"Nicholas Nickleby" as the luckless | have the rest hashed to-morrow with some pupil of Squeers who was reproved in a letter from "his maternal aunt, who was suspected of standing in a nearer maternal relation towards him, for turning up his nose at the cow's liver broth after his good master had asked a blessing on it," while the lady's maid of real life appears in the tale as a lady who, during the delay caused by the upsetting of the coach during Nicholas's journey to Dotheboys Hall, was very particular that a lookout should be kept for a carriage with servants in the smartest liveries (in a snowstorm) coming from Grantham, "which induced one of the other passengers to ask her whether there was not very good society in the neighborhood of Grantham, which the lady answered there was, in a manner that showed she belonged to RESPECTED SIR, I have given Squeers one cut in the neck and two on the hand, at which he appeared much surprised and began to cry, which, being a cowardly thing, is just what I should have expected from him- wouldn't you? greens which he is very fond of, and so am I. He said he did not like to have his porter hot, for he thought it spoiled the flavor, so I him drink it. I thought he would never have left off. I also gave him three pounds of money in sixpences to make it seem more, and he said directly that he would give more than half to his mamma and sister and divide the rest with poor Smike, and I say he is a good, fellow for saying so; and if anybody says he isn't, I am ready to fight him whenever they like—there. let him have it cold. You should have seen 好 E 124 Fanny Squeers shall be attended to, dependi upon it. Your drawing of her is very like, except that I don't think the hair is quite curly enough. The nose is particularly like hers, and so are the legs. She is a nasty, disagree, able thing, and I know it will make her very cross when she sees it; and what I say is, that I hope it may. You will say the same I know, at least I think you will. I meant to have written you a long letter, but I cannot write very fast when I like the person I am writing to, because that makes me think about them, and I like you, and so I tell you. Besides, it is just eight o'clock at night and I always go to bed at eight o'clock except when it is my birthday, and then I sit up to supper. So I will not say anything more be sides this and that is my love to you and Neptune, and if you will drink my health every Christmas-day I will drink yours I am, respected sir, come. Your affectionate friend.* For none of Dickens's friends had he a deeper affection and a higher admira tion than for the late William Charles Macready. This appears abundantly I have carefully done what you told me in throughout these volumes. We give the your letter about the lamb and the two "sheeps" for the little boys. They have also had some good ale and porter and some wine. I am sorry you didn't say what wine you would like them to have. I gave them some sherry which they liked very much, except one boy who was a little sick and choked a good deal. He was rather greedy, and that's the truth, and I believe it went the wrong way, which I say served him right, and I hope you will say so too. Nicholas had his roast lamb as you said he was to, but he could not eat it all, and says if you do not mind his doing so he should like to We are compelled to quote from memory, and although substantially we may not be verbally accurate. earliest expression of these feelings. I was written on the occasion of Macready's retirement from the management of Cov ent Garden Theatre. abdication, but I am, notwithstanding, mos I ought not to be sorry to hear of you and the sake of thousands who may now g heartily and sincerely sorry, for my own sak and whistle for a theatre-at least, such theatre as you gave them; and I do now in m heart believe that for a long and dreary tim that exquisite delight has passed away. If I may jest with my misfortunes, an quote the Portsmouth critic of Mr. Crummles * Vol. i., pp. 14, 15. company, I say that, as an exquisite embodiment of the poet's visions, and a realization 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 amuses a heartbroken 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 try Again, he suggests an idea which the artist admirably carried out: I want the cart gaily decorated, going through the street of the old town with the wax brigand displayed to fierce advantage, and the child seated on it also dispersing bills. As many flags and inscriptions about Jarley's Waxwork fluttering from the cart as you please. You know the wax brigands and how they contemplate small oval miniatures. That's the figure I want. I send you the scrap of MS. which contains the subject. ing and painful duties, you will now have lei-tration which, if our memory serves us Here is another suggestion for an illus sure 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 there is not one prouder of the name or more grateful for the store of delightful recollections you have abled him to heap up from boyhood.