The tickets being all sold for next week, and no other announcement being yet made, there is nothing new in that way to tell of. Dolby is over at New York, where we are at our wits' end how to keep tickets out of the hands of speculators. Morgan is staying with me; came yesterday to breakfast, and goes home to-morrow. Fields and Mrs. Fields also dined yesterday. She is a very nice woman, with a rare relish for humour and a most contagious laugh. The Bostonians having been duly informed that I wish to be quiet, really leave me as much so as I should be in Manchester or Liverpool. This I cannot expect to last elsewhere; but it is a most welcome relief here, as I have all the readings to get up. The people are perfectly kind and perfectly agreeable. If I stop to look in at a shop-window, a score of passers-by stop; and after I begin to read, I cannot expect in the natural course of things to get off so easily. But I every day take from seven to ten miles in peace.
Communications about readings incessantly come in from all parts of the country. We take no offer whatever, lying by with our plans until after the first series in New York, and designing, if we make a furore there, to travel as little as possible. I fear I shall have to take Canada at the end of the whole tour. They make such strong representations from Montreal and Toronto, and from Nova Scotia—represented by St. John's and Halifax—of the slight it would be to them, if I wound up with the States, that I am shaken.
It is sad to see Longfellow's house (the house in which his wife was burnt) with his young daughters in it, and the shadow of that terrible story. The young undergraduates of Cambridge (he is a professor there) have made a representation to him that they are five hundred strong, and cannot get one ticket. I don't know what is to be done for them; I suppose I must read there somehow. We are all in the clouds until I shall have broken ground in New York, as to where readings will be possible and where impossible.
Agassiz is one of the most natural and jovial of men. I go out a-visiting as little as I can, but still have to dine, and what is worse, sup pretty often. Socially, I am (as I was here before) wonderfully reminded of Edinburgh when I had many friends in it.
Your account and Mamie's of the return journey to London gave me great pleasure. I was delighted with your report of Wilkie, and not surprised by Chappell's coming out gallantly.
My anxiety to get to work is greater than I can express, because time seems to be making no movement towards home until I shall be reading hard. Then I shall begin to count and count and count the upward steps to May.
If ever you should be in a position to advise a traveller going on a sea voyage, remember that there is some mysterious service done to the bilious system when it is shaken, by baked apples. Noticing that they were produced on board the Cuba, every day at lunch and dinner, I thought I would make the experiment of always eating them freely. I am confident that they did wonders, not only at the time, but in stopping the imaginary pitching and rolling after the voyage is over, from which many good amateur sailors suffer. I have hardly had the sensation at all, except in washing of a morning. At that time I still hold on with one knee to the washing-stand, and could swear that it rolls from left to right. The Cuba does not return until Wednesday, the 4th December. You may suppose that every officer on board is coming on Monday, and that Dolby has provided extra stools for them. His work is very hard indeed. Cards are brought to him every minute in the day; his correspondence is immense; and he is jerked off to New York, and I don't know where else, on the shortest notice and the most unreasonable times. Moreover, he has to be at "the bar" every night, and to "liquor up with all creation" in the small hours. He does it all with the greatest good humour, and flies at everybody who waylays the Chief, furiously. We have divided our men into watches, so that one always sits outside the drawing-room door. Dolby knows the whole Cunard line, and as we could not get good English gin, went out in a steamer yesterday and got two cases (twenty-four bottles) out of Cunard officers. Osgood and he were detached together last evening for New York, whence they telegraph every other hour about some new point in this precious sale of tickets. So distracted a telegram arrived at three that I have telegraphed back, "Explain yourselves," and am now waiting for the explanation. I think you know that Osgood is a partner in Ticknor and Fields'.
Tuesday morning.—Dolby has come back from New York, where the prospects seem immense. We sell tickets there next Friday and Saturday, and a tremendous rush is expected.
Mr. Charles Dickens.
Parker House, Boston, U.S., Saturday, Nov. 30th, 1867.