The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Ii Part 56

As to the hall, I have my doubts whether one of the parqueted floors made by Aaron Smith's, of Bond Street, ought not to be better than tiles, for the reason that perhaps the nature of the house's construction might render the "bed" necessary for wooden flooring more easy to be made than the "bed" necessary for tiles. I don't think you can do better than call in the trusty Lillie to advise. Decide with your aunt on which appears to be better, under the circ.u.mstances. Have estimate made for _cash_, select patterns and colours, and let the work be done out of hand. (Here's a prompt order; now I draw breath.) Let it be thoroughly well done--no half measures.

There is a great thaw all over the country here, and I think it has done the catarrh good. I am to read at the famous Newhaven on Tuesday, the 24th. I hope without a row, but cannot say. The readings are running out fast now, and we are growing very restless.

This is a short letter, but we are pressed for time. It is two o'clock, and we dine at three, before reading. To-morrow we rise at six, and have eleven hours' railway or so. We have now come back from our farthest point, and are steadily working towards home.

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

SPRINGFIELD, Ma.s.s., _Sat.u.r.day, March 21st, 1868._

MY DEAREST MACREADY,

What with perpetual reading and travelling, what with a "true American catarrh" (on which I am complimented almost boastfully), and what with one of the severest winters ever known, your coals of fire received by the last mail did not burn my head so much as they might have done under less excusatory circ.u.mstances. But they scorched it too!

You would find the general aspect of America and Americans decidedly much improved. You would find immeasurably greater consideration and respect for your privacy than of old. You would find a steady change for the better everywhere, except (oddly enough) in the railroads generally, which seem to have stood still, while everything else has moved. But there is an exception westward. There the express trains have now a very delightful carriage called a "drawing-room car," literally a series of little private drawing-rooms, with sofas and a table in each, opening out of a little corridor. In each, too, is a large plate-gla.s.s window, with which you can do as you like. As you pay extra for this luxury, it may be regarded as the first move towards two cla.s.ses of pa.s.sengers.

When the railroad straight away to San Francisco (in six days) shall be opened through, it will not only have these drawing-rooms, but sleeping-rooms too; a bell in every little apartment communicating with a steward's pantry, a restaurant, a staff of servants, marble was.h.i.+ng-stands, and a barber's shop! I looked into one of these cars a day or two ago, and it was very ingeniously arranged and quite complete.

I left Niagara last Sunday, and travelled on to Albany, through three hundred miles of flood, villages deserted, bridges broken, fences drifting away, nothing but tearing water, floating ice, and absolute wreck and ruin. The train gave in altogether at Utica, and the pa.s.sengers were let loose there for the night. As I was due at Albany, a very active superintendent of works did all he could to "get Mr. d.i.c.kens along," and in the morning we resumed our journey through the water, with a hundred men in seven-league boots pus.h.i.+ng the ice from before us with long poles. How we got to Albany I can't say, but we got there somehow, just in time for a triumphal "Carol" and "Trial." All the tickets had been sold, and we found the Albanians in a state of great excitement. You may imagine what the flood was when I tell you that we took the pa.s.sengers out of two trains that had their fires put out by the water four-and-twenty hours before, and cattle from trucks that had been in the water I don't know how long, but so long that the sheep had begun to eat each other! It was a horrible spectacle, and the haggard human misery of their faces was quite a new study. There was a fine breath of spring in the air concurrently with the great thaw; but lo and behold! last night it began to snow again with a strong wind, and to-day a snowdrift covers this place with all the desolation of winter once more. I never was so tired of the sight of snow. As to sleighing, I have been sleighing about to that extent, that I am sick of the sound of a sleigh-bell.