* rightly, was not very successfully carried out by the artist: It is The child lying dead in the little sleepingroom which is behind the open screen. en-winter-time, so there are no flowers; but upon her breast and pillow, and about the bed, there may be strips of holly and berries, and such free green things. Window overgrown with ivy. The illustrations of Dickens's works were to him objects of his most painstakling care. Of this we can afford to give space for only one instance. Those who remember or possess the original edition of "Master Humphrey's Clock" will be interested in reading the following history of the illustrations in that edition. I want to know [he writes to his friend, George Cattermole, the artist] whether you would object to make me a little sketch for a woodcut- in Indian ink would be quite sufficient about the size of the enclosed scrap. The subject, an old quaint room with antique Elizabethan furniture, and in the chimney corner an extraordinary old clock - the clock belonging to Master Humphrey, in fact, and 10 figures. This I should drop into the text Wet the head of my opening page.† Again: ment Kit, the single gentleman, and Mr. Garland, o down to the place where the child is, and rrive there at night. There has been a fall of her now. ho and boom. Kit, leaving them behind, runs to the The concluding sentence of this letter stad house, and, with a lanthorn in one hand shows the earnestness with which Dicknd the bird in its cage in the other, stops for ens devoted himself to his compositions, moment at a little distance before he goes the intense interest he felt in his stories, P to make his presence known. In a window and that "The Old Curiosity Shop" was supposed to be that of the child's little one of the favorite children of his imaginaa light is burning, and in that room tion: "I am breaking my heart over this edhe child (unknown, of course, to her visitors story, and I cannot bear to finish it." A ho are full of hope) lies dead. still stronger proof of the same fact we take from a letter to his friend, the Rev. W. Harness: Vol. i., pp. 18, 19. ↑ Ibid., p. 29. I should have been very glad to join your pleasant party, but all next week I shall be laid up with a broken heart, for I must occupy myself in finishing the "Curiosity Shop," and it is such a painful task to me that I must concentrate myself upon it tooth and nail, and go out nowhere until it is done.* I am [he writes again to Cattermole] for the time being nearly dead with work and grief for the loss of my child. His sincere and ardent love of literary fame appears constantly in his letters, but nowhere finds a stronger expression than in the following extract from a letter to an admirer in the back-woods of America. I desire [Dickens writes to Macready, after being in the States about two months] to be te honest and just to those who have so enthu- a I thank you cordially and heartily, both for siastically and warmly welcomed me. your letter and its kind and courteous terms. Still it is of no use — I am disappointed. This no To think that I have awakened a fellow-feel- is not the republic I came to see; this is not ing and sympathy with the creatures of many the republic of my imagination. I infinitely thoughtful hours among the vast solitudes in prefer a liberal monarchy -even with its sick which you dwell is a source of the purest de-ening accompaniments of court circulars-td lo light and pride to me: and, believe me, that your expressions of affectionate remembrance and approval, sounding from the green forests on the banks of the Mississippi, sink deeper into my heart and gratify it more than all the honorary distinctions that all the courts in Europe could confer.t We have not Mr. Forster's "Life" at hand; but we think these letters first make public the fact that so early as 1841 overtures were made to Dickens to stand as candidate for the borough of Reading. My principles and inclinations [he writes to his correspondent there] would lead me to aspire to the distinction you invite me to seek, if there were any reasonable chance of success, and I hope I should do no discredit to such an honor if I won it and wore it. But I am bound to add, and I have no hesitation in saying plainly, that I cannot afford the expense of a contested election. It was suggested to him that he should apply to the government for their support. But I cannot [he writes to the same correspondent] satisfy myself that to enter Parliament under such circumstances would enable me to pursue that honorable independence without which I could neither preserve my own respect nor that of my constituents. As his literary labors and fame increased his inclination to enter Parliament grew weaker. Though the idea is again mentioned, he seems never seriously to have entertained it, and we think it was fortunate for his reputation that he did not enter the House of Commons; * Vol. i., pp. 29, 33-35, 38. such a government as this. The more I think I of its youth and strength the poorer and more trifling in a thousand aspects it appears in my eyes. In everything of which it has made a boast - excepting its education of the people and its care for poor children-it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it upon; and England, even England, bad and faulty as the old land is, and miserable as millions of her people are, rises in the compari You live here, Macready, as I have some times heard you imagining! You! Loving you with all my heart and soul, and knowing what your disposition really is, I would not condemn you to a year's residence on this side of the Atlantic for any money. Freedom of opinion! Where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than th any country I ever knew. If that is its standard here it is. But I speak of Bancroft and am advised to be silent on that subject, for he is "a black sheep and a Democrat." I speak of Bryant, and am entreated to be more careful for the same reason. I speak of interna- Th tional copyright, and am implored not to ruin myself outright. I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties-Slave-upholders and Aboli tionists, Whigs, Tyler-Whigs, and Democrat shower down upon me a perfect cataract d abuse. But what has she done? Surely sh praised America enough! Yes; but she told us some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults. Don't split on that rock, Mr. Dickens, don't write about America; we are so very suspicious.