NARRATIVE.

In the beginning of this year, Charles Dickens gave public readings at Reading, Sherborne, and Bradford in Yorkshire, to which reference is made in the first following letters.  Besides this, he was fully occupied in getting up a play for his children, which was acted on the 6th January.  Mr. Planche’s fairy extravaganza of “Fortunio and his Seven Gifted Servants” was the play selected, the parts being filled by all his own children and some of their young friends, and Charles Dickens, Mr. Mark Lemon, and Mr. Wilkie Collins playing with them, the only grown-up members of the company.  In February he made a short trip to Paris with Mr. Wilkie Collins, with an intention of going on to Bordeaux, which was abandoned on account of bad weather.  Out of the success of the children’s play at Tavistock House rose a scheme for a serious play at the same place.  Mr. Collins undertaking to write a melodrama for the purpose, and Mr. Stanfield to paint scenery and drop-scene, Charles Dickens turned one of the rooms of the house into a very perfect little theatre, and in June “The Lighthouse” was acted for three nights, with “Mr. Nightingale’s Diary” and “Animal Magnetism” as farces; the actors being himself and several members of the original amateur company, the actresses, his two daughters and his sister-in-law.  Mr. Stanfield, after entering most heartily into the enterprise, and giving constant time and attention to the painting of his beautiful scenes, was unfortunately ill and unable to attend the first performance.  We give a letter to him, reporting its great success.

In this summer Charles Dickens made a speech at a great meeting at Drury Lane Theatre on the subject of “Administrative Reform,” of which he writes to Mr. Macready.  On this subject of “Administrative Reform,” too, we give two letters to the great Nineveh traveller Mr. Layard (now Sir Austen H. Layard), for whom, as his letters show, he conceived at once the affectionate friendship which went on increasing from this time for the rest of his life.  Mr. Layard also spoke at the Drury Lane meeting.

Charles Dickens had made a promise to give another reading at Birmingham for the funds of the institute which still needed help; and in a letter to Mr. Arthur Ryland, asking him to fix a time for it, he gives the first idea of a selection from “David Copperfield,” which was afterwards one of the most popular of his readings.

He was at all times fond of making excursions for a day ­or two or three days ­to Rochester and its neighbourhood; and after one of these, this year, he writes to Mr. Wills that he has seen a “small freehold” to be sold, opposite the house on which he had fixed his childish affections (and which he calls in this letter the “Hermitage,” its real name being “Gad’s Hill Place").  The latter house was not, at that time, to be had, and he made some approach to negotiations as to the other “little freehold,” which, however, did not come to anything.  Later in the year, however, Mr. Wills, by an accident, discovered that Gad’s Hill Place, the property of Miss Lynn, the well-known authoress, and a constant contributor to “Household Words,” was itself for sale; and a negotiation for its purchase commenced, which was not, however, completed until the following spring.

Later in the year, the performance of “The Lighthouse” was repeated, for a charitable purpose, at the Campden House theatre.

This autumn was passed at Folkestone.  Charles Dickens had decided upon spending the following winter in Paris, and the family proceeded there from Folkestone in October, making a halt at Boulogne; from whence his sister-in-law preceded the party to Paris, to secure lodgings, with the help of Lady Olliffe.  He followed, to make his choice of apartments that had been found, and he writes to his wife and to Mr. Wills, giving a description of the Paris house.  Here he began “Little Dorrit.”  In a letter to Mrs. Watson, from Folkestone, he gives her the name which he had first proposed for this story ­“Nobody’s Fault.”

During his absence from England, Mr. and Mrs. Hogarth occupied Tavistock House, and his eldest son, being now engaged in business, remained with them, coming to Paris only for Christmas.  Three of his boys were at school at Boulogne at this time, and one, Walter Landor, at Wimbledon, studying for an Indian army appointment.

M. de Cerjat.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, January 3rd, 1855.

MY DEAR CERJAT,

When your Christmas letter did not arrive according to custom, I felt as if a bit of Christmas had fallen out and there was no supplying the piece.  However, it was soon supplied by yourself, and the bowl became round and sound again.

The Christmas number of “Household Words,” I suppose, will reach Lausanne about midsummer.  The first ten pages or so ­all under the head of “The First Poor Traveller” ­are written by me, and I hope you will find, in the story of the soldier which they contain, something that may move you a little.  It moved me not a little in the writing, and I believe has touched a vast number of people.  We have sold eighty thousand of it.

I am but newly come home from reading at Reading (where I succeeded poor Talfourd as the president of an institution), and at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, and at Bradford, in Yorkshire.  Wonderful audiences! and the number at the last place three thousand seven hundred.  And yet but for the noise of their laughing and cheering, they “went” like one man.

The absorption of the English mind in the war is, to me, a melancholy thing.  Every other subject of popular solicitude and sympathy goes down before it.  I fear I clearly see that for years to come domestic reforms are shaken to the root; every miserable red-tapist flourishes war over the head of every protester against his humbug; and everything connected with it is pushed to such an unreasonable extent, that, however kind and necessary it may be in itself, it becomes ridiculous.  For all this it is an indubitable fact, I conceive, that Russia MUST BE stopped, and that the future peace of the world renders the war imperative upon us.  The Duke of Newcastle lately addressed a private letter to the newspapers, entreating them to exercise a larger discretion in respect of the letters of “Our Own Correspondents,” against which Lord Raglan protests as giving the Emperor of Russia information for nothing which would cost him (if indeed he could get it at all) fifty or a hundred thousand pounds a year.  The communication has not been attended with much effect, so far as I can see.  In the meantime I do suppose we have the wretchedest Ministry that ever was ­in whom nobody not in office of some sort believes ­yet whom there is nobody to displace.  The strangest result, perhaps, of years of Reformed Parliaments that ever the general sagacity did not foresee.

Let me recommend you, as a brother-reader of high distinction, two comedies, both Goldsmith’s ­“She Stoops to Conquer” and “The Good-natured Man.”  Both are so admirable and so delightfully written that they read wonderfully.  A friend of mine, Forster, who wrote “The Life of Goldsmith,” was very ill a year or so ago, and begged me to read to him one night as he lay in bed, “something of Goldsmith’s.”  I fell upon “She Stoops to Conquer,” and we enjoyed it with that wonderful intensity, that I believe he began to get better in the first scene, and was all right again in the fifth act.

I am charmed by your account of Haldimand, to whom my love.  Tell him Sydney Smith’s daughter has privately printed a life of her father with selections from his letters, which has great merit, and often presents him exactly as he used to be.  I have strongly urged her to publish it, and I think she will do so, about March.

