The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume I Part 33

WASHINGTON, _February 5th, 1868._

MY DEAR SIR,

Allow me to thank you most cordially for your kind letter, and for its accompanying books. I have a particular love for books of travel, and shall wander into the "Wilds of America" with great interest. I have also received your charming Sketch with great pleasure and admiration.

Let me thank you for it heartily. As a beautiful suggestion of nature a.s.sociated with this country, it shall have a quiet place on the walls of my house as long as I live.

Your reference to my dear friend Washington Irving renews the vivid impressions reawakened in my mind at Baltimore the other day. I saw his fine face for the last time in that city. He came there from New York to pa.s.s a day or two with me before I went westward, and they were made among the most memorable of my life by his delightful fancy and genial humour. Some unknown admirer of his books and mine sent to the hotel a most enormous mint julep, wreathed with flowers. We sat, one on either side of it, with great solemnity (it filled a respectable-sized paper), but the solemnity was of very short duration. It was quite an enchanted julep, and carried us among innumerable people and places that we both knew. The julep held out far into the night, and my memory never saw him afterward otherwise than as bending over it, with his straw, with an attempted gravity (after some anecdote, involving some wonderfully droll and delicate observation of character), and then, as his eyes caught mine, melting into that captivating laugh of his which was the brightest and best I have ever heard.

Dear Sir, with many thanks, faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Pease.]

BALTIMORE, _9th February, 1868._

DEAR MADAM,

Mr. Dolby has _not_ come between us, and I have received your letter. My answer to it is, unfortunately, brief. I am not coming to Cleveland or near it. Every evening on which I can possibly read during the remainder of my stay in the States is arranged for, and the fates divide me from "the big woman with two smaller ones in tow." So I send her my love (to be shared in by the two smaller ones, if she approve--but not otherwise), and seriously a.s.sure her that her pleasant letter has been most welcome.

Dear madam, faithfully your friend.

[Sidenote: Mr. James T. Fields.]

ABOARD THE "RUSSIA," BOUND FOR LIVERPOOL, _Sunday, 26th April, 1868._

MY DEAR FIELDS,

In order that you may have the earliest intelligence of me, I begin this note to-day in my small cabin, purposing (if it should prove practicable) to post it at Queenstown for the return steamer.

We are already past the Banks of Newfoundland, although our course was seventy miles to the south, with the view of avoiding ice seen by Judkins in the _Scotia_ on his pa.s.sage out to New York. The _Russia_ is a magnificent ship, and has dashed along bravely. We had made more than thirteen hundred and odd miles at noon to-day. The wind, after being a little capricious, rather threatens at the present time to turn against us, but our run is already eighty miles ahead of the _Russia's_ last run in this direction--a very fast one. . . . To all whom it may concern, report the _Russia_ in the highest terms. She rolls more easily than the other Cunard Screws, is kept in perfect order, and is most carefully looked after in all departments. We have had nothing approaching to heavy weather, still one can speak to the trim of the ship. Her captain, a gentleman; bright, polite, good-natured, and vigilant. . . .

As to me, I am greatly better, I hope. I have got on my right boot to-day for the first time; the "true American" seems to be turning faithless at last; and I made a Gad's Hill breakfast this morning, as a further advance on having otherwise eaten and drunk all day ever since Wednesday.

You will see Anthony Trollope, I daresay. What was my amazement to see him with these eyes come aboard in the mail tender just before we started! He had come out in the _Scotia_ just in time to dash off again in said tender to shake hands with me, knowing me to be aboard here. It was most heartily done. He is on a special mission of convention with the United States post-office.

We have been picturing your movements, and have duly checked off your journey home, and have talked about you continually. But I have thought about you both, even much, much more. You will never know how I love you both; or what you have been to me in America, and will always be to me everywhere; or how fervently I thank you.

All the working of the ship seems to be done on my forehead. It is scrubbed and holystoned (my head--not the deck) at three every morning.

It is sc.r.a.ped and swabbed all day. Eight pairs of heavy boots are now clattering on it, getting the ship under sail again. Legions of ropes'-ends are flopped upon it as I write, and I must leave off with Dolby's love.