* Som The people are affectionate, generous, open. hearted, hospitable, enthusiastic, good-hu The mored, polite to women, frank and candid to s all strangers, anxious to oblige, far less preju diced than they have been described to be rude or disagreeable. I have made a grea frequently polished and refined, very seldom it Vol. i., p. 61. ་. 31 many friends here even in public conveyances, | lishing books, the authors of which do not reap whom I have been truly sorry to part from. one farthing from their issue, by scores of In the towns I have formed perfect attach- thousands; and that every vile, blackguard, ments. I have seen none of the greediness and detestable newspaper, so filthy and bestial and indecorousness on which travellers have that no honest man would admit one into his laid so much emphasis. I have returned house for a scullery door-mat, should be able frankness with frankness, met questions not to publish these same writings, side by side, intended to be rude with answers meant to be cheek by jowl, with the coarsest and most ob. satisfactory; and have not spoken to one man, scene companions, with which they must be woman, or child of any degree, who has not come connected in course of time in people's grown positively affectionate before we parted. minds. Is it tolerable that, besides being In the respects of not being left alone, and robbed and rifled, an author should be forced of being horribly disgusted by tobacco-chew-to appear in any form, in any vulgar dress, in ing and tobacco-spittle, I have suffered considerably. The sight of slavery in Virginia, the hatred of British feeling upon the subject, and the miserable hints of the impotent indignation of the South have pained me very much on the first head, of course, I have felt nothing but a mingled pity and amusement; on the other, sheer distress. But, however much I like the ingredients of this great dish, I can but come back to the point upon which I started, and say that the dish itself goes against the grain with me, and that I don't like it. The man who comes to this country a Radical, and goes home with his opinions unchanged, must be a Radical on reason, sympathy and reflection; one who has so well considered the subject that he has no chance of wavering.* It is difficult to reconcile the favorable statements in this letter as to American manners with the descriptions given of them in some of the American scenes in "Martin Chuzzlewit," particularly that one in which Martin is introduced to the "Hon. Elijah Pogram." Those familiar with that tale will remember the description of the levées, or receptions, held by some of the characters. The story embodies Dickens's experiences of such meetings. Think [he writes to a friend] of two hours of this every day, and the people coming in by hundreds all fresh and piping hot and full of questions, when we are literally exhausted and can hardly stand. I really do believe that if I had not had a lady with me I should have been obliged to leave the country and go back to England. But for her they would never leave me alone by day or night, and, as it is, a slave comes to me now and then in the middle of the night with a letter, and waits at the bedroom door for an answer.t The international copyright question draws from him the following burst of indignation: Is it not a horrible thing that scoundrel booksellers should grow rich here from pub. Vol. i., pp. 62, 63. ↑ Ibid., p. 66. any atrocious company, that he should have no choice of his audience, no control over his own distorted text, and that he should be compelled to jostle out of the course the best men in this country who only ask to live by writing? I vow before high Heaven that my blood so boils at these enormities that when I speak about them I seem to grow twenty feet high, and to swell out in proportion. "Robbers that ye are," I think to myself when I get upon my legs, "here goes." Strong as were his feelings on the question of international copyright, he was indignant that the Edinburgh Reviewer of his "American Notes represented him as having gone to America as a missionary in the cause of international copyright. American For I This statement [he writes to the editor] hurt my feelings excessively, and it is in this respect I still conceive most unworthy of its author. I am at a loss to divine who its author is. I know he read in some cut-throat statements which at any time I could have conpaper this and other monstrous verted into sickening praise by the payment of some fifty dollars. .. The better the acquaintance with America the more defenceless and more inexcusable such conduct is. solemnly declare (and appeal to any man but the writer of this paper, who has travelled in that country for confirmation of my statement) that the source from which he drew the "information" so recklessly put forth again in England is infinitely more obscene, disgusting, and brutal than the very worst Sunday newspaper that has ever been printed in Great Britain. Conceive the Edinburgh Review quoting the Satirist or the Man about Town as an authority against a man with one grain of honor or feather-weight of reputation.