My eldest boy has come home from Germany to learn a business life at Birmingham (I think), first of all.  The whole nine are well and happy.  Ditto, Mrs. Dickens.  Ditto, Georgina.  My two girls are full of interest in yours; and one of mine (as I think I told you when I was at Elysee) is curiously like one of yours in the face.  They are all agog now about a great fairy play, which is to come off here next Monday.  The house is full of spangles, gas, Jew theatrical tailors, and pantomime carpenters.  We all unite in kindest and best loves to dear Mrs. Cerjat and all the blooming daughters.  And I am, with frequent thoughts of you and cordial affection, ever, my dear Cerjat,

Your faithful Friend.

Miss Mary Boyle.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, January 3rd, 1855.

MY DEAR MARY,

This is a word of heartfelt greeting; in exchange for yours, which came to me most pleasantly, and was received with a cordial welcome.  If I had leisure to write a letter, I should write you, at this point, perhaps the very best letter that ever was read; but, being in the agonies of getting up a gorgeous fairy play for the postboys, on Charley’s birthday (besides having the work of half-a-dozen to do as a regular thing), I leave the merits of the wonderful epistle to your lively fancy.

Enclosing a kiss, if you will have the kindness to return it when done with.

I have just been reading my “Christmas Carol” in Yorkshire.  I should have lost my heart to the beautiful young landlady of my hotel (age twenty-nine, dress, black frock and jacket, exquisitely braided) if it had not been safe in your possession.

Many, many happy years to you!  My regards to that obstinate old Wurzell and his dame, when you have them under lock and key again.

Ever affectionately yours.

Mrs. Gaskell.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, January 27th, 1855.

MY DEAR MRS. GASKELL,

Let me congratulate you on the conclusion of your story; not because it is the end of a task to which you had conceived a dislike (for I imagine you to have got the better of that delusion by this time), but because it is the vigorous and powerful accomplishment of an anxious labour.  It seems to me that you have felt the ground thoroughly firm under your feet, and have strided on with a force and purpose that MUST now give you pleasure.

You will not, I hope, allow that not-lucid interval of dissatisfaction with yourself (and me?), which beset you for a minute or two once upon a time, to linger in the shape of any disagreeable association with “Household Words.”  I shall still look forward to the large sides of paper, and shall soon feel disappointed if they don’t begin to reappear.

I thought it best that Wills should write the business letter on the conclusion of the story, as that part of our communications had always previously rested with him.  I trust you found it satisfactory?  I refer to it, not as a matter of mere form, but because I sincerely wish everything between us to be beyond the possibility of misunderstanding or reservation.

Dear Mrs. Gaskell, very faithfully yours.

Mr. Arthur Ryland.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Monday, Jath, 1855.

MY DEAR MR. RYLAND,

I have been in the greatest difficulty ­which I am not yet out of ­to know what to read at Birmingham.  I fear the idea of next month is now impracticable.  Which of two other months do you think would be preferable for your Birmingham objects?  Next May, or next December?

Having already read two Christmas books at Birmingham, I should like to get out of that restriction, and have a swim in the broader waters of one of my long books.  I have been poring over “Copperfield” (which is my favourite), with the idea of getting a reading out of it, to be called by some such name as “Young Housekeeping and Little Emily.”  But there is still the huge difficulty that I constructed the whole with immense pains, and have so woven it up and blended it together, that I cannot yet so separate the parts as to tell the story of David’s married life with Dora, and the story of Mr. Peggotty’s search for his niece, within the time.  This is my object.  If I could possibly bring it to bear, it would make a very attractive reading, with, a strong interest in it, and a certain completeness.

This is exactly the state of the case.  I don’t mind confiding to you, that I never can approach the book with perfect composure (it had such perfect possession of me when I wrote it), and that I no sooner begin to try to get it into this form, than I begin to read it all, and to feel that I cannot disturb it.  I have not been unmindful of the agreement we made at parting, and I have sat staring at the backs of my books for an inspiration.  This project is the only one that I have constantly reverted to, and yet I have made no progress in it!

Faithfully yours always.

Monsieur Regnier.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, LONDON, Saturday Evening, Ferd, 1855.

MY DEAR REGNIER,

I am coming to Paris for a week, with my friend Collins ­son of the English painter who painted our green lanes and our cottage children so beautifully.  Do not tell this to Le Vieux.  Unless I have the ill fortune to stumble against him in the street I shall not make my arrival known to him.

I purpose leaving here on Sunday, the 11th, but I shall stay that night at Boulogne to see two of my little boys who are at school there.  We shall come to Paris on Monday, the 12th, arriving there in the evening.

Now, mon cher, do you think you can, without inconvenience, engage me for a week an apartment ­cheerful, light, and wholesome ­containing a comfortable salon et deux chambres a coucher.  I do not care whether it is an hotel or not, but the reason why I do not write for an apartment to the Hotel Brighton is, that there they expect one to dine at home (I mean in the apartment) generally; whereas, as we are coming to Paris expressly to be always looking about us, we want to dine wherever we like every day.  Consequently, what we want to find is a good apartment, where we can have our breakfast but where we shall never dine.

Can you engage such accommodation for me?  If you can, I shall feel very much obliged to you.  If the apartment should happen to contain a little bed for a servant I might perhaps bring one, but I do not care about that at all.  I want it to be pleasant and gay, and to throw myself en garcon on the festive diableries de Paris.

Mrs. Dickens and her sister send their kindest regards to Madame Regnier and you, in which I heartily join.  All the children send their loves to the two brave boys and the Normandy bonnes.

I shall hope for a short answer from you one day next week.  My dear Regnier,

Always faithfully yours.

Mr. W. H. Wills.

OFFICE OF “HOUSEHOLD WORDS,” Friday, Feth, 1855.

MY DEAR WILLS,

I want to alter the arrangements for to-morrow, and put you to some inconvenience.

When I was at Gravesend t’other day, I saw, at Gad’s Hill ­just opposite to the Hermitage, where Miss Lynn used to live ­a little freehold to be sold.  The spot and the very house are literally “a dream of my childhood,” and I should like to look at it before I go to Paris.  With that purpose I must go to Strood by the North Kent, at a quarter-past ten to-morrow morning, and I want you, strongly booted, to go with me!  (I know the particulars from the agent.)

Can you?  Let me know.  If you can, can you manage so that we can take the proofs with us?  If you can’t, will you bring them to Tavistock House at dinner time to-morrow, half-past five?  Forster will dine with us, but no one else.

I am uncertain of your being in town to-night, but I send John up with this.

