The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Ii Part 65

Wills having given up in consequence of broken health (he has been my sub-editor for twenty years), I have taken Charley into "All the Year Round." He is a very good man of business, and evinces considerable apt.i.tude in sub-editing work.

This place is immensely improved since you were here, and really is now very pretty indeed. We are sorry that there is no present prospect of your coming to see it; but I like to know of your being at the sea, and having to do--_from the beach_, as Mrs. Keeley used to say in "The Prisoner of War"--with the winds and the waves and all their freshening influences.

I dined at Greenwich a few days ago with Delane. He asked me about you with much interest. He looks as if he had never seen a printing-office, and had never been out of bed after midnight.

Great excitement caused here by your capital news of b.u.t.ty. I suppose w.i.l.l.y has at least a dozen children by this time.

Our loves to the n.o.ble boy and to dear Mrs. Macready.

Ever, my dearest Macready, Your attached and affectionate.

[Sidenote: Mr. Edmund Ollier.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Tuesday, Aug. 3rd, 1869._

MY DEAR MR. OLLIER,

I am very sensible of the feeling of the Committee towards me; and I receive their invitation (conveyed through you) as a most acceptable mark of their consideration.

But I have a very strong objection to speech-making beside graves. I do not expect or wish my feeling in this wise to guide other men; still, it is so serious with me, and the idea of ever being the subject of such a ceremony myself is so repugnant to my soul, that I must decline to officiate.

Faithfully yours always.

[Sidenote: Miss d.i.c.kens.]

OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND," NO. 26, WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C., _Tuesday, Aug. 3rd, 1869._

MY DEAREST MAMIE,

I send you the second chapter of the remarkable story. The printer is late with it, and I have not had time to read it, and as I altered it considerably here and there, I have no doubt there are some verbal mistakes in it. However, they will probably express themselves.

But I offer a prize of six pairs of gloves--between you, and your aunt, and Ellen Stone, as compet.i.tors--to whomsoever will tell me what idea in this second part is mine. I don't mean an idea in language, in the turning of a sentence, in any little description of an action, or a gesture, or what not in a small way, but an idea, distinctly affecting the whole story _as I found it_. You are all to a.s.sume that I found it in the main as you read it, with one exception. If I had written it, I should have made the woman love the man at last. And I should have shadowed that possibility out, by the child's bringing them a little more together on that holiday Sunday.

But I didn't write it. So, finding that it wanted something, I put that something in. What was it?

Love to Ellen Stone.

[Sidenote: Mr. Arthur Ryland.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Friday, Aug. 13th, 1869._

MY DEAR MR. RYLAND,

Many thanks for your letter.

I have very strong opinions on the subject of speechification, and hold that there is, everywhere, a vast amount too much of it. A sense of absurdity would be so strong upon me, if I got up at Birmingham to make a flourish on the advantages of education in the abstract for all sorts and conditions of men, that I should inevitably check myself and present a surprising incarnation of the soul of wit. But if I could interest myself in the practical usefulness of the particular inst.i.tution; in the ways of life of the students; in their examples of perseverance and determination to get on; in their numbers, their favourite studies, the number of hours they must daily give to the work that must be done for a livelihood, before they can devote themselves to the acquisition of new knowledge, and so forth, then I could interest others. This is the kind of information I want. Mere holding forth "I utterly detest, abominate, and abjure."

I fear I shall not be in London next week. But if you will kindly send me here, at your leisure, the roughest notes of such points as I have indicated, I shall be heartily obliged to you, and will take care of their falling into shape and order in my mind. Meantime I "make a note of" Monday, 27th September, and of writing to you touching your kind offer of hospitality, three weeks before that date.

I beg to send my kind regard to Mrs. and Miss Ryland, and am always,

Very faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Frederic Ouvry.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Sunday, Aug. 22nd, 1869._

MY DEAR OUVRY,

I will expect a call from you at the office, on Thursday, at your own most convenient hour. I admit the soft impeachment concerning Mrs. Gamp: I likes my payments to be made reg'lar, and I likewise likes my publisher to draw it mild.

Ever yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Arthur Ryland.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Monday, Sept. 6th, 1869._

MY DEAR MR. RYLAND,

I am sorry to find--I had a foreshadowing of it some weeks ago--that I shall not be able to profit by your kind offer of hospitality when I come to Birmingham for _our_ Inst.i.tution. I must come down in time for a quiet dinner at the hotel with my "Readings" secretary, Mr. Dolby, and must away next morning. Besides having a great deal in hand just now (the t.i.tle of a new book among other things), I shall have visitors from abroad here at the time, and am severely claimed by my daughter, who indeed is disloyal to Birmingham in the matter of my going away at all.

Pray represent me to Mrs. Ryland as the innocent victim of circ.u.mstances, and as sacrificing pleasure to the work I have to do, and to the training under which alone I can do it without feeling it.

You will see from the enclosed that I am in full force, and going to finish my readings, please G.o.d, after Christmas. I am in the hope of receiving your promised notes in due course, and continue in the irreverent condition in which I last reported myself on the subject of speech-making. Now that men not only make the nights of the session hideous by what the Americans call "orating" in Parliament, but trouble the peace of the vacation by saying over again what they said there (with the addition of what they _didn't_ say there, and never will have the courage to say there), I feel indeed that silence, like gold across the Atlantic, is a rarity at a premium.

Faithfully yours always.

[Sidenote: Mr. William Charles Kent.]

OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND,"

_Thursday, Oct. 7th, 1869._

MY DEAR KENT,

I felt that you would be deeply disappointed. I thought it better not to make the first sign while you were depressed, but my mind has been constantly with you. And not mine alone. You cannot think with what affection and sympathy you have been made the subject of our family dinner talk at Gad's Hill these last three days. Nothing could exceed the interest of my daughters and my sister-in-law, or the earnestness of their feeling about it. I have been really touched by its warm and genuine expression.

Cheer up, my dear fellow; cheer up, for G.o.d's sake. That is, for the sake of all that is good in you and around you.

Ever your affectionate Friend.

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