The Old Curiosity Club discussion
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Letters, writings, quotes, etc. OF Charles Dickens
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My dearest Mamie and Katie,
I have been "moved" here, and am now (Ballard having added to the hotel a house we lived in three years) in our old dining-room and sitting-room, and our old drawing-room as a bedroom. My cold is so bad, both in my throat and in my chest, that I can't bathe in the sea; Tom Collin dissuaded me—thought it "bad"—but I get a heavy shower-bath at Mrs. Crampton's every morning. The baths are still hers and her husband's, but they have retired and live in "Nuckells"—are going to give a stained-glass window, value three hundred pounds, to St. Peter's Church. Tom Collin is of opinion that the Miss Dickenses has growed two fine young women—leastwise, asking pardon, ladies. An evangelical family of most disagreeable girls prowl about here and trip people up with tracts, which they put in the paths with stones upon them to keep them from blowing away. Charles Collins and I having seen a bill yesterday—about a mesmeric young lady who did feats, one of which was set forth in the bill, in a line by itself, as
the rigid legs,
—were overpowered with curiosity, and resolved to go. It came off in the Assembly Room, now more exquisitely desolate than words can describe. Eighteen shillings was the "take." Behind a screen among the company, we heard mysterious gurglings of water before the entertainment began, and then a slippery sound which occasioned me to whisper C. C. (who laughed in the most ridiculous manner), "Soap." It proved to be the young lady washing herself. She must have been wonderfully dirty, for she took a world of trouble, and didn't come out clean after all—in a wretched dirty muslin frock, with blue ribbons. She was the alleged mesmeriser, and a boy who distributed bills the alleged mesmerised. It was a most preposterous imposition, but more ludicrous than any poor sight I ever saw. The boy is clearly out of pantomime, and when he pretended to be in the mesmeric state, made the company back by going in among them head over heels, backwards, half-a-dozen times, in a most insupportable way. The pianist had struck; and the manner in which the lecturer implored "some lady" to play a "polker," and the manner in which no lady would; and in which the few ladies who were there sat with their hats on, and the elastic under their chins, as if it were going to blow, is never to be forgotten. I have been writing all the morning, and am going for a walk to Ramsgate. This is a beast of a letter, but I am not well, and have been addling my head.
Ever, dear Girls, your affectionate Father.
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My Dear Evans.
Leech was down in the sitting room, dressed, all day yesterday—and had a boiled fowl for his dinner, of which he ate the two wings with great satisfaction. Going up there, at a little after 8 last night, I found he had gone to bed, and was restless again and tossing about. I soon began to magnetize him. He became composed immediately, and lay in a perfect calm, though without sleeping more than two or three minutes at a time (and then very soundly) until 12 o'clock, during the whole of which time I continued the magnetism. As he was then cheerful and quiet, though not—as he said—drowsy any more, I thought it best to come home, and leave John there to call me in case I should be wanted. He slept very well, however, (though he woke often) and there was not the least necessity to send.
(I observed exactly this effect several times, in a lady whom I magnetized every day for Six months, in Italy. Her disorder was tic Doloreux in a most horrible form. In some states of nervous excitement she never went to sleep for more than a minute or two at a time, but was invariably tranquillized and made easy by the process.)
I am going up there at 12 o'clock, and will finish this letter after I have sat with him for an hour or two, and seen how he is.
———
2 o'clock. afternoon
He is greatly better, and has very much surprised the Doctor. He had a haddock and a bit of boiled mutton for his dinner, and dispatched them in a twinkling. He made divers overtures to me (in Mrs. Leech's absence) concerning a glass of port wine and water—which I didn't understand; so he went on swallowing toast and water, and barley water. Appearance greatly improved, and spirits better altogether. We intend to have another operation tonight, if there should seem to be the least occasion. I think he is at least 100 per cent better than he was yesterday.
As you are interested in the Magnetism, I will tell you, when I have an opportunity, a very curious piece of observation in reference to it, of Mrs. Leech's, which she mentioned last night. The most remarkable incident of it, is, that a great German chemist of the name of Rheimbacher whose investigations changed him from a disbeliever into a believer mentions exactly the same observation as having been made by some female patients of his, and lays great stress on it [in] a pamphlet he wrote. I need not say that she never heard of him or his book.
Faithfully Always
CHARLES DICKENS
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June 1865
My Dear Letitia
I am a little shaken; not by the beating and dragging of the carriage in which I was, but by the work afterwards in taking out the dying and dead, which was most horrible. I was in the only carriage that did not go over into the stream. It tilted up, and was caught upon the turn by some of the ruin of the bridge. Two ladies were my fellow-passengers. I said to them "Pray don't cry out. We can't help ourselves. Let us be quiet and composed." One of them, an elderly lady, replied: "Rely upon me. Upon my soul I won't call out, or stir." We were all down together in a corner of the carriage, and they remained perfectly still until I could get them out.
Ever affecy.
CD.
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I write this note to-day because your going away is much upon my mind, and because I want you to have a few parting words from me to think of now and then at quiet times. I need not tell you that I love you dearly, and am very, very sorry in my heart to part with you. But this life is half made up of partings, and these pains must be borne. It is my comfort and my sincere conviction that you are going to try the life for which you are best fitted. I think its freedom and wildness more suited to you than any experiment in a study or office would ever have been; and without that training, you could have followed no other suitable occupation.
What you have already wanted until now has been a set, steady, constant purpose. I therefore exhort you to persevere in a thorough determination to do whatever you have to do as well as you can do it. I was not so old as you are now when I first had to win my food, and do this out of this determination, and I have never slackened in it since.
