Part 11

_Tuesday morning, February 25._—Somewhat fatigued. The “Marigold” went off brilliantly. He never read better nor was more universally applauded. Mr. Emerson came down to go, and passed the night here; of course we sat talking until late, he being much surprised at the artistic perfection of the performance. It was queer enough to sit by his side, for when his stoicism did at length break down, he laughed as if he must crumble to pieces at such unusual bodily agitation, and with a face on as if it hurt him dreadfully—to look at him was too much for me, already full of laughter myself. Afterward we all went in to shake hands for a moment.

When we came back home Mr. Emerson asked me a great many questions about C. D. and pondered much. Finally he said, “I am afraid he has too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it nor set at rest. You see him quite wrong, evidently; and would persuade me that he is a genial creature, full of sweetness and amenities and superior to his talents, but I fear he is harnessed to them. He is too consummate an artist to have a thread of nature left. He daunts me! I have not the key.”

When Mr. Fields came in he repeated, “Mrs. Fields would persuade me he is a man easy to communicate with, sympathetic and accessible to his friends; but her eyes do not see clearly in this matter, I am sure.” “Look for yourself, dear Mr. Emerson,” I answered, laughing, “and then report to me afterward.”

While we were enjoying ourselves in this way, a great change has come to the country. The telegram arrived during the Reading bringing the news of the President’s impeachment, 126 against 47. Since Johnson is to be thrust out, and since another revolution is upon us (Heaven help us that it be a peaceful one), we can only be thankful that the majority is so large. Mr. Dickens’s account of the ability of Johnson, of his apparent integrity and of his present temperance, as contrasted with the present (reported) failures of Grant in this respect, have made me shudder, for I presume Grant is inevitably the next man. Mrs. Agassiz was evidently pleased with the appearance of General Grant and his wife. She liked their repose of manner and ease; but I think this rather a shallow judgment because poise and ease of manner belong to the coarsest natures and to the finest; in the latter it is conquest; and this is why these qualities have so high a place in the esteem of man; but it is likewise the gift of society people who neither feel nor understand the varied natures with whom they come in contact.

Longfellow is at work on a tragedy, of which no words are spoken at present. Today Mr. Dickens does not go out; he is writing letters home. Yesterday he and J. walked seven miles, which is about their average generally....

_February 27._—Longfellow’s birthday. Last night Dickens went to a supper at Lowell’s and J. passed the evening with Longfellow. L.’s tragedy comes on apace. He looks to Fechter to help him. Dickens has doubtless done much to quicken him to write. He has two nearly finished in blank verse, both begun since this month came in. J. returned at half-past eleven, bringing an unread newspaper in his pocket which L. had lent him, telling him to read something to me about Dickens and return. Ah me! We could have cried as we read! It was the saddest of sad letters, written at the time the separation from his wife took place. The gentleman to whom he wrote it has died and the letter has stolen into print. I only hope the poor man may never see it.

Tonight he reads “Carol” and “Boots” and sups here with Longfellow afterward.

An entry in Mrs. Fields’s diary about two years later indicates with some clearness that she overestimated the sympathy between Longfellow and Dickens. After a visit from Longfellow, she wrote, May 24, 1870:—

When Mr. L. talks so much and so pleasantly, I am curiously reminded of Dickens’s saying to Forster, who lamented that he did not see Longfellow upon his return to London, “It was not a great loss this time, Forster; he had not a word to say for himself—he was the most embarrassing man in all England!” It is a difference of temperament which will never let those two men come together. They have no handle by which to take hold of each other. Longfellow told a gentleman at his table when J. was present that Dickens saved himself for his books, there was nothing to be learned in private—he never talked!!

To return to Dickens in Boston:—

_Sunday, March 1._—What a week we have had! I feel utterly weary this morning, although I _did_ start up with exceeding bravery and walked four miles just after breakfast, in order to see that the flowers were right at church and to ask some people to dinner today who could not, however, come. The air was very keen and exciting and I did not know I was tired until I came back and collapsed. Our supper came off Thursday, but _without_ Dickens. His cold had increased upon him seriously and he was really ill after his long, difficult reading. But Longfellow was perfectly lovely, so easily pleased and so deeply pleased with my little efforts to make this day a festival time. Dickens and Whittier both sent affectionate and graceful notes when they found they really could not come. Our company stayed until two A.M., Emerson never more talkative and good. He is a noble purifier of the social atmosphere, always keeping the talk simple as possible but up to the highest pitch of thought and feeling.

Friday, the Dana girls, Sallie and Charlotte, passed the night with us and went to the reading and shook hands with Mr. Dickens afterward. They were perfectly happy when they went away yesterday....

