Saviour."

The MS. of the little " History of the New Testament " is now
in the possession of his eldest daughter. She has (together with
her aunt) received many earnest entreaties, both from friends and
strangers, that this history might be allowed to be published, for
the benefit of other children.



734 LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

These many petitions have his daughter's fullest sympathy.
But she knows that her father wrote this history ONLY for his own
children, that it was his particular wish that it never should be
published, and she therefore holds this wish as sacred and irre-
vocable.

5, HYDE PARK PLACE, LONDON, W.,

Friday, Fourteenth January, 1870.
MY DEAR FIELDS,

We live here (opposite the Marble Arch) in a charming
house until the First of June, and then return to Gad's. The
conservatory is completed, and is a brilliant success ; but an
expensive one !

I should be quite ashamed of not having written to you and my
dear Mrs. Fields before now, if I didn't know that you will both
understand how occupied I am, and how naturally, when I put my
papers away for the day, I get up and fly. I have a large room
here, with three fine windows, overlooking the Park unsurpass-
able for airiness and cheerfulness.

You saw the announcement of the death of poor dear Harness.
The circumstances are curious. He wrote to his old friend the
Dean of Battle saying he would come to visit him on that day (the
day of his death). The Dean wrote back : " Come next day,
instead, as we are obliged to go out to dinner, and you will be
alone." Harness told his sister a little impatiently that he must
go on the first-named day ; that he had made up his mind to go,
and MUST. He had been getting himself ready for dinner, and
came to a part of the staircase whence two doors opened one,
upon another level passage, one, upon a flight of stone steps.
He opened the wrong door, fell down the steps, injured himself
very severely, and died in a few hours.

You will know / don't what Fechter's success is in America
at the time of this present writing. In his farewell performances
at the Princess's he acted very finely. I thought the three first
acts of his Hamlet very much better than I had ever thought them
before and I always thought very highly of them. We gave him
a foaming stirrup cup at Gad's Hill.

Forster (who has been ill with his bronchitis again) thinks
No. 2 of the new book (" Edwin Drood ") a clincher, I mean that
word (as his own expression) for Clincher. There is a curious
interest steadily working up to No. 5, which requires a great deal
of art and self-denial. I think also, apart from character and
picturesqueness, that the young people are placed in a very novel
situation. So I hope at Nos. 5 and 6, the story will turn upon
an interest suspended until the end.



LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 735

I can't believe it, and don't, and won't, but they say Harry's
twenty-first birthday is next Sunday. I have entered him at the
Temple just now ; and if he don't get a fellowship at Trinity Hall
when his time comes, I shall be disappointed, if in the present
disappointed state of existence.

I hope you may have met with the little touch of Radicalism I
gave them at Birmingham in the words of Buckle 1 With pride I
observe that it makes the regular political traders, of all sorts, per-
fectly mad. Sich was my intentions, as a grateful acknowledg-
ment of having been misrepresented.

I think Mrs. 's prose very admirable ; but I don't believe it !

No, I do not. My conviction is that those islanders get frightfully
bored by the islands, and wish they had never set eyes upon them.

Charley Collins has done a charming cover for the monthly
part of the new book. At the very earnest representations of
Millais (and after having seen a great number of his drawings) I
am going to engage with a new man ; retaining, of course, C. C.'s
cover aforesaid.* Katie has made some more capital portraits,
and is always improving.

My dear Mrs. Fields, if "He" (made proud by chairs and
bloated by pictures) does not give you my dear love, let us con-
spire against him when you find him out, and exclude him from all
future confidences. Until then,

Ever affectionately yours and his.

OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND," Mr. 8. I*

Wednesday, Sixteenth January, 1870. Kildea.

DEAR SIR,

I beg to thank you for the highly meritorious and interest-
ing specimens of your art that you have had the kindness to send
me. I return them herewith, after having examined them with
the greatest pleasure.

I am naturally curious to see your drawing from ' David
Copperfield," in order that I may compare it with my own idea.
In the meanwhile, I can honestly assure you that I entertain the
greatest admiration for your remarkable powers.

Faithfully yours.

5, HYDE PARK PLACE, LONDON, W., Mr. W. H.

Sunday, Twenty-third January, 1870.

MY DEAR WILLS,

In the note I had from you about Nancy and i
seem to refer to some other note you had written me.

* Mr. Charles Collins was obliged to give up the illustrating of "Edwin
Drood " on account of his failing health.