Never take a mean advantage of anyone in any transaction, and never be hard upon people who are in your power. Try to do to others, as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better for you that they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid down by our Saviour, than that you should.
I put a New Testament among your books, for the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes that made me write an easy account of it for you, when you were a little child; because it is the best book that ever was or will be known in the world, and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty can possibly be guided. As your brothers have gone away, one by one, I have written to each such words as I am now writing to you, and have entreated them all to guide themselves by this book, putting aside the interpretations and inventions of men.
You will remember that you have never at home been wearied about religious observances or mere formalities. I have always been anxious not to weary my children with such things before they are old enough to form opinions respecting them. You will therefore understand the better that I now most solemnly impress upon you the truth and beauty of the Christian religion, as it came from Christ Himself, and the impossibility of your going far wrong if you humbly but heartily respect it.
Only one thing more on this head. The more we are in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are disposed to hold forth about it. Never abandon the wholesome practice of saying your own private prayers, night and morning. I have never abandoned it myself, and I know the comfort of it.
I hope you will always be able to say in after life, that you had a kind father. You cannot show your affection for him so well, or make him so happy, as by doing your duty.
Your affectionate Father.
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I write this note to-day because your going away is much upon my mind, and because I want you to have a few parting words from me to think of now and then at quiet times. I need ..."
Kim
What a fascinating variety of letters you have provided. The one to Plorn I found especially interesting. While I was aware that Dickens wrote "The Life of Our Lord" for his children and never intended to have it published, I was unaware of the extent of his own private feelings and belief that is shown in the letter to his son.
The last sentence of the letter that asks Plorn to always do his duty certainly has the Victorian frame of mind in full view.
"If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
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My dear Georgy,
Think of Collins's usual luck with me! We went up a Cumberland mountain yesterday—a huge black hill, fifteen hundred feet high. We took for a guide a capital innkeeper hard by. It rained in torrents—as it only does rain in a hill country—the whole time. At the top, there were black mists and the darkness of night. It then came out that the innkeeper had not been up for twenty years, and he lost his head and himself altogether; and we couldn't get down again! What wonders the Inimitable performed with his compass until it broke with the heat and wet of his pocket no matter; it did break, and then we wandered about, until it was clear to the Inimitable that the night must be passed there, and the enterprising travellers probably die of cold. We took our own way about coming down, struck, and declared that the guide might wander where he would, but we would follow a watercourse we lighted upon, and which must come at last to the river. This necessitated amazing gymnastics; in the course of which performances, Collins fell into the said watercourse with his ankle sprained, and the great ligament of the foot and leg swollen I don't know how big.
How I enacted Wardour over again in carrying him down, and what a business it was to get him down; I may say in Gibbs's words: "Vi lascio a giudicare!" But he was got down somehow, and we got off the mountain somehow; and now I carry him to bed, and into and out of carriages, exactly like Wardour in private life. I don't believe he will stand for a month to come. He has had a doctor, and can wear neither shoe nor stocking, and has his foot wrapped up in a flannel waistcoat, and has a breakfast saucer of liniment, and a horrible dabbling of lotion incessantly in progress. We laugh at it all, but I doubt very much whether he can go on to Doncaster. It will be a miserable blow to our H. W. scheme, and I say nothing about it as yet; but he is really so crippled that I doubt[30] the getting him there. We have resolved to fall to work to-morrow morning and begin our writing; and there, for the present, that point rests.
This is a little place with fifty houses, five bathing-machines, five girls in straw hats, five men in straw hats, and no other company. The little houses are all in half-mourning—yellow stone on white stone, and black; and it reminds me of what Broadstairs might have been if it had not inherited a cliff, and had been an Irishman. But this is a capital little homely inn, looking out upon the sea; and we are really very comfortably lodged. I can just stand upright in my bedroom. Otherwise, it is a good deal like one of Ballard's top-rooms. We have a very obliging and comfortable landlady; and it is a clean nice place in a rough wild country. We came here haphazard, but could not have done better.
We lay last night at a place called Wigton—also in half-mourning—with the wonderful peculiarity that it had no population, no business, no streets to speak of; but five linendrapers within range of our small windows, one linendraper's next door, and five more linendrapers round the corner. I ordered a night-light in my bedroom. A queer little old woman brought me one of the common Child's night-lights, and seeming to think that I looked at it with interest, said: "It's joost a vara keeyourious thing, sir, and joost new coom oop. It'll burn awt hoors a' end, an no gootther, nor no waste, nor ony sike a thing, if you can creedit what I say, seein' the airticle."
Of course I shall go to Doncaster, whether or no (please God), and my postage directions to you remain unchanged. Love to Mamey, Katey, Charley, Harry, and the darling Plorn.
Ever affectionately.
Miss Hogarth.
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My dear Georgy,
I received your letter at Allonby yesterday, and was delighted to get it. We came back to Carlisle last night (to a capital inn, kept by Breach's brother), and came on here to-day. We are on our way to Doncaster; but Sabbath observance throws all the trains out; and although it is not a hundred miles from here, we shall have, as well as I can make out the complicated lists of trains, to sleep at Leeds—which I particularly detest as an odious place—to-morrow night.
Accustomed as you are to the homage which men delight to render to the Inimitable, you would be scarcely prepared for the proportions it assumes in this northern country. Station-masters assist him to alight from carriages, deputations await him in hotel entries, innkeepers bow down before him and put him into regal rooms, the town goes down to the platform to see him off, and Collins's ankle goes into the newspapers!!!
It is a great deal better than it was, and he can get into new hotels and up the stairs with two thick sticks, like an admiral in a farce. His spirits have improved in a corresponding degree, and he contemplates cheerfully the keeping house at Doncaster. I thought (as I told you) he would never have gone there, but he seems quite up to the mark now. Of course he can never walk out, or see anything of any place. We have done our first paper for H. W., and sent it up to the printer's.
