Chapter 114

HOME INCIDENTS AND HARD TIMES.

1853-1854-1855.

_Bleak House_ Sale--Proposed Titles--Restless--Tavistock House--Last Child born--Death of Friends--Liking for Boulogne--Banquet at Birmingham--Self-changes--Overdoing it--Projected Trip to Italy--First Public Readings--Argument against Paid Readings--Children's Theatricals--Small Actors--Henry Fielding Dickens--Dickens and the Czar--Titles for a New Story--"Hard Times" chosen--Difficulties of Weekly Publication--Mr. Ruskin on _Hard Times_--Exaggerated Rebuke of Exaggeration--Manufacturing Town on Strike--Dinner to Thackeray--Peter Cunningham--Incident of a November Night.

_DAVID COPPERFIELD_ had been written, in Devonshire-terrace for the most part, between the opening of 1849 and October 1850, its publication covering that time; and its sale, which has since taken the lead of all his books but _Pickwick_, never then exceeding twenty-five thousand. But though it remained thus steady for the time, the popularity of the book added largely to the sale of its successor. _Bleak House_ was begun in his new abode of Tavistock House at the end of November 1851; was carried on, amid the excitements of the Guild performances, through the following year; was finished at Boulogne in the August of 1853; and was dedicated to "his friends and companions in the Guild of Literature and Art."

In March 1852 the first number appeared,[169] and its sale was mentioned in the same letter from Tavistock House (7th of March) which told of his troubles in the story at its outset, and of other anxieties incident to the common lot and inseparable equally from its joys and sorrows, through which his life was passing at the time. "My Highgate journey yesterday was a sad one. Sad to think how all journeys tend that way. I went up to the cemetery to look for a piece of ground. In no hope of a Government bill,[170] and in a foolish dislike to leaving the little child shut up in a vault there, I think of pitching a tent under the sky. . . . Nothing has taken place here: but I believe, every hour, that it must next hour. Wild ideas are upon me of going to Paris--Rouen--Switzerland--somewhere--and writing the remaining two-thirds of the next No. aloft in some queer inn room. I have been hanging over it, and have got restless. Want a change I think. Stupid. We were at 30,000 when I last heard. . . . I am sorry to say that after all kinds of evasions, I am obliged to dine at Lansdowne House to-morrow. But maybe the affair will come off to-night and give me an excuse! I enclose proofs of No. 2. Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him singularly unlike the great original. Look it over, and say what occurs to you. . . . Don't you think Mrs. Gaskell charming? With one ill-considered thing that looks like a want of natural perception, I think it masterly." His last allusion is to the story by a delightful writer then appearing in _Household Words_; and of the others it only needs to say that the family affair which might have excused his absence at the Lansdowne dinner did not come off until four days later. On the 13th of March his last child was born; and the boy, his seventh son, bears his godfather's distinguished name, Edward Bulwer Lytton.

The inability to "grind sparks out of his dull blade," as he characterized his present labour at _Bleak House_, still fretting him, he struck out a scheme for Paris. "I could not get to Switzerland very well at this time of year. The Jura would be covered with snow. And if I went to Geneva I don't know where I might _not_ go to." It ended at last in a flight to Dover; but he found time before he left, amid many occupations and some anxieties, for a good-natured journey to Walworth to see a youth rehearse who was supposed to have talents for the stage, and he was able to gladden Mr. Toole's friends by thinking favourably of his chances of success. "I remember what I once myself wanted in that way," he said, "and I should like to serve him."

At one of the last dinners in Tavistock House before his departure, Mr. Watson of Rockingham was present; and he was hardly settled in Camden-crescent, Dover, when he had news of the death of that excellent friend. "Poor dear Watson! It was this day two weeks when you rode with us and he dined with us. We all remarked after he had gone how happy he seemed to have got over his election troubles, and how cheerful he was. He was full of Christmas plans for Rockingham, and was very anxious that we should get up a little French piece I had been telling him the plot of. He went abroad next day to join Mrs. Watson and the children at Homburg, and then go to Lausanne, where they had taken a house for a month. He was seized at Homburg with violent internal inflammation, and died--without much pain--in four days. . . . I was so fond of him that I am sorry you didn't know him better. I believe he was as thoroughly good and true a man as ever lived; and I am sure I can have felt no greater affection for him than he felt for me. When I think of that bright house, and his fine simple honest heart, both so open to me, the blank and loss are like a dream." Other deaths followed. "Poor d'Orsay!" he wrote after only seven days (8th of August). "It is a tremendous consideration that friends should fall around us in such awful numbers as we attain middle life. What a field of battle it is!" Nor had another month quite passed before he lost, in Mrs. Macready, a very dear family friend. "Ah me! ah me!" he wrote. "This tremendous sickle certainly does cut deep into the surrounding corn, when one's own small blade has ripened. But _this_ is all a Dream, may be, and death will wake us."

