Volume I Part 4 (1/2)
Affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving.]
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, _Monday Afternoon, March 21st, 1842._
MY DEAR IRVING,
We pa.s.sed through--literally pa.s.sed through--this place again to-day. I did not come to see you, for I really have not the heart to say ”good-bye” again, and felt more than I can tell you when we shook hands last Wednesday.
You will not be at Baltimore, I fear? I thought, at the time, that you only said you might be there, to make our parting the gayer.
Wherever you go, G.o.d bless you! What pleasure I have had in seeing and talking with you, I will not attempt to say. I shall never forget it as long as I live. What would I give, if we could have but a quiet week together! Spain is a lazy place, and its climate an indolent one. But if you have ever leisure under its sunny skies to think of a man who loves you, and holds communion with your spirit oftener, perhaps, than any other person alive--leisure from listlessness, I mean--and will write to me in London, you will give me an inexpressible amount of pleasure.
Your affectionate friend.
[Sidenote: Professor Felton.]
MONTREAL, _Sat.u.r.day, 21st May, 1842._
MY DEAR FELTON,
I was delighted to receive your letter yesterday, and was well pleased with its contents. I antic.i.p.ated objection to Carlyle's[18] letter. I called particular attention to it for three reasons. Firstly, because he boldly _said_ what all the others _think_, and therefore deserved to be manfully supported. Secondly, because it is my deliberate opinion that I have been a.s.sailed on this subject in a manner in which no man with any pretensions to public respect or with the remotest right to express an opinion on a subject of universal literary interest would be a.s.sailed in any other country. . . .
I really cannot sufficiently thank you, dear Felton, for your warm and hearty interest in these proceedings. But it would be idle to pursue that theme, so let it pa.s.s.
The wig and whiskers are in a state of the highest preservation. The play comes off next Wednesday night, the 25th. What would I give to see you in the front row of the centre box, your spectacles gleaming not unlike those of my dear friend Pickwick, your face radiant with as broad a grin as a staid professor may indulge in, and your very coat, waistcoat, and shoulders expressive of what we should take together when the performance was over! I would give something (not so much, but still a good round sum) if you could only stumble into that very dark and dusty theatre in the daytime (at any minute between twelve and three), and see me with my coat off, the stage manager and universal director, urging impracticable ladies and impossible gentlemen on to the very confines of insanity, shouting and driving about, in my own person, to an extent which would justify any philanthropic stranger in clapping me into a strait-waistcoat without further inquiry, endeavouring to goad H.
into some dim and faint understanding of a prompter's duties, and struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and inextricable entanglement of speech and action as you would grow giddy in contemplating. We perform ”A Roland for an Oliver,” ”A Good Night's Rest,” and ”Deaf as a Post.” This kind of voluntary hard labour used to be my great delight. The _furor_ has come strong upon me again, and I begin to be once more of opinion that nature intended me for the lessee of a national theatre, and that pen, ink, and paper have spoiled a manager.
Oh, how I look forward across that rolling water to home and its small tenantry! How I busy myself in thinking how my books look, and where the tables are, and in what positions the chairs stand relatively to the other furniture; and whether we shall get there in the night, or in the morning, or in the afternoon; and whether we shall be able to surprise them, or whether they will be too sharply looking out for us; and what our pets will say; and how they'll look, and who will be the first to come and shake hands, and so forth! If I could but tell you how I have set my heart on rus.h.i.+ng into Forster's study (he is my great friend, and writes at the bottom of all his letters: ”My love to Felton”), and into Maclise's painting-room, and into Macready's managerial ditto, without a moment's warning, and how I picture every little trait and circ.u.mstance of our arrival to myself, down to the very colour of the bow on the cook's cap, you would almost think I had changed places with my eldest son, and was still in pantaloons of the thinnest texture. I left all these things--G.o.d only knows what a love I have for them--as coolly and calmly as any animated cuc.u.mber; but when I come upon them again I shall have lost all power of self-restraint, and shall as certainly make a fool of myself (in the popular meaning of that expression) as ever Grimaldi did in his way, or George the Third in his.
And not the less so, dear Felton, for having found some warm hearts, and left some instalments of earnest and sincere affection, behind me on this continent. And whenever I turn my mental telescope hitherward, trust me that one of the first figures it will descry will wear spectacles so like yours that the maker couldn't tell the difference, and shall address a Greek cla.s.s in such an exact imitation of your voice, that the very students hearing it should cry, ”That's he! Three cheers. Hoo-ray-ay-ay-ay-ay!”
About those joints of yours, I think you are mistaken. They _can't_ be stiff. At the worst they merely want the air of New York, which, being impregnated with the flavour of last year's oysters, has a surprising effect in rendering the human frame supple and flexible in all cases of rust.
A terrible idea occurred to me as I wrote those words. The oyster-cellars--what do they do when oysters are not in season? Is pickled salmon vended there? Do they sell crabs, shrimps, winkles, herrings? The oyster-openers--what do _they_ do? Do they commit suicide in despair, or wrench open tight drawers and cupboards and hermetically-sealed bottles for practice? Perhaps they are dentists out of the oyster season. Who knows?
Affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: The same.]
1, DEVONs.h.i.+RE TERRACE, YORK GATE, REGENT'S PARK, LONDON, _Sunday, July 31st, 1842._
MY DEAR FELTON,
Of all the monstrous and incalculable amount of occupation that ever beset one unfortunate man, mine has been the most stupendous since I came home. The dinners I have had to eat, the places I have had to go to, the letters I have had to answer, the sea of business and of pleasure in which I have been plunged, not even the genius of an ---- or the pen of a ---- could describe.
Wherefore I indite a monstrously short and wildly uninteresting epistle to the American Dando; but perhaps you don't know who Dando was. He was an oyster-eater, my dear Felton. He used to go into oyster-shops, without a farthing of money, and stand at the counter eating natives, until the man who opened them grew pale, cast down his knife, staggered backward, struck his white forehead with his open hand, and cried, ”You are Dando!!!” He has been known to eat twenty dozen at one sitting, and would have eaten forty, if the truth had not flashed upon the shopkeeper. For these offences he was constantly committed to the House of Correction. During his last imprisonment he was taken ill, got worse and worse, and at last began knocking violent double knocks at Death's door. The doctor stood beside his bed, with his fingers on his pulse.