Volume Iii Part 3 (1/2)

I perfectly concur in all you say, and thank you most heartily and cordially for your kind and manly conduct, which is only what I should have expected from you; though, under such circ.u.mstances, I sincerely believe there are few but you--if any--who would have adopted it.

Believe me that I have no other feeling of disappointment connected with this matter but that arising from the not having been able to be of some use to you. And trust me that, if the opportunity should ever arrive, my ardour will only be increased--not damped--by the result of this experiment.

Believe me always, my dear Macready, Faithfully yours.

1839.

NARRATIVE.

Charles d.i.c.kens was still living in Doughty Street, but he removed at the end of this year to 1, Devons.h.i.+re Terrace, Regent's Park. He hired a cottage at Petersham for the summer months, and in the autumn took lodgings at Broadstairs.

The cottage at Alphington, near Exeter, mentioned in the letter to Mr.

Mitton, was hired by Charles d.i.c.kens for his parents.

He was at work all through this year on ”Nicholas Nickleby.”

We have now the commencement of his correspondence with Mr. George Cattermole. His first letter was written immediately after Mr.

Cattermole's marriage with Miss Elderton, a distant connection of Charles d.i.c.kens; hence the allusions to ”cousin,” which will be found in many of his letters to Mr. Cattermole. The bride and bridegroom were pa.s.sing their honeymoon in the neighbourhood of Petersham, and the letter refers to a request from them for the loan of some books, and also to his having lent them his pony carriage and groom, during their stay in this neighbourhood.

The first letter in this year to Mr. Macready is in answer to one from him, announcing his retirement from the management of Covent Garden Theatre.

The portrait by Mr. Maclise, mentioned to Mr. Harley, was the, now, well-known one, which appeared as a frontispiece to ”Nicholas Nickleby.”

[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]

DOUGHTY STREET, _Sunday._

MY DEAR MACREADY,

I will have, if you please, three dozen of the extraordinary champagne; and I am much obliged to you for recollecting me.

I ought not to be sorry to hear of your abdication, but I am, notwithstanding, most heartily and sincerely sorry, for my own sake and the sake of thousands, who may now go and whistle for a theatre--at least, such a theatre as you gave them; and I do now in my heart believe that for a long and dreary time that exquisite delight has pa.s.sed away.

If I may jest with my misfortunes, and quote the Portsmouth critic of Mr. Crummles's company, I say that: ”As an exquisite embodiment of the poet's visions and a realisation of human intellectuality, gilding with refulgent light our dreamy moments, and laying open a new and magic world before the mental eye, the drama is gone--perfectly gone.”

With the same perverse and unaccountable feeling which causes a heart-broken man at a dear friend's funeral to see something irresistibly comical in a red-nosed or one-eyed undertaker, I receive your communication with ghostly facetiousness; though on a moment's reflection I find better cause for consolation in the hope that, relieved from your most trying and painful duties, you will now have leisure to return to pursuits more congenial to your mind, and to move more easily and pleasantly among your friends. In the long catalogue of the latter, I believe that there is not one prouder of the name, or more grateful for the store of delightful recollections you have enabled him to heap up from boyhood, than,

My dear Macready, Yours always faithfully.

[Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Mitton.]

NEW LONDON INN, EXETER, _Wednesday Morning, March 6th, 1839._

DEAR TOM,

Perhaps you have heard from Kate that I succeeded yesterday in the very first walk, and took a cottage at a place called Alphington, one mile from Exeter, which contains, on the ground-floor, a good parlour and kitchen, and above, a full-sized country drawing-room and three bedrooms; in the yard behind, coal-holes, fowl-houses, and meat-safes out of number; in the kitchen, a neat little range; in the other rooms, good stoves and cupboards; and all for twenty pounds a year, taxes included. There is a good garden at the side well stocked with cabbages, beans, onions, celery, and some flowers. The stock belonging to the landlady (who lives in the adjoining cottage), there was some question whether she was not ent.i.tled to half the produce, but I settled the point by paying five s.h.i.+llings, and becoming absolute master of the whole!