[The walking match between Dolby and Osgood to which the following paragraph refers has already been mentioned. The elaborately humorous conditions of the contest, drawn up by Dickens, are printed in “Yesterdays with Authors.” “We have had such a funny paper from Dickens today,” Mrs. Fields had written in her diary, on February 5th, “that it can only describe itself—Articles drawn up arranging for a walk and dinner upon his return here, as if it were some fierce legal document.”]

I had barely time yesterday, after the girls left, to dress and prepare some flowers and some lunch and make my way in a carriage, first to the Parker House at Mr. Dickens’s kind request, to see if all the table arrangements were perfect for the dinner. I found he had done everything he could think of to make the feast go off well and had really left nothing for me to suggest, so I turned about and drove over the mill-dam, following Messrs. Dickens, Dolby, Osgood, and Fields, who had left just an hour before on a walking match of six miles out and six in. This agreement was made and articles drawn up several weeks ago, signed and sealed in form by all the parties, to come off without regard to the weather. The wind was blowing strong from the north-west, very cold, and the snow blowing, too. They had turned and were coming back when I came up with them. Osgood was far ahead and, after saluting them all and giving a cheer for America, discovering too that they had refreshed on the way, I drove back to Mr. Osgood, keeping near him and administering brandy all the way in town. The walk was accomplished in precisely two hours forty-eight minutes. Of course Mr. Dickens stayed by his man, who was beaten out and out. They were all exhausted, for the snow made the walking extremely difficult, and they all jumped into carriages and drove home with great speed to bathe and sleep before dinner.

At six o’clock we were assembled, eighteen of us, for dinner, looking our very best (I hope)—at least we all tried for that, I am sure—and sat punctually down to our elegant dinner. I have never seen a dinner more beautiful. Two English crowns of violets were at the opposite ends of the table and flowers everywhere arranged in perfect taste. I sat at Mr. Dickens’s right hand and next Mr. Lowell. Mrs. Norton sat the other side of our host, and he divided his attention loyally between us. He talked with me about Spiritualism as it is called, the humbug of which excites his deepest ire, although no one could believe more entirely than he in magnetism and the unfathomed ties between man and man. He told me many curious things about the traps which had been laid by well-meaning friends to bring him into “spiritual” circles. But he said, “If I go to a friend’s house for the purpose of exposing a fraud in which she believes, I am doing a very disagreeable thing and not what she invited me for. Forster and I were invited to Lord Dufferin’s to a little dinner with Home. I refused, but Forster went, saying beforehand to Lord Dufferin that Home would have no spirits about if he came. Lord Dufferin said, ‘Nonsense,’ and the dinner came off; but they were hardly seated at table when Home announced that there was an adverse influence present and the spirits would not appear. ‘Ah,’ said Forster, ‘my spirits in this case were clearer than yours, for they told me before I came that there would be no manifestations tonight.’”

Speaking of dreams, he said he was convinced that no man (judging from his own experience, which could not be altogether singular, but must be a type of the experience of others), he believed no writer, neither Shakespeare nor Scott nor any other who had ever invented a character, had ever been known to dream about the creature of his imagination. It would be like a man’s dreaming of meeting himself, which was clearly an impossibility. Things exterior to oneself must always be the basis of our dreams. This talk about characters led him to say how mysterious and beautiful the action of the mind was around any given subject. “Suppose,” he said, “this wine-glass were a character, fancy it a man, endue it with certain qualities, and soon fine filmy webs of thoughts almost impalpable coming from every direction, and yet we know not from where, spin and weave around it until it assumes form and beauty and becomes instinct with life....”

Mr. Lowell asked him some question in a low voice about the country, when I heard him say presently that it was very much grown up, indeed he should not know oftentimes that he was not in England, things went on so much the same and with very few exceptions (hardly worth mentioning) he was let alone precisely as he would have been there.

He loves to talk of Gad’s Hill and stopped joyfully from other talk to tell me how his daughter Mary arranged his table with flowers. He speaks continually of her great taste in combining flowers. “Sometimes she will have nothing but water-lilies,” he said, as if the memory were a fragrance.

Some one has said, “We cannot love and be wise.” I will gladly give away the inconsistent wisdom, for Jamie and I are truly penetrated with grateful love to C. D.

_Wednesday, March 3._—Mr. Dickens came over last night with Messrs. Osgood and Dolby, to pass the evening and have a little punch and supper and a merry game with us....