_Thursday, 30th._

Soon after I left off as above we had a gale of wind which blew all night. For a few hours on the evening side of midnight there was no getting from this cabin of mine to the saloon, or _vice versa_, so heavily did the sea break over the decks. The ship, however, made nothing of it, and we were all right again by Monday afternoon. Except for a few hours yesterday (when we had a very light head-wind), the weather has been constantly favourable, and we are now bowling away at a great rate, with a fresh breeze filling all our sails. We expect to be at Queenstown between midnight and three in the morning.

I hope, my dear Fields, you may find this legible, but I rather doubt it, for there is motion enough on the ship to render writing to a landsman, however accustomed to pen and ink, rather a difficult achievement. Besides which, I slide away gracefully from the paper, whenever I want to be particularly expressive. . . .

----, sitting opposite to me at breakfast, always has the following items: A large dish of porridge into which he casts slices of b.u.t.ter and a quant.i.ty of sugar. Two cups of tea. A steak. Irish stew. Chutnee and marmalade. Another deputation of two has solicited a reading to-night.

Ill.u.s.trious novelist has unconditionally and absolutely declined. More love, and more to that, from your ever affectionate friend.

[Sidenote: The same.]

"ALL THE YEAR ROUND" OFFICE, _May 15th, 1868._

MY DEAR FIELDS,

I have found it so extremely difficult to write about America (though never so briefly) without appearing to blow trumpets on the one hand, or to be inconsistent with my avowed determination _not_ to write about it on the other, that I have taken the simple course enclosed. The number will be published on the 6th of June. It appears to me to be the most modest and manly course, and to derive some graceful significance from its t.i.tle.

Thank my dear Mrs. Fields for me for her delightful letter received on the 16th. I will write to her very soon, and tell her about the dogs. I would write by this post, but that Wills' absence (in Suss.e.x, and getting no better there as yet) so overwhelms me with business that I can scarcely get through it.

Miss me? Ah, my dear fellow, but how do I miss _you_! We talk about you both at Gad's Hill every day of our lives. And I never see the place looking very pretty indeed, or hear the birds sing all day long and the nightingales all night, without restlessly wishing that you were both there.

With best love, and truest and most enduring regard, ever, my dear Fields,

Your most affectionate.

. . . I hope you will receive by Sat.u.r.day's Cunard a case containing:

1. A trifling supply of the pen-knibs that suited your hand.

2. A do. of unfailing medicine for c.o.c.kroaches.

3. Mrs. Gamp, for ----.

The case is addressed to you at Bleecker Street, New York. If it should be delayed for the knibs (or nibs) promised to-morrow, and should be too late for the Cunard packet, it will in that case come by the next following Inman steamer.

Everything here looks lovely, and I find it (you will be surprised to hear) really a pretty place! I have seen "No Thoroughfare" twice.

Excellent things in it, but it drags to my thinking. It is, however, a great success in the country, and is now getting up with great force in Paris. Fechter is ill, and was ordered off to Brighton yesterday. Wills is ill too, and banished into Suss.e.x for perfect rest. Otherwise, thank G.o.d, I find everything well and thriving. You and my dear Mrs. Fields are constantly in my mind. Procter greatly better.

[Sidenote: Mr. Fechter.]

OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND,"

_Friday, 22nd May, 1868._

MY DEAR FECHTER,

I have an idea about the bedroom act, which I should certainly have suggested if I had been at our "repet.i.tions" here.[91] I want it done _to the sound of the Waterfall_. I want the sound of the Waterfall louder and softer as the wind rises and falls, to be spoken through--like the music. I want the Waterfall _listened to when spoken of, and not looked out at_. The mystery and gloom of the scene would be greatly helped by this, and it would be new and picturesquely fanciful.

I am very anxious to hear from you how the piece seems to go,[92] and how the artists, who are to act it, seem to understand their parts. Pray tell me, too, when you write, how you found Madame Fechter, and give all our loves to all.

Ever heartily yours.