Ever faithfully.

Miss Hogarth.

HOTEL MEURICE, PARIS, Friday, Feth, 1855.

MY DEAR GEORGY,

I heard from home last night; but the posts are so delayed and put out by the snow, that they come in at all sorts of times except the right times, and utterly defy all calculation.  Will you tell Catherine with my love, that I will write to her again to-morrow afternoon; I hope she may then receive my letter by Monday morning, and in it I purpose telling her when I may be expected home.  The weather is so severe and the roads are so bad, that the journey to and from Bordeaux seems out of the question.  We have made up our minds to abandon it for the present, and to return about Tuesday night or Wednesday.  Collins continues in a queer state, but is perfectly cheerful under the stoppage of his wine and other afflictions.

We have a beautiful apartment, very elegantly furnished, very thickly carpeted, and as warm as any apartment in Paris can be in such weather.  We are very well waited on and looked after.  We breakfast at ten, read and write till two, and then I go out walking all over Paris, while the invalid sits by the fire or is deposited in a cafe.  We dine at five, in a different restaurant every day, and at seven or so go to the theatre ­sometimes to two theatres, sometimes to three.  We get home about twelve, light the fire, and drink lemonade, to which I add rum.  We go to bed between one and two.  I live in peace, like an elderly gentleman, and regard myself as in a negative state of virtue and respectability.

The theatres are not particularly good, but I have seen Lemaitre act in the most wonderful and astounding manner.  I am afraid we must go to the Opera Comique on Sunday.  To-morrow we dine with Regnier and to-day with the Olliffes.

“La Joie fait Peur,” at the Francais, delighted me.  Exquisitely played and beautifully imagined altogether.  Last night we went to the Porte St. Martin to see a piece (English subject) called “Jane Osborne,” which the characters pronounce “Ja Nosbornnne.”  The seducer was Lord Nottingham.  The comic Englishwoman’s name (she kept lodgings and was a very bad character) was Missees Christmas.  She had begun to get into great difficulties with a gentleman of the name of Meestair Cornhill, when we were obliged to leave, at the end of the first act, by the intolerable stench of the place.  The whole theatre must be standing over some vast cesspool.  It was so alarming that I instantly rushed into a cafe and had brandy.

My ear has gradually become so accustomed to French, that I understand the people at the theatres (for the first time) with perfect ease and satisfaction.  I walked about with Regnier for an hour and a half yesterday, and received many compliments on my angelic manner of speaking the celestial language.  There is a winter Franconi’s now, high up on the Boulevards, just like the round theatre on the Champs Elysees, and as bright and beautiful.  A clown from Astley’s is all in high favour there at present.  He talks slang English (being evidently an idiot), as if he felt a perfect confidence that everybody understands him.  His name is Boswell, and the whole cirque rang last night with cries for Boz Zwilllll!  Boz Zweellll!  Boz Zwuallll! etc. etc. etc. etc.

I must begin to look out for the box of bon-bons for the noble and fascinating Plornish-Maroon.  Give him my love and a thousand kisses.

Loves to Mamey, Katey, Sydney, Harry, and the following stab to Anne ­she forgot to pack me any shaving soap.

Ever, my dear Georgy, most affectionately yours.

P.S. ­Collins sends kind regards.

Mr. W. H. Wills.

HOTEL MEURICE, PARIS, Friday, Feth, 1855.

MY DEAR WILLS,

I received your letter yesterday evening.  I have not yet seen the lists of trains and boats, but propose arranging to return about Tuesday or Wednesday.  In the meantime I am living like Gil Blas and doing nothing.  I am very much obliged to you, indeed, for the trouble you have kindly taken about the little freehold.  It is clear to me that its merits resolve themselves into the view and the spot.  If I had more money these considerations might, with me, overtop all others.  But, as it is, I consider the matter quite disposed of, finally settled in the negative, and to be thought no more about.  I shall not go down and look at it, as I could add nothing to your report.

Paris is finer than ever, and I go wandering about it all day.  We dine at all manner of places, and go to two or three theatres in the evening.  I suppose, as an old farmer said of Scott, I am “makin’ mysel’” all the time; but I seem to be rather a free-and-easy sort of superior vagabond.

I live in continual terror of ­, and am strongly fortified within doors, with a means of retreat into my bedroom always ready.  Up to the present blessed moment, his staggering form has not appeared.

As to yesterday’s post from England, I have not, at the present moment, the slightest idea where it may be.  It is under the snow somewhere, I suppose; but nobody expects it, and Galignani reprints every morning leaders from The Times of about a fortnight or three weeks old.

Collins, who is not very well, sends his “penitent regards,” and says he is enjoying himself as much as a man with the weight of a broken promise on his conscience can.

Ever, my dear Wills, faithfully yours.

Mr. Arthur Ryland.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, February 26th, 1855.

MY DEAR MR. RYLAND,

Charley came home, I assure you, perfectly delighted with his visit to you, and rapturous in his accounts of your great kindness to him.

It appears to me that the first question in reference to my reading (I have not advanced an inch in my “Copperfield” trials by-the-bye) is, whether you think you could devise any plan in connection with the room at Dee’s, which would certainly bring my help in money up to five hundred pounds.  That is what I want.  If it could be done by a subscription for two nights, for instance, I would not be chary of my time and trouble.  But if you cannot see your way clearly to that result in that connection, then I think it would be better to wait until we can have the Town Hall at Christmas.  I have promised to read, about Christmas time, at Sheffield and at Peterboro’.  I could add Birmingham to the list, then, if need were.  But what I want is, to give the institution in all five hundred pounds.  That is my object, and nothing less will satisfy me.

Will you think it over, taking counsel with whomsoever you please, and let me know what conclusion you arrive at.  Only think of me as subservient to the institution.

My dear Mr. Ryland, always very faithfully yours.

Mr. David Roberts‚ R.A.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, February 28th, 1855.

MY DEAR DAVID ROBERTS,

I hope to make it quite plain to you, in a few words, why I think it right to stay away from the Lord Mayor’s dinner to the club.  If I did not feel a kind of rectitude involved in my non-acceptance of his invitation, your note would immediately induce me to change my mind.

Entertaining a strong opinion on the subject of the City Corporation as it stands, and the absurdity of its pretensions in an age perfectly different, in all conceivable respects, from that to which it properly belonged as a reality, I have expressed that opinion on more than one occasion, within a year or so, in “Household Words.”  I do not think it consistent with my respect for myself, or for the art I profess, to blow hot and cold in the same breath; and to laugh at the institution in print, and accept the hospitality of its representative while the ink is staring us all in the face.  There is a great deal too much of this among us, and it does not elevate the earnestness or delicacy of literature.

