Volume I Part 30 (1/2)

Ever affectionately yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Rusden.[80]]

_September, 1866._

MY DEAR SIR,

Again I have to thank you very heartily for your kindness in writing to me about my son. The intelligence you send me concerning him is a great relief and satisfaction to my mind, and I cannot separate those feelings from a truly grateful recognition of the advice and a.s.sistance for which he is much beholden to you, or from his strong desire to deserve your good opinion.

Believe me always, my dear sir, Your faithful and truly obliged.

[Sidenote: Anonymous.]

GAD'S HILL, _Thursday, 27th December, 1866._

DEAR MADAM,[81]

You make an absurd, though common mistake, in supposing that any human creature can help you to be an auth.o.r.ess, if you cannot become one in virtue of your own powers. I know nothing about ”impenetrable barrier,”

”outsiders,” and ”charmed circles.” I know that anyone who can write what is suitable to the requirements of my own journal--for instance--is a person I am heartily glad to discover, and do not very often find. And I believe this to be no rare case in periodical literature. I cannot undertake to advise you in the abstract, as I number my unknown correspondents by the hundred. But if you offer anything to me for insertion in ”All the Year Round,” you may be sure that it will be honestly read, and that it will be judged by no test but its own merits and adaptability to those pages.

But I am bound to add that I do not regard successful fiction as a thing to be achieved in ”leisure moments.”

Faithfully yours.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] The honorary secretary of the St. George Club, Manchester.

[79] Robert Browning, the Poet, a dear and valued friend.

[80] Mr. Rusden was, at this time, Clerk to the House of Parliament, in Melbourne. He was the kindest of friends to the two sons of Charles d.i.c.kens, in Australia, from the time that the elder of the two first went out there. And Charles d.i.c.kens had the most grateful regard for him, and maintained a frequent correspondence with him--as a friend--although they never saw each other.

[81] Anonymous.

1867.

[Sidenote: Hon. Robert Lytton.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Wednesday, 17th April, 1867._

MY DEAR ROBERT LYTTON,[82]

It would have been really painful to me, if I had seen you and yours at a Reading of mine in right of any other credentials than my own. Your appreciation has given me higher and purer gratification than your modesty can readily believe. When I first entered on this interpretation of myself (then quite strange in the public ear) I was sustained by the hope that I could drop into some hearts, some new expression of the meaning of my books, that would touch them in a new way. To this hour that purpose is so strong in me, and so real are my fictions to myself, that, after hundreds of nights, I come with a feeling of perfect freshness to that little red table, and laugh and cry with my hearers, as if I had never stood there before. You will know from this what a delight it is to be delicately understood, and why your earnest words cannot fail to move me.

We are delighted to be remembered by your charming wife, and I am entrusted with more messages from this house to her, than you would care to give or withhold, so I suppress them myself and absolve you from the difficulty.