The landlady of the little inn at Allonby lived at Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, when I went down there before "Nickleby," and was smuggled into the room to see me, when I was secretly found out. She is an immensely fat woman now. "But I could tuck my arm round her waist then, Mr. Dickens," the landlord said when she told me the story as I was going to bed the night before last. "And can't you do it now," I said, "you insensible dog? Look at me! Here's a picture!" Accordingly, I got round as much of her as I could; and this gallant action was the most successful I have ever performed, on the whole. I think it was the dullest little place I ever entered; and what with the monotony of an idle sea, and what with the monotony of another sea in the room (occasioned by Collins's perpetually holding his ankle over a pail of salt water, and laving it with a milk jug), I struck yesterday, and came away.
We are in a very remarkable old house here, with genuine old rooms and an uncommonly quaint staircase. I have a state bedroom, with two enormous red four-posters in it, each as big as Charley's room at Gad's Hill. Bellew is to preach here to-morrow. "And we know he is a friend of yours, sir," said the landlord, when he presided over the serving of the dinner (two little salmon trout; a sirloin steak; a brace of partridges; seven dishes of sweets; five dishes of dessert, led off by a bowl of peaches; and in the centre an enormous bride-cake—"We always have it here, sir," said the landlord, "custom of the house.") (Collins turned pale, and estimated the dinner at half a guinea each.)
This is the stupidest of letters, but all description is gone, or going, into "The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices."
Kiss the darling Plorn, who is often in my thoughts. Best love to Charley, Mamey, and Katie. I will write to you again from Doncaster, where I shall be rejoiced to find another letter from you.
Ever affectionately, my dearest Georgy.
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My dear Henry,
Here is a very serious business on the great estate respecting the water supply. Last night, they had pumped the well dry merely in raising the family supply for the day; and this morning (very little water having been got into the cisterns) it is dry again! It is pretty clear to me that we must look the thing in the face, and at once bore deeper, dig, or do some beastly thing or other, to secure this necessary in abundance. Meanwhile I am in a most plaintive and forlorn condition without your presence and counsel. I raise my voice in the wilderness and implore the same!!!
Wild legends are in circulation among the servants how that Captain Goldsmith on the knoll above—the skipper in that crow's-nest of a house—has millions of gallons of water always flowing for him. Can he have damaged my well? Can we imitate him, and have our millions of gallons? Goldsmith or I must fall, so I conceive.
If you get this, send me a telegraph message informing me when I may expect comfort. I am held by four of the family while I write this, in case I should do myself a mischief—it certainly won't be taking to drinking water.
Ever affectionately (most despairingly).
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Sheweth,
That your Petitioner has not been able to write one word to-day, or to fashion forth the dimmest shade of the faintest ghost of an idea.
That your Petitioner is therefore desirous of being taken out, and is not at all particular where.
That your Petitioner, being imbecile, says no more. But will ever, etc. (whatever that may be).
Paris, March 3rd, 1856.
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So much for respecting Paradise Lost.
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I had never thought of Dickens as a religious man -- this passage offers me a new perspective on him.
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My dear Henry,
The second conspirator has been here this morning to ask whether you wish the windlass to be left in the yard, and whether you will want him and his mate any more, and, if so, when? Of course he says (rolling something in the form of a fillet in at one broken tooth all the while, and rolling it out at another) that they could wish fur to have the windlass if it warn't any ways a hill conwenience fur to fetch her away. I have told him that if he will come back on Friday he shall have your reply. Will you, therefore, send it me by return of post? He says he'll "look up" (as if he was an astronomer) "a Friday arterdinner."
On Monday I am going away with Collins for ten days or a fortnight, on a "tour in search of an article" for "Household Words." We have not the least idea where we are going; but he says, "Let's look at the Norfolk coast," and I say, "Let's look at the back of the Atlantic." I don't quite know what I mean by that; but have a general impression that I mean something knowing.
I am horribly used up after the Jerrold business. Low spirits, low pulse, low voice, intense reaction. If I were not like Mr. Micawber, "falling back for a spring" on Monday, I think I should slink into a corner and cry.
Ever affectionately.
Mod
Sunday, Fourth March, 1855.
MY DEAR COLLINS,-- I have to report another failure on the part of our friend "Williams" last night. He so confounded an enlightened British audience at the Standard Theatre on the subject of Antony and Cleopatra that I clearly saw them wondering, towards the end of the Fourth Act, when the play was going to begin.
A man much heavier than Mark (in the actual scale, I mean), and about twenty years older, played Cæsar. When he came on with a map of London--pretending it was a scroll and making believe to read it--and said, "He calls me Boy"--a howl of derision arose from the audience which you probably heard in the Dark, without knowing what occasioned it. All the smaller characters, having their speeches much upon their minds, came in and let them off without the slightest reference to cues. And Miss Glyn, in some entirely new conception of her art, "read" her part like a Patter song--several lines on end with the rapidity of Charles Mathews, and then one very long word. It was very brightly and creditably got up, but (as I have said) "Williams" did not carry the audience, and I don't think the Sixty Pounds a week will be got back by the Manager.
You will have the goodness to picture me to yourself--alone--in profound solitude--in an abyss of despair--ensconced in a small Managerial Private Box in the very centre of the House--frightfully sleepy (I had a dirty steak in the City first, and I think they must have put Laudanum into the Harvey's sauce), and played at, point-blank, by the entire strength of the company. The horrors in which I constantly woke up, and found myself detected, you will imagine. The gentle Glyn, on being called for, heaved her snowy bosom straight at me, and the box-keeper informed me that the Manager who brought her on would "have the honor of stepping round directly." I sneaked away in the most craven and dastardly manner, and made an utterly false representation that I was coming back again.