Able at last to settle to his work, he stayed in Dover three months; and early in October, sending home his family caravan, crossed to Boulogne to try it as a resort for seaside holiday. "I never saw a better instance of our countrymen than this place. Because it is accessible it is genteel to say it is of no character, quite English, nothing continental about it, and so forth. It is as quaint, picturesque, good a place as I know; the boatmen and fishing-people quite a race apart, and some of their villages as good as the fishing-villages on the Mediterranean. The Haute Ville, with a walk all round it on the ramparts, charming. The country walks, delightful. It is the best mixture of town and country (with sea air into the bargain) I ever saw; everything cheap, everything good; and please God I shall be writing on those said ramparts next July!"

Before the year closed, the time to which his publishing arrangements with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans were limited had expired, but at his suggestion the fourth share in such books as he might write, which they had now received for eight years, was continued to them on the understanding that the publishers' percentage should no longer be charged in the partnership accounts, and with a power reserved to himself to withdraw when he pleased. In the new year his first adventure was an ovation in Birmingham, where a silver-gilt salver and a diamond ring were presented to him, as well for eloquent service specially rendered to the Institution, as in general testimony of "varied literary acquirements, genial philosophy, and high moral teaching." A great banquet followed on Twelfth Night, made memorable by an offer[171] to give a couple of readings from his books at the following Christmas, in aid of the new Midland Institute. It might seem to have been drawn from him as a grateful return for the enthusiastic greeting of his entertainers, but it was in his mind before he left London. It was his first formal undertaking to read in public.

His eldest son had now left Eton, and, the boy's wishes pointing at the time to a mercantile career, he was sent to Leipzig for completion of his education.[172] At this date it seemed to me that the overstrain of attempting too much, brought upon him by the necessities of his weekly periodical, became first apparent in Dickens. Not unfrequently a complaint strange upon his lips fell from him. "Hypochondriacal whisperings tell me that I am rather overworked. The spring does not seem to fly back again directly, as it always did when I put my own work aside, and had nothing else to do. Yet I have everything to keep me going with a brave heart, Heaven knows!" Courage and hopefulness he might well derive from the increasing sale of _Bleak House_, which had risen to nearly forty thousand; but he could no longer bear easily what he carried so lightly of old, and enjoyments with work were too much for him. "What with _Bleak House_, and _Household Words_, and _Child's History_" (he dictated from week to week the papers which formed that little book, and cannot be said to have quite hit the mark with it), "and Miss Coutts's Home, and the invitations to feasts and festivals, I really feel as if my head would split like a fired shell if I remained here." He tried Brighton first, but did not find it answer, and returned.[173] A few days of unalloyed enjoyment were afterwards given to the visit of his excellent American friend Felton; and on the 13th of June he was again in Boulogne, thanking heaven for escape from a breakdown. "If I had substituted anybody's knowledge of myself for my own, and lingered in London, I never could have got through."

What befell him in Boulogne will be given, with the incidents of his second and third summer visits to the place, on a later page. He completed, by the third week of August, his novel of _Bleak House_; and it was resolved to celebrate the event by a two months' trip to Italy, in company with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg. The start was to be made from Boulogne in the middle of October, when he would send his family home; and he described the intervening weeks as a fearful "reaction and prostration of laziness" only broken by the _Child's History_. At the end of September he wrote: "I finished the little _History_ yesterday, and am trying to think of something for the Christmas number. After which I shall knock off; having had quite enough to do, small as it would have seemed to me at any other time, since I finished _Bleak House_." He added, a week before his departure: "I get letters from Genoa and Lausanne as if I were going to stay in each place at least a month. If I were to measure my deserts by people's remembrance of me, I should be a prodigy of intolerability. Have recovered my Italian, which I had all but forgotten, and am one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness."