736 LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

I think it well merely to mention that I have received no other
note.

I do not wonder at your not being up to the undertaking (even
if you had had no cough) under the wearing circumstances. It
was a very curious scene. The actors and actresses (most of the
latter looking very pretty) mustered in extraordinary force, and
were a fine audience. I set myself to carrying out of themselves
and their observation, those who were bent on watching how the
effects were got ; and I believe I succeeded. Coming back to it
again, however, I feel it was madness ever to do it so continuously.
My ordinary pulse is seventy-two, and it runs up under this effort
to one hundred and twelve. Besides which, it takes me ten or
twelve minutes to get my wind back at all ; I being, in the mean-
time, like the man who lost the fight in fact, his express image.
Frank Beard was in attendance to make divers experiments to
report to Watson ; and although, as you know, he stopped it
instantly when he found me at Preston, he was very much
astonished by the effects of the reading on the reader.

So I hope you may be able to come and hear it before it is
silent for ever. I hope, now I have got over the mornings, that
I may be able to work on my book. But up to this time the
great preparation required in getting the subjects up again, and
the twice a week besides, have almost exclusively occupied me.

I have something the matter with my right thumb, and can't
(as you see) write plainly. I sent a word to poor Robert
Chambers,* and I send my love to Mrs. Wills.

Ever, my dear Wills, affectionately yours.

I-ord 5, HYDE PARK PLAIT,,

Lytt0 "- Mmiday, Fourteenth February, 1870.

MY DEAR LYTTON,

I ought to have mentioned in my hurried note to you, that
my knowledge of the consultation! in question only preceded
yours by certain hours ; and that Longman asked me if I would
make the design known to you, as he thought it might be a
liberty to address you otherwise. This I did therefore.

The class of writers to whom you refer at the close of your
note, have no copyright, and do not come within my case at all.
I quite agree with you as to their propensities and deserts.

Indeed, I suppose in the main that there is very little difference
between our opinions. I do not think the present Government

* On the death of his second wife.

t A meeting of Publishers and Authors to discuss the subject of Inter-
national Copyright.



LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 737

worse than another, and I think it better than another by the
presence of Mr. Gladstone ; but it appears to me that our system
fails- Ever yours.

5, HYDE PARK PLACE, W., Mr. Henry

Thursday, Seventeenth February, 187<>. Killing

MY DEAR HARRY,

I am extremely glad to hear that you have made a good
start at the Union. Take any amount of pains about it ; oj>en
your mouth well and roundly, speak to the last person visible, and
give yourself time. Ever affectionately.

JFednesday, Second March, 1870. .Mr. w. c.
MY DEAREST MACREADY, Mac-ready.

This is to wish you and yours all happiness and prosperity
at the well-remembered anniversary* to-morrow. You may be sure
that loves and happy returns will not be forgotten at our table.

I have been getting on very well with my book, and we are
having immense audiences at St. James's Hall. Mary has been
celebrating the first glimpses of spring by having the measles.
She got over the disorder very easily, but a weakness remains
behind. Katie is blooming. Georgina is in perfect order, and all
send you their very best loves. It gave me true pleasure to have
your sympathy with me in the second little speech at Birmingham.
I was determined that my Radicalism should not be called in
question. The electric wires are not very exact in their reporting,
but at all events the sense was there.

I am ever, my dearest Macready,

Your most affectionate.

5, HYPE PARK PLACE, Mr . Frederic

Monday, Fourteenth March, 18/0. chapman.

DEAR FREDERIC CHAPJIAX,

Mr. Fildes has been with me this morning, and without
complaining of or expressing himself otherwise than as being
obliged to him for his care of No. 1 , represents that there is a
brother-student of his, a wood-engraver, perfectly acquainted with
his style and well understanding his meaning, who would render
him better.

I have replied to him that there can be no doubt that he has
a claim beyond dispute to our employing whomsoever he knows
will present him in his best aspect. Therefore, we must make the
change ; the rather because the fellow-student in question has
engraved Mr. Fildes' most successful drawings hitherto.

Faithfully yours.

* Mr. Macready's birthday on 3rd March.
3B



738 LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

Mr. William 5, HYDE PARK. I'I.ACF... \V.

Charles Saturday, Twenty-sixth March, 1870.

MY DEAR KENT,

I received both copies of The Sun, with the tenderest
pleasure and gratification.

