The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Iii Part 43

Kate sends you her affectionate love. I enclose a note from Georgina.

Pray give my kindest remembrances to your brother Cavendish, and believe me now and ever,

Faithfully your Friend.

[Sidenote: Mr. Eeles.]

"HOUSEHOLD WORDS" OFFICE, _Wednesday Evening, Oct. 22nd, 1851._

DEAR MR. EELES,

I send you the list I have made for the book-backs. I should like the "History of a Short Chancery Suit" to come at the bottom of one recess, and the "Catalogue of Statues of the Duke of Wellington" at the bottom of the other. If you should want more t.i.tles, and will let me know how many, I will send them to you.

Faithfully yours.

LIST OF IMITATION BOOK-BACKS.

_Tavistock House_, 1851.

Five Minutes in China. 3 vols.

Forty Winks at the Pyramids. 2 vols.

Abernethy on the Const.i.tution. 2 vols.

Mr. Green's Overland Mail. 2 vols.

Captain Cook's Life of Savage. 2 vols.

A Carpenter's Bench of Bishops. 2 vols.

Toot's Universal Letter-Writer. 2 vols.

Orson's Art of Etiquette.

Downeaster's Complete Calculator.

History of the Middling Ages. 6 vols.

Jonah's Account of the Whale.

Captain Parry's Virtues of Cold Tar.

Kant's Ancient Humbugs. 10 vols.

Bowwowdom. A Poem.

The Quarrelly Review. 4 vols.

The Gunpowder Magazine. 4 vols.

Steele. By the Author of "Ion."

The Art of Cutting the Teeth.

Matthew's Nursery Songs. 2 vols.

Paxton's Bloomers. 5 vols.

On the Use of Mercury by the Ancient Poets.

Drowsy's Recollections of Nothing. 3 vols.

Heavyside's Conversations with n.o.body. 3 vols.

Commonplace Book of the Oldest Inhabitant. 2 vols.

Growler's Gruffiology, with Appendix. 4 vols.

The Books of Moses and Sons. 2 vols.

Burke (of Edinburgh) on the Sublime and Beautiful. 2 vols.

Teazer's Commentaries.

King Henry the Eighth's Evidences of Christianity. 5 vols.

Miss Biffin on Deportment.

Morrison's Pills Progress. 2 vols.

Lady G.o.diva on the Horse.

Munchausen's Modern Miracles. 4 vols.

Richardson's Show of Dramatic Literature. 12 vols.

Hansard's Guide to Refreshing Sleep. As many volumes as possible.

[Sidenote: Mr. Henry Austin.]

OFFICE OF "HOUSEHOLD WORDS,"

_Sat.u.r.day, Oct. 25th, 1851._

MY DEAR HENRY,

On the day of our departure, I thought we were going--backward--at a most triumphant pace; but yesterday we rather recovered. The painters still mislaid their brushes every five minutes, and chiefly whistled in the intervals; and the carpenters (especially the Pantechnicon) continued to look sideways with one eye down pieces of wood, as if they were absorbed in the contemplation of the perspective of the Thames Tunnel, and had entirely relinquished the vanities of this transitory world; but still there was an improvement, and it is confirmed to-day.

White lime is to be seen in kitchens, the bath-room is gradually resolving itself from an abstract idea into a fact--youthful, extremely youthful, but a fact. The drawing-room encourages no hope whatever, nor the study. Staircase painted. Irish labourers howling in the school-room, but I don't know why. I see nothing. Gardener vigorously lopping the trees, and really letting in the light and air. Foreman sweet-tempered but uneasy. Inimitable hovering gloomily through the premises all day, with an idea that a little more work is done when he flits, bat-like, through the rooms, than when there is no one looking on. Catherine all over paint. Mister McCann, encountering Inimitable in doorways, fades obsequiously into areas, and there encounters him again, and swoons with confusion. Several reams of blank paper constantly spread on the drawing-room walls, and sliced off again, which looks like insanity. Two men still clinking at the new stair-rails. I think they must be learning a tune; I cannot make out any other object in their proceedings.

Since writing the above, I have been up there again, and found the young paper-hanger putting on his slippers, and looking hard at the walls of the servants' room at the top of the house, as if he meant to paper it one of these days. May Heaven prosper his intentions!

When do you come back? I hope soon.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Charles d.i.c.kens.]

CLIFTON, _November 13th, 1851._

MY DEAREST KATE,

I have just received your second letter, and am quite delighted to find that all is going on so vigorously, and that you are in such a methodical, business-like, and energetic state. I shall come home by the express on Sat.u.r.day morning, and shall hope to be at home between eleven and twelve.

We had a n.o.ble night last night. The room (which is the largest but one in England) was crammed in every part. The effect of from thirteen to fourteen hundred people, all well dressed, and all seated in one unbroken chamber, except that the floor rose high towards the end of the hall, was most splendid, and we never played to a better audience. The enthusiasm was prodigious; the place delightful for speaking in; no end of gas; another hall for a dressing-room; an immense stage; and every possible convenience. We were all thoroughly pleased, I think, with the whole thing, and it was a very great and striking success.

To-morrow-night, having the new Hardman, I am going to try the play with all kinds of cuts, taking out, among other things, some half-dozen printed pages of "Wills's Coffee House."

We are very pleasant and cheerful. They are all going to Matthew Davenport Hill's to lunch this morning, and to see some woods about six or seven miles off. I prefer being quiet, and shall go out at my leisure and call on Elliot. We are very well lodged and boarded, and, living high up on the Downs, are quite out of the filth of Bristol.

I saw old Landor at Bath, who has bronchitis. When he was last in town, "Kenyon drove him about, by G.o.d, half the morning, under a most d.a.m.nable pretence of taking him to where Walter was at school, and they never found the confounded house!" He had in his pocket on that occasion a souvenir for Walter in the form of a Union shirt-pin, which is now in my possession, and shall be duly brought home.

I am tired enough, and shall be glad when to-morrow night is over. We expect a very good house. Forster came up to town after the performance last night, and promised to report to you that all was well. Jerrold is in extraordinary force. I don't think I ever knew him so humorous. And this is all my news, which is quite enough. I am continually thinking of the house in the midst of all the bustle, but I trust it with such confidence to you that I am quite at my ease about it.

With best love to Georgy and the girls, Ever, my dearest Kate, most affectionately yours.

P.S.--I forgot to say that Topham has suddenly come out as a juggler, and swallows candles, and does wonderful things with the poker very well indeed, but with a bashfulness and embarra.s.sment extraordinarily ludicrous.

[Sidenote: Mr. Eeles.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, _Nov. 17th, 1851._