Chapter 9

The writing of No. 4 is very like that of No. 3; the easy curves below the signature are cleverly made, and while they indicate much energy, they also point to a useful confidence in self, owing to the deliberate way of accentuating the most personal part of a letter--its signature.

No. 5 is the facsimile of a signature to a letter which was written in the Library of the British Museum to "My dear Knolle"; the letter ends: "Believe me (in haste), yours most truly." At this time--1832--Dickens was a newspaper reporter, and it is curious to notice that in spite of "haste" he yet managed to execute this complex movement underneath the signature. Its force and energy are great, but we shall see even more pronounced developments of this flourish before it takes the moderated and graceful form of confident and assured power.

There is still more force and "go" about No. 6: it was written on "Wednesday night, past 12," and also in haste. Dickens was reporting for the _Morning Chronicle_, and was just starting on a journey, but yet there are here two separate flourishes; one begins under the _s_ of _Charles_ and ends under the _C_ of that name; the other starts under the capital _D_ and finishes below the _n_ of _Dickens_.

The intricacy of the next facsimile, No. 7, is an ugly but a very active piece of movement. This group of curves is equal to about a two-feet length of pen-stroke, a fact which indicates an extraordinary amount of personal energy. Dickens was then writing his "Sketches by Boz," and this ungraceful elaboration of his signature was probably accompanied by a growing sense of his own capacity and power. During the time-interval between the signatures shown in Nos. 7 and 8, the first number of the "Pickwick Papers" was published--March, 1836--and Charles Dickens married Catherine Hogarth on the 2nd of April in that year. The original of a very different facsimile (No. 9) was written as a receipt in the account-book of Messrs. Chapman and Hall for an advance of £5.

The six facsimiles numbered 9 to 15 deserve special notice. The originals were all written in the year 1837, and I have purposely shown them because their extraordinary variations entirely negative the popular idea about the uniformity of Dickens's handwriting, and because these mobile hand-gestures are a striking illustration of the mobility and great sensibility to impressions which were prominent features in Charles Dickens's nature.

Common observation show us that a man whose mind is specially receptive of impressions from persons and things around him, and whose sensibility is very quick, can scarcely fail to show much variation in his own forms of outward expression--such, for example, as facial "play," voice-inflections, hand-gestures, and so on. Notice the originality in the position of the flourishes shown in No. 9, and compare the ungraceful movement of it with the much more dignified and pleasing flourishes in some of the later signatures. A whimsical originality of mind comes out also in the curious "B" of "Boz" (No. 10).

The next pair--Nos. 11 and 12--are interesting. No. 11 shows the signature squeezed in at the bottom of a page; the flourish was attempted, and accompanied by the words: "No room for the flouish," the _r_ of _flourish_ being omitted. No. 12 was written on the envelope of the same letter.

No. 13 is a copy of a very famous signature: the original is on a great parchment called "Deed of License Assignment and Covenants respecting a Work called 'The Pickwick Papers,'" and which, after a preamble, contains the words: "Whereas the said Charles Dickens is the Author of a Book or Work intituled 'The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club,' which has been recently printed and published in twenty parts or numbers," etc. It is probable that the fact of the seal being placed between _Charles_ and _Dickens_ prevented the flourish which almost invariably accompanied his signatures on business documents; the marked enlargement of this signature takes the place of the flourish, and shows an unconscious emphasis of the _ego_. It would be almost unreasonable for us to expect that so impressionable a man, who was also feeling his power and fame, could abstain from showing outward signs of his own consciousness of abnormal success. Yet, in the private letters of Dickens, the simple "C. D." is very frequent; a few examples of it are given in this article, and their present number in no way represents the numerical relation of these simple signatures to the more "showy" ones. It may at once be said that this point of difference is alike interesting to the student of gesture and to the student of Dickens's character. He was certainly a very able man of business, and the wording of his "business" letters fully bears out the idea conveyed by his "business" signature--so to speak--that Dickens was fully aware of his own powers, and that, quite fairly, he did not omit to impress the fact upon other people when he thought fit. Both the wording and the signature of many of his private letters are simple and unostentatious to a high degree. This curious fact, which is now illustrated by Charles Dickens's own hand-gesture, ought to be remembered when people talk about Dickens's "conceit" and "love of show." My explanation is, I think, both logical and true.

