Volume Ii Part 19 (2/2)

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

BIDEFORD, NORTH DEVON, _Thursday Night, Nov. 1st, 1860._

MY DEAREST GEORGY,

I write (with the most impracticable iron pen on earth) to report our safe arrival here, in a beastly hotel. We start to-morrow morning at nine on a two days' posting between this and Liskeard in Cornwall. We are due in Liskeard (but n.o.body seems to know anything about the roads) on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and we purpose making an excursion in that neighbourhood on Sunday, and coming up from Liskeard on Monday by Great Western fast train, which will get us to London, please G.o.d, in good time on Monday evening. There I shall hear from you, and know whether dear Mamie will move to London too.

We had a pleasant journey down here, and a beautiful day. No adventures whatever. Nothing has happened to Wilkie, and he sends love.

We had stinking fish for dinner, and have been able to drink nothing, though we have ordered wine, beer, and brandy-and-water. There is nothing in the house but two tarts and a pair of snuffers. The landlady is playing cribbage with the landlord in the next room (behind a thin part.i.tion), and they seem quite comfortable.

Ever, my dearest Georgy, your most affectionate.

[Sidenote: Miss Mary Boyle.]

OFFICE OF ”ALL THE YEAR ROUND,”

_Friday, Dec. 28th, 1860._

MY DEAR MARY,

I cannot tell you how much I thank you for the beautiful cigar-case, and how seasonable, and friendly, and good, and warm-hearted it looked when I opened it at Gad's Hill. Besides which, it is a cigar-case, and will hold cigars; two crowning merits that I never yet knew to be possessed by any article claiming the same name. For all of these reasons, but more than all because it comes from you, I love it, and send you eighteen hundred and sixty kisses, with one in for the new year.

Both excellent stories and perfectly new. Your Joe swears that he never heard either--never a word or syllable of either--after he laughed at 'em this blessed day.

I have no news, except that I am not quite well, and am being doctored.

Pray read ”Great Expectations.” I think it is very droll. It is a very great success, and seems universally liked. I suppose because it opens funnily, and with an interest too.

I pa.s.s my time here (I am staying here alone) in working, taking physic, and taking a stall at a theatre every night. On Boxing Night I was at Covent Garden. A dull pantomime was ”worked” (as we say) better than I ever saw a heavy piece worked on a first night, until suddenly and without a moment's warning, every scene on that immense stage fell over on its face, and disclosed chaos by gaslight behind! There never was such a business; about sixty people who were on the stage being extinguished in the most remarkable manner. Not a soul was hurt. In the uproar, some moon-calf rescued a porter pot, six feet high (out of which the clown had been drinking when the accident happened), and stood it on the cus.h.i.+on of the lowest proscenium box, P.S., beside a lady and gentleman, who were dreadfully ashamed of it. The moment the house knew that n.o.body was injured, they directed their whole attention to this gigantic porter pot in its genteel position (the lady and gentleman trying to hide behind it), and roared with laughter. When a modest footman came from behind the curtain to clear it, and took it up in his arms like a Brobdingnagian baby, we all laughed more than ever we had laughed in our lives. I don't know why.

We have had a fire here, but our people put it out before the parish-engine arrived, like a drivelling perambulator, with _the beadle in it_, like an imbecile baby. Popular opinion, disappointed in the fire having been put out, s...o...b..lled the beadle. G.o.d bless it!

Over the way at the Lyceum, there is a very fair Christmas piece, with one or two uncommonly well-done n.i.g.g.e.r songs--one remarkably gay and mad, done in the finale to a scene. Also a very nice transformation, though I don't know what it means.

The poor actors waylay me in Bow Street, to represent their necessities; and I often see one cut down a court when he beholds me coming, cut round Drury Lane to face me, and come up towards me near this door in the freshest and most accidental way, as if I was the last person he expected to see on the surface of this globe. The other day, there thus appeared before me (simultaneously with a scent of rum in the air) one aged and greasy man, with a pair of pumps under his arm. He said he thought if he could get down to somewhere (I think it was Newcastle), he would get ”taken on” as Pantaloon, the existing Pantaloon being ”a stick, sir--a mere m.u.f.f.” I observed that I was sorry times were so bad with him. ”Mr. d.i.c.kens, you know our profession, sir--no one knows it better, sir--there is no right feeling in it. I was Harlequin on your own circuit, sir, for five-and-thirty years, and was displaced by a boy, sir!--a boy!”

So no more at present, except love to Mrs. Watson and Bedgey Prig and all, from my dear Mary.

Your ever affectionate JOE.

P.S.--DON'T I pine neither?

P.P.S.--I did my best to arouse Forster's worst feelings; but he had got into a Christmas habit of mind, and wouldn't respond.

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