Ever affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Rusden.[80]]
_September, 1866._
MY DEAR SIR,
Again I have to thank you very heartily for your kindness in writing to me about my son. The intelligence you send me concerning him is a great relief and satisfaction to my mind, and I cannot separate those feelings from a truly grateful recognition of the advice and a.s.sistance for which he is much beholden to you, or from his strong desire to deserve your good opinion.
Believe me always, my dear sir, Your faithful and truly obliged.
[Sidenote: Anonymous.]
GAD"S HILL, _Thursday, 27th December, 1866._
DEAR MADAM,[81]
You make an absurd, though common mistake, in supposing that any human creature can help you to be an auth.o.r.ess, if you cannot become one in virtue of your own powers. I know nothing about "impenetrable barrier,"
"outsiders," and "charmed circles." I know that anyone who can write what is suitable to the requirements of my own journal--for instance--is a person I am heartily glad to discover, and do not very often find. And I believe this to be no rare case in periodical literature. I cannot undertake to advise you in the abstract, as I number my unknown correspondents by the hundred. But if you offer anything to me for insertion in "All the Year Round," you may be sure that it will be honestly read, and that it will be judged by no test but its own merits and adaptability to those pages.
But I am bound to add that I do not regard successful fiction as a thing to be achieved in "leisure moments."
Faithfully yours.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] The honorary secretary of the St. George Club, Manchester.
[79] Robert Browning, the Poet, a dear and valued friend.
[80] Mr. Rusden was, at this time, Clerk to the House of Parliament, in Melbourne. He was the kindest of friends to the two sons of Charles d.i.c.kens, in Australia, from the time that the elder of the two first went out there. And Charles d.i.c.kens had the most grateful regard for him, and maintained a frequent correspondence with him--as a friend--although they never saw each other.
[81] Anonymous.
1867.
[Sidenote: Hon. Robert Lytton.]
GAD"S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Wednesday, 17th April, 1867._
MY DEAR ROBERT LYTTON,[82]
It would have been really painful to me, if I had seen you and yours at a Reading of mine in right of any other credentials than my own. Your appreciation has given me higher and purer gratification than your modesty can readily believe. When I first entered on this interpretation of myself (then quite strange in the public ear) I was sustained by the hope that I could drop into some hearts, some new expression of the meaning of my books, that would touch them in a new way. To this hour that purpose is so strong in me, and so real are my fictions to myself, that, after hundreds of nights, I come with a feeling of perfect freshness to that little red table, and laugh and cry with my hearers, as if I had never stood there before. You will know from this what a delight it is to be delicately understood, and why your earnest words cannot fail to move me.
We are delighted to be remembered by your charming wife, and I am entrusted with more messages from this house to her, than you would care to give or withhold, so I suppress them myself and absolve you from the difficulty.
Affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Henry W. Phillips.]
GAD"S HILL, _Thursday, 16th April, 1867._
MY DEAR MR. PHILLIPS,[83]
Although I think the scheme has many good points, I have this doubt: Would boys so maintained at any one of our great public schools stand at a decided disadvantage towards boys not so maintained? Foundation Scholars, in many cases, win their way into public schools and so enforce respect and even a.s.sert superiority. In many other cases their patron is a remote and misty person, or Inst.i.tution, sanctioned by Time and custom. But the proposed position would be a very different one for a student to hold, and boys are too often inconsiderate, proud, and cruel. I should like to know whether this point has received consideration from the projectors of the design?
Faithfully yours always.
[Sidenote: Mr. Henry F. Chorley.]
GAD"S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Sunday, June 2nd, 1867._
MY DEAR CHORLEY,
Thank G.o.d I have come triumphantly through the heavy work of the fifty-one readings, and am wonderfully fresh. I grieve to hear of your sad occupation. You know where to find rest, and quiet, and sympathy, when you can change the dreary scene.
I saw poor dear Stanfield (on a hint from his eldest son) in a day"s interval between two expeditions. It was clear that the shadow of the end had fallen on him.
It happened well that I had seen, on a wild day at Tynemouth, a remarkable sea-effect, of which I wrote a description to him, and he had kept it under his pillow. This place is looking very pretty. The freshness and repose of it, after all those thousands of gas-lighted faces, sink into the soul.[84]
[Sidenote: Mr. James T. Fields.]
_September 3rd, 1867._
MY DEAR FIELDS,[85]
Your cheering letter of the 21st of August arrived here this morning. A thousand thanks for it. I begin to think (nautically) that I "head west"ard." You shall hear from me fully and finally as soon as Dolby shall have reported personally.
The other day I received a letter from Mr. ----, of New York (who came over in the winning yacht, and described the voyage in _The Times_), saying he would much like to see me. I made an appointment in London, and observed that when he _did_ see me he was obviously astonished.
While I was sensible that the magnificence of my appearance would fully account for his being overcome, I nevertheless angled for the cause of his surprise. He then told me that there was a paragraph going round the papers to the effect that I was "in a critical state of health." I asked him if he was sure it wasn"t "cricketing" state of health. To which he replied, Quite. I then asked him down here to dinner, and he was again staggered by finding me in sporting training; also much amused.
Yesterday"s and to-day"s post bring me this unaccountable paragraph from hosts of uneasy friends, with the enormous and wonderful addition that "eminent surgeons" are sending me to America for "cessation from literary labour"!!! So I have written a quiet line to _The Times_, certifying to my own state of health, and have also begged Dixon to do the like in _The Athenaeum_. I mention the matter to you, in order that you may contradict, from me, if the nonsense should reach America unaccompanied by the truth. But I suppose that _The New York Herald_ will probably have got the letter from Mr. ---- aforesaid. . . .
Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins are here; and the joke of the time is to feel my pulse when I appear at table, and also to inveigle innocent messengers to come over to the summer-house, where I write (the place is quite changed since you were here, and a tunnel under the highroad connects this shrubbery with the front garden), to ask, with their compliments, how I find myself _now_.
If I come to America this next November, even you can hardly imagine with what interest I shall try Copperfield on an American audience, or, if they give me their heart, how freely and fully I shall give them mine. We will ask Dolby then whether he ever heard it before.
I cannot thank you enough for your invaluable help to Dolby. He writes that at every turn and moment the sense and knowledge and tact of Mr.
Osgood are inestimable to him.