If you will give me one glass of hot gin-and-water on Thursday or Friday evening, I will come up about 8 ( )* o'clock with a cigar in my pocket and inspect the Hospital. I am afraid this relaxing weather will tell a little faintly on your medicine, but I hope you will soon begin to see land beyond the Hunterian Ocean.
I have been writing and planning and making notes over an immense number of little bits of paper--and I never can write legibly under such circumstances.
Always cordially yours, C. D.
W. WILKIE COLLINS, Esquire
*( ) Intended for "eight."--C. D.
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Shopping lists
Cigar reminders
Plans for his next novel TTC
Having recently read American Notes, it does strike me that many of his letters have the similar sense of humor. American Notes is like laying the letters back to back, written to no one in particular, but sounding like a friend on the receiving end.
Mod
Tristram wrote: "As yet, I have never read American Notes but your saying that there is humour in them makes me curious because there is nothing like Dickens's humour."It does, and it also has its serious parts, too, with its observations of American society at the time.
The ship journey in the middle of winter in rough seas, fighting off seasickness, boredom, worry -- all with humor.
I love travel books and this one is one of the best I've read.
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I'm told that Henry James' American Scenes is quite good in the American Notes vein.I have it on my Nook, but have not gotten to it. I assume it is more of a story of a visit back to America rather than first time seeing it.
Funny, but I recall James being an early critic of Dickens and OMF was not to his liking.
Mod
"Our Mutual Friend is, to our perception, the poorest of Mr Dickens's works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment, but of permanent exhaustion. It is wanting in inspiration. For the last ten years it has seemed to us that Mr Dickens has been. unmistakably forcing himself Bleak House was forced; Little Dorrit was labored; the present work is dug out as with a spade and pickaxe. Of course -- to anticipate the usual argument -- who but Dickens could have written it? Who, indeed? Who else would have established a lady in business in a novel on the admirably solid basis of her always putting on gloves and tieing a handkerchief round her head in moments of grief, and of her habitually addressing her family with 'Peace! hold!' It is needless to say that Mrs Reginald Wilfer is first and last the occasion of considerable true humor. When, after conducting her daughter to Mrs Boffin's carriage, in sight of all the envious neighbors, she is described as enjoying her triumph during the next quarter of an hour by airing herself on the door-step 'in a kind of splendidly serene trance,' we laugh with as uncritical a laugh as could be desired of us. We pay the same tribute to her assertions, as she narrates the glories of the society she enjoyed at her father's table, that she has known as many as three copper-plate engravers exchanging the most exquisite Sallies and retorts there at one time. But when to these we have added a dozen more happy examples of the humor which was exhaled from every line of Mr Dickens's earlier writings, we shall have closed the list of the merits of the work before us. To say that the conduct of the story, with all its complications, betrays a long-practised hand, is to pay no compliment worthy the author. If this were, indeed, a compliment, we should be inclined to carry it further, and congratulate him on his success in what we should call the manufacture of fiction; for in so doing we should express a feeling that has attended us throughout the book. Seldom, we reflected, had we read a book so intensely written, so little seen, known, or felt.
The review is quite long so instead of posting the entire thing, here's the link to it.
https://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~mats...
Kim wrote: "From Henry James's Review on Our Mutual Friend:"Our Mutual Friend is, to our perception, the poorest of Mr Dickens's works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment, but of ..."
Thanks Kim. Interesting to read. It almost seems there was some sort of enmity there. That is a review that does not spare an unkind word.
Well, 150 years later, having read two of James' works, I find him mostly unreadable; or if I could phrase like him: drudgery acutely unmitigated by momentary delights.
Mod
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"Our Mutual Friend is, to our perception, the poorest of Mr Dickens's works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment, but of ..."
Charles Dickens. Yes, of course. Still read today. By the way, who is Henry James? ;-))
The only James I could ever recommend to anyone would be Turn of The Screw.
Mod
you took the words right out of my mouth. Reading James's "review", which seethes with envy in every line, my first question was, Who is this Henry James? My second question then was, Why is he talking of "us" and "we"? Is he counting the voices in his head, or does he want to manipulate the readers by assuming that he is talking for them all? Or has he got the same explanation for the "we" as our friend the Dude:
[warning: There's strong language in here]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLR_T...
And then, yes - apart from the Turn of the Screw, there is nothing by James I would in the least like. Strange to think that with Dickens it's exactly the other way around: There is nothing by him, apart from TOCS, I would in the least dislike, and even TOCS has some very good moments.
Mod
I'd rather chew tobacco for three hours - although I can't abide chewing tobacco - than sit through a Wagner opera for three hours. Although the result would be the same in both cases: Strong fits of nausea ;-)
Mod
As usual you can never agree with the great majority of people;
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas (or, as some of his later works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionized opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesize the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama.
His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticsism and quickly shifting tonal centers, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music.
Wagner inspired great devotion. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner's music. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were greatly indebted to him, as were César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and numerous others. Gustav Mahler was devoted to Wagner and his music; aged 15, he sought him out on his 1875 visit to Vienna, became a renowned Wagner conductor, and his compositions are seen by Richard Taruskin as extending Wagner's "maximalization" of "the temporal and the sonorous" in music to the world of the symphony. The harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (both of whose oeuvres contain examples of tonal and atonal modernism) have often been traced back to Tristan and Parsifal. The Italian form of operatic realism known as verismo owed much to the Wagnerian concept of musical form.