From this trip, of which the incidents have an interest independent of my ordinary narrative, Dickens was home again in the middle of December 1853, and kept his promise to his Birmingham friends by reading in their Town Hall his _Christmas Carol_ on the 27th,[174] and his _Cricket on the Hearth_ on the 29th. The enthusiasm was great, and he consented to read his _Carol_ a second time, on Friday the 30th, if seats were reserved for working men at prices within their means. The result was an addition of between four and five hundred pounds to the funds for establishment of the new Institute; and a prettily worked flower-basket in silver, presented to Mrs. Dickens, commemorated these first public readings "to nearly six thousand people," and the design they had generously helped. Other applications then followed to such extent that limits to compliance had to be put; and a letter of the 16th of May 1854 is one of many that express both the difficulty in which he found himself, and his much desired expedient for solving it. "The objection you suggest to paid public lecturing does not strike me at all. It is worth consideration, but I do not think there is anything in it. On the contrary, if the lecturing would have any motive power at all (like my poor father this, in the sound!) I believe it would tend the other way. In the Colchester matter I had already received a letter from a Colchester magnate; to whom I had honestly replied that I stood pledged to Christmas readings at Bradford[175] and at Reading, and could in no kind of reason do more in the public way." The promise to the people of Reading was for Talfourd's sake; the other was given after the Birmingham nights, when an institute in Bradford asked similar help, and offered a fee of fifty pounds. At first this was entertained; but was abandoned, with some reluctance, upon the argument that to become publicly a reader must alter without improving his position publicly as a writer, and that it was a change to be justified only when the higher calling should have failed of the old success. Thus yielding for the time, he nevertheless soon found the question rising again with the same importunity; his own position to it being always that of a man assenting against his will that it should rest in abeyance. But nothing farther was resolved on yet. The readings mentioned came off as promised, in aid of public objects;[176] and besides others two years later for the family of a friend, he had given the like liberal help to institutes in Folkestone, Chatham, and again in Birmingham, Peterborough, Sheffield, Coventry, and Edinburgh, before the question settled itself finally in the announcement for paid public readings issued by him in 1858.

Carrying memory back to his home in the first half of 1854, there are few things that rise more pleasantly in connection with it than the children's theatricals. These began with the first Twelfth Night at Tavistock House, and were renewed until the principal actors ceased to be children. The best of the performances were _Tom Thumb_ and _Fortunio_, in '54 and '55; Dickens now joining first in the revel, and Mr. Mark Lemon bringing into it his own clever children and a very mountain of child-pleasing fun in himself. Dickens had become very intimate with him, and his merry genial ways had given him unbounded popularity with the "young 'uns," who had no such favourite as "Uncle Mark." In Fielding's burlesque he was the giantess Glumdalca, and Dickens was the ghost of Gaffer Thumb; the names by which they respectively appeared being the Infant Phenomenon and the Modern Garrick. But the younger actors carried off the palm. There was a Lord Grizzle, at whose ballad of Miss Villikins, introduced by desire, Thackeray rolled off his seat in a burst of laughter that became absurdly contagious. Yet even this, with hardly less fun from the Noodles, Doodles, and King Arthurs, was not so good as the pretty, fantastic, comic grace of Dollalolla, Huncamunca, and Tom. The girls wore steadily the grave airs irresistible when put on by little children; and an actor not out of his fourth year, who went through the comic songs and the tragic exploits without a wrong note or a victim unslain, represented the small helmeted hero. He was in the bills as Mr. H----, but bore in fact the name of the illustrious author whose conception he embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal Hole."[177] The encores were frequent, and for the most part the little fellow responded to them; but the misplaced enthusiasm that took similar form at the heroic intensity with which he stabbed Dollalolla, he rebuked by going gravely on to the close. His Fortunio, the next Twelfth Night, was not so great; yet when, as a prelude to getting the better of the Dragon, he adulterated his drink (Mr. Lemon played the Dragon) with sherry, the sly relish with which he watched the demoralization, by this means, of his formidable adversary into a helpless imbecility, was perfect. Here Dickens played the testy old Baron, and took advantage of the excitement against the Czar raging in 1855 to denounce him (in a song) as no other than own cousin to the very Bear that Fortunio had gone forth to subdue. He depicted him, in his desolation of autocracy, as the Robinson Crusoe of absolute state, who had at his court many a show-day and many a high-day, but hadn't in all his dominions a Friday.[178] The bill, which attributed these interpolations to "the Dramatic Poet of the Establishment," deserves also mention for the fun of the six large-lettered announcements which stood at the head of it, and could not have been bettered by Mr. Crummles himself. "Re-engagement of that irresistible comedian" (the performer of Lord Grizzle) "Mr. Ainger!" "Reappearance of Mr. H. who created so powerful an impression last year!" "Return of Mr. Charles Dickens Junior from his German engagements!" "Engagement of Miss Kate, who declined the munificent offers of the Management last season!" "Mr. Passé, Mr. Mudperiod, Mr. Measly Servile, and Mr. Wilkini Collini!" "First appearance on any stage of Mr. Plornishmaroontigoonter (who has been kept out of bed at a vast expense)." The last performer mentioned[179] was yet at some distance from the third year of his age. Dickens was Mr. Passé.