They left punctually before eleven, having promised the driver they would not keep him waiting in the cold. Jamie has every day long walks with him. He has told him much regarding the forms and habits of his life. He is fond of “Gad’s Hill,” and his “dear daughters” and their aunt, Miss Hogarth, make his home circle. What a dear one it is to him can be seen whenever his thought turns that way; and if his letters do not come punctually, he is in low spirits. He is a great actor and artist, but above all a great and loving and well-beloved man. (This I cling to in memory of Mr. Emerson’s dictum.)

I am deep in Carlyle’s history and every little thing I hear chimes in with that. After _the_ dinner (at the Parker) the other night, Mr. Dickens thought he would take a warm bath; but, the water being drawn, he began playing the clown in pantomime on the edge of the bath (with his clothes on) for the amusement of Dolby and Osgood; in a moment and before he knew where he was, he had tumbled in head over heels, clothes and all. A second and improved edition of “Les Noyades,” I thought. Surely this book is a marvel of thought and labor. Why, why have I left it unknown to myself until now? I fear, unlike Lowell, it is because I could not read eighteen uninterrupted hours without apoplexy or some other ’exy, which would destroy what power I have forever.

_March 6._—Mr. Dickens dined here last night without company except Messrs. Dolby and Osgood and Howells. We had a very merry time. They had been to visit the Cambridge Printing Office in the afternoon and had been shown so many things that “the chief” said he began to think he should have a bitter hatred against any mortal who undertook to show him anything else in the world, and laughed immoderately at J.T.F.’s proposition to show him the new fruit house afterward. We all had a game of Nincomtwitch and separated rather early because we were going to a party; and as C. D. shook me by the hand to say good-bye, he said he hoped we would have a better time at this party than _he_ ever had at any party in all _his_ life. A part of the dinner-time was taken up by half guess and half calculation of how far Mr. Dickens’s manuscript would extend in a single line. Mr. Osgood said 40 miles. J. said 100,000 (!!). I believe they are really going to find out. C. D. said _he_ felt as if it would go farther than 40 miles, and was inclined to be “down” on Osgood until he saw him doing figures in his head after a fearful fashion. All this amusing talk served to give one a strange, weird sensation of the value of words over time and space; these little marks of immeasurable value covering so slight a portion of the rough earth! Howells talked a little of Venice, thought the Ligurians lived better than the Venetians. C. D. said they ate but little meat when _he_ lived in Genoa; chiefly “pasta” with a good soup poured over it....

He leaves Boston today, to return the first of April, so I will end this poor little surface record here, hoping always that the new sheet shall have something written down of a deeper, simpler, and more inseeing nature.

On the return of Dickens to Boston, Mrs. Fields dined with him at the Parker House, March 31, 1868, and, commenting on his lack of “talent” for sleeping, wrote in her diary:—

I remember Carlyle says, “When Dulness puts his head upon his mattresses, Dulness sleeps,” referring to the apathetic people who went on their daily habits and avocations in Paris while men were guillotined by thousands in the next street. Mr. Dickens talked as usual, much and naturally—first of the various hotels of which he had late experience. The one in Portland was particularly bad, the dinner, poor as it was, being brought in small dishes, “as if Osgood and I should quarrel over it,” everything being very bad and disgusting which the little dishes contained.

At last they came to the book, “Ecce Homo,” in which Dickens can see nothing of value, any more than we. He thinks Jesus foresaw and guarded as well as he could against the misinterpreting of his teaching, that the four Gospels are all derived from some anterior written Scriptures—made up, perhaps, with additions and interpolations from the “Talmud,” in which he expressed great interest and admiration. Among other things which prove how little the Gospels should be taken literally is the fact that _broad phylacteries_ were not in use until some years after Jesus lived, so that the passage in which this reference occurs, at least, must only be taken as conveying the spirit and temper, not the actual form of speech, of our Lord. Mr. Dickens spoke reverently and earnestly, and said much more if I could recall it perfectly.