Everything that I can let you have in aid of the proposed
record* (which, of course, would be far more agreeable to me if
done by you than by any other hand) shall be at your service.
Dolby has all the figures relating to America, and you shall have
for reference the books from which I read. They are afterwards
going into Forster's collection, f Ever affectionately .

5, HYDE PAUK PLACE, W.,

Fielding 17 Tuesday, Twenty-ninth March, 1870.

Dickens. MY DEAR HARRY,

Your next Tuesday's subject is a very good one. I would
not lose the point that narrow-minded fanatics, who decry the
theatre and defame its artists, are absolutely the advocates of
depraved and barbarous amusements. For wherever a good drama
and a well-regulated theatre decline, some distorted form of
theatrical entertainment will infallibly arise in their place. In
one of the last chapters of " Hard Times," Mr. Sleary says some-
thing to the effect : " People will be entertained thomehow,
thquire. Make the betht of uth, and not the wortht."

Ever affectionately.

Mr. w. Y. 5 . HYDE PAIIK PLACE, W.,

Frith, R.A. Saturday, Sixteenth April, 1870.

MY DEAR FRITH,

I shall be happy to go on Wednesday evening, if convenient.
You please me with what you say of my new illustrator, of

whom I have great hopes.

Faithfully yours ever.

Mr. Charles OKKICE OF " ALL THK YHAR ROUND,"

Mackay. Thursday, Twenty -first April, 1870.

MY DEAR MACJKAY,

I have placed " God's Acre.'' The prose paper, " The

False Friend," has lingered, because it seems to me that the idea

* Of the Readings. The intention was carried out. Mr. Kent's book,
" Charles Dickens as a Reader," was published in 1872.

t No doubt Charles Dickens intended to add the Reading Books to the
legacy of his MSS. to Mr. Forster. But he did not do so, therefore the
"Readings" are not a part of the "Forster Collection" at the South
Kensington Museum.



LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 739

is to be found in an introduced story of mine called " The Baron
of Grogzwig "* in " Pickwick."

Be pleasant with the Scottish people in handling Johnson,
because I love them.

Kver faithfully.

Monday Mornimj, Twenty -Jifth A]irU, 1870. Mr. William
MY DEAR KENT. Charles

I received your bookf with the greatest pleasure, and
heartily thank you for it. It is a volume of a highly prepossessing
appearance, and a most friendly look. I felt as if I should have
taken to it at sight ; even (a very large even) though I had known
nothing of its contents, or of its author !

For the last week I have been most perseveringly and ding-
dong-doggedly at work, making headway but slowly. The spring
always has a restless influence over me ; and I weary, at any
season, of this London dining-out beyond expression ; and I yearn
for the country again. This is my excuse for not having written
to you sooner. Besides which, I had a baseless conviction that I
should see you at the office last Thursday. Not having done so, I
fear you must be worse, or no better ? If you can let me have a
report of yourself, pray do.

Believe me ever,

Affectionately yours.

5, HYDE PARK PLACK, W., Mrs.

Monday, Second May, 187*>. {Jjjjg
MY DEAR MRS. POLLOCK,

Pray tell the illustrious Philip van Artevelde,^ that 1 will
deal with the nefarious case in question if I can. I am a little
doubtful of the practicability of doing so, and frisking outside the
bounds of the law of libel. I have that high opinion of the law
of England generally, which one is likely to derive from the impres-
sion that it puts all the honest men under the diabolical hoofs of all
the scoundrels. It makes me cautious of doing right : an admir-
able instance of its wisdom !

I was very sorry to have gone astray from you that Sunday ;
but as the earlier disciples entertained angels unawares, so the
atter often meet them haphazard.

Your description of Lafont's acting is the complete truth in

* His mistake ! The story of the " Baron of Grogzwig " is in " Nichols*
Nicklebv "

+ A new collective edition of Kent's Poems," dedicate.! t
Colonel Kent, of the 77th Regiment.
The Poet -Sir Henry Taylor.



740 LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

one short sentence : Nature's triumph over art ; reversing the
copy-book axiom ! But the Lord deliver us from Plessy's
mechanical ingenuousness ! !

And your petitioner will ever pray.

And ever be, Faithfully yours.

sir John GAD'S HILL, Thursday, Fifth May, 1870.