In the 20th century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived", while Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is also discussed in some of the works of James Joyce. Wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which contains lines from Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, and Verlaine's poem on Parsifal.
See, you're supposed to love the guy. I think he looks like John Wayne in this picture.
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Gentlemen, as I have no secrets from you, in the spirit of confidence you have engendered between us, and as I have made a kind of compact with myself that I never will, while I remain in America, omit an opportunity of referring to a topic in which I and all others of my class on both sides of the water are equally interested--equally interested, there is no difference between us, I would beg leave to whisper in your ear two words: INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. I use them in no sordid sense, believe me, and those who know me best, best know that. For myself, I would rather that my children, coming after me, trudged in the mud, and knew by the general feeling of society that their father was beloved, and had been of some use, than I would have them ride in their carriages, and know by their banker's books that he was rich. But I do not see, I confess, why one should be obliged to make the choice, or why fame, besides playing that delightful REVEIL for which she is so justly celebrated, should not blow out of her trumpet a few notes of a different kind from those with which she has hitherto contented herself.
It was well observed the other night by a beautiful speaker, whose words went to the heart of every man who heard him, that, if there had existed any law in this respect, Scott might not have sunk beneath the mighty pressure on his brain, but might have lived to add new creatures of his fancy to the crowd which swarm about you in your summer walks, and gather round your winter evening hearths.
As I listened to his words, there came back, fresh upon me, that touching scene in the great man's life, when he lay upon his couch, surrounded by his family, and listened, for the last time, to the rippling of the river he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I pictured him to myself, faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and body by his honourable struggle, and hovering round him the phantoms of his own imagination--Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb Balderstone, Dominie Sampson--all the familiar throng--with cavaliers, and Puritans, and Highland chiefs innumerable overflowing the chamber, and fading away in the dim distance beyond. I pictured them, fresh from traversing the world, and hanging down their heads in shame and sorrow, that, from all those lands into which they had carried gladness, instruction, and delight for millions, they brought him not one friendly hand to help to raise him from that sad, sad bed. No, nor brought him from that land in which his own language was spoken, and in every house and hut of which his own books were read in his own tongue, one grateful dollar-piece to buy a garland for his grave. Oh! if every man who goes from here, as many do, to look upon that tomb in Dryburgh Abbey, would but remember this, and bring the recollection home!
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[On the occasion of the Second Exhibition of the Royal Academy in their new galleries in Piccadilly, the President, Sir F. Grant, and the council gave their usual inaugurative banquet, and a very distinguished company was present. The dinner took place in the large central room, and covers were laid for 200 guests. The Prince of Wales acknowledged the toast of his health and that of the Princess, the Duke of Cambridge responded to the toast of the army, Mr. Childers to the navy, Lord Elcho to the volunteers, Mr. Motley to "The Prosperity of the United States," Mr. Gladstone to "Her Majesty's Ministers," the Archbishop of York to, "The Guests," and Mr. Dickens to "Literature." The last toast having been proposed in a highly eulogistic speech, Mr. Dickens responded.]
Mr. President, your Royal Highnesses, my Lords and Gentlemen,--I beg to acknowledge the toast with which you have done me the great honour of associating my name. I beg to acknowledge it on behalf of the brotherhood of literature, present and absent, not forgetting an illustrious wanderer from the fold, whose tardy return to it we all hail with delight, and who now sits--or lately did sit--within a few chairs of or on your left hand. I hope I may also claim to acknowledge the toast on behalf of the sisterhood of literature also, although that "better half of human nature," to which Mr. Gladstone rendered his graceful tribute, is unworthily represented here, in the present state of its rights and wrongs, by the devouring monster, man.
All the arts, and many of the sciences, bear witness that women, even in their present oppressed condition, can attain to quite as great distinction, and can attain to quite as lofty names as men. Their emancipation (as I am given to understand) drawing very near, there is no saying how soon they may "push us from our stools" at these tables, or how soon our better half of human nature, standing in this place of mine, may eloquently depreciate mankind, addressing another better half of human nature sitting in the president's chair.
The literary visitors of the Royal Academy to-night desire me to congratulate their hosts on a very interesting exhibition, in which risen excellence supremely asserts itself, and from which promise of a brilliant succession in time to come is not wanting. They naturally see with especial interest the writings and persons of great men--historians, philosophers, poets, and novelists, vividly illustrated around them here. And they hope that they may modestly claim to have rendered some little assistance towards the production of many of the pictures in this magnificent gallery.
For without the patient labours of some among them unhistoric history might have long survived in this place, and but for the researches and wandering of others among them, the most preposterous countries, the most impossible peoples, and the absurdest superstitions, manners, and customs, might have usurped the place of truth upon these walls. Nay, there is no knowing, Sir Francis Grant, what unlike portraits you yourself might have painted if you had been left, with your sitters, to idle pens, unchecked reckless rumours, and undenounced lying malevolence.
I cannot forbear, before I resume my seat, adverting to a sad theme (the recent death of Daniel Maclise) to which his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales made allusion, and to which the president referred with the eloquence of genuine feeling. Since I first entered the public lists, a very young man indeed, it has been my constant fortune to number amongst my nearest and dearest friends members of the Royal Academy who have been its grace and pride. They have so dropped from my side one by one that I already, begin to feel like the Spanish monk of whom Wilkie tells, who had grown to believe that the only realities around him were the pictures which he loved, and that all the moving life he saw, or ever had seen, was a shadow and a dream.
For many years I was one of the two most intimate friends and most constant companions of the late Mr. Maclise. Of his genius in his chosen art I will venture to say nothing here, but of his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect, I may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. The gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one grain of self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more pure from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art goddess whom he worshipped.
[These were the last public words of Charles Dickens.]
