Note.—In the Introduction to the present volume, p. 42, it is stated that Dickens’s “First Reading” in public was given at Birmingham in the Christmas of 1853. The offer to read on this public occasion was certainly the First which the great novelist made, but before the Christmas had come around he thought proper to give a trial Reading before a much smaller audience, in the quiet little city of Peterborough.—Ed.
It must be sixteen or seventeen years ago—I cannot fix the date exactly, though the affair made a strong impression on me at the time—that I witnessed Charles Dickens’s débût as a public reader. The circumstances surrounding this event were so singular that I am tempted to recall them.
Scene, the City of Peterborough—dreamy and quiet enough then, though now a flourishing railroad terminus—a silent city, with a grand old Norman cathedral, round which the rooks cawed lazily all day, straggling narrow streets of brick-built houses, a large Corn Exchange, a Mechanics’ Institute, and about seven thousand inhabitants. The Mechanics’ Institute brought it all about. That well-meaning but weak-kneed organization was, I need hardly say, in debt. Mechanics’ Institutes always are in debt. That is their chief peculiarity, next to the fact that they never by any chance have any mechanics among their members. Our institution was no exception to the rule. On the contrary, it was a bright and shining example. No mechanics’ institute of its size anywhere around was so deeply in debt; none was more snobbishly exclusive in its membership. We had overrun our resources to such an extent that we could not even pay the rent of the building we occupied, and were in daily danger of being turned out of doors. Lectures on highly improving subjects had been tried, but the proceeds did not pay the printer. Concerts succeeded better, but the committee said they were immoral. We had given two monster tea meetings to pay off the debt, on which occasions all the cake required was supplied gratuitously by the members’ mothers, and all the members and their friends came in by free tickets and ate it up. Henry Vincent delivered us an oration; George Dawson propounded metaphysical sophistries for our intellectual mystification; but with all this we got no better of our troubles—every flounder we made only plunged us deeper into the mud. At last it was resolved to write to our Borough members. This was in the good old days of Whig supremacy; and all the land and all the houses round about us being owned by one great Whig earl, our borough was privileged to return two members to represent the opinions of that unprotected earl in Parliament. A contested election had just come to a close, and the honeyed promises and grateful pledges of our elected candidates were still fresh in our memory. So to our members the committee addressed their tearful entreaties—“deserving institution,”—“valuable agency of self-improvement,”—“pressing pecuniary embarrassments,” and so forth. Member No. 1 sent his compliments and a five pound note. Member No. 2 delayed writing for several days, and then had great pleasure in informing us that the celebrated author, Mr. Charles Dickens, had kindly consented to deliver a public reading on our behalf.
What an excitement it caused in the little city! Mr. Dickens at that time had made no public appearance as a reader. He had occasionally been heard of as giving selections from his works to small coteries of friends or in the private saloon of some distinguished patron of art. But he had nervously shrunk from any public débût, unwilling, so it seemed, to weaken his reputation as a writer by any possible failure as a reader. This diffidence had taken so strong a hold of him that it might never have been overcome but for the insidious persuasions of “our member.” “Here was an opportunity,” he argued, “for testing the matter without risk: an antediluvian country town; an audience of farmers’ sons and daughters, rural shop-keepers, and a few country parsons—if interest could be excited in the stolid minds of such a Bœotian assemblage, the success of the reader would be assured wherever the English tongue was spoken. On the other hand, if failure resulted, none would be the wiser outside this Sleepy-Hollow circle.” The bait took, and Mr. Dickens consented to deliver a public reading in aid of the Peterborough Mechanics’ Institute. He only stipulated that the prices of admission should be such that every mechanic, if he chose, might come to hear him, and named two shillings, a shilling, and sixpence as the limit of charge.
Vain limitation!—a fortnight before the reading every place was taken, and half a guinea and a guinea were the current rates for front seat tickets.