Gravities were mixed with these gaieties. "I wish you would look" (20th of January 1854) "at the enclosed titles for the _H. W._ story, between this and two o'clock or so, when I will call. It is my usual day, you observe, on which I have jotted them down--Friday! It seems to me that there are three very good ones among them. I should like to know whether you hit upon the same." On the paper enclosed was written: 1. According to Cocker. 2. Prove it. 3. Stubborn Things. 4. Mr. Gradgrind's Facts. 5. The Grindstone. 6. Hard Times. 7. Two and Two are Four. 8. Something Tangible. 9. Our Hard-headed Friend. 10. Rust and Dust. 11. Simple Arithmetic. 12. A Matter of Calculation. 13. A Mere Question of Figures. 14. The Gradgrind Philosophy.[180] The three selected by me were 2, 6, and 11; the three that were his own favourites were 6, 13, and 14; and as 6 had been chosen by both, that title was taken.

It was the first story written by him for _Household Words_; and in the course of it the old troubles of the _Clock_ came back, with the difference that the greater brevity of the weekly portions made it easier to write them up to time, but much more difficult to get sufficient interest into each. "The difficulty of the space," he wrote after a few weeks' trial, "is CRUSHING. Nobody can have an idea of it who has not had an experience of patient fiction-writing with some elbow-room always, and open places in perspective. In this form, with any kind of regard to the current number, there is absolutely no such thing." He went on, however; and, of the two designs he started with, accomplished one very perfectly and the other at least partially. He more than doubled the circulation of his journal; and he wrote a story which, though not among his best, contains things as characteristic as any he has written. I may not go as far as Mr. Ruskin in giving it a high place; but to anything falling from that writer, however one may differ from it, great respect is due, and every word here said of Dickens's intention is in the most strict sense just.[181] "The essential value and truth of Dickens's writings," he says, "have been unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because he presents his truth with some colour of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens's caricature, though often gross, is never mistaken. Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always true. I wish that he could think it right to limit his brilliant exaggeration to works written only for public amusement; and when he takes up a subject of high national importance, such as that which he handled in _Hard Times_, that he would use severer and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of that work (to my mind, in several respects, the greatest he has written) is with many persons seriously diminished, because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly master; and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a characteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose the use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially _Hard Times_, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial, and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine all the evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the finally right one, grossly and sharply told."[182] The best points in it, out of the circle of stage fire (an expression of wider application to this part of Dickens's life than its inventor supposed it to be), were the sketches of the riding-circus people and the Bounderby household; but it is a wise hint of Mr. Ruskin's that there may be, in the drift of a story, truths of sufficient importance to set against defects of workmanship; and here they challenged wide attention. You cannot train any one properly, unless you cultivate the fancy, and allow fair scope to the affections. You cannot govern men on a principle of averages; and to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market is not the _summum bonum_ of life. You cannot treat the working man fairly unless, in dealing with his wrongs and his delusions, you take equally into account the simplicity and tenacity of his nature, arising partly from limited knowledge, but more from honesty and singleness of intention. Fiction cannot prove a case, but it can express forcibly a righteous sentiment; and this is here done unsparingly upon matters of universal concern. The book was finished at Boulogne in the middle of July,[183] and is inscribed to Carlyle.