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[On the occasion of the Second Exhibition of the Royal Academy in their new galleries in Piccadilly, the President, Sir F. Grant, and the ..."
Thanks Kim for providing this speech. As well as the words Dickens speaks about his good friend Daniel Maclise it was interesting to read what he had to say about women.
In the correspondence, speeches and journals we find a broader perspective and insight into Dickens. It's fascinating to learn about him from the various sources.
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Kim, he does not in the least look like John Wayne, one of my childhood heroes, who still gives me a warm feeling when I see him in a movie. Here's what I think is the last appearance (or one of the last appearances) of Duke, and it really brings tears to my eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og8py...
As to Wagner, I can't bring myself round to liking him because not only was his music more a kind of megalomaniac noise but he, as a person, was also an anti-Semite, who even wrote a pamphlet contesting Jewish composers' ability to create valuable music.
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I don't like him either after the stuff I read about him. I didn't mention any of that because I was only trying to prove how wrong you were. :-) But when I was reading his biography, what I can find on here anyway, I decided rather quickly that I don't like him at all. Which brings me to something that happened a few minutes ago. Our church is putting on one of their big annoying Christmas musicals which end up taking up too much of my time, and while I'm not in it this time (thankfully) I am playing for them to practice their parts. I was just playing over the music for tonight and turning the one page I see:
Fear Not
Fear Not!
FEAR NOT!
FEAR NOT!!
FEAR.......NOT!!!!
With music of course. The piece is called......"Fear Not" and was written by.....Wagner. I was wondering if the person who wrote the musical knew of Wagner's beliefs and whether that would have made a difference. Oh, playing the same notes five times each time getting louder is boring. :-)
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Kim, he does not in the least look like John Wayne, one of my childhood heroes, who still gives..."
Now that you have me looking up things about John
Wayne, who I've now decided I've seen none of his movies, I found this:
"Wayne was fond of literature, his favorite authors being Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. His favorite books were David Copperfield, and Conan Doyle's historical novels The White Company and Sir Nigel."
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I don't like him either after the stuff I read about him. I didn't mention any of that because I was only trying to prove h..."
If it was written by Wagner and is typical of his style, I suggest it should not be called FEAR NOT but rather HEAR NOT.
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Kim, he does not in the least look like John Wayne, one of my childhood heroes..."
Seeing those two photos, it's obvious that Wagner does not look anywhere near like Wayne. It starts with one of them being in colour, and the other in black and white.
I did not know that Dickens was one of Wayne's favourite writers - thanks for finding that out, Kim!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW8oD...
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THE LAMPLIGHTER
In 1838 Dickens agreed to prepare a little play for Macready, the famous actor, then the manager of Drury Lane Theatre. It was called The Lamplighter, and when completed the author read aloud the ‘unfortunate little farce’ (as he subsequently termed it) in the greenroom of the theatre. Although the play went through rehearsal, it was never presented before an audience, for the actors would not agree about it, and, at Macready’s suggestion, Dickens consented to withdraw it, declaring that he had ‘no other feeling of disappointment connected with this matter’ but that which arose from the failure in attempting to serve his friend. The manuscript of the play, not in Dickens’s handwriting, reposes in the Forster Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in 1879 it was printed for the first time, in the form of a pamphlet, of which only two hundred and fifty copies were issued.
When rejected by Macready as unsuitable for stage presentation, The Lamplighter was adapted by Dickens to another purpose—that is to say, he converted it into a tale called The Lamplighter’s Story, for publication in The Pic-Nic Papers, issued in 1841 for the benefit of the widow of Macrone, Dickens’s first publisher, who died in great poverty. Between the farce and the story there are but slight differences. The duet of two verses, sung by Tom and Betsy to the air of ‘The Young May-moon,’ cannot of course be regarded as a remarkable composition, but it served its purpose sufficiently well, and for that reason deserves recognition.
DUET FROM ‘THE LAMPLIGHTER’
Air—‘The Young May-moon’
Tom. There comes a new moon twelve times a year.
Betsy. And when there is none, all is dark and drear.
Tom. In which I espy—
Betsy. And so, too, do I—
Both. A resemblance to womankind very clear—
Both. There comes a new moon twelve times a year;
And when there is none, all is dark and drear.
Tom. In which I espy—
Betsy. And so do I—
Both. A resemblance to womankind very clear.
Second Verse.
Tom. She changes, she’s fickle, she drives men mad.
Betsy. She comes to bring light, and leaves them sad.
Tom. So restless wild—
Betsy. But so sweetly wild—
Both. That no better companion could be had.
Both. There comes a new moon twelve times a year;
And when there is none, all is dark and drear.
Tom. In which I espy—
Betsy. And so do I—
Both. A resemblance to womankind very clear.
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POLITICAL SQUIBS FROM ‘THE EXAMINER,’ 1841
In August 1841 Dickens contributed anonymously to The Examiner (then edited by Forster) three political squibs, which were signed W., and were intended to help the Liberals in fighting their opponents. These squibs were entitled respectively ‘The Fine Old English Gentleman (to be said or sung at all Conservative Dinners)’; ‘The Quack Doctor’s Proclamation’; and ‘Subjects for Painters (after Peter Pindar).’ Concerning those productions, Forster says: ‘I doubt if he ever enjoyed anything more than the power of thus taking part occasionally, unknown to outsiders, in the sharp conflict the press was waging at the time.’ In all probability he contributed other political rhymes to the pages of The Examiner as events prompted: if so, they are buried beyond easy reach of identification.