No. 14 closes this series for the year 1837. It shows a quaint and pretty signature on a wrapper.

No. 15 shows part of a very humorous and famous letter announcing the death of the raven which figures in "Barnaby Rudge." Notice the curious originality of form shown in the capital _Y_ and _R_. The wording of this letter is also quaintly original, and the sensitive mind of this man again caused his nerve-muscular action--his gesture--to harmonize with his mood. Points of this kind, which the handwriting of Dickens illustrates so well, have a deeper meaning for the observant than for the casual reader of a magazine article; they indicate that these little human acts, which have been so long overlooked by intelligent men, do really give us valuable data for the study of mind by means of written-gesture.

In No. 16 we see another and very original form of the "Boz" signature. No. 17 has a curious stroke of activity above the signature. No. 18 is a fine, strong signature.

No. 19 is remarkably vigorous and active. The well-controlled activity and energy of the signatures are now strongly marked. No. 20 explains itself; the curious _P_ of _Pass_ is worth notice.

No. 21 is a stray illustration of clever and gracefully-executed movements which abound in Dickens's letters.

See, in No. 22, how illness disturbed the fine action of this splendid organism; but illness did not prevent attention to detail--the dot is placed after the _D_.

When on a reading tour, Dickens wrote at Bideford the letter from which No. 23 has been copied. After writing that he could get nothing to eat or drink at the small inn, he wrote the sentence facsimiled. The exaggeration of the words is matched by the use of two capital _T_'s in place of two small _t_'s. The letter continues: "The landlady is playing cribbage with the landlord in the next room (behind a thin partition), and they seem quite comfortable." No. 24 is another instance of the variation which, in fact, obtained up to the very day before death. No. 25 was written at Berwick-on-Tweed; it is an amusing letter, and states how the local agents wanted to put the famous reader into "a little lofty crow's nest," and how "I instantly struck, of course, and said I would either read in a room attached to this house ... or not at all. Terrified local agents glowered, but fell prostrate." By the way, notice, in No. 25, the emphasis of gesture on the _me_.

No. 26 is written in one continuous stroke with a noticeably good management of the curves. The graceful imagination of this is very striking.

No. 27 shows the endorsement on a cheque.

But we near the end. Doctors had detected the signs of breaking up, which are not less plain in the written gesture, and had strenuously urged Dickens to stop the incessant strain caused by his public readings. The stimulus of facing an appreciative audience would spur him on time after time, and then, late at night, he would write affectionate letters giving details of "the house," etc., but which are painful to see if one notices the constant droop of the words and of the lines across the page. Contrast the writing in No. 28, broken and agitated, with some of the earlier specimens I have shown you. This was written three days before death. The wording of the letter from which No. 29 has been copied tells no tale of weakness, but the gesture which clothes the words is tell-tale. The words, and the lines of words, run downward across the paper, and No. 29 is very suggestive of serious trouble--and it is specially suggestive to those who have studied this form of gesture: look, for example, at the ill-managed flourish.

Now comes a facsimile taken from the last letter written by Charles Dickens. It has been given elsewhere, but, not satisfied with the facsimile I saw, I obtained permission to take this direct from the letter in the British Museum. This was written an hour or so before the fatal seizure. Every word droops below the level from which each starts, each line of writing descends across the page, the simple _C. D._ is very shaky, and the whole letter is broken and weak. Charles Dickens was not "ready" at "3 o'clock"--he died at ten minutes past six p.m. And so ends this too scanty notice of a great man's written-gesture.

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NOTE:--Considerations of space and of the avoidance of technicalities have prevented a really full account of the written gesture of Charles Dickens; scanty as the foregoing account is, the illustrations it contains could not have been supplied by any one collector of Charles Dickens's letters. I express my sincere gratitude to the many persons who have enabled me to give these illustrations, and only regret that one collector refused my request for the loan of some very early and interesting letters.

J.H.S.

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_The Mirror._

By George Japy.

It has always been said that the Japanese are the French of the Orient. Be that as it may, it is very clear that in certain traits which characterize the French, there is no resemblance whatever between the people of those two nations.

