The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Iii Part 29

Faithfully yours always.

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

JUNCTION HOUSE, BRIGHTON, _March 2nd, 1848._

MY DEAR MACREADY,

We have migrated from the Bedford and come here, where we are very comfortably (not to say gorgeously) accommodated. Mrs. Macready is certainly better already, and I really have very great hopes that she will come back in a condition so blooming, as to necessitate the presentation of a piece of plate to the undersigned trainer.

You mean to come down on Sunday and on Sunday week. If you don't, I shall immediately take the Victoria, and start Mr. ----, of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, as a smas.h.i.+ng tragedian. Pray don't impose upon me this cruel necessity.

I think Lamartine, so far, one of the best fellows in the world; and I have lively hopes of that great people establis.h.i.+ng a n.o.ble republic.

Our court had best be careful not to overdo it in respect of sympathy with ex-royalty and ex-n.o.bility. Those are not times for such displays, as, it strikes me, the people in some of our great towns would be apt to express pretty plainly.

However, we'll talk of all this on these Sundays, and Mr. ---- shall _not_ be raised to the pinnacle of fame.

Ever affectionately yours, My dear Macready.

[Sidenote: Editor of _The Sun_.]

DEVONs.h.i.+RE TERRACE, YORK GATE, REGENT'S PARK, _Friday, April 14th, 1848._

_Private._

Mr. Charles d.i.c.kens presents his compliments to the Editor of _The Sun_, and begs that gentleman will have the goodness to convey to the writer of the notice of "Dombey and Son," in last evening's paper, Mr.

d.i.c.kens's warmest acknowledgments and thanks. The sympathy expressed in it is so very earnestly and unaffectedly stated, that it is particularly welcome and gratifying to Mr. d.i.c.kens, and he feels very desirous indeed to convey that a.s.surance to the writer of that frank and genial farewell.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. Charles M. Kent.]

1, DEVONs.h.i.+RE TERRACE, YORK GATE, REGENT'S PARK, _April 18th, 1848._

DEAR SIR,

Pray let me repeat to you personally what I expressed in my former note, and allow me to a.s.sure you, as an ill.u.s.tration of my sincerity, that I have never addressed a similar communication to anybody except on one occasion.

Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]

DEVONs.h.i.+RE TERRACE, _Sat.u.r.day, April 22nd, 1848._

MY DEAR FORSTER,[7]

I finished Goldsmith yesterday, after dinner, having read it from the first page to the last with the greatest care and attention.

As a picture of the time, I really think it impossible to give it too much praise. It seems to me to be the very essence of all about the time that I have ever seen in biography or fiction, presented in most wise and humane lights, and in a thousand new and just aspects. I have never liked Johnson half so well. n.o.body's contempt for Boswell ought to be capable of increase, but I have never seen him in my mind's eye half so plainly. The introduction of him is quite a masterpiece. I should point to that, if I didn't know the author, as being done by somebody with a remarkably vivid conception of what he narrated, and a most admirable and fanciful power of communicating it to another. All about Reynolds is charming; and the first account of the Literary Club and of Beauclerc as excellent a piece of description as ever I read in my life. But to read the book is to be in the time. It lives again in as fresh and lively a manner as if it were presented on an impossibly good stage by the very best actors that ever lived, or by the real actors come out of their graves on purpose.

And as to Goldsmith himself, and _his_ life, and the tracing of it out in his own writings, and the manful and dignified a.s.sertion of him without any sobs, whines, or convulsions of any sort, it is throughout a n.o.ble achievement, of which, apart from any private and personal affection for you, I think (and really believe) I should feel proud, as one who had no indifferent perception of these books of his--to the best of my remembrance--when little more than a child. I was a little afraid in the beginning, when he committed those very discouraging imprudences, that you were going to champion him somewhat indiscriminately; but I very soon got over that fear, and found reason in every page to admire the sense, calmness, and moderation with which you make the love and admiration of the reader cl.u.s.ter about him from his youth, and strengthen with his strength--and weakness too, which is better still.

I don't quite agree with you in two small respects. First, I question very much whether it would have been a good thing for every great man to have had his Boswell, inasmuch as I think that two Boswells, or three at most, would have made great men extraordinarily false, and would have set them on always playing a part, and would have made distinguished people about them for ever restless and distrustful. I can imagine a succession of Boswells bringing about a tremendous state of falsehood in society, and playing the very devil with confidence and friends.h.i.+p.

Secondly, I cannot help objecting to that practice (begun, I think, or greatly enlarged by Hunt) of italicising lines and words and whole pa.s.sages in extracts, without some very special reason indeed. It does appear to be a kind of a.s.sertion of the editor over the reader--almost over the author himself--which grates upon me. The author might almost as well do it himself to my thinking, as a disagreeable thing; and it is such a strong contrast to the modest, quiet, tranquil beauty of "The Deserted Village," for instance, that I would almost as soon hear "the town crier" speak the lines. The practice always reminds me of a man seeing a beautiful view, and not thinking how beautiful it is half so much as what he shall say about it.

