The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume I Part 16

P.S.--Sometimes I think ----'s bill will be too long to be added up until Babbage's calculating machine shall be improved and finished.

Sometimes that there is not paper enough ready made, to carry it over and bring it forward upon.

I dream, also, of the workmen every night. They make faces at me, and won't do anything.

[Sidenote: Mr. Austen Henry Layard.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, _16th December, 1851._

MY DEAR LAYARD,[52]

I want to renew your recollection of "the last time we parted"--not at Wapping Old Stairs, but at Miss Coutts's--when we vowed to be more intimate after all nations should have departed from Hyde Park, and I should be able to emerge from my cave on the sea-sh.o.r.e.

Can you, and will you, be in town on Wednesday, the last day of the present old year? If yes, will you dine with us at a quarter after six, and see the New Year in with such extemporaneous follies of an exploded sort (in genteel society) as may occur to us? Both Mrs. d.i.c.kens and I would be really delighted if this should find you free to give us the pleasure of your society.

Believe me always, very faithfully yours.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] "Not So Bad As We Seem; or, Many Sides to a Character."

[45] "Not So Bad As We Seem."

[46] An embroidered blotting-book given by Mrs. Cowden Clarke.

[47] One of the series in "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines,"

dedicated to Charles d.i.c.kens.

[48] Wilmot, the clever veteran prompter, who was engaged to accompany the acting-tours.

[49] A wooden one.

[50] Miss Eden had a cottage at Broadstairs, and was residing there at this time.

[51] Tavistock House.

[52] Now Sir Austen Henry Layard.

1852.

[Sidenote: Mr. James Bower Harrison.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, _5th January, 1852._

DEAR SIR,

I have just received the work[53] you have had the kindness to send me, and beg to thank you for it, and for your obliging note, cordially. It is a very curious little volume, deeply interesting, and written (if I may be allowed to say so) with as much power of knowledge and plainness of purpose as modesty.

Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday Night, 15th February, 1852._

MY DEAR BULWER,

I left Liverpool at four o'clock this morning, and am so blinded by excitement, gas, and waving hats and handkerchiefs, that I can hardly see to write, but I cannot go to bed without telling you what a triumph we have had. Allowing for the necessarily heavy expenses of all kinds, I believe we can hardly fund less than a Thousand Pounds out of this trip alone. And, more than that, the extraordinary interest taken in the idea of the Guild by "this grand people of England" down in these vast hives, and the enthusiastic welcome they give it, a.s.sure me that we may do what we will if we will only be true and faithful to our design. There is a social recognition of it which I cannot give you the least idea of. I sincerely believe that we have the ball at our feet, and may throw it up to the very Heaven of Heavens. And I don't speak for myself alone, but for all our people, and not least of all for Forster, who has been absolutely stunned by the tremendous earnestness of these great places.

To tell you (especially after your affectionate letter) what I would have given to have had you there would be idle. But I can most seriously say that all the sights of the earth turned pale in my eyes, before the sight of three thousand people with one heart among them, and no capacity in them, in spite of all their efforts, of sufficiently testifying to you how they believe you to be right, and feel that they cannot do enough to cheer you on. They understood the play (_far better acted by this time than ever you have seen it_) as well as you do. They allowed nothing to escape them. They rose up, when it was over, with a perfect fury of delight, and the Manchester people sent a requisition after us to Liverpool to say that if we will go back there in May, when we act at Birmingham (as of course we shall) they will joyfully undertake to fill the Free Trade Hall again. Among the Tories of Liverpool the reception was equally enthusiastic. We played, two nights running, to a hall crowded to the roof--more like the opera at Genoa or Milan than anything else I can compare it to. We dined at the Town Hall magnificently, and it made no difference in the response. I said what we were quietly determined to do (when the Guild was given as the toast of the night), and really they were so n.o.ble and generous in their encouragement that I should have been more ashamed of myself than I hope I ever shall be, if I could have felt conscious of having ever for a moment faltered in the work.

I will answer for Birmingham--for any great working town to which we chose to go. We have won a position for the idea which years upon years of labour could not have given it. I believe its worldly fortunes have been advanced in this last week fifty years at least. I feebly express to you what Forster (who couldn't be at Liverpool, and has not those shouts ringing in his ears) has felt from the moment he set foot in Manchester. Believe me we may carry a perfect fiery cross through the North of England, and over the Border, in this cause, if need be--not only to the enrichment of the cause, but to the lasting enlistment of the people's sympathy.

I have been so happy in all this that I could have cried on the shortest notice any time since Tuesday. And I do believe that our whole body would have gone to the North Pole with me if I had shown them good reason for it.

I hope I am not so tired but that you may be able to read this. I have been at it almost incessantly, day and night for a week, and I am afraid my handwriting suffers. But in all other respects I am only a giant refreshed.

We meet next Sat.u.r.day you recollect? Until then, and ever afterwards,

Believe me, heartily yours.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Cowden Clarke.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _3rd March, 1852._

MY DEAR MRS. CLARKE,

It is almost an impertinence to tell you how delightful your flowers were to me; for you who thought of that beautiful and delicately-timed token of sympathy and remembrance, must know it very well already.

I do a.s.sure you that I have hardly ever received anything with so much pleasure in all my life. They are not faded yet--are on my table here--but never can fade out of my remembrance.

I should be less than a Young Gas, and more than an old Manager--that commemorative portfolio is here too--if I could relieve my heart of half that it could say to you. All my house are my witnesses that you have quite filled it, and this note is my witness that I can _not_ empty it.

Ever faithfully and gratefully your friend.

[Sidenote: Mr. James Bower Harrison.]

LONDON, TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _26th March, 1852._

DEAR SIR,

I beg to thank you for your interesting pamphlet, and to add that I shall be very happy to accept an article from you on the subject[54] for "Household Words." I should already have suggested to you that I should have great pleasure in receiving contributions from one so well and peculiarly qualified to treat of many interesting subjects, but that I felt a delicacy in encroaching on your other occupations. Will you excuse my remarking that to make an article on this particular subject useful, it is essential to address the employed as well as the employers? In the case of the Sheffield grinders the difficulty was, for many years, not with the masters, but the men. Painters who use white lead are with the greatest difficulty persuaded to be particular in was.h.i.+ng their hands, and I daresay that I need not remind you that one could not generally induce domestic servants to attend to the commonest sanitary principles in their work without absolutely forcing them to experience their comfort and convenience.