This is my sole consideration.  Personally I have always met the present Lord Mayor on the most agreeable terms, and I think him an excellent one.  As between you, and me, and him, I cannot have the slightest objection to your telling him the truth.  On a more private occasion, when he was not keeping his state, I should be delighted to interchange any courtesy with that honourable and amiable gentleman, Mr. Moon.

Believe me always cordially yours.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Tuesday Evening, April 3rd, 1855.

DEAR LAYARD,

Since I had the pleasure of seeing you again at Miss Coutts’s (really a greater pleasure to me than I could easily tell you), I have thought a good deal of the duty we all owe you of helping you as much as we can.  Being on very intimate terms with Lemon, the editor of “Punch” (a most affectionate and true-hearted fellow), I mentioned to him in confidence what I had at heart.  You will find yourself the subject of their next large cut, and of some lines in an earnest spirit.  He again suggested the point to Mr. Shirley Brookes, one of their regular corps, who will do what is right in The Illustrated London News and The Weekly Chronicle, papers that go into the hands of large numbers of people.  I have also communicated with Jerrold, whom I trust, and have begged him not to be diverted from the straight path of help to the most useful man in England on all possible occasions.  Forster I will speak to carefully, and I have no doubt it will quicken him a little; not that we have anything to complain of in his direction.  If you ever see any new loophole, cranny, needle’s-eye, through which I can present your case to “Household Words,” I most earnestly entreat you, as your staunch friend and admirer ­you can have no truer ­to indicate it to me at any time or season, and to count upon my being Damascus steel to the core.

All this is nothing; because all these men, and thousands of others, dote upon you.  But I know it would be a comfort to me, in your hard-fighting place, to be assured of such sympathy, and therefore only I write.

You have other recreations for your Sundays in the session, I daresay, than to come here.  But it is generally a day on which I do not go out, and when we dine at half-past five in the easiest way in the world, and smoke in the peacefulest manner.  Perhaps one of these Sundays after Easter you might not be indisposed to begin to dig us out?

And I should like, on a Saturday of your appointing, to get a few of the serviceable men I know ­such as I have mentioned ­about you here.  Will you think of this, too, and suggest a Saturday for our dining together?

I am really ashamed and moved that you should do your part so manfully and be left alone in the conflict.  I felt you to be all you are the first moment I saw you.  I know you will accept my regard and fidelity for what they are worth.

Dear Layard, very heartily yours.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Tuesday, April 10th, 1855.

DEAR LAYARD,

I shall of course observe the strictest silence, at present, in reference to your resolutions.  It will be a most acceptable occupation to me to go over them with you, and I have not a doubt of their producing a strong effect out of doors.

There is nothing in the present time at once so galling and so alarming to me as the alienation of the people from their own public affairs.  I have no difficulty in understanding it.  They have had so little to do with the game through all these years of Parliamentary Reform, that they have sullenly laid down their cards, and taken to looking on.  The players who are left at the table do not see beyond it, conceive that gain and loss and all the interest of the play are in their hands, and will never be wiser until they and the table and the lights and the money are all overturned together.  And I believe the discontent to be so much the worse for smouldering, instead of blazing openly, that it is extremely like the general mind of France before the breaking out of the first Revolution, and is in danger of being turned by any one of a thousand accidents ­a bad harvest ­the last strain too much of aristocratic insolence or incapacity ­a defeat abroad ­a mere chance at home ­with such a devil of a conflagration as never has been beheld since.

Meanwhile, all our English tuft-hunting, toad-eating, and other manifestations of accursed gentility ­to say nothing of the Lord knows who’s defiances of the proven truth before six hundred and fifty men ­ARE expressing themselves every day.  So, every day, the disgusted millions with this unnatural gloom are confirmed and hardened in the very worst of moods.  Finally, round all this is an atmosphere of poverty, hunger, and ignorant desperation, of the mere existence of which perhaps not one man in a thousand of those not actually enveloped in it, through the whole extent of this country, has the least idea.

It seems to me an absolute impossibility to direct the spirit of the people at this pass until it shows itself.  If they begin to bestir themselves in the vigorous national manner; if they would appear in political reunion, array themselves peacefully but in vast numbers against a system that they know to be rotten altogether, make themselves heard like the sea all round this island, I for one should be in such a movement heart and soul, and should think it a duty of the plainest kind to go along with it, and try to guide it by all possible means.  But you can no more help a people who do not help themselves than you can help a man who does not help himself.  And until the people can be got up from the lethargy, which is an awful symptom of the advanced state of their disease, I know of nothing that can be done beyond keeping their wrongs continually before them.

I shall hope to see you soon after you come back.  Your speeches at Aberdeen are most admirable, manful, and earnest.  I would have such speeches at every market-cross, and in every town-hall, and among all sorts and conditions of men; up in the very balloons, and down in the very diving-bells.

Ever, cordially yours.

Mr. John Forster.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Saturday, April 14th, 1855.

MY DEAR FORSTER,

I cannot express to you how very much delighted I am with the “Steele.”  I think it incomparably the best of the series.  The pleasanter humanity of the subject may commend it more to one’s liking, but that again requires a delicate handling, which you have given to it in a most charming manner.  It is surely not possible to approach a man with a finer sympathy, and the assertion of the claims of literature throughout is of the noblest and most gallant kind.

I don’t agree with you about the serious papers in The Spectator, which I think (whether they be Steele’s or Addison’s) are generally as indifferent as the humour of The Spectator is delightful.  And I have always had a notion that Prue understood her husband very well, and held him in consequence, when a fonder woman with less show of caprice must have let him go.  But these are points of opinion.  The paper is masterly, and all I have got to say is, that if ­ had a grain of the honest sentiment with which it overflows, he never would or could have made so great a mistake.

Ever affectionately.

Mr. Mark Lemon.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Thursday, April 26th, 1855.

ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT.

MY DEAR MARK,

I will call for you at two, and go with you to Highgate, by all means.

Leech and I called on Tuesday evening and left our loves.  I have not written to you since, because I thought it best to leave you quiet for a day.  I have no need to tell you, my dear fellow, that my thoughts have been constantly with you, and that I have not forgotten (and never shall forget) who sat up with me one night when a little place in my house was left empty.

It is hard to lose any child, but there are many blessed sources of consolation in the loss of a baby.  There is a beautiful thought in Fielding’s “Journey from this World to the Next,” where the baby he had lost many years before was found by him all radiant and happy, building him a bower in the Elysian Fields where they were to live together when he came.