I have seen all our Boston friends, except Curtis. Ticknor is dead. The rest are very little changed, except that Longfellow has a perfectly white flowing beard and long white hair. But he does not otherwise look old, and is infinitely handsomer than he was. I have been constantly with them all, and they have always talked much of you. It is the established joke that Boston is my "native place," and we hold all sorts of hearty foregatherings. They all come to every reading, and are always in a most delightful state of enthusiasm. They give me a parting dinner at the club, on the Thursday before Good Friday. To pa.s.s from Boston personal to New York theatrical, I will mention here that one of the proprietors of my New York hotel is one of the proprietors of Niblo's, and the most active. Consequently I have seen the "Black Crook" and the "White Fawn," in majesty, from an arm-chair in the first entrance, P.S., more than once. Of these astonis.h.i.+ng dramas, I beg to report (seriously) that I have found no human creature "behind" who has the slightest idea what they are about (upon my honour, my dearest Macready!), and that having some amiable small talk with a neat little Spanish woman, who is the _premiere danseuse_, I asked her, in joke, to let me measure her skirt with my dress glove. Holding the glove by the tip of the forefinger, I found the skirt to be just three gloves long, and yet its length was much in excess of the skirts of two hundred other ladies, whom the carpenters were at that moment getting into their places for a transformation scene, on revolving columns, on wires and "travellers" in iron cradles, up in the flies, down in the cellars, on every description of float that Wilmot, gone distracted, could imagine!

I have taken my pa.s.sage for Liverpool from New York in the Cunarder _Russia_, on the 22nd of April. I had the second officer's cabin on deck coming out, and I have the chief steward's cabin on deck going home, because it will be on the sunny side of the s.h.i.+p. I have experienced nothing here but good humour and cordiality. In the autumn and winter I have arranged with Chappells to take my farewell of reading in the United Kingdom for ever and ever.

I am delighted to hear of Benvenuta's marriage, and I think her husband a very lucky man. Johnnie has my profound sympathy under his examinatorial woes. The n.o.ble boy will give me Gavazzi revised and enlarged, I expect, when I next come to Cheltenham. I will give you and Mrs. Macready all my American experiences when you come to London, or, better still, to Gad's. Meanwhile I send my hearty love to all, not forgetting dear Katie.

Niagara is not at all spoiled by a very dizzy-looking suspension bridge.

Is to have another still nearer to the Horse-shoe opened in July. My last sight of that scene (last Sunday) was thus: We went up to the rapids above the Horse-shoe--say two miles from it--and through the great cloud of spray. Everything in the magnificent valley--buildings, forest, high banks, air, water, everything--was _made of rainbow_.

Turner's most imaginative drawing in his finest day has nothing in it so ethereal, so gorgeous in fancy, so celestial. We said to one another (Dolby and I), "Let it for evermore remain so," and shut our eyes and came away.

G.o.d bless you and all dear to you, my dear old Friend!

I am ever your affectionate and loving.

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

PORTLAND, _Sunday, March 29th, 1868._

I should have written to you by the last mail, but I really was too unwell to do it. The writing day was last Friday, when I ought to have left Boston for New Bedford (fifty-five miles) before eleven in the morning. But I was so exhausted that I could not be got up, and had to take my chance of an evening's train producing me in time to read, which it just did. With the return of snow, nine days ago, the "true American"

(which had lulled) came back as bad as ever. I have coughed from two or three in the morning until five or six, and have been absolutely sleepless. I have had no appet.i.te besides, and no taste. Last night here I took some laudanum, and it is the only thing that has done me good.

But the life in this climate is so very hard. When I did manage to get from Boston to New Bedford, I read with my utmost force and vigour.

Next morning, well or ill, I must turn out at seven to get back to Boston on my way here.

I dine at Boston at three, and at five must come on here (a hundred and thirty miles or so), for to-morrow night; there being no Sunday train.

To-morrow night I read here in a very large place, and Tuesday morning at six I must start again to get back to Boston once more. But after to-morrow night, I have only the Boston and New York farewells, thank G.o.d! I am most grateful to think that when we came to devise the details of the tour, I foresaw that it could never be done, as Dolby and Osgood proposed, by one una.s.sisted man, as if he were a machine. If I had not cut out the work, and cut out Canada, I could never have gone there, I am quite sure. Even as it is, I have just now written to Dolby (who is in New York), to see my doctor there, and ask him to send me some composing medicine that I can take at night, inasmuch as without sleep I cannot get through. However sympathetic and devoted the people are about me, they _can not_ be got to comprehend that one's being able to do the two hours with spirit when the time comes round, may be co-existent with the consciousness of great depression and fatigue. I don't mind saying all this, now that the labour is so nearly over. You shall have a brighter account of me, please G.o.d, when I close this at Boston.

_Monday, March 30th._

Without any artificial aid, I got a splendid night's rest last night, and consequently am very much freshened up to-day. Yesterday I had a fine walk by the sea, and to-day I have had another on the heights overlooking it.

