Volume Iii Part 49 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.]

OFFICE OF ”HOUSEHOLD WORDS,” _Christmas Eve, 1852._

MY DEAR WILLS,

I have gone carefully through the number--an awful one for the amount of correction required--and have made everything right. If my mind could have been materialised, and drawn along the tops of all the spikes on the outside of the Queen's Bench prison, it could not have been more agonised than by the ----, which, for imbecility, carelessness, slovenly composition, relatives without antecedents, universal chaos, and one absorbing whirlpool of jolter-headedness, beats anything in print and paper I have ever ”gone at” in my life.

I shall come and see how you are to-morrow. Meantime everything is in perfect trim in these parts, and I have sent down to Stacey to come here and top up with a final interview before I go.

Just after I had sent the messenger off to you, yesterday, concerning the toll-taker memoranda, the other idea came into my head, and in the most obliging manner came out of it.

Ever faithfully yours.

P.S.--Here is ---- perpetually flitting about Brydges Street, and hovering in the neighbourhood, with a veil of secrecy drawn down over his chin, so ludicrously transparent, that I can't help laughing while he looks at me.

[Sidenote: Mr. G. Linnaeus Banks.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, Dec. 26th, 1852._

MY DEAR SIR,

I will not attempt to tell you how affected and gratified I am by the intelligence your kind letter conveys to me. Nothing would be more welcome to me than such a mark of confidence and approval from such a source, nothing more precious, or that I could set a higher worth upon.

I hasten to return the gauges, of which I have marked one as the size of the finger, from which this token will never more be absent as long as I live.

With feelings of the liveliest grat.i.tude and cordiality towards the many friends who so honour me, and with many thanks to you for the genial earnestness with which you represent them,

I am, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours.

P.S.--Will you do me the favour to inform the dinner committee that a friend of mine, Mr. Clement, of Shrewsbury, is very anxious to purchase a ticket for the dinner, and that if they will be so good as to forward one for him to me I shall feel much obliged.

FOOTNOTE:

[14] The great Duke of Wellington's funeral.

1853.

NARRATIVE.

In this year, Charles d.i.c.kens was still writing ”Bleak House,” and went to Brighton for a short time in the spring. In May he had an attack of illness, a return of an old trouble of an inflammatory pain in the side, which was short but very severe while it lasted. Immediately on his recovery, early in June, a departure from London for the summer was resolved upon. He had decided upon trying Boulogne this year for his holiday sojourn, and as soon as he was strong enough to travel, he, his wife, and sister-in-law went there in advance of the family, taking up their quarters at the Hotel des Bains, to find a house, which was speedily done. The pretty little Villa des Moulineaux, and its excellent landlord, at once took his fancy, and in that house, and in another on the same ground, also belonging to M. Beaucourt, he pa.s.sed three very happy summers. And he became as much attached to ”Our French Watering Place” as to ”Our English” one. Having written a sketch of Broadstairs under that name in ”Household Words,” he did the same of Boulogne under the former t.i.tle.

During the summer, besides his other work, he was employed in dictating ”The Child's History of England,” which he published in ”Household Words,” and which was the only book he ever wrote by dictation. But, as at Broadstairs and other seaside homes, he had always plenty of relaxation and enjoyment in the visits of his friends. In September he finished ”Bleak House,” and in October he started with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Egg from Boulogne, on an excursion through parts of Switzerland and Italy; his wife and family going home at the same time, and he himself returning to Tavistock House early in December. His eldest son, Charles, had left Eton some time before this, and had gone for the completion of his education to Leipsic. He was to leave Germany at the end of the year, therefore it was arranged that he should meet the travellers in Paris on their homeward journey, and they all returned together.

Just before Christmas he went to Birmingham in fulfilment of an offer which he had made at the dinner given to him at Birmingham on the 6th of January (of which he writes to Mr. Macready in the first letter that follows here), to give two readings from his own books for the benefit of the New Midland Inst.i.tute. They were his first public readings. He read ”The Christmas Carol” on one evening, and ”The Cricket on the Hearth” on the next, before enormous audiences. The success was so great, and the sum of money realised for the inst.i.tute so large, that he consented to give a second reading of ”The Christmas Carol,” remaining another night in Birmingham for the purpose, on the condition that seats were reserved, at prices within their means, for the working men. And to his great satisfaction they formed a large proportion, and were among the most enthusiastic and appreciative of his audience. He was accompanied by his wife and sister-in-law, and on this occasion a breakfast was given to him after his last reading, at which a silver flower-basket, duly inscribed, was very gracefully presented to _Mrs._ Charles d.i.c.kens.

The letters in this year require little explanation. Those to his wife and sister-in-law and Mr. Wills give a little history of his Italian journey. At Naples he found his excellent friend Sir James Emerson Tennent, with his wife and daughter, with whom he joined company in the ascent of Vesuvius.