Ever affectionately yours.

P.S. ­Our kindest loves to Mrs. Lemon.

Mr. Clarkson Stanfield‚ R.A.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Sunday, May 20th, 1855.

MY DEAR STANNY,

I have a little lark in contemplation, if you will help it to fly.

Collins has done a melodrama (a regular old-style melodrama), in which there is a very good notion.  I am going to act it, as an experiment, in the children’s theatre here ­I, Mark, Collins, Egg, and my daughter Mary, the whole dram. pers.; our families and yours the whole audience; for I want to make the stage large and shouldn’t have room for above five-and-twenty spectators.  Now there is only one scene in the piece, and that, my tarry lad, is the inside of a lighthouse.  Will you come and paint it for us one night, and we’ll all turn to and help?  It is a mere wall, of course, but Mark and I have sworn that you must do it.  If you will say yes, I should like to have the tiny flats made, after you have looked at the place, and not before.  On Wednesday in this week I am good for a steak and the play, if you will make your own appointment here; or any day next week except Thursday.  Write me a line in reply.  We mean to burst on an astonished world with the melodrama, without any note of preparation.  So don’t say a syllable to Forster if you should happen to see him.

Ever affectionately yours.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Tuesday Afternoon, Six o’clock, May 22nd, 1855.

MY DEAR STANNY,

Your note came while I was out walking.  Even if I had been at home I could not have managed to dine together to-day, being under a beastly engagement to dine out.  Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I shall expect you here some time to-morrow, and will remain at home.  I only wait your instructions to get the little canvases made.  O, what a pity it is not the outside of the light’us, with the sea a-rowling agin it!  Never mind, we’ll get an effect out of the inside, and there’s a storm and a shipwreck “off;” and the great ambition of my life will be achieved at last, in the wearing of a pair of very coarse petticoat trousers.  So hoorar for the salt sea, mate, and bouse up!

Ever affectionately,
DICKY.

Mr. Mark Lemon.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, May 23rd, 1855.

MY DEAR MARK,

Stanny says he is only sorry it is not the outside of the lighthouse with a raging sea and a transparent light.  He enters into the project with the greatest delight, and I think we shall make a capital thing of it.

It now occurs to me that we may as well do a farce too.  I should like to get in a little part for Katey, and also for Charley, if it were practicable.  What do you think of “Animal Mag.”?  You and I in our old parts; Collins, Jeffrey; Charley, the Markis; Katey and Mary (or Georgina), the two ladies?  Can you think of anything merry that is better?  It ought to be broad, as a relief to the melodrama, unless we could find something funny with a story in it too.  I rather incline myself to “Animal Mag.”  Will you come round and deliver your sentiments?

Ever affectionately.

Mr. Frank Stone‚ A.R.A.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Thursday, May 24th, 1855.

MY DEAR STONE,

Great projects are afoot here for a grown-up play in about three weeks’ time.  Former schoolroom arrangements to be reversed ­large stage and small audience.  Stanfield bent on desperate effects, and all day long with his coat off, up to his eyes in distemper colours.

Will you appear in your celebrated character of Mr. Nightingale?  I want to wind up with that popular farce, we all playing our old parts.

Ever affectionately.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, May 24th, 1855.

MY DEAR STONE,

That’s right!  You will find the words come back very quickly.  Why, of course your people are to come, and if Stanfield don’t astonish ’em, I’m a Dutchman.  O Heaven, if you could hear the ideas he proposes to me, making even my hair stand on end!

Will you get Marcus or some similar bright creature to copy out old Nightingale’s part for you, and then return the book?  This is the prompt-book, the only one I have; and Katey and Georgina (being also in wild excitement) want to write their parts out with all despatch.

Ever affectionately.

Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Thursday, May 24th, 1855.

MY DEAR COLLINS,

I shall expect you to-morrow evening at “Household Words.”  I have written a little ballad for Mary ­“The Story of the Ship’s Carpenter and the Little Boy, in the Shipwreck.”

Let us close up with “Mr. Nightingale’s Diary.”  Will you look whether you have a book of it, or your part.

All other matters and things hereunto belonging when we meet.

Ever faithfully.

Mrs. Trollope.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Tuesday Morning, June 19th, 1855.

MY DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE,

I was out of town on Sunday, or I should have answered your note immediately on its arrival.  I cannot have the pleasure of seeing the famous “medium” to-night, for I have some theatricals at home.  But I fear I shall not in any case be a good subject for the purpose, as I altogether want faith in the thing.

I have not the least belief in the awful unseen world being available for evening parties at so much per night; and, although I should be ready to receive enlightenment from any source, I must say I have very little hope of it from the spirits who express themselves through mediums, as I have never yet observed them to talk anything but nonsense, of which (as Carlyle would say) there is probably enough in these days of ours, and in all days, among mere mortality.

Very faithfully yours.

Mr. Clarkson Stanfield‚ R.A.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Wednesday, June 20th, 1855.

MY DEAR STANNY,

I write a hasty note to let you know that last night was perfectly wonderful!!!

Such an audience!  Such a brilliant success from first to last!  The Queen had taken it into her head in the morning to go to Chatham, and had carried Phipps with her.  He wrote to me asking if it were possible to give him a quarter of an hour.  I got through that time before the overture, and he came without any dinner, so influenced by eager curiosity.  Lemon and I did every conceivable absurdity, I think, in the farce; and they never left off laughing.  At supper I proposed your health, which was drunk with nine times nine, and three cheers over.  We then turned to at Scotch reels (having had no exercise), and danced in the maddest way until five this morning.

It is as much as I can do to guide the pen.

With loves to Mrs. Stanfield and all,
Ever most affectionately yours.

Mr. W. C. Macready.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Saturday, June 30th, 1855.

MY VERY DEAR MACREADY,

I write shortly, after a day’s work at my desk, rather than lose a post in answering your enthusiastic, earnest, and young ­how young, in all the best side of youth ­letter.

To tell you the truth, I confidently expected to hear from you.  I knew that if there were a man in the world who would be interested in, and who would approve of, my giving utterance to whatever was in me at this time, it would be you.  I was as sure of you as of the sun this morning.

The subject is surrounded by difficulties; the Association is sorely in want of able men; and the resistance of all the phalanx, who have an interest in corruption and mismanagement, is the resistance of a struggle against death.  But the great, first, strong necessity is to rouse the people up, to keep them stirring and vigilant, to carry the war dead into the tent of such creatures as ­, and ring into their souls (or what stands for them) that the time for dandy insolence is gone for ever.  It may be necessary to come to that law of primogeniture (I have no love for it), or to come to even greater things; but this is the first service to be done, and unless it is done, there is not a chance.  For this, and to encourage timid people to come in, I went to Drury Lane the other night; and I wish you had been there and had seen and heard the people.