Almost as soon as a French baby (a girl, be it understood) is born, its first instinct is to stretch out its tiny hands for a mirror, in which to admire its beautiful little face and its graceful movements. This natural, and we may say inborn, taste grows with the child's growth, and ere the fair girl has reached her seventeenth year, her ideal of perfect bliss is to find herself in a room with mirrors on every side. There is indeed a room in the Palace of Versailles which is the elysium of the Frenchwoman. It is a long room with looking-glasses from ceiling to floor, and the said floor is polished so that it reflects, at any rate, the shadow of the feet.

Now, in the little Japanese village of Yowcuski a looking-glass was an unheard-of thing, and girls did not even know what they looked like, except on hearing the description which their lovers gave them of their personal beauty (which description, by-the-bye, was sometimes slightly biased, according as the lover was more or less devoted).

Now it happened that a young Japanese, whose daily work was to pull along those light carriages such as were seen at the last Paris Exhibition, picked up one day in the street a small pocket hand-mirror, probably dropped by some English lady-tourist on her travels in that part of the world.

It was, of course, the first time in his life that Kiki-Tsum had ever gazed on such a thing. He looked carefully at it, and to his intense astonishment saw the image of a brown face, with dark, intelligent eyes, and a look of awestruck wonderment expressed on its features.

Kiki-Tsum dropped on his knees, and gazing earnestly at the object he held in his hand, he whispered, "It is my sainted father. How could his portrait have come here? Is it, perhaps, a warning of some kind for me?"

He carefully folded the precious treasure up in his handkerchief, and put it in the large pocket of his loose blouse. When he went home that night he hid it away carefully in a vase which was scarcely ever touched, as he did not know of any safer place in which to deposit it. He said nothing of the adventure to his young wife, for, as he said to himself "Women are curious, and then, too, _sometimes_ they are given to talking," and Kiki-Tsum felt that it was too reverent a matter to be discussed by neighbours, this finding of his dead father's portrait in the street.

For some days Kiki-Tsum was in a great state of excitement. He was thinking of the portrait all the time, and at intervals he would leave his work and suddenly appear at home to take a furtive look at his treasure.

Now, in Japan, as in other countries, mysterious actions and irregular proceedings of all kinds have to be explained to a wife. Lili-Tsee did not understand why her husband kept appearing at all hours of the day. Certainly he kissed her every time he came in like this. At first she was satisfied with his explanation when he told her that he only ran in for a minute to see her pretty face. She thought it was really quite natural on his part, but when day after day he appeared, and always with the same solemn expression on his face, she began to wonder in her heart of hearts whether he was telling her the whole truth. And so Lili-Tsee fell to watching her husband's movements, and she noticed that he never went away until he had been alone in the little room at the back of the house.

Now the Japanese women are as persevering as any others when there is a mystery to be discovered, and so Lili-Tsee set herself to discover this mystery. She hunted day after day to see if she could find some trace of anything in that little room which was at all unusual, but she found nothing. One day, however, she happened to come in suddenly and saw her husband replacing the long blue vase in which she kept her rose leaves in order to dry them. He made some excuse about its not looking very steady, and appeared to be just setting it right, and Lili-Tsee pretended there was nothing out of the common in his putting the vase straight. The moment he had gone out of the house, though, she was up on a stool like lightning, and in a moment she had fished the looking-glass out of the vase. She took it carefully in her hand, wondering whatever it could be, but when she looked in it the terrible truth was clear. What was it she saw?

Why, the portrait of a woman, and she had believed that Kiki-Tsum was so good, and so fond, and so true.

Her grief was at first too deep for any words. She just sat down on the floor with the terrible portrait in her lap, and rocked herself backwards and forwards. This, then, was why her husband came home so many times in the day. It was to look at the portrait of the woman she had just seen.

Suddenly a fit of anger seized her, and she gazed at the glass again. The same face looked at her, but she wondered how her husband could admire such a face, so wicked did the dark eyes look: there was an expression in them that she certainly had not seen the first time she had looked at it, and it terrified her so much that she made up her mind not to look at it again.

She had no heart, however, for anything, and did not even make any attempt to prepare a meal for her husband. She just went on sitting there on the floor, nursing the portrait, and at the same time her wrath. When later on Kiki-Tsum arrived, he was surprised to find nothing ready for their evening meal, and no wife. He walked through to the other rooms, and was not long left in ignorance of the cause of the unusual state of things.

