Volume Ii Part 35 (1/2)
1865.
NARRATIVE.
For this spring a furnished house in Somer's Place, Hyde Park, had been taken, which Charles d.i.c.kens occupied, with his sister-in-law and daughter, from the beginning of March until June.
During the year he paid two short visits to France.
He was still at work upon ”Our Mutual Friend,” two numbers of which had been issued in January and February, when the first volume was published, with dedication to Sir James Emerson Tennent. The remaining numbers were issued between March and November, when the complete work was published in two volumes.
The Christmas number, to which Charles d.i.c.kens contributed three stories, was called ”Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions.”
Being out of health, and much overworked, Charles d.i.c.kens, at the end of May, took his first short holiday trip into France. And on his way home, and on a day afterwards so fatal to him, the 9th of June, he was in that most terrible railway accident at Staplehurst. Many of our letters for this year have reference to this awful experience--an experience from the effects of which his nerves never wholly recovered. His letters to Mr. Thomas Mitton and to Mrs. Hulkes (an esteemed friend and neighbour) are graphic descriptions of this disaster. But they do NOT tell of the wonderful presence of mind and energy shown by Charles d.i.c.kens when most of the terrified pa.s.sengers were incapable of thought or action, or of his gentleness and goodness to the dead and dying. The Mr. d.i.c.kenson[14]
mentioned in the letter to Mrs. Hulkes soon recovered. He always considers that he owes his life to Charles d.i.c.kens, the latter having discovered and extricated him from beneath a carriage before it was too late.
Our first letter to Mr. Kent is one of congratulation upon his having become the proprietor of _The Sun_ newspaper.
Professor Owen has been so kind as to give us some notes, which we publish for the sake of his great name. Charles d.i.c.kens had not much correspondence with Professor Owen, but there was a firm friends.h.i.+p and great mutual admiration between them.
The letter to Mrs. Procter is in answer to one from her, asking Charles d.i.c.kens to write a memoir of her daughter Adelaide, as a preface to a collected edition of her poems.
[Sidenote: Mr. William Charles Kent.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Tuesday, Jan. 17th, 1865._
MY DEAR KENT,
I meant to have written instantly on the appearance of your paper in its beautiful freshness, to congratulate you on its handsome appearance, and to send you my heartiest good wishes for its thriving and prosperous career. Through a mistake of the postman's, that remarkable letter has been tesselated into the Infernal Pavement instead of being delivered in the Strand.
We have been looking and waiting for your being well enough to propose yourself for a mouthful of fresh air. Are you well enough to come on Sunday? We shall be coming down from Charing Cross on Sunday morning, and I shall be going up again at nine on Monday morning.
It amuses me to find that you don't see your way with a certain ”Mutual Friend” of ours. I have a horrible suspicion that you may begin to be fearfully knowing at somewhere about No. 12 or 13. But you shan't if I can help it.
Your note delighted me because it dwelt upon the places in the number that _I_ dwell on. Not that that is anything new in your case, but it is always new to me in the pleasure I derive from it, which is truly inexpressible.
Ever cordially yours.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Procter.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Wednesday, Feb. 15th, 1865._
MY DEAR MRS. PROCTER,
Of course I will do it, and of course I will do it for the love of you and Procter. You can give me my brief, and we can speak about its details. Once again, of course I will do it, and with all my heart.
I have registered a vow (in which there is not the least merit, for I couldn't help it) that when I am, as I am now, very hard at work upon a book, I never will dine out more than one day in a week. Why didn't you ask me for the Wednesday, before I stood engaged to Lady Molesworth for the Tuesday?
It is so delightful to me to sit by your side anywhere and be brightened up, that I lay a handsome sacrifice upon the altar of ”Our Mutual Friend” in writing this note, very much against my will. But for as many years as can be made consistent with my present juvenility, I always have given my work the first place in my life, and what can I do now at 35!--or at least at the two figures, never mind their order.
I send my love to Procter, hoping you may appropriate a little of it by the way.