Volume Iii Part 17 (1/2)
Robert Keeley. Charles d.i.c.kens superintended some rehearsals, but had left England before the play was acted in public.
The man ”Roche,” alluded to in his letter to Mr. Maclise, was the French courier engaged to go with the family to Italy. He remained as servant there, and was with Charles d.i.c.kens through all his foreign travels. His many excellent qualities endeared him to the whole family, and his master never lost sight of this faithful servant until poor Roche's untimely death in 1849.
The Rev. Edward Tagart was a celebrated Unitarian minister, and a very highly esteemed and valued friend.
The ”Chickenstalker” (letter to Mrs. d.i.c.kens, November 8th), is an instance of the eccentric names he was constantly giving to his children, and these names he frequently made use of in his books.
In this year we have our first letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir Edwin) Landseer, for whom Charles d.i.c.kens had the highest admiration and personal regard.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]
DEVONs.h.i.+RE TERRACE, _January 3rd, 1844._
MY VERY DEAR MACREADY,
You know all the news, and you know I love you; so I no more know why I write than I do why I ”come round” after the play to shake hands with you in your dressing-room. I say come, as if you were at this present moment the lessee of Drury Lane, and had ---- with a long face on one hand, ---- elaborately explaining that everything in creation is a joint-stock company on the other, the inimitable B. by the fire, in conversation with ----. Well-a-day! I see it all, and smell that extraordinary compound of odd scents peculiar to a theatre, which bursts upon me when I swing open the little door in the hall, accompanies me as I meet perspiring supers in the narrow pa.s.sage, goes with me up the two steps, crosses the stage, winds round the third entrance P.S. as I wind, and escorts me safely into your presence, where I find you unwinding something slowly round and round your chest, which is so long that no man can see the end of it.
Oh that you had been at Clarence Terrace on Nina's birthday! Good G.o.d, how we missed you, talked of you, drank your health, and wondered what you were doing! Perhaps you are Falkland enough (I swear I suspect you of it) to feel rather sore--just a little bit, you know, the merest trifle in the world--on hearing that Mrs. Macready looked brilliant, blooming, young, and handsome, and that she danced a country dance with the writer hereof (Acres to your Falkland) in a thorough spirit of becoming good humour and enjoyment. Now you don't like to be told that?
Nor do you quite like to hear that Forster and I conjured bravely; that a plum-pudding was produced from an empty saucepan, held over a blazing fire kindled in Stanfield's hat without damage to the lining; that a box of bran was changed into a live guinea-pig, which ran between my G.o.dchild's feet, and was the cause of such a shrill uproar and clapping of hands that you might have heard it (and I daresay did) in America; that three half-crowns being taken from Major Burns and put into a tumbler-gla.s.s before his eyes, did then and there give jingling answers to the questions asked of them by me, and knew where you were and what you were doing, to the unspeakable admiration of the whole a.s.sembly.
Neither do you quite like to be told that we are going to do it again next Sat.u.r.day, with the addition of demoniacal dresses from the masquerade shop; nor that Mrs. Macready, for her gallant bearing always, and her best sort of best affection, is the best creature I know. Never mind; no man shall gag me, and those are my opinions.
My dear Macready, the lecturing proposition is not to be thought of. I have not the slightest doubt or hesitation in giving you my most strenuous and decided advice against it. Looking only to its effect at home, I am immovable in my conviction that the impression it would produce would be one of failure, and a reduction of yourself to the level of those who do the like here. To us who know the Boston names and honour them, and who know Boston and like it (Boston is what I would have the whole United States to be), the Boston requisition would be a valuable doc.u.ment, of which you and your friends might be proud. But those names are perfectly unknown to the public here, and would produce not the least effect. The only thing known to the public here is, that they ask (when I say ”they” I mean the people) everybody to lecture. It is one of the things I have ridiculed in ”Chuzzlewit.” Lecture you, and you fall into the roll of Lardners, Vandenhoffs, Eltons, Knowleses, Buckinghams. You are off your pedestal, have flung away your gla.s.s slipper, and changed your triumphal coach into a seedy old pumpkin. I am quite sure of it, and cannot express my strong conviction in language of sufficient force.
”Puff-ridden!” why to be sure they are. The nation is a miserable Sindbad, and its boasted press the loathsome, foul old man upon his back, and yet they will tell you, and proclaim to the four winds for repet.i.tion here, that they don't need their ignorant and brutal papers, as if the papers could exist if they didn't need them! Let any two of these vagabonds, in any town you go to, take it into their heads to make you an object of attack, or to direct the general attention elsewhere, and what avail those wonderful images of pa.s.sion which you have been all your life perfecting!
I have sent you, to the charge of our trusty and well-beloved Colden, a little book I published on the 17th of December, and which has been a most prodigious success--the greatest, I think, I have ever achieved. It pleases me to think that it will bring you home for an hour or two, and I long to hear you have read it on some quiet morning. Do they allow you to be quiet, by-the-way? ”Some of our most fas.h.i.+onable people, sir,”
denounced me awfully for liking to be alone sometimes.
Now that we have turned Christmas, I feel as if your face were directed homewards, Macready. The downhill part of the road is before us now, and we shall travel on to midsummer at a das.h.i.+ng pace; and, please Heaven, I will be at Liverpool when you come steaming up the Mersey, with that red funnel smoking out unutterable things, and your heart much fuller than your trunks, though something lighter! If I be not the first Englishman to shake hands with you on English ground, the man who gets before me will be a brisk and active fellow, and even then need put his best leg foremost. So I warn Forster to keep in the rear, or he'll be blown.
If you shall have any leisure to project and put on paper the outline of a scheme for opening any theatre on your return, upon a certain list subscribed, and on certain understandings with the actors, it strikes me that it would be wise to break ground while you are still away. Of course I need not say that I will see anybody or do anything--even to the calling together of the actors--if you should ever deem it desirable. My opinion is that our respected and valued friend Mr. ---- will stagger through another season, if he don't rot first. I understand he is in a partial state of decomposition at this minute. He was very ill, but got better. How is it that ---- always do get better, and strong hearts are so easy to die?
Kate sends her tender love; so does Georgy, so does Charlie, so does Mamey, so does Katey, so does Walter, so does the other one who is to be born next week. Look homeward always, as we look abroad to you. G.o.d bless you, my dear Macready.
Ever your affectionate Friend.
[Sidenote: Mr. Laman Blanchard.]
DEVONs.h.i.+RE TERRACE, _January 4th, 1844._
MY DEAR BLANCHARD,
I cannot thank you enough for the beautiful manner and the true spirit of friends.h.i.+p in which you have noticed my ”Carol.” But I _must_ thank you because you have filled my heart up to the brim, and it is running over.
You meant to give me great pleasure, my dear fellow, and you have done it. The tone of your elegant and fervent praise has touched me in the tenderest place. I cannot write about it, and as to talking of it, I could no more do that than a dumb man. I have derived inexpressible gratification from what I know was a labour of love on your part. And I can never forget it.