In that picture at the close of the third book (a most beautiful one) of Goldsmith sitting looking out of window at the Temple trees, you speak of the "gray-eyed" rooks. Are you sure they are "gray-eyed"? The raven's eye is a deep l.u.s.trous black, and so, I suspect, is the rook's, except when the light s.h.i.+nes full into it.

I have reserved for a closing word--though I _don't_ mean to be eloquent about it, being far too much in earnest--the admirable manner in which the case of the literary man is stated throughout this book. It is splendid. I don't believe that any book was ever written, or anything ever done or said, half so conducive to the dignity and honour of literature as "The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith," by J. F., of the Inner Temple. The grat.i.tude of every man who is content to rest his station and claims quietly on literature, and to make no feint of living by anything else, is your due for evermore. I have often said, here and there, when you have been at work upon the book, that I was sure it would be; and I shall insist on that debt being due to you (though there will be no need for insisting about it) as long as I have any tediousness and obstinacy to bestow on anybody. Lastly, I never will hear the biography compared with Boswell's except under vigorous protest. For I do say that it is mere folly to put into opposite scales a book, however amusing and curious, written by an unconscious c.o.xcomb like that, and one which surveys and grandly understands the characters of all the ill.u.s.trious company that move in it.

My dear Forster, I cannot sufficiently say how proud I am of what you have done, or how sensible I am of being so tenderly connected with it.

When I look over this note, I feel as if I had said no part of what I think; and yet if I were to write another I should say no more, for I can't get it out. I desire no better for my fame, when my personal dustiness shall be past the control of my love of order, than such a biographer and such a critic. And again I say, most solemnly, that literature in England has never had, and probably never will have, such a champion as you are, in right of this book.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]

_Wednesday, May 3rd, 1848._

MY DEAR LEMON,

Do you think you could manage, before we meet to-morrow, to get from the musical director of the Haymarket (whom I don't know) a note of the overtures he purposes playing on our two nights? I am obliged to correct and send back the bill proofs to-morrow (they are to be brought to Miss Kelly's)--and should like, for completeness' sake, to put the music in.

Before "The Merry Wives," it must be something Shakespearian. Before "Animal Magnetism," something very telling and light--like "Fra Diavolo."

Wednesday night's music in a concatenation accordingly, and jolly little polkas and quadrilles between the pieces, always beginning the moment the act-drop is down. If any little additional strength should be really required in the orchestra, so be it.

Can you come to Miss Kelly's by _three_? I should like to show you bills, tickets, and so forth, before they are worked. In order that they may not interfere with or confuse the rehearsal, I have appointed Peter Cunningham to meet me there at three, instead of half-past.

Faithfully ever.

P.S.--If you should be disposed to chop together early, send me a line to the Athenaeum. I have engaged to be with Barry at ten, to go over the Houses of Parliament. When I have done so, I will go to the club on the chance of a note from you, and would meet you where you chose.

[Sidenote: Rev. James White.]

ATHENaeUM, _Thursday, May 4th, 1848._

MY DEAR WHITE,

I have not been able to write to you until now. I have lived in hope that Kate and I might be able to run down to see you and yours for a day, before our design for enforcing the Government to make Knowles the first custodian of the Shakespeare house should come off. But I am so perpetually engaged in drilling the forces, that I see no hope of making a pleasant expedition to the Isle of Wight until about the twentieth.

Then I shall hope to do so for one day. But of this I will advise you further, in due course.

My doubts about the house you speak of are twofold, First, I could not leave town so soon as May, having affairs to arrange for a sick sister.

And secondly, I fear Bonchurch is not sufficiently bracing for my chickens, who thrive best in breezy and cool places. This has set me thinking, sometimes of the Yorks.h.i.+re coast, sometimes of Dover. I would not have the house at Bonchurch reserved for me, therefore. But if it should be empty, we will go and look at it in a body. I reserve the more serious part of my letter until the last, my dear White, because it comes from the bottom of my heart. None of your friends have thought and spoken oftener of you and Mrs. White than we have these many weeks past.

I should have written to you, but was timid of intruding on your sorrow.

What you say, and the manner in which you tell me I am connected with it in your recollection of your dear child, now among the angels of G.o.d, gives me courage to approach your grief--to say what sympathy we have felt with it, and how we have not been unimaginative of these deep sources of consolation to which you have had recourse. The traveller who journeyed in fancy from this world to the next was struck to the heart to find the child he had lost, many years before, building him a tower in heaven. Our blessed Christian hopes do not shut out the belief of love and remembrance still enduring there, but irradiate it and make it sacred. Who should know that better than you, or who more deeply feel the touching truths and comfort of that story in the older book, where, when the bereaved mother is asked, "Is it well with the child?" she answers, "It _is_ well."

G.o.d be with you. Kate and her sister desire their kindest love to yourself and Mrs. White, in which I heartily join.