“‘It is always,’ said the Frenchman, ‘possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.’
“‘Sir,’ said I—you may imagine my condition and dismal sense of my own absurdity by this time—‘that is true.’
“He then took an immense pinch of snuff, wiped the dust off his umbrella, led me to an arch commanding a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, and pointed deep into the earth from which I had mounted.
“‘Below there, near the lamp, one finds an Englishman, with a servant with a wooden leg. It is always possible that he is the Signor Lootheere.’
“I had been asked at six, and it was now getting on for seven. I went down again in a state of perspiration and misery not to be described, and without the faintest hope of finding the place. But as I was going down to the lamp, I saw the strangest staircase up a dark corner, with a man in a white waistcoat (evidently hired) standing on the top of it fuming. I dashed in at a venture, found it was the place, made the most of the whole story, and was indescribably popular.”
“Indescribably popular” Dickens was almost every place he went. And in 1858 there came to him increased popularity by reason of a new venture. In this year he began his public readings from his own works, which brought him in immense sums of money. Through England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States he journeyed, reading, as only he could read, scenes humorous and pathetic from his great novels, and everywhere the effect was the same.
Descriptive of an evening at Edinburgh, he wrote: “Such a pouring of hundreds into a place already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, such a rending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humor on the whole!... I read with the platform crammed with people. I got them to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau or gigantic picnic; one pretty girl in full dress hang on her side all night, holding on to one of the legs of my table. And yet from the moment I began to the moment of my leaving off, they never missed a point, and they ended with a burst of cheers.”
Meanwhile Dickens’s domestic life had not been happy. He and his wife were not entirely congenial in temper, and the incompatibility increased with the years, until in 1858 they agreed to live apart. Most of the children remained with their father, although they were given perfect freedom to visit their mother.
Among Dickens’s later novels are the Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, which is one of his very best books, and Our Mutual Friend, which, while as a story it has many faults, yet abounds with the humor and fancy which are characteristic of Dickens. In October, 1869, was begun Edwin Drood, which was published like most of its predecessors, as a serial. Six numbers appeared, and there the story closed; for on June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens died, after an illness of but one day, during all of which he was unconscious.
His family desired to have him buried near his home, the Gad’s Hill which he had admired from his childhood and had purchased in his manhood; but the general wish was that he should be laid in Westminster Abbey, and to this wish his family felt that it would be wrong to object. For days there were crowds of mourners about the grave, shedding tears, scattering flowers, testifying to the depth of affection they had felt for the man who had given them so many happy hours.