Dickens himself came down and superintended the arrangements, so anxious was he as to the result. At one end of the large Corn Exchange before spoken of he had caused to be erected a tall pulpit of red baize, as much like a Punch and Judy show with the top taken off as anything. This was to be the reader’s rostrum. But, as the tall red pulpit looked lanky and very comical stuck up there alone, two dummy pulpits of similar construction were placed one on each side to bear it company. When the reader mounted into the middle box nothing was visible of him but his head and shoulders. So if it be really true, as was stated afterwards by an indiscreet supernumerary, that Mr. Dickens’s legs shook under him from first to last, the audience knew nothing of it. The whole character of the stage arrangements suggested that Mr. Dickens was sure of his head, but was not quite so sure of his legs.
It was the Christmas Carol that Mr. Dickens read; the night was Christmas Eve. As the clock struck the appointed hour, a red, jovial face, unrelieved by the heavy moustache which the novelist has since assumed, a broad, high forehead, and a perfectly Micawber-like expanse of shirt-collar and front appeared above the red baize box, and a full, sonorous voice rang out the words, “Marley-was-dead-to-begin-with”—then paused, as if to take in the character of the audience. No need of further hesitation. The voice held all spellbound. Its depth of quiet feeling when the ghost of past Christmases led the dreamer through the long-forgotten scenes of his boyhood—its embodiment of burly good nature when old Fezziwig’s calves were twinkling in the dance—its tearful suggestiveness when the spirit of Christmases to come pointed to the nettle-grown, neglected grave of the unloved man—its exquisite pathos by the death-bed of Tiny Tim, dwell yet in memory like a long-known tune. That one night’s reading in the quaint little city, so curiously brought about, so ludicrous almost in its surroundings, committed Mr. Dickens to the career of a public reader; and he has since derived nearly as large an income from his readings as from the copyright of his novels. Only he signally failed to carry out his wish of making his first bow before an uneducated audience. The vote of thanks which closed the proceedings was moved by the senior marquis of Scotland and seconded by the heir of the wealthiest peer in England.
One other incident suggests itself in this connection. Somewhere about this time three notable men stood together in a print-shop in this same city—a singular three-cornered shop, with three fiddles dangling forlorn and dusty from the ceiling, and everything from piano-fortes to hair-brushes comprised in its stock-in-trade. They stood there one whole morning, laughing heartily at the perplexities of the little shopwoman, who in her nervousness continually transposed the first letters of words, sometimes with very comical effect. Thus, instead of saying, “Put the bottle in the cupboard,” she would remark, “Put the cottle in the bupboard.” The laughing trio were Dickens, Albert Smith, and Layard the traveller, now our minister to the court of Madrid. I strongly suspect that the eccentricity of the medical student in Albert Smith’s Adventures of Mr. Ledbury—the student who invites his friends to “poke a smipe” when he means them to “smoke a pipe”—was born on that occasion, and that Charles Dickens was robbed by his friend of some thunder which he intended to use himself.
But to return to the “Readings.” One glance at the platform is sufficient to convince the audience that Mr. Dickens thoroughly appreciates “stage effect.” A large screen of maroon cloth occupies the background; before it stands a light table of peculiar design, on the inner left-hand corner of which there peers forth a miniature desk, large enough to accommodate the reader’s book. On the right hand of the table, and somewhat below its level, is a shelf, where repose a carafe of water and a tumbler. This is covered with velvet, somewhat lighter in colour than the screen. No drapery conceals the table, whereby it is plain that Mr. Dickens believes in expression of figure as well as of face, and does not throw away everything but his head and arms, according to the ordinary habit of ordinary speakers. About twelve feet above the platform, and somewhat in advance of the table, is a horizontal row of gas-jets with a tin reflector; and midway in both perpendicular gas-pipes there is one powerful jet with glass chimney. By this admirable arrangement, Mr. Dickens stands against a dark background in a frame of gaslight, which throws out his face and figure to the best advantage.
He comes! A lithe, energetic man, of medium stature, crosses the platform at the brisk gait of five miles an hour, and takes his position behind the table. This is Charles Dickens, whose name has been a household word for thirty years in England. He has a broad, full brow, a fine head,—which, for a man of such power and energy, is singularly small at the base of the brain,—and a cleanly cut profile.