Volume Ii Part 45 (1/2)
I am very doubtful indeed about ”Vaux,” and have kept it out of the number in consequence. The mere details of such a rascal's proceedings, whether recorded by himself or set down by the Reverend Ordinary, are not wholesome for a large audience, and are scarcely justifiable (I think) as claiming to be a piece of literature. I can understand Barrington to be a good subject, as involving the representation of a period, a style of manners, an order of dress, certain habits of street life, a.s.sembly-room life, and coffee-room life, etc.; but there is a very broad distinction between this and mere Newgate Calendar. The latter would a.s.suredly damage your book, and be protested against to me.
I have a conviction of it, founded on constant observation and experience here.
Your kind invitation is extremely welcome and acceptable to me, but I am sorry to add that I must not go a-visiting. For this reason: So incessantly have I been ”reading,” that I have not once been at home at Gad's Hill since last January, and am little likely to get there before the middle of May. Judge how the master's eye must be kept on the place when it does at length get a look at it after so long an absence! I hope you will descry in this a reason for coming to me again, instead of my coming to you.
The extinct prize-fighters, as a body, I take to be a good subject, for much the same reason as George Barrington. Their patrons were a cla.s.s of men now extinct too, and the whole ring of those days (not to mention Jackson's rooms in Bond Street) is a piece of social history. Now Vaux is not, nor is he even a phenomenon among thieves.
Faithfully yours always.
[Sidenote: Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, _Thursday, April 18th, 1867._
MY DEAR STANNY,
The time of year reminds me how the months have gone, since I last heard from you through Mrs. Stanfield.
I hope you have not thought me unmindful of you in the meanwhile. I have been almost constantly travelling and reading. England, Ireland, and Scotland have laid hold of me by turns, and I have had no rest. As soon as I had finished this kind of work last year, I had to fall to work upon ”All the Year Round” and the Christmas number. I was no sooner quit of that task, and the Christmas season was but run out to its last day, when I was tempted into another course of fifty readings that are not yet over. I am here now for two days, and have not seen the place since Twelfth Night. When a reading in London has been done, I have been brought up for it from some great distance, and have next morning been carried back again. But the fifty will be ”paid out” (as we say at sea) by the middle of May, and then I hope to see you.
Reading at Cheltenham the other day, I saw Macready, who sent his love to you. His face was much more ma.s.sive and as it used to be, than when I saw him previous to his illness. His wife takes admirable care of him, and is on the happiest terms with his daughter Katie. His boy by the second marriage is a jolly little fellow, and leads a far easier life than the children you and I remember, who used to come in at dessert and have each a biscuit and a gla.s.s of water, in which last refreshment I was always convinced that they drank, with the gloomiest malignity, ”Destruction to the gormandising grown-up company!”
I hope to look up your latest triumphs on the day of the Academy dinner.
Of course as yet I have had no opportunity of even hearing of what anyone has done. I have been (in a general way) snowed up for four months. The locomotive with which I was going to Ireland was dug out of the snow at midnight, in Wales. Both pa.s.sages across were made in a furious snowstorm. The snow lay ankle-deep in Dublin, and froze hard at Belfast. In Scotland it slanted before a perpetual east wind. In Yorks.h.i.+re, it derived novelty from thunder and lightning. Whirlwinds everywhere I don't mention.
G.o.d bless you and yours. If I look like some weather-beaten pilot when we meet, don't be surprised. Any mahogany-faced stranger who holds out his hand to you will probably turn out, on inspection, to be the old original d.i.c.k.
Ever, my dear Stanny, your faithful and affectionate.
P.S.--I wish you could have been with me (of course in a snowstorm) one day on the pier at Tynemouth. There was a very heavy sea running, and a perfect fleet of screw merchantmen were plunging in and out on the turn of the tide at high-water. Suddenly there came a golden horizon, and a most glorious rainbow burst out, arching one large s.h.i.+p, as if she were sailing direct for heaven. I was so enchanted by the scene, that I became oblivious of a few thousand tons of water coming on in an enormous roller, and was knocked down and beaten by its spray when it broke, and so completely wetted through and through, that the very pockets in my pocket-book were full of sea.
[Sidenote: Mr. George Stanfield.]
OFFICE OF ”ALL THE YEAR ROUND,”
_Sunday, May 19th, 1867._
ON THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
When I came up to the house this afternoon and saw what had happened, I had not the courage to ring, though I had thought I was fully prepared by what I heard when I called yesterday. No one of your father's friends can ever have loved him more dearly than I always did, or can have better known the worth of his n.o.ble character.
It is idle to suppose that I can do anything for you; and yet I cannot help saying that I am staying here for some days, and that if I could, it would be a much greater relief to me than it could be a service to you.
Your poor mother has been constantly in my thoughts since I saw the quiet bravery with which she preserved her composure. The beauty of her ministration sank into my heart when I saw him for the last time on earth. May G.o.d be with her, and with you all, in your great loss.
Affectionately yours always.