Bowring. ]yj y DEAR g IR J OHN>

I send you many cordial thanks for your note, and the very
curious drawing accompanying it. I ought to tell you, perhaps,
that the opium smoking I have described, I saw (exactly as I have
described it, penny ink-bottle and all) down in Shad well this last
autumn. A couple of the Inspectors of Lodging-Houses knew the
woman and took me to her as I was making a round with them
to see for myself the working of Lord Shaftesbury's Bill.

Believe me, always faithfully yours.

Mrs. E. M. 5, HYDE PARK PLACE, W.,

Wind. Wednesday, Eleventh May, ] 870.

MY DEAR MRS. WARD,

I grieve to say that I am literally laid by the heels, and
incapable of dining with you to-morrow. A neuralgic affection of
the foot, which usually seizes me about twice a year, and which
will yield to nothing but days of fomentation and horizontal rest,
set in last night, and has caused me very great pain ever since, and
will too clearly be no better until it has had its usual time in which
to wear itself out. I send my kindest regard to Ward, and beg to
be pitied.

Believe me, faithfully yours always.

Mr. j. B. * Sunday, Fifteenth May, 1870.

Buckstone. MY DEAR BuCKSTONE,

I send a duplicate of this note to the Haymarket, in case
it should miss you out of town. For a few years I have been
liable, at wholly uncertain and incalculable times, to a severe
attack of neuralgia in the foot, about once in the course of a year.
It began in an injury to the finer muscles or nerves, occasioned by
over- walking in the deep snow. When it comes on I cannot
stand, and can bear no covering whatever on the sensitive place.
One of these seizures is upon me now. Until it leaves me I could
no more walk into St. James's Hall than I could fly in the air.
I hope you will present my duty to the Prince of Wales, and
assure his Royal Highness that nothing short of my being (most
* Printed in Mackenzie's "Life of Dickens."



LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 741

unfortunately) disabled for the moment would have prevented my
attending, as trustee of the Fund,* at the dinner, and warmly
expressing my poor sense of the great and inestimable service
his Royal Highness renders to a most deserving institution by so
kindly commending it to the public.

Faithfully yours always.

t GAD'S HILL PLACE, HICHAM BY ROCHESTER KENT, Mr. w. j.
Wednesday, Eighteenth May, 1870. O'Drisc-oll.

MY DEAR SIR,

I beg to assure you, in reply to your letter, that I have not
one solitary scrap of the late Mr. Maclise's handwriting in my
possession. A few years ago I destroyed an immense corre-
spondence, expressly because I considered it had been held with
me, and not with the public, and because I could not answer for
its privacy being respected when I should be dead. I have since
allowed no letters from friends to accumulate in my possession, and
hence this disappointing answer to your request. The remarks I
made at the Royal Academy dinner were reported with perfect
accuracy in The Times.

My dear Sir, yours faithfully.

ATHEN^UM, Mr Rusden.

Friday Evening, Twentieth May, 1870.

MY DEAR MR. RUSDEN,

I received your most interesting and clear-sighted letter
about Plorn just before the departure of the last mail from here to
you. I did not answer then because another incoming mail was
nearly due, and I expected (knowing Plorn so well) that some
communication from him such as he made to you would come to
me. I was not mistaken. The same arguing of the squatter
question vegetables and all appeared. This gave me an
opportunity of touching on those points by this mail, without in
the least compromising you. I cannot too completely express my
concurrence with your excellent idea that his correspondence with
you should be regarded as confidential. Just as I could not
possibly suggest a word more neatly to the point, or more thought-
fully addressed, to such a young man than your reply to his letter,
I hope you will excuse my saying that it is a perfect model of tact,
good sense, and good feeling. I had been stnick by his persistently
ignoring the possibility of his holding any other position in
Australia than his present position, and had inferred from it a

* The General Theatrical Fund.

t Printed iu the preface to "A Memoir of Daniel Maclise, R. A.," by Mr.
W. Justin O'Driscoll.



742 . LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

homeward tendency. What is most curious to me is that lie is
very sensible, and yet does not seem to understand that lie has
qualified himself for no public examinations in the old country, and
could not possibly hold his own against any competition for any-
thing to which I could get him nominated.

But I must not trouble you about my boys as if they were
yours. It is enough that I can never thank you for your goodness
to them in a generous consideration of me.

