The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume I Part 26

LORD WARDEN HOTEL, DOVER, _Sunday, Twenty-sixth May, 1861._

MY DEAR LADY OLLIFFE,

I have run away to this sea-beach to get rid of my neuralgic face.

Touching the kind invitations received from you this morning, I feel that the only course I can take--without being a Humbug--is to decline them. After the middle of June I shall be mostly at Gad's Hill--I know that I cannot do better than keep out of the way of hot rooms and late dinners, and what would you think of me, or call me, if I were to accept and not come!

No, no, no. Be still my soul. Be virtuous, eminent author. Do _not_ accept, my d.i.c.kens. She is to come to Gad's Hill with her spouse. Await her _there_, my child. (Thus the voice of wisdom.)

My dear Lady Olliffe, Ever affectionately yours.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Milner Gibson.]

GAD'S HILL, _Monday, Eighth July, 1861._

MY DEAR MRS. GIBSON,

I want very affectionately and earnestly to congratulate you on your eldest daughter's approaching marriage. Up to the moment when Mary told me of it, I had foolishly thought of her always as the pretty little girl with the frank loving face whom I saw last on the sands at Broadstairs. I rubbed my eyes and woke at the words "going to be married," and found I had been walking in my sleep some years.

I want to thank you also for thinking of me on the occasion, but I feel that I am better away from it. I should really have a misgiving that I was a sort of shadow on a young marriage, and you will understand me when I say so, and no more.

But I shall be with you in the best part of myself, in the warmth of sympathy and friends.h.i.+p--and I send my love to the dear girl, and devoutly hope and believe that she will be happy. The face that I remember with perfect accuracy, and could draw here, if I could draw at all, was made to be happy and to make a husband so.

I wonder whether you ever travel by railroad in these times! I wish Mary could tempt you to come by any road to this little place.

With kind regard to Milner Gibson, believe me ever, Affectionately and faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Tuesday, Seventeenth September, 1861._

MY DEAR BULWER LYTTON,

I am delighted with your letter of yesterday--delighted with the addition to the length of the story--delighted with your account of it, and your interest in it--and even more than delighted by what you say of our working in company.

Not one dissentient voice has reached me respecting it. Through the dullest time of the year we held our circulation most gallantly. And it could not have taken a better hold. I saw Forster on Friday (newly returned from thousands of provincial lunatics), and he really was more impressed than I can tell you by what he had seen of it. Just what you say you think it will turn out to be, _he_ was saying, almost in the same words.

I am burning to get at the whole story;--and you inflame me in the maddest manner by your references to what I don't know. The exquisite art with which you have changed it, and have overcome the difficulties of the mode of publication, has fairly staggered me. I know pretty well what the difficulties are; and there is no other man who could have done it, I ween.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. H. G. Adams.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Sunday, Sixth October, 1861._

MY DEAR MR. ADAMS,

My readings are a sad subject to me just now, for I am going away on the 28th to read fifty times, and I have lost Mr. Arthur Smith--a friend whom I can never replace--who always went with me, and transacted, as no other man ever can, all the business connected with them, and without whom, I fear, they will be dreary and weary to me. But this is not to the purpose of your letter.

I desire to be useful to the Inst.i.tution of the place with which my childhood is inseparably a.s.sociated, and I will serve it this next Christmas if I can. Will you tell me when I could do you most good by reading for you?

Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. B. W. Procter.]

OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND,"

_Tuesday, Twelfth November, 1861._

MY DEAR PROCTER,

I grieve to reply to your note, that I am obliged to read at Newcastle on the 21st. Poor Arthur Smith had pledged me to do so before I knew that my annual engagement with you was being encroached on. I am heartily sorry for this, and shall miss my usual place at your table, quite as much (to say the least) as my place can possibly miss me. You may be sure that I shall drink to my dear old friend in a b.u.mper that day, with love and best wishes. Don't leave me out next year for having been carried away north this time.

Ever yours affectionately.

[Sidenote: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.]

QUEEN'S HEAD HOTEL, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE, _Wednesday Night, Twentieth November, 1861._

MY DEAR BULWER LYTTON,

I have read here, this evening, very attentively, Nos. 19 and 20. I have not the least doubt of the introduced matter; whether considered for its policy, its beauty, or its wise bearing on the story, it is decidedly a great improvement. It is at once very suggestive and very new to have these various points of view presented to the reader's mind.

That the audience is good enough for anything that is well presented to it, I am quite sure.

When you can avoid _notes_, however, and get their substance into the text, it is highly desirable in the case of so large an audience, simply because, as so large an audience necessarily reads the story in small portions, it is of the greater importance that they should retain as much of its argument as possible. Whereas the difficulty of getting numbers of people to read notes (which they invariably regard as interruptions of the text, not as strengtheners or elucidators of it) is wonderful.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: The same.]

"ALL THE YEAR ROUND" OFFICE, _Eighteenth December_, 1861.

MY DEAR BULWER LYTTON,

I have not had a moment in which to write to you. Even now I write with the greatest press upon me, meaning to write in detail in a day or two.

But I have _read_, at all events, though not written. And I say, Most masterly and most admirable! It is impossible to lay the sheets down without finis.h.i.+ng them. I showed them to Georgina and Mary, and they read and read and never stirred until they had read all. There cannot be a doubt of the beauty, power, and artistic excellence of the whole.

I counsel you most strongly NOT to append the proposed dialogue between Fenwick and Faber, and NOT to enter upon any explanation beyond the t.i.tle-page and the motto, unless it be in some very brief preface.

Decidedly I would not help the reader, if it were only for the reason that that antic.i.p.ates his being in need of help, and his feeling objections and difficulties that require solution. Let the book explain itself. It speaks _for_ itself with a n.o.ble eloquence.

Ever affectionately.