Volume Ii Part 12 (1/2)
Will you let me know, either at Southampton or Portsmouth, whether any of you, and how many of you, if any, are coming over, so that Arthur Smith may reserve good seats? Tell Lotty I hope she does not contemplate coming to the morning reading; I always hate it so myself.
Mary and Katey are down at Gad's Hill with Georgy and Plornish, and they have Marguerite Power and Ellen Stone staying there. I am sorry to say that even my benevolence descries no prospect of their being able to come to my native place.
On Sat.u.r.day week, the 13th, my tour, please G.o.d, ends.
My best love to Mrs. White, and to Lotty, and to Clara.
Ever, my dear White, affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Frank Stone, A.R.A.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C., _Monday, Dec. 13th, 1858._
MY DEAR STONE,
Many thanks for these discourses. They are very good, I think, as expressing what many men have felt and thought; otherwise not specially remarkable. They have one fatal mistake, which is a canker at the foot of their ever being widely useful. Half the misery and hypocrisy of the Christian world arises (as I take it) from a stubborn determination to refuse the New Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament into alliance with it--whereof comes all manner of camel-swallowing and of gnat-straining. But so to resent this miserable error, or to (by any implication) depreciate the divine goodness and beauty of the New Testament, is to commit even a worse error. And to cla.s.s Jesus Christ with Mahomet is simply audacity and folly. I might as well hoist myself on to a high platform, to inform my disciples that the lives of King George the Fourth and of King Alfred the Great belonged to one and the same category.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. B. W. Procter.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, Dec. 18th, 1858._
MY DEAR PROCTER,
A thousand thanks for the little song. I am charmed with it, and shall be delighted to brighten ”Household Words” with such a wise and genial light. I no more believe that your poetical faculty has gone by, than I believe that you have yourself pa.s.sed to the better land. You and it will travel thither in company, rely upon it. So I still hope to hear more of the trade-songs, and to learn that the blacksmith has hammered out no end of iron into good fas.h.i.+on of verse, like a cunning workman, as I know him of old to be.
Very faithfully yours, my dear Procter.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Niece to the Rev. W. Harness.
[4] The birthplace of Mr. Forster.
1859.
NARRATIVE.
During the winter, Charles d.i.c.kens was living at Tavistock House, removing to Gad's Hill for the summer early in June, and returning to London in November. At this time a change was made in his weekly journal. ”Household Words” became absolutely his own--Mr. Wills being his partner and editor, as before--and was ”incorporated with 'All the Year Round,'” under which t.i.tle it was known thenceforth. The office was still in Wellington Street, but in a different house. The first number with the new name appeared on the 30th April, and it contained the opening of ”A Tale of Two Cities.”
The first letter which follows shows that a proposal for a series of readings in America had already been made to him. It was carefully considered and abandoned for the time. But the proposal was constantly renewed, and the idea never wholly relinquished for many years before he actually decided on making so distant a ”reading tour.”
Mr. Procter contributed to the early numbers of ”All the Year Round”
some very spirited ”Songs of the Trades.” We give notes from Charles d.i.c.kens to the veteran poet, both in the last year, and in this year, expressing his strong approval of them.