March). “O Heaven, to meet the Cold Waterers (as I did this morning when I went out for a shower-bath) dashing down the hills, with severe expressions on their countenances, like men doing matches and not exactly winning! Then, a young lady in a grey polka going
up
the hills, regardless of legs; and meeting a young gentleman (a bad case, I should say) with a light black silk cap on under his hat, and the pimples of I don’t know how many douches under that. Likewise an old man who ran over a milk-child, rather than stop! — with no neckcloth, on principle; and with his mouth wide open, to catch the morning air.” This was the month, as we have seen, when the performances for the Guild were in active preparation, and it was also the date of the farewell dinner to our friend Macready on his quitting the stage. Dickens and myself came up for it from Malvern, to which he returned the next day; and from the spirited speech in which he gave the health of the chairman at the dinner, I will add a few words for the sake of the truth expressed in them. “There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition, that authors are not a particularly united body, and I am afraid that this may contain half a grain or so of the veracious. But of our chairman I have never in my life made public mention without adding what I can never repress, that in the path we both tread I have uniformly found him to be, from the first, the most generous of men; quick to encourage, slow to disparage, and ever anxious to assert the order of which he is so great an ornament. That we men of letters are, or have been, invariably or inseparably attached to each other, it may not be possible to say, formerly or now; but there cannot now be, and there cannot ever have been, among the followers of literature, a man so entirely without the grudging little jealousies that too often disparage its brightness, as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.” That was as richly merited as it is happily said.