An American admirer accounted for the vivacity of the circus-scenes by declaring that Dickens had "arranged with the master of Astley's Circus to spend many hours behind the scenes with the riders and among the horses;" a thing just as likely as that he went into training as a stroller to qualify for Mr. Crummles in _Nickleby_. Such successes belonged to the experiences of his youth; he had nothing to add to what his marvellous observation had made familiar from almost childish days; and the glimpses we get of them in the _Sketches by Boz_ are in these points as perfect as anything his later experience could supply. There was one thing nevertheless which the choice of his subject made him anxious to verify while _Hard Times_ was in hand; and this was a strike in a manufacturing town. He went to Preston to see one at the end of January, and was somewhat disappointed. "I am afraid I shall not be able to get much here. Except the crowds at the street-corners reading the placards pro and con; and the cold absence of smoke from the mill-chimneys; there is very little in the streets to make the town remarkable. I am told that the people 'sit at home and mope.' The delegates with the money from the neighbouring places come in to-day to report the amounts they bring; and to-morrow the people are paid. When I have seen both these ceremonies, I shall return. It is a nasty place (I thought it was a model town); and I am in the Bull Hotel, before which some time ago the people assembled supposing the masters to be here, and on demanding to have them out were remonstrated with by the landlady in person. I saw the account in an Italian paper, in which it was stated that 'the populace then environed the Palazzo Bull, until the padrona of the Palazzo heroically appeared at one of the upper windows and addressed them!' One can hardly conceive anything less likely to be represented to an Italian mind by this description, than the old, grubby, smoky, mean, intensely formal red brick house with a narrow gateway and a dingy yard, to which it applies. At the theatre last night I saw _Hamlet_, and should have done better to 'sit at home and mope' like the idle workmen. In the last scene, Laertes on being asked how it was with him replied (verbatim) 'Why, like a woodcock--on account of my treachery.'" (29th Jan.)

The home incidents of the summer and autumn of 1855 may be mentioned briefly. It was a year of much unsettled discontent with him, and upon return from a short trip to Paris with Mr. Wilkie Collins, he flung himself rather hotly into agitation with the administrative reformers,[184] and spoke at one of the great meetings in Drury-lane Theatre. In the following month (April) he took occasion, even from the chair of the General Theatrical Fund, to give renewed expression to political dissatisfactions.[185] In the summer he threw open to many friends his Tavistock House Theatre, having secured for its "lessee and manager Mr. Crummles;" for its poet Mr. Wilkie Collins, in an "entirely new and original domestic melodrama;" and for its scene-painter "Mr. Stanfield, R.A."[186] _The Lighthouse_, by Mr. Wilkie Collins, was then produced, its actors being Mr. Crummles the manager (Dickens in other words), the Author of the play, Mr. Lemon and Mr. Egg, and the manager's sister-in-law and eldest daughter. It was followed by the Guild farce of _Mr. Nightingale's Diary_, in which besides the performers named, and Dickens in his old personation part, the manager's youngest daughter and Mr. Frank Stone assisted. The success was wonderful; and in the three delighted audiences who crowded to what the bills described as "the smallest theatre in the world," were not a few of the notabilities of London. Mr. Carlyle compared Dickens's wild picturesqueness in the old lighthouse keeper to the famous figure in Nicholas Poussin's bacchanalian dance in the National Gallery; and at one of the joyous suppers that followed on each night of the play, Lord Campbell told the company that he had much rather have written _Pickwick_ than be Chief Justice of England and a peer of parliament.[187]

Then came the beginning of _Nobody's Fault_, as _Little Dorrit_ continued to be called by him up to the eve of its publication; a flight to Folkestone to help his sluggish fancy; and his return to London in October to preside at a dinner to Thackeray on his going to lecture in America. It was a muster of more than sixty admiring entertainers, and Dickens's speech gave happy expression to the spirit that animated all, telling Thackeray not alone how much his friendship was prized by those present, and how proud they were of his genius, but offering him in the name of the tens of thousands absent who had never touched his hand or seen his face, life-long thanks for the treasures of mirth, wit, and wisdom within the yellow-covered numbers of _Pendennis_ and _Vanity Fair_. Peter Cunningham, one of the sons of Allan, was secretary to the banquet; and for many pleasures given to the subject of this memoir, who had a hearty regard for him, should have a few words to his memory.