I believe the truth as to France to be that a citizen Frenchman
never forgives, and that Napoleon will never live down, the coup
d'etat. This makes it enormously difficult for any well-advised
English newspaper to support him, and pretend not to know on
what a volcano his throne is set. Informed as to his designs on
the one hand, and the perpetual uneasiness of his police on the
other (to say nothing of a doubtful army), The Times has a
difficult game to play. My own impression is that if it were
played too boldly for him, the old deplorable national antagonism
would revive in his going down. That the wind will pass over
his Imperiality on the sands of France I have not the slightest
doubt. In no country on the earth, but least of all there, can you
seize people in their houses on political warrants, and kill in the
streets, on no warrant at all, without raising a gigantic Nemesis
not very reasonable in detail, perhaps, but none the less terrible
for that.

The commonest dog or man driven mad is a much more
alarming creature than the same individuality in a sober and
commonplace condition.

. Your friend is setting the world right generally all

round (including the flattened ends, the two poles), and, as a
Minister said to me the other day, " has the little one fault of
omniscience."

You will probably have read before now that I am going to be
everything the Queen can make me.* If my authority be worth
anything believe on it that I am going to be nothing but what I
am, and that that includes my being as long as I live,

Your faithful and heartily obliged.

UAH'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,

Thursday, Thirty-first May, 1870.
-My DEAR MRS. BANCROFT, f

I am most heartily obliged to you for your kind note, which

I received here only last night, having come here from town

ircuitously to get a little change of air on the road. My sense of

An allusion to an unfounded rumour. t .Miss Marie Wilton.



LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 743

your interest cannot be better proved than by my trying the remedy
you recommend, and that I will do immediately. As I shall be in
town on Thursday,. my troubling you to order it would be quite
unjustifiable. I will use your name in applying for it, and will
report the result after a fair trial. Whether this remedy succeeds
or fails as to the neuralgia, I shall always consider myself under
an obligation to it for having indirectly procured me the great
pleasure of receiving a communication from you ; for I hope I may
lay claim to being one of the most earnest and delighted of your
many artistic admirers.

Believe me, faithfully yours.



ATHEN^CUM CLUB, Mr. Alfred

Friday Night, Twentieth May, 1 870. Tennyson
MY DEAR ALFRED,*

I have just time to tell you under my own hand that I
invited Mr. Bear to a dinner of such guests as he would naturally
like to see, and that we took to him very much, and got on with
him capitally.

I am doubtful whether Plorn is taking to Australia. Can you
find out his real mind 1 I notice that he always writes as if his
present life were the be-all and the end-all of his emigration, and
as if I had no idea of you two becoming proprietors, and aspiring
to the first positions in the colony, without casting off the old
connection.

From Mr. Bear I had the best accounts of you. I told him
that they did not surprise me, for I had unbounded faith in you.
For which take my love and blessing.

They will have told you all the news here, and that I am hard
at work. This is not a letter so much as an assurance that I
never think of you without hope and comfort.
Ever, my dear Alfred,

Your affectionate Father.

(This Letter did not reach Australia until after these two
absent sons of Charles Dickens had heard, by telegraph, the news
of their father's death.)

* Charles Dickens' son, Alfred Tennyson.



LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.



745



VTA.



TWO LAST LETTERS.
b'* W flatc,



IB "gothtsitt, 'Qtnt.*







4 ^.






C ^ - >




_

o



* This Mter has lately l.eeu preseutc-l l,y Mr. Cl.arlos Kent to the British
Museum.



746



LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.



Mr. John M.
Makeham.



'* ^Ul $I*cc,



bj IHotlttstcr,




LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.




748 LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

All through this spring iu London, Charles Dickens had been
ailing in health, and it was remarked by many friends that he had
a weary look, and was " aged " and altered. But he was generally
in good spirits, and his family had no uneasiness about him, relying
upon the country quiet and comparative rest at Gad's Hill to have
their usual influence in restoring his health and strength. On the
Second June he attended a private play at the house of Mr. and
Mrs. Freake, where his two daughters were among the actresses.
The next day he went back to Gad's Hill. His daughter Kate
(whose home was there at all times when she chose, and almost
always through the summer months) went down on Sunday, the
Fifth June, for a day's visit, to see the " great improvement of the
conservatory." Her father laughingly assured her she had now
seen " the last " improvement at Gad's Hill. At this time he was
tolerably well, but Kate remarked to her sister and aunt how
strangely he was tired, and what a curious grey colour he had in
his face after a very short walk on that Sunday afternoon. How-
ever, he seemed quite himself again in the evening. The next