What I Remember Part 7

In another letter of the same year, 25th July, after a page of remarks on editorial matters, he writes:--

"If Italy could but achieve some brilliant success in arms! That she does not, causes, I think, some disappointment here, and makes her sluggish friends more sluggish, and her open enemies more powerful. I fear too that the Italian ministry have lost an excellent opportunity of repairing the national credit in London city, and have borrowed money in France for the poor consideration of lower interest, which"

_[sic_, but I suspect _which_ must be a slip of the pen for _than_]

"they could have got in England, greatly to the re-establishment of a reputation for public good faith. As to Louis Napoleon, his position in the whole matter is to me like his position in Europe at all times, simply disheartening and astounding. Between Prussia and Austria there is, in my mind (but for Italy), not a pin to choose. If each could smash the other I should be, as to those two Powers, perfectly satisfied. But I feel for Italy almost as if I were an Italian born.

So here you have in brief my confession of faith.

"Mr. Home" [as he by that time called himself,--when he was staying in my house his name was Hume], "after trying to come out as an actor, first at Fechter's (where I had the honour of stopping him short), and then at the St. James's Theatre under Miss Herbert (where he was twice announced, and each time very mysteriously disappeared from the bills), was announced at the little theatre in Dean Street, Soho, as a 'great attraction for one night only,' to play last Monday. An appropriately dirty little rag of a bill, fluttering in the window of an obscure dairy behind the Strand, gave me this intelligence last Sat.u.r.day. It is like enough that even that striking business did not come off, for I believe the public to have found out the scoundrel; in which lively and sustaining hope this leaves me at present.

"Ever faithfully yours,

"CHARLES d.i.c.kENS."

Here is a letter which, as may be easily imagined, I value much. It was written on the 2nd of November, 1866, and reached me at Brest. It was written to congratulate me on my second marriage, and among the great number which I received on that occasion is one of the most warm-hearted:--

"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,--I should have written immediately to congratulate you on your then approaching marriage, and to a.s.sure you of my most cordial and affectionate interest in all that nearly concerns you, had I known how best to address you.

"No friend that you have can be more truly attached to you than I am.

I congratulate you with all my heart, and believe that your marriage will stand high upon the list of happy ones. As to your wife's winning a high reputation out of your house--if you care for that; it is not much as an addition to the delights of love and peace and a suitable companion for life--I have not the least doubt of her power to make herself famous.

"I little thought what an important master of the ceremonies I was when I first gave your present wife an introduction to your mother.

Bear me in your mind then as the unconscious instrument of your having given your best affection to a worthy object, and I shall be the best paid master of the ceremonies since Nash drove his coach and six through the streets of Bath.

"Faithfully yours,

"CHARLES d.i.c.kENS."

Among a heap of others I find a note of invitation written on the 9th of July, 1867, in which he says: "My 'readings' secretary, whom I am despatching to America at the end of this week, will dine with me at Verey's in Regent Street at six exact to be wished G.o.d-speed. There will only be besides, Wills, Wilkie Collins, and Mr. Arthur Chappell.

Will you come? No dress. Evening left quite free."

I went, and the G.o.d-speed party was a very pleasant one. But I liked best to have him, as I frequently had, all to myself. I suppose I am not, as Johnson said, a "clubbable" man. At all events I highly appreciate what the Irishman called a tatur-tatur dinner, whether the gender in the case be masculine or feminine; and I incline to give my adherence to the philosophy of the axiom that declares "two to be company, and three none." But then I am very deaf, and that has doubtless much to do with it.

On the 10th of September, 1868, d.i.c.kens writes:--

"The madness and general political b.e.s.t.i.a.lity of the General Elections will come off in the appropriate Guy Fawkes days. It was proposed to me, under very flattering circ.u.mstances indeed, to come in as the third member for Birmingham; I replied in what is now my stereotyped phrase, 'that no consideration on earth would induce me to become a candidate for the representation of any place in the House of Commons.' Indeed it is a dismal sight, is that arena altogether. Its irrationality and dishonesty are quite shocking." [What would he have said now!] "How disheartening it is, that in affairs spiritual or temporal mankind will not begin at the beginning, but _will_ begin with a.s.sumptions. Could one believe without actual experience of the fact, that it would be a.s.sumed by hundreds of thousands of pestilent b.o.o.bies, pandered to by politicians, that the Established Church in Ireland has stood between the kingdom and Popery, when as a crying grievance it has been Popery's trump-card!

"I have now growled out my growl, and feel better.

"With kind regards, my dear Trollope,

"Faithfully yours,

"CHARLES d.i.c.kENS."

In the December of that year came another growl, as follows:--

"KENNEDY'S HOTEL, EDINBURGH.

"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,--I am reading here, and had your letter forwarded to me this morning. The MS. accompanying it was stopped at _All The Year Round_ office (in compliance with general instructions referring to any MS. from you) and was sent straight to the printer.

"Oh dear no! n.o.body supposes for a moment that the English Church will follow the Irish Establishment. In the whole great universe of shammery and flummery there is no such idea floating. Everybody knows that the Church of England as an endowed establishment is doomed, and would be, even if its hand were not perpetually hacking at its own throat; but as was observed of an old lady in gloves in one of my Christmas books, 'Let us be polite or die!'

"Anthony's ambition" [in becoming a candidate for Beverley] "is inscrutable to me. Still, it is the ambition of many men; and the honester the man who entertains it, the better for the rest of us, I suppose.

"Ever, my dear Trollope,

"Most cordially yours,

"CHARLES d.i.c.kENS."

Here is another "growl," provoked by a species of charlatan, which he, to whom all charlatans were odious, especially abominated--the pietistic charlatan:--

"Oh, we have such a specimen here! a man who discourses extemporaneously, positively without the power of constructing one grammatical sentence; but who is (ungrammatically) deep in Heaven's confidence on the abstrusest points, and discloses some of his private information with an idiotic complacency insupportable to behold.

"We are going to have a bad winter in England too probably. What with Ireland, and what with the last new Government device of getting in the taxes before they are due, and what with vagrants, and what with fever, the prospect is gloomy."

The last letter I ever received from him is dated the 10th of November, 1869. It is a long letter, but I will give only one pa.s.sage from it, which has, alas! a peculiarly sad and touching significance when read with the remembrance of the catastrophe then hurrying on, which was to put an end to all projects and purposes. I had been suggesting a walking excursion across the Alps. He writes:--

"Walk across the Alps? Lord bless you, I am 'going' to take up my alpenstock and cross all the pa.s.ses. And, I am 'going' to Italy. I am also 'going' up the Nile to the second cataract; and I am 'going' to Jerusalem, and to India, and likewise to Australia. My only dimness of perception in this wise is, that I don't know _when_. If I did but know when, I should be so wonderfully clear about it all! At present I can't see even so much as the Simplon in consequence of certain farewell readings and a certain new book (just begun) interposing their dwarfish shadow. But whenever (if ever) I change 'going' into 'coming,' I shall come to see you.

"With kind regards, ever, my dear Trollope,

"Your affectionate friend,

"CHARLES d.i.c.kENS."

And those were the last words I ever had from him!