His presence was always welcome to Dickens, and indeed to all who knew him, for his relish of social life was great, and something of his keen enjoyment could not but be shared by his company. His geniality would have carried with it a pleasurable glow even if it had stood alone, and it was invigorated by very considerable acquirements. He had some knowledge of the works of eminent authors and artists; and he had an eager interest in their lives and haunts, which he had made the subject of minute and novel enquiry. This store of knowledge gave substance to his talk, yet never interrupted his buoyancy and pleasantry, because only introduced when called for, and not made matter of parade or display. But the happy combination of qualities that rendered him a favourite companion, and won him many friends, proved in the end injurious to himself. He had done much while young in certain lines of investigation which he had made almost his own, and there was every promise that, in the department of biographical and literary research, he would have produced much weightier works with advancing years. This however was not to be. The fascinations of good fellowship encroached more and more upon literary pursuits, until he nearly abandoned his former favourite studies, and sacrificed all the deeper purposes of his life to the present temptation of a festive hour. Then his health gave way, and he became lost to friends as well as to literature. But the impression of the bright and amiable intercourse of his better time survived, and his old associates never ceased to think of Peter Cunningham with regret and kindness.

Dickens went to Paris early in October, and at its close was brought again to London by the sudden death of a friend, much deplored by himself, and still more so by a distinguished lady who had his loyal service at all times. An incident before his return to France is worth brief relation. He had sallied out for one of his night walks, full of thoughts of his story, one wintery rainy evening (the 8th of November), and "pulled himself up," outside the door of Whitechapel Workhouse, at a strange sight which arrested him there. Against the dreary enclosure of the house were leaning, in the midst of the downpouring rain and storm, what seemed to be seven heaps of rags: "dumb, wet, silent horrors" he described them, "sphinxes set up against that dead wall, and no one likely to be at the pains of solving them until the General Overthrow." He sent in his card to the Master. Against him there was no ground of complaint; he gave prompt personal attention; but the casual ward was full, and there was no help. The rag-heaps were all girls, and Dickens gave each a shilling. One girl, "twenty or so," had been without food a day and night. "Look at me," she said, as she clutched the shilling, and without thanks shuffled off. So with the rest. There was not a single "thank you." A crowd meanwhile, only less poor than these objects of misery, had gathered round the scene; but though they saw the seven shillings given away they asked for no relief to themselves, they recognized in their sad wild way the other greater wretchedness, and made room in silence for Dickens to walk on.

Not more tolerant of the way in which laws meant to be most humane are too often administered in England, he left in a day or two to resume his _Little Dorrit_ in Paris. But before his life there is described, some sketches from his holiday trip to Italy with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg, and from his three summer visits to Boulogne, claim to themselves two intervening chapters.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] I subjoin the dozen titles successively proposed for _Bleak House_. 1. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined House;" 2. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House that was always shut up;" 3. "Bleak House Academy;" 4. "The East Wind;" 5. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined [House, Building, Factory, Mill] that got into Chancery and never got out;" 6. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House where the Grass grew;" 7. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House that was always shut up and never Lighted;" 8. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined Mill, that got into Chancery and never got out;" 9. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House where the Wind howled;" 10. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined House that got into Chancery and never got out;" 11. "Bleak House and the East Wind. How they both got into Chancery and never got out;" 12. "Bleak House."

[170] He was greatly interested in the movement for closing town and city graves (see the close of the 11th chapter of _Bleak House_), and providing places of burial under State supervision.

[171] The promise was formally conveyed next morning in a letter to one who took the lead then and since in all good work for Birmingham, Mr. Arthur Ryland. The reading would, he said in this letter (7th of Jan. 1853), "take about two hours, with a pause of ten minutes half way through. There would be some novelty in the thing, as I have never done it in public, though I have in private, and (if I may say so) with a great effect on the hearers."

[172] Baron Tauchnitz, describing to me his long and uninterrupted friendly intercourse with Dickens, has this remark: "I give also a passage from one of his letters written at the time when he sent his son Charles, through my mediation, to Leipzig. He says in it what he desires for his son. 'I want him to have all interest in, and to acquire a knowledge of, the life around him, and to be treated like a gentleman though pampered in nothing. By punctuality in all things, great or small, I set great store.'"