BOSTON, _Tuesday, 31st._

I have safely arrived here, just in time to add a line to that effect, and get this off by to-morrow's English mail from New York. Catarrh rather better. Everything triumphant last night, except no sleep again.

I suppose Dolby to be now on his way back to join me here. I am much mistaken if the political crisis do not damage the farewells by almost one half.

I hope that I am certainly better altogether.

My room well decorated with flowers, of course, and Mr. and Mrs. Fields coming to dinner. They are the most devoted of friends, and never in the way and never out of it.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

BOSTON, _Wednesday, April 1st, 1868._

I received your letter of from the 14th to the 17th of March, here, last night. My New York doctor has prescribed for me promptly, and I hope I am better. I am certainly no worse. We shall do (to the best of my belief) _very well_ with the farewells here and at New York, but not greatly. Everything is at a standstill, pending the impeachment and the next presidential election. I forgot whether I told you that the New York press are going to give me a public dinner, on Sat.u.r.day, the 18th.

I hear (but not from himself) that Wills has had a bad fall in hunting, and is, or has been, laid up. I am supposed, I take it, not to know this until I hear it from himself.

_Thursday._

My notion of the farewells is pretty certain now to turn out right. It is not at all probable that we shall do anything enormous. Every pulpit in Ma.s.sachusetts will resound to violent politics to-day and to-night.

You remember the Hutchinson family?[24] I have had a grateful letter from John Hutchinson. He speaks of "my sister Abby" as living in New York. The immediate object of his note is to invite me to the marriage of his daughter, twenty-one years of age.

You will see by the evidence of this piece of paper that I am using up my stationery. Scott has just been making anxious calculations as to our powers of holding out in the articles of tooth-powder, etc. The calculations encourage him to believe that we shall just hold out, and no more. I think I am still better to-day than I was yesterday; but I am far from strong, and have no appet.i.te. To see me at my little table at night, you would think me the freshest of the fresh. And this is the marvel of Fields' life.

I don't forget that this is Forster's birthday.

_Friday Afternoon, 3rd._

Catarrh worse than ever! And we don't know (at four) whether I can read to-night or must stop. Otherwise all well.

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

BOSTON, _Tuesday, April 7th, 1868._

I not only read last Friday, when I was doubtful of being able to do so, but read as I never did before, and astonished the audience quite as much as myself. You never saw or heard such a scene of excitement.

Longfellow and all the Cambridge men urged me to give in. I have been very near doing so, but feel stronger to-day. I cannot tell whether the catarrh may have done me any lasting injury in the lungs or other breathing organs, until I shall have rested and got home. I hope and believe not. Consider the weather. There have been two snowstorms since I wrote last, and to-day the town is blotted out in a ceaseless whirl of snow and wind.

I cannot eat (to anything like the ordinary extent), and have established this system: At seven in the morning, in bed, a tumbler of new cream and two tablespoonsful of rum. At twelve, a sherry cobbler and a biscuit. At three (dinner time), a pint of champagne. At five minutes to eight, an egg beaten up with a gla.s.s of sherry. Between the parts, the strongest beef tea that can be made, drunk hot. At a quarter-past ten, soup, and anything to drink that I can fancy. I don't eat more than half a pound of solid food in the whole four-and-twenty hours, if so much.

If I hold out, as I hope to do, I shall be greatly pressed in leaving here and getting over to New York before next Sat.u.r.day's mail from there. Do not, therefore, _if all be well_, expect to hear from me by Sat.u.r.day's mail, but look for my last letter from America by the mail of the following Wednesday, the 15th. _Be sure_ that you shall hear, however, by Sat.u.r.day's mail, if I should knock up as to reading. I am tremendously "beat," but I feel really and unaffectedly so much stronger to-day, both in my body and hopes, that I am much encouraged. I have a fancy that I turned my worst time last night.

Dolby is as tender as a woman and as watchful as a doctor. He never leaves me during the reading now, but sits at the side of the platform and keeps his eye upon me all the time. Ditto George, the gasman, steadiest and most reliable man I ever employed. I am the more hopeful of my not having to relinquish a reading, because last night was "Copperfield" and "Bob"--by a quarter of an hour the longest, and, in consideration of the storm, by very much the most trying. Yet I was far fresher afterwards than I have been these three weeks.