The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Iii Part 63

[Sidenote: Mr. Austen H. Layard.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Tuesday, April 10th, 1855._

DEAR LAYARD,

I shall of course observe the strictest silence, at present, in reference to your resolutions. It will be a most acceptable occupation to me to go over them with you, and I have not a doubt of their producing a strong effect out of doors.

There is nothing in the present time at once so galling and so alarming to me as the alienation of the people from their own public affairs. I have no difficulty in understanding it. They have had so little to do with the game through all these years of Parliamentary Reform, that they have sullenly laid down their cards, and taken to looking on. The players who are left at the table do not see beyond it, conceive that gain and loss and all the interest of the play are in their hands, and will never be wiser until they and the table and the lights and the money are all overturned together. And I believe the discontent to be so much the worse for smouldering, instead of blazing openly, that it is extremely like the general mind of France before the breaking out of the first Revolution, and is in danger of being turned by any one of a thousand accidents--a bad harvest--the last strain too much of aristocratic insolence or incapacity--a defeat abroad--a mere chance at home--with such a devil of a conflagration as never has been beheld since.

Meanwhile, all our English tuft-hunting, toad-eating, and other manifestations of accursed gentility--to say nothing of the Lord knows who's defiances of the proven truth before six hundred and fifty men--ARE expressing themselves every day. So, every day, the disgusted millions with this unnatural gloom are confirmed and hardened in the very worst of moods. Finally, round all this is an atmosphere of poverty, hunger, and ignorant desperation, of the mere existence of which perhaps not one man in a thousand of those not actually enveloped in it, through the whole extent of this country, has the least idea.

It seems to me an absolute impossibility to direct the spirit of the people at this pa.s.s until it shows itself. If they begin to bestir themselves in the vigorous national manner; if they would appear in political reunion, array themselves peacefully but in vast numbers against a system that they know to be rotten altogether, make themselves heard like the sea all round this island, I for one should be in such a movement heart and soul, and should think it a duty of the plainest kind to go along with it, and try to guide it by all possible means. But you can no more help a people who do not help themselves than you can help a man who does not help himself. And until the people can be got up from the lethargy, which is an awful symptom of the advanced state of their disease, I know of nothing that can be done beyond keeping their wrongs continually before them.

I shall hope to see you soon after you come back. Your speeches at Aberdeen are most admirable, manful, and earnest. I would have such speeches at every market-cross, and in every town-hall, and among all sorts and conditions of men; up in the very balloons, and down in the very diving-bells.

Ever, cordially yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sat.u.r.day, April 14th, 1855._

MY DEAR FORSTER,

I cannot express to you how very much delighted I am with the "Steele."

I think it incomparably the best of the series. The pleasanter humanity of the subject may commend it more to one's liking, but that again requires a delicate handling, which you have given to it in a most charming manner. It is surely not possible to approach a man with a finer sympathy, and the a.s.sertion of the claims of literature throughout is of the n.o.blest and most gallant kind.

I don't agree with you about the serious papers in _The Spectator_, which I think (whether they be Steele's or Addison's) are generally as indifferent as the humour of _The Spectator_ is delightful. And I have always had a notion that Prue understood her husband very well, and held him in consequence, when a fonder woman with less show of caprice must have let him go. But these are points of opinion. The paper is masterly, and all I have got to say is, that if ---- had a grain of the honest sentiment with which it overflows, he never would or could have made so great a mistake.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Thursday, April 26th, 1855._

ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT.

MY DEAR MARK,

I will call for you at two, and go with you to Highgate, by all means.

Leech and I called on Tuesday evening and left our loves. I have not written to you since, because I thought it best to leave you quiet for a day. I have no need to tell you, my dear fellow, that my thoughts have been constantly with you, and that I have not forgotten (and never shall forget) who sat up with me one night when a little place in my house was left empty.

It is hard to lose any child, but there are many blessed sources of consolation in the loss of a baby. There is a beautiful thought in Fielding's "Journey from this World to the Next," where the baby he had lost many years before was found by him all radiant and happy, building him a bower in the Elysian Fields where they were to live together when he came.

Ever affectionately yours.

P.S.--Our kindest loves to Mrs. Lemon.

[Sidenote: Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, May 20th, 1855._

MY DEAR STANNY,

I have a little lark in contemplation, if you will help it to fly.

Collins has done a melodrama (a regular old-style melodrama), in which there is a very good notion. I am going to act it, as an experiment, in the children's theatre here--I, Mark, Collins, Egg, and my daughter Mary, the whole _dram. pers._; our families and yours the whole audience; for I want to make the stage large and shouldn't have room for above five-and-twenty spectators. Now there is only one scene in the piece, and that, my tarry lad, is the inside of a lighthouse. Will you come and paint it for us one night, and we'll all turn to and help? It is a mere wall, of course, but Mark and I have sworn that you must do it. If you will say yes, I should like to have the tiny flats made, after you have looked at the place, and not before. On Wednesday in this week I am good for a steak and the play, if you will make your own appointment here; or any day next week except Thursday. Write me a line in reply. We mean to burst on an astonished world with the melodrama, without any note of preparation. So don't say a syllable to Forster if you should happen to see him.

Ever affectionately yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Tuesday Afternoon, Six o'clock, May 22nd, 1855._

MY DEAR STANNY,

Your note came while I was out walking. Even if I had been at home I could not have managed to dine together to-day, being under a beastly engagement to dine out. Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I shall expect you here some time to-morrow, and will remain at home. I only wait your instructions to get the little canvases made. O, what a pity it is not the outside of the light'us, with the sea a-rowling agin it!

Never mind, we'll get an effect out of the inside, and there's a storm and a s.h.i.+pwreck "off;" and the great ambition of my life will be achieved at last, in the wearing of a pair of very coa.r.s.e petticoat trousers. So hoorar for the salt sea, mate, and bouse up!

Ever affectionately, d.i.c.kY.

[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _May 23rd, 1855._

MY DEAR MARK,

Stanny says he is only sorry it is not the outside of the lighthouse with a raging sea and a transparent light. He enters into the project with the greatest delight, and I think we shall make a capital thing of it.

It now occurs to me that we may as well do a farce too. I should like to get in a little part for Katey, and also for Charley, if it were practicable. What do you think of "Animal Mag."? You and I in our old parts; Collins, Jeffrey; Charley, the Markis; Katey and Mary (or Georgina), the two ladies? Can you think of anything merry that is better? It ought to be broad, as a relief to the melodrama, unless we could find something funny with a story in it too. I rather incline myself to "Animal Mag." Will you come round and deliver your sentiments?

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Frank Stone, A.R.A.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Thursday, May 24th, 1855._

MY DEAR STONE,

Great projects are afoot here for a grown-up play in about three weeks'

time. Former schoolroom arrangements to be reversed--large stage and small audience. Stanfield bent on desperate effects, and all day long with his coat off, up to his eyes in distemper colours.

Will you appear in your celebrated character of Mr. Nightingale? I want to wind up with that popular farce, we all playing our old parts.