[173] From one of his letters while there I take a passage of observation full of character. "Great excitement here about a wretched woman who has murdered her child. Apropos of which I observed a curious thing last night. The newspaper offices (local journals) had placards like this outside:

CHILD MURDER IN BRIGHTON. INQUEST. COMMITTAL OF THE MURDERESS.

I saw so many common people stand profoundly staring at these lines for half-an-hour together--and even go back to stare again--that I feel quite certain they had not the power of thinking about the thing at all connectedly or continuously, without having something about it before their sense of sight. Having got that, they were considering the case, wondering how the devil they had come into that power. I saw one man in a smock frock lose the said power the moment he turned away, and bring his hob-nails back again."

[174] The reading occupied nearly three hours: double the time devoted to it in the later years.

[175] "After correspondence with all parts of England, and every kind of refusal and evasion on my part, I am now obliged to decide this question--whether I shall read two nights at Bradford for a hundred pounds. If I do, I may take as many hundred pounds as I choose." 27th of Jan. 1854.

[176] On the 28th of Dec. 1854 he wrote from Bradford: "The hall is enormous, and they expect to seat 3700 people to-night! Notwithstanding which, it seems to me a tolerably easy place--except that the width of the platform is so very great to the eye at first." From Folkestone, on his way to Paris, he wrote in the autumn of 1855: "16th of Sept. I am going to read for them here, on the 5th of next month, and have answered in the last fortnight thirty applications to do the like all over England, Ireland, and Scotland. Fancy my having to come from Paris in December, to do this, at Peterborough, Birmingham, and Sheffield--old promises." Again: 23rd of Sept. "I am going to read here, next Friday week. There are (as there are everywhere) a Literary Institution and a Working Men's Institution, which have not the slightest sympathy or connexion. The stalls are five shillings, but I have made them fix the working men's admission at threepence, and I hope it may bring them together. The event comes off in a carpenter's shop, as the biggest place that can be got." In 1857, at Paxton's request, he read his _Carol_ at Coventry for the Institute.

[177] My name it is Tom Thumb, Small my size, Small my size, My name it is Tom Thumb, Small my size. Yet though I am so small, I have killed the giants tall; And now I'm paid for all, Small my size, Small my size, And now I'm paid for all, Small my size.

[178] This finds mention, I observe, in a pleasant description of "Mr. Dickens's Amateur Theatricals," which appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ two years ago, by one who had been a member of the Juvenile Company. I quote a passage, recommending the whole paper as very agreeably written, with some shrewd criticism. "Mr. Planché had in one portion of the extravaganza put into the mouth of one of the characters for the moment a few lines of burlesque upon Macbeth, and we remember Mr. Dickens's unsuccessful attempts to teach the performer how to imitate Macready, whom he (the performer) had never seen! And after the performance, when we were restored to our evening-party costumes, and the school-room was cleared for dancing, still a stray 'property' or two had escaped the vigilant eye of the property-man, for Douglas Jerrold had picked up the horse's head (Fortunio's faithful steed _Comrade_), and was holding it up before the greatest living animal painter, who had been one of the audience, with 'Looks as if it knew _you_, Edwin!'"

[179] He went with the rest to Boulogne in the summer, and an anecdote transmitted in one of his father's letters will show that he maintained the reputation as a comedian which his early debut had awakened. "ORIGINAL ANECDOTE OF THE PLORNISHGHENTER. This distinguished wit, being at Boulogne with his family, made a close acquaintance with his landlord, whose name was M. Beaucourt--the only French word with which he was at that time acquainted. It happened that one day he was left unusually long in a bathing-machine when the tide was making, accompanied by his two young brothers and little English nurse, without being drawn to land. The little nurse, being frightened, cried 'M'soo! M'soo!' The two young brothers being frightened, cried 'Ici! Ici!'. Our wit, at once perceiving that his English was of no use to him under the foreign circumstances, immediately fell to bawling 'Beau-court!' which he continued to shout at the utmost pitch of his voice and with great gravity, until rescued.--_New Boulogne Jest Book_, page 578."

