Volume I Part 35 (1/2)
Your report of him is an unspeakable comfort to me, and I most heartily a.s.sure you of my grat.i.tude and friends.h.i.+p.
In the midst of your colonial seethings and heavings, I suppose you have some leisure to consult equally the hopeful prophets and the dismal prophets who are all wiser than any of the rest of us as to things at home here. My own strong impression is that whatsoever change the new Reform Bill may effect will be very gradual indeed and quite wholesome.
Numbers of the middle cla.s.s who seldom or never voted before will vote now, and the greater part of the new voters will in the main be wiser as to their electoral responsibilities and more seriously desirous to discharge them for the common good than the b.u.mptious singers of ”Rule Britannia,” ”Our dear old Church of England,” and all the rest of it.
If I can ever do anything for any accredited friend of yours coming to the old country, command me. I shall be truly glad of any opportunity of testifying that I do not use a mere form of words in signing myself,
Cordially yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Russell Sturgis.]
KENNEDY'S HOTEL, EDINBURGH, _Monday, 14th December, 1868._[98]
MY DEAR MR. RUSSELL STURGIS,
I am ”reading” here, and shall be through this week. Consequently I am only this morning in receipt of your kind note of the 10th, forwarded from my own house.
Believe me I am as much obliged to you for your generous and ready response to my supposed letter as I should have been if I had really written it. But I know nothing whatever of it or of ”Miss Jeffries,”
except that I have a faint impression of having recently noticed that name among my begging-letter correspondents, and of having a.s.sociated it in my mind with a regular professional hand. Your caution has, I hope, disappointed this swindler. But my testimony is at your service if you should need it, and I would take any opportunity of bringing one of those vagabonds to punishment; for they are, one and all, the most heartless and worthless vagabonds on the face of the earth.
Believe me, faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Mrs. James T. Fields.]
GLASGOW, _Wednesday, December 16, 1868._
MY DEAR MRS. FIELDS,
. . . First, as you are curious about the Oliver murder, I will tell you about that trial of the same at which you _ought_ to have a.s.sisted.
There were about a hundred people present in all. I have changed my stage. Besides that back screen which you know so well, there are two large screens of the same colour, set off, one on either side, like the ”wings” at a theatre. And besides these again, we have a quant.i.ty of curtains of the same colour, with which to close in any width of room from wall to wall. Consequently, the figure is now completely isolated, and the slightest action becomes much more important. This was used for the first time on the occasion. But behind the stage--the orchestra being very large and built for the accommodation of a numerous chorus--there was ready, on the level of the platform, a very long table, beautifully lighted, with a large staff of men ready to open oysters and set champagne-corks flying. Directly I had done, the screens being whisked off by my people, there was disclosed one of the prettiest banquets you can imagine; and when all the people came up, and the gay dresses of the ladies were lighted by those powerful lights of mine, the scene was exquisitely pretty; the hall being newly decorated, and very elegantly; and the whole looking like a great bed of flowers and diamonds.
Now, you must know that all this company were, before the wine went round, unmistakably pale, and had horror-stricken faces. Next morning Harness (Fields knows--Rev. William--did an edition of Shakespeare--old friend of the Kembles and Mrs. Siddons), writing to me about it, and saying it was ”a most amazing and terrific thing,” added, ”but I am bound to tell you that I had an almost irresistible impulse upon me to _scream_, and that, if anyone had cried out, I am certain I should have followed.” He had no idea that, on the night, P----, the great ladies'
doctor, had taken me aside and said: ”My dear d.i.c.kens, you may rely upon it that if only one woman cries out when you murder the girl, there will be a contagion of hysteria all over this place.” It is impossible to soften it without spoiling it, and you may suppose that I am rather anxious to discover how it goes on the 5th of January!!! We are afraid to announce it elsewhere, without knowing, except that I have thought it pretty safe to put it up once in Dublin. I asked Mrs. K----, the famous actress, who was at the experiment: ”What do _you_ say? Do it or not?”
”Why, of course, do it,” she replied. ”Having got at such an effect as that, it must be done. But,” rolling her large black eyes very slowly, and speaking very distinctly, ”the public have been looking out for a sensation these last fifty years or so, and by Heaven they have got it!”
With which words, and a long breath and a long stare, she became speechless. Again, you may suppose that I am a little anxious!
Not a day pa.s.ses but Dolby and I talk about you both, and recall where we were at the corresponding time of last year. My old likening of Boston to Edinburgh has been constantly revived within these last ten days. There is a certain remarkable similarity of _tone_ between the two places. The audiences are curiously alike, except that the Edinburgh audience has a quicker sense of humour and is a little more genial. No disparagement to Boston in this, because I consider an Edinburgh audience perfect.
I trust, my dear Eugenius, that you have recognised yourself in a certain Uncommercial, and also some small reference to a name rather dear to you? As an instance of how strangely something comic springs up in the midst of the direst misery, look to a succeeding Uncommercial, called ”A Small Star in the East,” published to-day, by-the-bye. I have described, _with exactness_, the poor places into which I went, and how the people behaved, and what they said. I was wretched, looking on; and yet the boiler-maker and the poor man with the legs filled me with a sense of drollery not to be kept down by any pressure.
The atmosphere of this place, compounded of mists from the highlands and smoke from the town factories, is crus.h.i.+ng my eyebrows as I write, and it rains as it never does rain anywhere else, and always does rain here.
It is a dreadful place, though much improved and possessing a deal of public spirit. Improvement is beginning to knock the old town of Edinburgh about, here and there; but the Canongate and the most picturesque of the horrible courts and wynds are not to be easily spoiled, or made fit for the poor wretches who people them to live in.
Edinburgh is so changed as to its notabilities, that I had the only three men left of the Wilson and Jeffrey time to dine with me there, last Sat.u.r.day.