Writing to Forster at this time, Dickens said: ‘By Jove, how Radical I am getting! I wax stronger and stronger in the true principles every day.’... He would (observes Forster) sometimes even talk, in moments of sudden indignation at the political outlook, ‘of carrying off himself and his household gods, like Coriolanus, to a world elsewhere.’ This was the period of the Tory interregnum, with Sir Robert Peel at the head of affairs.
THE FINE OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN
New Version
(To be said or sung at all Conservative Dinners)
I’ll sing you a new ballad, and I’ll warrant it first-rate,
Of the days of that old gentleman who had that old estate;
When they spent the public money at a bountiful old rate
On ev’ry mistress, pimp, and scamp, at ev’ry noble gate,
In the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
The good old laws were garnished well with gibbets, whips, and chains,
With fine old English penalties, and fine old English pains,
With rebel heads, and seas of blood once hot in rebel veins;
For all these things were requisite to guard the rich old gains
Of the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
This brave old code, like Argus, had a hundred watchful eyes,
And ev’ry English peasant had his good old English spies,
To tempt his starving discontent with fine old English lies,
Then call the good old Yeomanry to stop his peevish cries,
In the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
The good old times for cutting throats that cried out in their need,
The good old times for hunting men who held their fathers’ creed,
The good old times when William Pitt, as all good men agreed,
Came down direct from Paradise at more than railroad speed....
Oh the fine old English Tory times;
When will they come again!
In those rare days, the press was seldom known to snarl or bark,
But sweetly sang of men in pow’r, like any tuneful lark;
Grave judges, too, to all their evil deeds were in the dark;
And not a man in twenty score knew how to make his mark.
Oh the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
Those were the days for taxes, and for war’s infernal din;
For scarcity of bread, that fine old dowagers might win;
For shutting men of letters up, through iron bars to grin,
Because they didn’t think the Prince was altogether thin,
In the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
But Tolerance, though slow in flight, is strong-wing’d in the main;
That night must come on these fine days, in course of time was plain;
The pure old spirit struggled, but its struggles were in vain;
A nation’s grip was on it, and it died in choking pain,
With the fine old English Tory days,
All of the olden time.
The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land,
In England there shall be dear bread—in Ireland, sword and brand;
And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,
So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand,
Of the fine old English Tory days;
Hail to the coming time!
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Tune—‘A Cobbler there was’
An astonishing doctor has just come to town,
Who will do all the faculty perfectly brown:
He knows all diseases, their causes, and ends;
And he begs to appeal to his medical friends.
Tol de rol:
Diddle doll:
Tol de rol, de dol,
Diddle doll
Tol de rol doll.
He’s a magnetic doctor, and knows how to keep
The whole of a Government snoring asleep
To popular clamours; till popular pins
Are stuck in their midriffs—and then he begins
Tol de rol.
He’s a clairvoyant subject, and readily reads
His countrymen’s wishes, condition, and needs,
With many more fine things I can’t tell in rhyme,
—And he keeps both his eyes shut the whole of the time.
Tol de rol.
You mustn’t expect him to talk; but you’ll take
Most particular notice the doctor’s awake,
Though for aught from his words or his looks that you reap, he
Might just as well be most confoundedly sleepy.
Tol de rol.
Homœopathy, too, he has practised for ages
(You’ll find his prescriptions in Luke Hansard’s pages),
Just giving his patient when maddened by pain,—
Of Reform the ten thousandth part of a grain.
Tol de rol.
He’s a med’cine for Ireland, in portable papers;
The infallible cure for political vapours;
A neat label round it his ’prentices tie—
‘Put your trust in the Lord, and keep this powder dry!’
Tol de rol.
He’s a corn doctor also, of wonderful skill,
—No cutting, no rooting-up, purging, or pill—
You’re merely to take, ’stead of walking or riding,
The sweet schoolboy exercise—innocent sliding.
Tol de rol.
There’s no advice gratis. If high ladies send
His legitimate fee, he’s their soft-spoken friend.
At the great public counter with one hand behind him,
And one in his waistcoat, they’re certain to find him.
Tol de rol.
He has only to add he’s the real Doctor Flam,
All others being purely fictitious and sham;
The house is a large one, tall, slated, and white,
With a lobby; and lights in the passage at night.
Tol de rol:
Diddle doll:
Tol de rol, de dol,
Diddle doll
Tol de rol doll.
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(After Peter Pindar)
To you, Sir Martin, and your co. R.A.’s,
I dedicate in meek, suggestive lays,
Some subjects for your academic palettes;
Hoping, by dint of these my scanty jobs,
To fill with novel thoughts your teeming nobs,
As though I beat them in with wooden mallets.
To you, Maclise, who Eve’s fair daughters paint
With Nature’s hand, and want the maudlin taint
Of the sweet Chalon school of silk and ermine:
To you, E. Landseer, who from year to year
Delight in beasts and birds, and dogs and deer,
And seldom give us any human vermin:
—To all who practise art, or make believe,
I offer subjects they may take or leave.
Great Sibthorp and his butler, in debate
(Arcades ambo) on affairs of state,
Not altogether ‘gone,’ but rather funny;
Cursing the Whigs for leaving in the lurch
Our d——d good, pleasant, gentlemanly Church,
Would make a picture—cheap at any money.
Or Sibthorp as the Tory Sec.—at-War,
Encouraging his mates with loud ‘Yhor! Yhor!
From Treas’ry benches’ most conspicuous end;
Or Sib.’s mustachios curling with a smile,
As an expectant Premier without guile
Calls him his honourable and gallant friend.
Or Sibthorp travelling in foreign parts,
Through that rich portion of our Eastern charts
Where lies the land of popular tradition;
And fairly worshipp’d by the true devout
In all his comings-in and goings-out,
Because of the old Turkish superstition.