[180] To show the pains he took in such matters I will give other titles also thought of for this tale. 1. Fact; 2. Hard-headed Gradgrind; 3. Hard Heads and Soft Hearts; 4. Heads and Tales; 5. Black and White.

[181] It is well to remember, too, what he wrote about the story to Charles Knight. It had no design, he said, to damage the really useful truths of Political Economy, but was wholly directed against "those who see figures and averages, and nothing else; who would take the average of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing a soldier in nankeen on a night when he would be frozen to death in fur; and who would comfort the labourer in travelling twelve miles a day to and from his work, by telling him that the average distance of one inhabited place from another, on the whole area of England, is not more than four miles."

[182] It is curious that with as strong a view in the opposite direction, and with an equally mistaken exaltation, above the writer's ordinary level, of a book which on the whole was undoubtedly below it, Mr. Taine speaks of _Hard Times_ as that one of Dickens's romances which is a summary of all the rest: exalting instinct above reason, and the intuitions of the heart above practical knowledge; attacking all education based on statistic figures and facts; heaping sorrow and ridicule on the practical mercantile people; fighting against the pride, hardness, and selfishness of the merchant and noble; cursing the manufacturing towns for imprisoning bodies in smoke and mud, and souls in falsehood and factitiousness;--while it contrasts, with that satire of social oppression, lofty eulogy of the oppressed; and searches out poor workmen, jugglers, foundlings, and circus people, for types of good sense, sweetness of disposition, generosity, delicacy, and courage, to perpetual confusion of the pretended knowledge, pretended happiness, pretended virtue, of the rich and powerful who trample upon them! This is a fair specimen of the exaggerations with which exaggeration is rebuked, in Mr. Taine's and much similar criticism.

[183] Here is a note at the close. "Tavistock House. Look at that! Boulogne, of course. Friday, 14th of July, 1854. I am three parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at _Hard Times_. I have done what I hope is a good thing with Stephen, taking his story as a whole; and hope to be over in town with the end of the book on Wednesday night. . . . I have been looking forward through so many weeks and sides of paper to this Stephen business, that now--as usual--it being over, I feel as if nothing in the world, in the way of intense and violent rushing hither and thither, could quite restore my balance."

[184] "I have hope of Mr. Morley--whom one cannot see without knowing to be a straightforward, earnest man. Travers, too, I think a man of the Anti-corn-law-league order. I also think Higgins will materially help them. Generally I quite agree with you that they hardly know what to be at; but it is an immensely difficult subject to start, and they must have every allowance. At any rate, it is not by leaving them alone and giving them no help, that they can be urged on to success." 29th of March 1855.

[185] "The Government hit took immensely, but I'm afraid to look at the report, these things are so ill done. It came into my head as I was walking about at Hampstead yesterday. . . . On coming away I told B. we must have a toastmaster in future less given to constant drinking while the speeches are going on. B. replied 'Yes sir, you are quite right sir, he has no head whatever sir, look at him now sir'--Toastmaster was weakly contemplating the coats and hats--'do you not find it difficult to keep your hands off him sir, he ought to have his head knocked against the wall sir,--and he should sir, I assure you sir, if he was not in too debased a condition to be aware of it sir.'" April 3rd 1855.

[186] For the scene of the Eddystone Lighthouse at this little play, afterwards placed in a frame in the hall at Gadshill, a thousand guineas was given at the Dickens sale. It occupied the great painter only one or two mornings, and Dickens will tell how it originated. Walking on Hampstead Heath to think over his Theatrical Fund speech, he met Mr. Lemon, and they went together to Stanfield. "He has been very ill, and he told us that large pictures are too much for him, and he must confine himself to small ones. But I would not have this, I declared he must paint bigger ones than ever, and what would he think of beginning upon an act-drop for a proposed vast theatre at Tavistock House? He laughed and caught at this, we cheered him up very much, and he said he was quite a man again." April 1855.

[187] Sitting at Nisi Prius not long before, the Chief Justice, with the same eccentric liking for literature, had committed what was called at the time a breach of judicial decorum. (Such indecorums were less uncommon in the great days of the Bench.) "The name," he said, "of the illustrious Charles Dickens has been called on the jury, but he has not answered. If his great Chancery suit had been still going on, I certainly would have excused him, but, as that is over, he might have done us the honour of attending here, that he might have seen how we went on at common law."