"So this is the love you professed for me! This is the way in which you treat me, before we have even been married a year!"

"What do you mean, Lili-Tsee?" asked her husband, in consternation, thinking that his poor wife had taken leave of her senses.

"What do I mean? What do you mean? I should think. The idea of your keeping portraits in my rose-leaf vase. Here, take it and treasure it, for I do not want it, the wicked, wicked woman!" and here poor Lili-Tsee burst out crying.

"I cannot understand," said her bewildered husband.

"Oh, you can't?" she said, laughing hysterically. "I can, though, well enough. You like that hideous, villainous-looking woman better than your own true wife. I would say nothing if she were at any rate beautiful; but she has a vile face, a hideous face, and looks wicked and murderous, and everything that is bad!"

"Lili-Tsee, what do you mean?" asked her husband, getting exasperated in his turn. "That portrait is the living image of my poor dead father. I found it in the street the other day, and put it in your vase for safety."

Lili-Tsee's eyes flashed with indignation at this apparently barefaced lie.

"Hear him!" she almost screamed. "He wants to tell me now that I do not know a woman's face from a man's."

Kiki-Tsum was wild with indignation, and a quarrel began in good earnest. The street-door was a little way open, and the loud, angry words attracted the notice of a _bonze_ (one of the Japanese priests) who happened to be passing.

"My children," he said, putting his head in at the door, "why this unseemly anger, why this dispute?"

"Father," said Kiki-Tsum, "my wife is mad."

"All women are so, my son, more or less," interrupted the holy _bonze_. "You were wrong to expect perfection, and must abide by your bargain now. It is no use getting angry, all wives are trials."

"But what she says is a lie."

"It is not, father," exclaimed Lili-Tsee. "My husband has the portrait of a woman, and I found it hidden in my rose-leaf vase."

"I swear that I have no portrait but that of my poor dead father," explained the aggrieved husband.

"My children, my children," said the holy _bonze_, majestically, "show me the portraits."

"Here it is; there is only one, but it is one too many," said Lili-Tsee, sarcastically.

The _bonze_ took the glass and looked at it earnestly. He then bowed low before it, and in an altered tone said: "My children, settle your quarrel and live peaceably together. You are both in the wrong. This portrait is that of a saintly and venerable _bonze_. I know not how you could mistake so holy a face. I must take it from you and place it amongst the precious relics of our church."

So saying, the _bonze_ lifted his hands to bless the husband and wife, and then went slowly away, carrying with him the glass which had wrought such mischief.

END.

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_Handcuffs._

WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY INSPECTOR MAURICE MOSER,

_Late of the Criminal Investigation Department, Great Scotland Yard._

The ordinary connection of ideas between handcuffs and policemen does not need very acute mental powers to grasp, but there is a further connection, a philological one, which is only evident at first sight to those who have made a small acquaintance with the science of words.

The word "handcuff" is a popular corruption of the Anglo-Saxon "handcop," _i.e._, that which "cops" or "catches" the hands.

Now, one of the most common of the many slang expressions used by their special enemies towards the police is "Copper"--_i.e._, he who cops the offending member. Strange as it may seem, handcuffs are by no means the invention of these times, which insist on making the life of a prisoner so devoid of the picturesque and romantic.

We must go back, past the dark ages, past the stirring times of Greek and Roman antiquity, till we come to those blissful mythological ages when every tree and every stream was the home of some kindly god.

In those olden days there dwelt in the Carpathian Sea a wily old deity, known by the name of Proteus, possessing the gift of prophecy, the fruits of which he selfishly denied to mankind.

Even if those who wished to consult him were so fortunate as to find him, all their efforts to force him to exert his gifts of prophecy were useless, for he was endowed with the power of changing himself into all things, and he eluded their grasp by becoming a flame of fire or a drop of water. There was one thing, however, against which all the miracles of Proteus were of no avail, and of this Aristæus was aware.

So Aristæus came, as Virgil tells us, from a distant land to consult the famous prophet. He found him on the sea-shore among his seals, basking in the afternoon sun. Quick as thought he fitted handcuffs on him, and all struggles and devices were now of no avail. Such was then the efficacy of handcuffs even on the persons of the immortal gods.