Again from Cremona, (November, 1844,) Dickens writes:—
“You rather entertained the notion once, of coming to see me at Genoa. I shall return straight on the ninth of December, limiting my stay in town to one week. Now, couldn’t you come back with me? The journey that way is very cheap, and I am sure the gratification to you would be high. I am lodged in quite a wonderful place, and would put you in a painted room as big as a church, and much more comfortable. There are pens and ink upon the premises; orange trees, gardens, battledores and shuttlecocks, rousing wood fires for evenings, and a welcome worth having.” * * *
In 1846, again, Mr. Dickens is off to Switzerland, and still would tempt Jerrold in his wake. “I wish,” he writes, “you would seriously consider the expediency and feasibility of coming to Lausanne in the summer or early autumn. It is a wonderful place to see; and what sort of welcome you would find I will say nothing about, for I have vanity enough to believe that you would be willing to feel yourself as much at home in my household as in any man’s.”
Arrived at Lausanne, Mr. Dickens writes that he will be ready for his guest in June. “We are established here,” he says, “in a perfect doll’s house, which could be put bodily into the hall of our Italian palazzo. But it is in the most lovely and delicious situation imaginable, and there is a spare bedroom wherein we could make you as comfortable as need be. Bowers of roses for cigar-smoking, arbours for cool punch-drinking, mountain and Tyrolean countries close at hand, piled-up Alps before the windows, &c., &c., &c.” Then follow business-like directions for the journey.
But it could not be. Jerrold was busy with his paper, and with his magazine, and felt unable to abandon them even for a few weeks. Well, could he reach Paris for Christmas, persisted Mr. Dickens, and spend that merry time with his friend.
Early in 1847 Jerrold thought he did see his way clear at last to make a short visit to Paris, where Dickens was still established. “We are delighted at your intention of coming,” writes the latter, giving the most minute details of the manner in which the journey was to be performed; but even this journey was never accomplished. Once only, after all these promises and invitations—and that for but two or three days—did Douglas Jerrold escape from the cares of London literary life, to meet Mr. Dickens at Ostend, on his return from Italy, and have a few days’ stroll about Belgium.
The following is an extract from a curious and interesting letter addressed by Dickens to Douglas Jerrold on the subject of public hanging, respecting which the latter held conservative opinions:—
‘Devonshire Terrace, November 17, 1849.
“In a letter I have received from G. this morning he quotes a recent letter from you, in which you deprecate the ‘mystery’ of private hanging.
“Will you consider what punishment there is, except death, to which ‘mystery’ does not attach? Will you consider whether all the improvements in prisons and punishments that have been made within the last twenty years have or have not, been all productive of ‘mystery?’ I can remember very well when the silent system was objected to as mysterious, and opposed to the genius of English society. Yet there is no question that it has been a great benefit. The prison vans are mysterious vehicles; but surely they are better than the old system of marching prisoners through the streets chained to a long chain, like the galley slaves in Don Quixote. Is there no mystery about transportation, and our manner of sending men away to Norfolk Island, or elsewhere? None in abandoning the use of a man’s name, and knowing him only by a number? Is not the whole improved and altered system, from the beginning to end, a mystery? I wish I could induce you to feel justified in leaving that word to the platform people, on the strength of your knowledge of what crime was, and of what its punishments were, in the days when there was no mystery connected with these things, and all was as open as Bridewell when Ned Ward went to see the women whipped.”
II.—AS A POET.
There are several among our foremost prose writers in the present century, who, possessing high imagination, and a considerable power of rhythmical expression, have occasionally produced verse of a high though not of the first order. Lord Macaulay will not be remembered either by his prize poems, or by his “Lays of Ancient Rome,” but one who wrote such eloquent prose could hardly fail ignobly when he attempted verse. Thomas Carlyle, in spite of his energetic denunciation of modern poetry as mere dilettantism and trifling, has occasionally courted the muse, and were the original pieces and translations from the German which lie scattered through his earlier writings, collected together, they would by themselves form a volume of no mean value. They have a wild, rugged melody of their own, as have also the occasional verses of Emerson; the latter bear in many respects a remarkable resemblance to those of Blake. The author of Modern Painters might also have gained some reputation as a poet, had he chosen to preserve in a more permanent form his scattered contributions to annuals. Indeed, it would seem that no eloquent writer of prose is altogether devoid of the lyric gift if he chooses to exercise it. The only attempt at poetry by Charles Dickens which is at all known to the general public is the famous song of “The Ivy Green,” in the Pickwick Papers. This exquisite little lyric, with its beautiful refrain, so often wedded to music and so familiar to us all, would alone suffice to give him no mean rank among contemporary writers of verse. But in the Comic Opera of the Village Coquettes, [334] to which we alluded in our Introduction, there were a dozen songs of equal tenderness and melody, though, as the author has never thought fit to reprint the little piece, they are now forgotten.