Then he came to “spiritualism” again, and asked if he had ever told us his interview with Colchester, the famous medium. He continued that, being at Knebworth one day, Lytton, having finished his dinner and retired to the comfort of his pipe, said: “Why don’t you see some of these famous men? What a pity Home has just gone.” (Here Dickens imitated to the life Lytton’s manner of speaking, so I could see the man.) “Well,” said D., “he went on to say so much about it that I inquired of him who was the next best man. He said there was one Colchester, if possible better than Home. So I took Colchester’s address, got Charley Collins, my son-in-law, to write to him asking an interview for five gentlemen and for any day he should designate, the hour being two o’clock. A day being fixed, I wrote to a young French conjuror, with whom I had no acquaintance but had observed his great cleverness at his business before the public, to ask him to accompany us. He acceded with alacrity. Therefore, with poor Chauncey Townshend, just dead, and one other person whom I do not at this moment recall, we waited upon Mr. Colchester. As we entered the room, I leading the way, the man, recognizing me immediately, turned deadly pale, especially when he saw me followed by the conjuror and Townshend, who, with his colored imperial and beard and tight-fitting wig, looked like a member of the detective police. He trembled visibly, became livid to the eyes, all of which was visible in spite of paint with which his face was covered to the eyes. He withdrew for a few minutes, during which we heard him in hot discussion with his accomplice, telling him how he was cornered and trying to imagine some way in which to get out of the trap, the other evidently urging him to go through with it now the best way he could. He returned, therefore, and placed himself with his back to the light, while it shone upon our faces. We sat awhile in silence until he began, insolently turning to me: ‘Take up the alphabet and think of somebody who is dead, pass your hands over the letters, and the spirit will indicate the name.’ I thought of Mary and took the alphabet, and when I came to M, he rapped; but I was sure that I had unconsciously signified by some movement and determined to be more skilful the next time.

For the next letter, therefore, he went on to H, and then asked me if that was right. I told him I thought the spirits ought to know. He then began with some one else, but doing nothing he became hotter and hotter, the perspiration pouring from his face, until he got up, said the spirits were against him, and was about to withdraw. I then rose and told him that it was the most shameless imposition, that he had got us there with the intent to deceive and under false pretences, that he had done nothing and could do nothing. He offered to return our money—I said the fact of his taking the money at all was the point. At last the wretch said, turning to the Frenchman, ‘I did tell you one name, Valentine.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the young conjuror, with a sudden burst of English, ‘Yes, but I showed it to you!’ indicating with a swift movement of the hand how he had given him a chance.” Then it was all up with Colchester, and more scathing words than those spoken by Dickens to him have been seldom spoken by mortal.

It was the righteous anger of one trying to avenge and help the world. Mr. Dickens always seems to me like one who, working earnestly with his eyes fixed on the immutable, nevertheless finds to his own surprise that his words place him among the prophets. He does not arrogate a place to himself there; indeed he is singularly humble (as it seems to us) in the moral position he takes; but for all that is led by the Divine Hand to see what a power he is and in an unsought-for manner finds himself among the teachers of the earth. He says nowhere is a man placed in such an unfair position as at church. If one could only be allowed to get up and state his objections, it would be very well, but under the circumstances he declines being preached to.

A few days later Mrs. Fields heard Dickens read the “Christmas Carol” for the last time in Boston.

_Such_ a wonderful evening as it was!! We were on fire with enthusiasm and in spite of some people who went with us ... looking, as C. D. said, as if they were sorry they had come, they were really filled with enthusiasm, and enjoying as fully as their critical and crossed natures would allow. He himself was full of fun and put in all manner of queer things for our amusement; but what he put in, involuntarily, when he turned on a man who was standing staring fixedly at him with an opera glass, was almost more than we could bear. The stolidity of the man, the fixed glass, the despairing, annihilating look of Dickens were too much for our equanimity.

_Thursday._—Anniversary of C. D.’s marriage day and of John Forster’s birthday. C. D. not at all well, coughing all the time and in low spirits. Mr. Dolby came in when J. was there in the morning to say there were two gentlemen from New Bedford (friends of Mr. Osgood’s) who wished to see him. Would he allow them to come in? “No, I’ll be damned if I will,” he said, like a spoiled child, starting up from his chair! J. was equally amused and astonished at the outburst, but sleeplessness, narcotics, and the rest of the crew of disturbers have done their worst. My only fear is he may be ill. However, they had a walk together towards noon and he revived, but coughed badly in the evening. I think, too, only $1300 in the house was bad for his spirits!

_April 7._—Dickens ... told Jamie the other day in walking that he wrote “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Oliver Twist” at the same time for rival magazines from month to month. Once he was taken ill, with both magazines waiting for unwritten sheets. He immediately took steamer for Boulogne, took a room in an inn there, secure from interruption, and was able to return just in season for the monthly issues with his work completed. He sees now how the work of both would have been better done had he worked only upon one at a time.

After the exertion of last evening he looked pale and exhausted. Longfellow and Norton joined with us in trying to dissuade him from future Readings after these two. He does not recover his vitality after the effort of reading, and his spirits are naturally somewhat depressed by the use of soporifics, which at length became a necessity.... “Copperfield” was a tragedy last night—less vigor but great tragic power came out of it.