The Association will be proud to have your name and gift.  When we sat down on the stage the other night, and were waiting a minute or two to begin, I said to Morley, the chairman (a thoroughly fine earnest fellow), “this reminds me so of one of my dearest friends, with a melancholy so curious, that I don’t know whether the place feels familiar to me or strange.”  He was full of interest directly, and we went on talking of you until the moment of his getting up to open the business.

They are going to print my speech in a tract-form, and send it all over the country.  I corrected it for the purpose last night.  We are all well.  Charley in the City; all the boys at home for the holidays; three prizes brought home triumphantly (one from the Boulogne waters and one from Wimbledon); I taking dives into a new book, and runs at leap-frog over “Household Words;” and Anne going to be married ­which is the only bad news.

Catherine, Georgie, Mary, Katey, Charley, and all the rest, send multitudes of loves.  Ever, my dearest Macready, with unalterable affection and attachment,

Your faithful Friend.

Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.

3, ALBION VILLAS, FOLKESTONE, Tuesday, July 17th, 1855.

MY DEAR COLLINS,

Walter goes back to school on the 1st of August.  Will you come out of school to this breezy vacation on the same day, or rather this day fortnight, July 31st? for that is the day on which he leaves us, and we begin (here’s a parent!) to be able to be comfortable.  Why a boy of that age should seem to have on at all times a hundred and fifty pair of double-soled boots, and to be always jumping a bottom stair with the whole hundred and fifty, I don’t know.  But the woeful fact is within my daily experience.

We have a very pleasant little house, overlooking the sea, and I think you will like the place.  It rained, in honour of our arrival, with the greatest vigour, yesterday.  I went out after dinner to buy some nails (you know the arrangements that would be then in progress), and I stopped in the rain, about halfway down a steep, crooked street, like a crippled ladder, to look at a little coachmaker’s, where there had just been a sale.  Speculating on the insolvent coachmaker’s business, and what kind of coaches he could possibly have expected to get orders for in Folkestone, I thought, “What would bring together fifty people now, in this little street, at this little rainy minute?” On the instant, a brewer’s van, with two mad horses in it, and the harness dangling about them ­like the trappings of those horses you are acquainted with, who bolted through the starry courts of heaven ­dashed by me, and in that instant, such a crowd as would have accumulated in Fleet Street sprang up magically.  Men fell out of windows, dived out of doors, plunged down courts, precipitated themselves down steps, came down waterspouts, instead of rain, I think, and I never saw so wonderful an instance of the gregarious effect of an excitement.

A man, a woman, and a child had been thrown out on the horses taking fright and the reins breaking.  The child is dead, and the woman very ill but will probably recover, and the man has a hand broken and other mischief done to him.

Let me know what Wigan says.  If he does not take the play, and readily too, I would recommend you not to offer it elsewhere.  You have gained great reputation by it, have done your position a deal of good, and (as I think) stand so well with it, that it is a pity to engender the notion that you care to stand better.

Ever faithfully.

Mr. W. H. Wills.

FOLKESTONE, September 16th, 1855.

MY DEAR WILLS,

Scrooge is delighted to find that Bob Cratchit is enjoying his holiday in such a delightful situation; and he says (with that warmth of nature which has distinguished him since his conversion), “Make the most of it, Bob; make the most of it.”

[I am just getting to work on N of the new book, and am in the hideous state of mind belonging to that condition.]

I have not a word of news.  I am steeped in my story, and rise and fall by turns into enthusiasm and depression.

Ever faithfully.

The Hon. Mrs. Watson.

FOLKESTONE, Sunday, Septh, 1855.

MY DEAR MRS. WATSON,

This will be a short letter, but I hope not unwelcome.  If you knew how often I write to you ­in intention ­I don’t know where you would find room for the correspondence.

Catherine tells me that you want to know the name of my new book.  I cannot bear that you should know it from anyone but me.  It will not be made public until the end of October; the title is: 

“NOBODY’S FAULT.”

Keep it as the apple of your eye ­an expressive form of speech, though I have not the least idea of what it means.

Next, I wish to tell you that I have appointed to read at Peterboro’, on Tuesday, the 18th of December.  I have told the Dean that I cannot accept his hospitality, and that I am going with Mr. Wills to the inn, therefore I shall be absolutely at your disposal, and shall be more than disappointed if you don’t stay with us.  As the time approaches will you let me know your arrangements, and whether Mr. Wills can bespeak any rooms for you in arranging for me?  Georgy will give you our address in Paris as soon as we shall have settled there.  We shall leave here, I think, in rather less than a month from this time.

You know my state of mind as well as I do, indeed, if you don’t know it much better, it is not the state of mind I take it to be.  How I work, how I walk, how I shut myself up, how I roll down hills and climb up cliffs; how the new story is everywhere ­heaving in the sea, flying with the clouds, blowing in the wind; how I settle to nothing, and wonder (in the old way) at my own incomprehensibility.  I am getting on pretty well, have done the first two numbers, and am just now beginning the third; which egotistical announcements I make to you because I know you will be interested in them.

All the house send their kindest loves.  I think of inserting an advertisement in The Times, offering to submit the Plornishghenter to public competition, and to receive fifty thousand pounds if such another boy cannot be found, and to pay five pounds (my fortune) if he can.

Ever, my dear Mrs. Watson, affectionately yours.

Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.

FOLKESTONE, Sunday, Septh, 1855.

MY DEAR COLLINS,

Welcome from the bosom of the deep!  If a hornpipe will be acceptable to you at any time (as a reminder of what the three brothers were always doing), I shall be, as the chairman says at Mr. Evans’s, “happy to oblige.”

I have almost finished N, in which I have relieved my indignant soul with a scarifier.  Sticking at it day after day, I am the incompletest letter-writer imaginable ­seem to have no idea of holding a pen for any other purpose but that book.  My fair Laura has not yet reported concerning Paris, but I should think will have done so before I see you.  And now to that point.  I purpose being in town on Monday, the 8th, when I have promised to dine with Forster.  At the office, between half-past eleven and one that day, I will expect you, unless I hear from you to the contrary.  Of course the H. W. stories are at your disposition.  If you should have completed your idea, we might breakfast together at the G. on the Tuesday morning and discuss it.  Or I shall be in town after ten on the Monday night.  At the office I will tell you the idea of the Christmas number, which will put you in train, I hope, for a story.  I have postponed the shipwreck idea for a year, as it seemed to require more force from me than I could well give it with the weight of a new start upon me.