Fame with her trumpet, blowing very hard,
And making earth rich with celestial lard,
In puffing deeds done through Lord Chamberlain Howe;
While some few thousand persons of small gains,
Who give their charities without such pains,
Look up, much wondering what may be the row.
Behind them Joseph Hume, who turns his pate
To where great Marlbro’ House in princely state
Shelters a host of lacqueys, lords and pages,
And says he knows of dowagers a crowd,
Who, without trumpeting so very loud,
Would do so much, and more, for half the wages.
Limn, sirs, the highest lady in the land,
When Joseph Surface, fawning cap in hand,
Delivers in his list of patriot mortals;
Those gentlemen of honour, faith, and truth,
Who, foul-mouthed, spat upon her maiden youth,
And dog-like did defile her palace portals.
Paint me the Tories, full of grief and woe,
Weeping (to voters) over Frost and Co.,
Their suff’ring, erring, much-enduring brothers.
And in the background don’t forget to pack,
Each grinning ghastly from its bloody sack,
The heads of Thistlewood, Despard, and others.
Paint, squandering the club’s election gold,
Fierce lovers of our Constitution old,
Lords who’re that sacred lady’s greatest debtors;
And let the law, forbidding any voice
Or act of Peer to influence the choice
Of English people, flourish in bright letters.
Paint that same dear old lady, ill at ease,
Weak in her second childhood, hard to please,
Unknowing what she ails or what she wishes;
With all her Carlton nephews at the door,
Deaf’ning both aunt and nurses with their roar,
—Fighting already, for the loaves and fishes.
Leaving these hints for you to dwell upon,
I shall presume to offer more anon.
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GAD’S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
First January 1870
Sir
I am very unwilling to complain; but the gas supplied me within this last fortnight has been so intolerably bad, that the taking of it from the Company at all has been merely an expensive form. It has been black in colour, and so scant in quantity, that I have been obliged to burn a large number of wax candles to obtain any adequate light in my hall and Billiard room. At this season, of all others, the inconvenience has been very great, and it has become necessary that I should strongly represent it to you.
I am Sir Your obedient Servant
CHARLES DICKENS
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Furnival’s Inn | Tuesday Afternoon
My Dear Uncle
I regret to say that I cannot leave home this evening. Catherine is not so well as she was; and we have a consultation here, at six o’clock. I was seized last night with a violent pain in my head (fortunately, just as I had concluded my month’s work) and was immediately ordered as much medicine as would confine an ordinary-sized horse to his stall for a week. Whether it arises from the “Influentials”, or from close application, or from worry, or from the wind cholic, to quote King Arthur, I know not. But this I know – that sorely against my will and much to my disappointment, here I am, in a gloomy and miserable state, and here I must remain.
Believe me Affectionately yours,
CHARLES DICKENS
Kim wrote: "To THE SECRETARY OF THE GAS COMPANY, 1 JANUARY 1870GAD’S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
First January 1870
Sir
I am very unwilling to complain; but the gas supplied me within this la..."
I have to remember his opening in this when considering complaints or notifications....
Dear Petsmart:
I am very unwilling to complain; but the staleness of the cat treats I purchased was noticed even by my small friends who make their displeasures known only in the rarest of intervals....
While I was in Paris (which I left only yesterday), I received your book and your charming letter, quite safely. I am grieved to say that I do not read German; but my eldest boy, who has been partly educated in Germany and knows the language well, has gone through your book at my side, and has enabled me to understand much of its pure idea, and fine, womanly, true sentiment. I am proud to be associated with it, and thank you more than ever.
It will take me a year from this time, to finish Little Dorrit. After that, I think I really shall begin (Please God) to make myself master of the German language. I lose so much pleasure by not knowing it, and I can learn a language with so little difficulty, that I often reproach myself for not having acquired it long ago. I am not so young as I am in the picture you have seen, for that was painted some fifteen years ago, and I am now 44. It looks a good deal, on paper, I find; but I believe I am very young-looking still, and I know that I am a very active vigorous fellow, who never knew in his own experience what the word "fatigue" meant.
This is in answer to your first question. In reply to your second question whether I dictate, I answer with a smile that I can as soon imagine a painter dictating his pictures. No. I write every word of my books with my own hand, and do not write them very quickly either. I write with great care and pains (being passionately fond of my art, and thinking it worth any trouble), and persevere, and work hard. I am a great walker besides, and plunge into cold water every day in the dead of winter. When I was last in Switzerland, I found that I could climb as fast as the Swiss Guides. Few strangers think I look like one who passes so many hours alone in his own Study. You would be disappointed perhaps, to see me with a brown-red color in my face?
I very seldom write or talk about myself, but you express your interest so naturally and unaffectedly, that I feel I ought to describe myself in the same spirit.
It makes me sorry to find you describing your health as very delicate. You must remember that in all your literary aspiration, and whether thinking or writing, it is indispensably necessary to relieve that wear and tear of the mind by some other exertion that may be wholesomely set against it. Habitually, I have always had, besides great bodily exercise, some mental pursuit of a light kind with which to vary my labors as an Author. And I have found the result so salutary, that I strongly commend it to the fair friend in whom I am deeply interested.
I am now upon my way home, merely staying here a couple of days to have some walks on the high cliffs by the sea. During the summer, I shall be generally at a little French Country House among pleasant gardens near Boulogne Sur Mer. But that is only a few hours journey from London, and I shall receive my letters and papers from thence, two or three times a week. My best address therefore, is at my own house.
Tavistock House
London
— and there I shall always be delighted to hear from you. Perhaps I may see you there one day? If not, I must come to Potsdam after I have learnt German from your book.
Farewell. God bless you! Always believe me, with great regard,
Your affectionate
CHARLES DICKENS