Petronia Jones!
Olympia Jones?
Tavistock House, December 1st, 1856.
The moment the first bill is printed for the first night of the new play I told you of, I send it to you, in the hope that you will grace it with your presence. There is not one of the old actors whom you will fail to inspire as no one else can; and I hope you will see a little result of a friendly union of the arts, that you may think worth seeing, and that you can see nowhere else.
We propose repeating it on Thursday, the 8th; Monday, the 12th; and Wednesday, the 14th of January. I do not encumber this note with so many bills, and merely mention those nights in case any one of them should be more convenient to you than the first.
But I shall hope for the first, unless you dash me (N. B.—I put Flora into the current number on purpose that this might catch you softened towards me, and at a disadvantage). If there is hope of your coming, I will have the play clearly copied, and will send it to you to read beforehand. With the most grateful remembrances, and the sincerest good wishes for your health and happiness,
Your faithful and obliged.
Tavistock House, Wednesday, Dec. 3rd, 1856.
The inspector from the fire office—surveyor, by-the-bye, they called him—duly came. Wills described him as not very pleasant in his manners. I derived the impression that he was so exceedingly dry, that if he ever takes fire, he must burn out, and can never otherwise be extinguished.
Next day, I received a letter from the secretary, to say that the said surveyor had reported great additional risk from fire, and that the directors, at their meeting next Tuesday, would settle the extra amount of premium to be paid.
Thereupon I thought the matter was becoming complicated, and wrote a common-sense note to the secretary (which I begged might be read to the directors), saying that I was quite prepared to pay any extra premium, but setting forth the plain state of the case. (I did not say that the Lord Chief Justice, the Chief Baron, and half the Bench were coming; though I felt a temptation to make a joke about burning them all.)
Finally, this morning comes up the secretary to me (yesterday having been the great Tuesday), and says that he is requested by the directors to present their compliments, and to say that they could not think of charging for any additional risk at all; feeling convinced that I would place the gas (which they considered to be the only danger) under the charge of one competent man. I then explained to him how carefully and systematically that was all arranged, and we parted with drums beating and colours flying on both sides.
Tavistock House, Saturday Evening, Dec. 13th, 1856.
We shall be charmed to squeeze Willie's friend in, and it shall be done by some undiscovered power of compression on the second night, Thursday, the 14th. Will you make our compliments to his honour, the Deputy Fiscal, present him with the enclosed bill, and tell him we shall be cordially glad to see him? I hope to entrust him with a special shake of the hand, to be forwarded to our dear boy (if a hoary sage like myself may venture on that expression) by the next mail.
I would have proposed the first night, but that is too full. You may faintly imagine, my venerable friend, the occupation of these also gray hairs, between "Golden Marys," "Little Dorrits," "Household Wordses," four stage-carpenters entirely boarding on the premises, a carpenter's shop erected in the back garden, size always boiling over on all the lower fires, Stanfield perpetually elevated on planks and splashing himself from head to foot, Telbin requiring impossibilities of smart gasmen, and a legion of prowling nondescripts for ever shrinking in and out. Calm amidst the wreck, your aged friend glides away on the "Dorrit" stream, forgetting the uproar for a stretch of hours, refreshes himself with a ten or twelve miles walk, pitches headforemost into foaming rehearsals, placidly emerges for editorial purposes, smokes over buckets of distemper with Mr. Stanfield aforesaid, again calmly floats upon the "Dorrit" waters.
Ever, my dear Macready, most affectionately yours.
Tavistock House, December 15th, 1856.
I am not quite clear about the story; not because it is otherwise than exceedingly pretty, but because I am rather in a difficult position as to stories just now. Besides beginning a long one by Collins with the new year (which will last five or six months), I have, as I always have at this time, a considerable residue of stories written for the Christmas number, not suitable to it, and yet available for the general purposes of "Household Words." This limits my choice for the moment to stories that have some decided specialties (or a great deal of story) in them.
But I will look over the accumulation before you come, and I hope you will never see your little friend again but in print.
You will find us expecting you on the night of the twenty-fourth, and heartily glad to welcome you. The most terrific preparations are in hand for the play on Twelfth Night. There has been a carpenter's shop in the garden for six weeks; a painter's shop in the school-room; a gasfitter's shop all over the basement; a dressmaker's shop at the top of the house; a tailor's shop in my dressing-room. Stanfield has been incessantly on scaffoldings for two months; and your friend has been writing "Little Dorrit," etc. etc., in corners, like the sultan's groom, who was turned upside-down by the genie.
Ever affectionately.
Tavistock House, Christmas Eve, 1856.
I cannot leave your letter unanswered, because I am really anxious that you should understand why I cannot comply with your request.
Scarcely a week passes without my receiving requests from various quarters to sit for likenesses, to be taken by all the processes ever invented. Apart from my having an invincible objection to the multiplication of my countenance in the shop-windows, I have not, between my avocations and my needful recreation, the time to comply with these proposals. At this moment there are three cases out of a vast number, in which I have said: "If I sit at all, it shall be to you first, to you second, and to you third." But I assure you, I consider myself almost as unlikely to go through these three conditional achievements as I am to go to China. Judge when I am likely to get to Mr. Watkins!
I highly esteem and thank you for your sympathy with my writings. I doubt if I have a more genial reader in the world.
PROLOGUE TO "THE LIGHTHOUSE."
(Spoken by Charles Dickens.)
Slow music all the time, unseen speaker, curtain down.
To cast them wreck'd upon the steps of home,
Where solitary men, the long year through—
The wind their music and the brine their view—
Warn mariners to shun the beacon-light;
A story of those rocks is here to-night.
Eddystone lighthouse
Ere he who built it wish'd for the great storm
That shiver'd it to nothing; once again
Behold outgleaming on the angry main!
Within it are three men; to these repair
In our frail bark of Fancy, swift as air!
They are but shadows, as the rower grim
Took none but shadows in his boat with him.
So be ye shades, and, for a little space,
The real world a dream without a trace.
Return is easy. It will have ye back
Too soon to the old beaten dusty track;
For but one hour forget it. Billows rise,
Blow winds, fall rain, be black ye midnight skies;
And you who watch the light, arise! arise!
THE SONG OF THE WRECK.
I.
A ship drove on the land,
A hundred human creatures saved,
Kneeled down upon the sand.
Threescore were drowned, threescore were thrown
Upon the black rocks wild,
And thus among them, left alone,
They found one helpless child.
II.
Stood out from all the rest,
And gently laid the lonely head
Upon his honest breast.
And travelling o'er the desert wide,
It was a solemn joy,
To see them, ever side by side,
The sailor and the boy.
III.
The two were still but one,
Until the strong man drooped the first,
And felt his labours done.
Then to a trusty friend he spake,
"Across the desert wide,
O take this poor boy for my sake!"
And kissed the child and died.
IV.
Through heavy jungle, mire,
These two came later every night
To warm them at the fire.
Until the captain said one day,
"O seaman good and kind,
To save thyself now come away,
And leave the boy behind!"
V.
"O captain, let him rest
Until it sinks, when God's own ways
Shall teach us what is best!"
They watched the whitened ashy heap,
They touched the child in vain;
They did not leave him there asleep,
He never woke again.
This song was sung to the music of "Little Nell," a ballad composed by the late Mr. George Linley, to the words of Miss Charlotte Young, and dedicated to Charles Dickens. He was very fond of it, and his eldest daughter had been in the habit of singing it to him constantly since she was quite a child.
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CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.