All here send their kindest remembrances.  We missed you very much, and the Plorn was quite inconsolable.  We slide down Cæsar occasionally.

They launched the boat, the rapid building of which you remember, the other day.  All the fishermen in the place, all the nondescripts, and all the boys pulled at it with ropes from six A.M. to four P.M.  Every now and then the ropes broke, and they all fell down in the shingle.  The obstinate way in which the beastly thing wouldn’t move was so exasperating that I wondered they didn’t shoot it, or burn it.  Whenever it moved an inch they all cheered; whenever it wouldn’t move they all swore.  Finally, when it was quite given over, some one tumbled against it accidentally (as it appeared to me, looking out at my window here), and it instantly shot about a mile into the sea, and they all stood looking at it helplessly.

Kind regards to Pigott, in which all unite.

Ever faithfully.

Mr. W. C. Macready.

FOLKESTONE, Thursday, Octh, 1855.

MY DEAREST MACREADY,

I have been hammering away in that strenuous manner at my book, that I have had leisure for scarcely any letters but such, as I have been obliged to write; having a horrible temptation when I lay down my book-pen to run out on the breezy downs here, tear up the hills, slide down the same, and conduct myself in a frenzied manner, for the relief that only exercise gives me.

Your letter to Miss Coutts in behalf of little Miss Warner I despatched straightway.  She is at present among the Pyrénées, and a letter from her crossed that one of mine in which I enclosed yours, last week.

Pray stick to that dim notion you have of coming to Paris!  How delightful it would be to see your aged countenance and perfectly bald head in that capital!  It will renew your youth, to visit a theatre (previously dining at the Trois Frères) in company with the jocund boy who now addresses you.  Do, do stick to it.

You will be pleased to hear, I know, that Charley has gone into Baring’s house under very auspicious circumstances.  Mr. Bates, of that firm, had done me the kindness to place him at the brokers’ where he was.  And when said Bates wrote to me a fortnight ago to say that an excellent opening had presented itself at Baring’s, he added that the brokers gave Charley “so high a character for ability and zeal” that it would be unfair to receive him as a volunteer, and he must begin at a fifty-pound salary, to which I graciously consented.

As to the suffrage, I have lost hope even in the ballot.  We appear to me to have proved the failure of representative institutions without an educated and advanced people to support them.  What with teaching people to “keep in their stations,” what with bringing up the soul and body of the land to be a good child, or to go to the beershop, to go a-poaching and go to the devil; what with having no such thing as a middle class (for though we are perpetually bragging of it as our safety, it is nothing but a poor fringe on the mantle of the upper); what with flunkyism, toadyism, letting the most contemptible lords come in for all manner of places, reading The Court Circular for the New Testament, I do reluctantly believe that the English people are habitually consenting parties to the miserable imbecility into which we have fallen, and never will help themselves out of it.  Who is to do it, if anybody is, God knows.  But at present we are on the down-hill road to being conquered, and the people WILL be content to bear it, sing “Rule Britannia,” and WILL NOT be saved.

In N of my new book I have been blowing off a little of indignant steam which would otherwise blow me up, and with God’s leave I shall walk in the same all the days of my life; but I have no present political faith or hope ­not a grain.

I am going to read the “Carol” here to-morrow in a long carpenter’s shop, which looks far more alarming as a place to hear in than the Town Hall at Birmingham.

Kindest loves from all to your dear sister, Kate and the darlings.  It is blowing a gale here from the south-west and raining like mad.

Ever most affectionately.

Mrs. Charles Dickens.

2, RUE ST. FLORENTIN, Tuesday, Octh, 1855.

MY DEAREST CATHERINE,

We have had the most awful job to find a place that would in the least suit us, for Paris is perfectly full, and there is nothing to be got at any sane price.  However, we have found two apartments ­an entresol and a first floor, with a kitchen and servants’ room at the top of the house, at N, Avenue des Champs Elysees.

You must be prepared for a regular Continental abode.  There is only one window in each room, but the front apartments all look upon the main street of the Champs Elysees, and the view is delightfully cheerful.  There are also plenty of rooms.  They are not over and above well furnished, but by changing furniture from rooms we don’t care for to rooms we do care for, we shall be able to make them home-like and presentable.  I think the situation itself almost the finest in Paris; and the children will have a window from which to look on the busy life outside.

We could have got a beautiful apartment in the Rue Faubourg St. Honore for a very little more, most elegantly furnished; but the greater part of it was on a courtyard, and it would never have done for the children.  This, that I have taken for six months, is seven hundred francs per month, and twenty more for the concierge.  What you have to expect is a regular French residence, which a little habitation will make pretty and comfortable, with nothing showy in it, but with plenty of rooms, and with that wonderful street in which the Barriere de l’Etoile stands outside.  The amount of rooms is the great thing, and I believe it to be the place best suited for us, at a not unreasonable price in Paris.

Georgina and Lady Olliffe send their loves.  Georgina and I add ours to Mamey, Katey, the Plorn, and Harry.

Ever affectionately.

Mr. W. H. Wills.

49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS,
Friday, Octh, 1855.

MY DEAR WILLS,

After going through unheard-of bedevilments (of which you shall have further particulars as soon as I come right side upwards, which may happen in a day or two), we are at last established here in a series of closets, but a great many of them, with all Paris perpetually passing under the windows.  Letters may have been wandering after me to that home in the Rue de Balzac, which is to be the subject of more lawsuits between the man who let it to me and the man who wouldn’t let me have possession, than any other house that ever was built.  But I have had no letters at all, and have been ­ha, ha! ­a maniac since last Monday.

I will try my hand at that paper for H. W. to-morrow, if I can get a yard of flooring to sit upon; but we have really been in that state of topsy-turvyhood that even that has been an unattainable luxury, and may yet be for eight-and-forty hours or so, for anything I see to the contrary.

Ever faithfully.

49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS,
Sunday Night, Ocst, 1855.

MY DEAR WILLS,

Coming here from a walk this afternoon, I found your letter of yesterday awaiting me.  I send this reply by my brother Alfred, who is here, and who returns home to-morrow.  You should get it at the office early on Tuesday.

I will go to work to-morrow, and will send you, please God, an article by Tuesday’s post, which you will get on Wednesday forenoon.  Look carefully to the proof, as I shall not have time to receive it for correction.  When you arrange about sending your parcels, will you ascertain, and communicate to me, the prices of telegraph messages?  It will save me trouble, having no foreign servant (though French is in that respect a trump), and may be useful on an emergency.