* We turned with interest to the letters written during Dickens's second tour in America (1868) to see if we could find in them any revisal or modification of his opinions on America and its institutions, but we find none. The second series of his American letters is almost wholly Selected Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, p. 417. The Satirist and the Man about Town were libellous newspapers of that day, filled with the descriptions of his readings, and the preparations and arrangements for them. But though Dickens's letters are silent as to his later views on America, we not agreeing with the universal we have heard laid down "that every man lies when he speaks in public". are glad to learn those views from his speech, in returning thanks, at the farewell dinner given to him at New York previous to his final return to England.* From a letter to Douglas Jerrold (written 1843) we take the following characteristic extracts': ... I vow to God that I think the parrots of If society are worse than its birds of prey. ever I destroy myself it will be in the bitterness of hearing those infernal and damnably "good old times" extolled. . . O Heaven! if you could have been with me at a hospital dinner last Monday. There were men there who made such speeches and expressed such sentiments as any moderately intelligent dustman would have blushed through his cindery I say, gentlemen, so much of my voice has bloom to have thought of. Sleek, slobbering, lately been heard, that I might have been con- bow-paunched, over-fed, apoplectic, snorting tented with troubling you no further from my cattle, and the auditory leaping up in their present standing-point, were it not a duty with delight! I never saw such an illustration of which I henceforth charge myself, not only the power of purse, or felt so degraded and here, but on every suitable occasion whatso-debased by its contemplation, since I have had ever and wheresoever, to express my high and eyes and ears. The absurdity of the thing grateful sense of my second reception in was too horrible to laugh at. It was perAmerica, and to bear my testimony to the na- fectly overwhelming. tional generosity and magnanimity. Also to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing changes that I have seen around me on every side-changes moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the press, without whose advancement no advancement can be made anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in fiveand-twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct when I was here first. As I never scrupled to say in America, so I can have no delicacy in saying to you, that allowing for the change you worked in many social features of American society, and for the time that has passed since you wrote of the country, I am convinced that there is no writer who has so well and so accurately (I need not add so entertainingly) described it, in many of its aspects, as you have done; and this renders your praise [of his "Notes"] the more valuable to me. I do not recollect ever to have heard or seen the charge of exaggeration made against a feeble performance, though in its feebleness it may have been most untrue. It seems to me essentially natural and quite inevitable that common observers should accuse an uncommon one of this fault, and I have no doubt that you were long ago of this opinion, very much to your own comfort. Again, from the same letter: Supposing fifty families were to emigrate into the wilds of North America- yours, mine, and forty-eight others— picked for their concurrence of opinion in all important subjects and for their resolution to form a colony of common sense, how soon would that devil Cant present itself among them in some shape or other? The day they landed, do you say, or the day after? Certainly had such a colony been founded, and the devil Cant had risen up amongst them, he would have been met with a vigorous exorcism, as we may judge from the following reply to a correspondent who had written that some saying attributed to Stiggins, in "Pickwick," doctrine of the "new birth: apparently reflected on the Scriptural Permit me to say in reply to your letter that you do not understand the intention (I dare say the fault is mine) of that passage in the "Pickwick Papers" which has given you offence. The design of "the Shepherd," and of this and every allusion to him, is to show how sacred things are degraded, vulgarized, and rendered absurd when persons who are utterly incompetent to teach the commonest things take upon themselves to expound such mysteries, and how in making mere cant phrases of divine words these persons miss the spirit in which they had their origin. I have seen a great deal of this sort of thing in many parts of England, and I never knew it lead to charity or good deeds. Whether the great Creator of the world and the creature of his hands, moulded in his own image, be quite so opposite in character as you believe, is a question which it would profit us little to discuss. I like the frankness and Speeches on Literary and Social Occasions in En- candor of your letter, and thank you for it. gland and America, by Charles Dickens, p. 226. That every man who seeks heaven must be |