I have two floors here ­entresol and first ­in a doll’s house, but really pretty within, and the view without astounding, as you will say when you come.  The house is on the Exposition side, about half a quarter of a mile above Franconi’s, of course on the other side of the way, and close to the Jardin d’Hiver.  Each room has but one window in it, but we have no fewer than six rooms (besides the back ones) looking on the Champs Elysees, with the wonderful life perpetually flowing up and down.  We have no spare-room, but excellent stowage for the whole family, including a capital dressing-room for me, and a really slap-up kitchen near the stairs.  Damage for the whole, seven hundred francs a month.

But, sir ­but ­when Georgina, the servants, and I were here for the first night (Catherine and the rest being at Boulogne), I heard Georgy restless ­turned out ­asked:  “What’s the matter?” “Oh, it’s dreadfully dirty.  I can’t sleep for the smell of my room.”  Imagine all my stage-managerial energies multiplied at daybreak by a thousand.  Imagine the porter, the porter’s wife, the porter’s wife’s sister, a feeble upholsterer of enormous age from round the corner, and all his workmen (four boys), summoned.  Imagine the partners in the proprietorship of the apartment, and martial little man with Francois-Prussian beard, also summoned.  Imagine your inimitable chief briefly explaining that dirt is not in his way, and that he is driven to madness, and that he devotes himself to no coat and a dirty face, until the apartment is thoroughly purified.  Imagine co-proprietors at first astounded, then urging that “it’s not the custom,” then wavering, then affected, then confiding their utmost private sorrows to the Inimitable, offering new carpets (accepted), embraces (not accepted), and really responding like French bricks.  Sallow, unbrushed, unshorn, awful, stalks the Inimitable through the apartment until last night.  Then all the improvements were concluded, and I do really believe the place to be now worth eight or nine hundred francs per month.  You must picture it as the smallest place you ever saw, but as exquisitely cheerful and vivacious, clean as anything human can be, and with a moving panorama always outside, which is Paris in itself.

You mention a letter from Miss Coutts as to Mrs. Brown’s illness, which you say is “enclosed to Mrs. Charles Dickens.”

It is not enclosed, and I am mad to know where she writes from that I may write to her.  Pray set this right, for her uneasiness will be greatly intensified if she have no word from me.

I thought we were to give L1,700 for the house at Gad’s Hill.  Are we bound to L1,800?  Considering the improvements to be made, it is a little too much, isn’t it?  I have a strong impression that at the utmost we were only to divide the difference, and not to pass L1,750.  You will set me right if I am wrong.  But I don’t think I am.

I write very hastily, with the piano playing and Alfred looking for this.

Ever, my dear Wills, faithfully.

49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSEES,
Wednesday, Octh, 1855.

MY DEAR WILLS,

In the Gad’s Hill matter, I too would like to try the effect of “not budging.” So do not go beyond the L1,700.  Considering what I should have to expend on the one hand, and the low price of stock on the other, I do not feel disposed to go beyond that mark.  They won’t let a purchaser escape for the sake of the L100, I think.  And Austin was strongly of opinion, when I saw him last, that L1,700 was enough.

You cannot think how pleasant it is to me to find myself generally known and liked here.  If I go into a shop to buy anything, and give my card, the officiating priest or priestess brightens up, and says:  “Ah! c’est l’ecrivain célèbre!  Monsieur porte un nom très-distingue.  Mais! je suis honore et intéresse de voir Monsieur Dick-in.  Je lis un des livres de monsieur tous les jours” (in the Moniteur).  And a man who brought some little vases home last night, said:  “On connait bien en France que Monsieur Dick-in prend sa position sur la dignité de la littérature.  Ah! c’est grande chose!  Et ses caractères” (this was to Georgina, while he unpacked) “sont si spirituellement tournees!  Cette Madame Tojare” (Todgers), “ah! qu’elle est drôle et précisément comme une dame que je connais a Calais.”

You cannot have any doubt about this place, if you will only recollect it is the great main road from the Place de la Concorde to the Barriere de l’Etoile.

Ever faithfully.

Monsieur Regnier.

Wednesday, November 21st, 1855.

MY DEAR REGNIER,

In thanking you for the box you kindly sent me the day before yesterday, let me thank you a thousand times for the delight we derived from the representation of your beautiful and admirable piece.  I have hardly ever been so affected and interested in any theatre.  Its construction is in the highest degree excellent, the interest absorbing, and the whole conducted by a masterly hand to a touching and natural conclusion.

Through the whole story from beginning to end, I recognise the true spirit and feeling of an artist, and I most heartily offer you and your fellow-labourer my félicitations on the success you have achieved.  That it will prove a very great and a lasting one, I cannot for a moment doubt.

O my friend!  If I could see an English actress with but one hundredth part of the nature and art of Madame Plessy, I should believe our English theatre to be in a fair way towards its regeneration.  But I have no hope of ever beholding such a phenomenon.  I may as well expect ever to see upon an English stage an accomplished artist, able to write and to embody what he writes, like you.

Faithfully yours ever.

Madame Viardot.

49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSEES, Monday, Derd, 1855.

DEAR MADAME VIARDOT,

Mrs. Dickens tells me that you have only borrowed the first number of “Little Dorrit,” and are going to send it back.  Pray do nothing of the sort, and allow me to have the great pleasure of sending you the succeeding numbers as they reach me.  I have had such delight in your great genius, and have so high an interest in it and admiration of it, that I am proud of the honour of giving you a moment’s intellectual pleasure.

Believe me, very faithfully yours.

The Hon. Mrs. Watson.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, Sunday, Derd, 1855.

MY DEAR MRS. WATSON,

I have a moment in which to redeem my promise, of putting you in possession of my Little Friend N, before the general public.  It is, of course, at the disposal of your circle, but until the month is out, is understood to be a prisoner in the castle.

If I had time to write anything, I should still quite vainly try to tell you what interest and happiness I had in once more seeing you among your dear children.  Let me congratulate you on your Eton boys.  They are so handsome, frank, and genuinely modest, that they charmed me.  A kiss to the little fair-haired darling and the rest; the love of my heart to every stone in the old house.

Enormous effect at Sheffield.  But really not a better audience perceptively than at Peterboro’, for that could hardly be, but they were more enthusiastically demonstrative, and they took the line, “and to Tiny Tim who did NOT die,” with a most prodigious shout and roll of thunder.

Ever, my dear Friend, most faithfully yours.