Besides the graver work which Mr. Wilkie Collins and himself were busy with, in these months, and by which Household Words mainly was to profit, some lighter matters occupied the leisure of both. There were to be, at Christmas, theatricals again at Tavistock House; in which the children, with the help of their father and other friends, were to follow up the success of the Lighthouse by again acquitting themselves as grown-up actors; and Mr. Collins was busy preparing for them a new drama to be called The Frozen Deep, while Dickens was sketching a farce for Mr. Lemon to fill in. But this pleasant employment had sudden and sad interruption.
An epidemic broke out in the town, affecting the children of several families known to Dickens, among them that of his friend Mr. Gilbert A'Becket; who, upon arriving from Paris, and finding a favourite little son stricken dangerously, sank himself under an illness from which he had been suffering, and died two days after the boy. "He had for three days shown symptoms of rallying, and we had some hope of his recovery; but he sank and died, and never even knew that the child had gone before him. A sad, sad story." Dickens meanwhile had sent his own children home with his wife, and the rest soon followed. Poor M. Beaucourt was inconsolable. "The desolation of the place is wretched. When Mamey and Katey went, Beaucourt came in and wept. He really is almost broken-hearted about it. He had planted all manner of flowers for next month, and has thrown down the spade and left off weeding the garden, so that it looks something like a dreary bird-cage with all manner of grasses and chickweeds sticking through the bars and lying in the sand. 'Such a loss too,' he says, 'for Monsieur Dickens!' Then he looks in at the kitchen window (which seems to be his only relief), and sighs himself up the hill home."[195]
The interval of residence in Paris between these two last visits to Boulogne is now to be described.
CHAPTER V.
RESIDENCE IN PARIS.
1855-1856.
Actors and Dramas—Criticism of Frédéric Lemaitre—Increase of Celebrity—French Translation of Dickens—Conventionalities of the Théâtre Français—Paradise Lost at the Ambigu—Profane Nonsense—French As You Like It—Story of a French Drama—Auber and Queen Victoria—Robinson Crusoe—A Compliment and its Result—Madame Scribe—Ristori—Viardot in Orphée—Madame Dudevant at the Viardots—Banquet at Girardin's—National and Personal Compliment—Second Banquet—The Bourse and its Victims—Entry of Troops from Crimea—Paris illuminated—Streets on New Year's Day—Results of Imperial Improvement—English and French Art—French and English Nature—Sitting to Ary Scheffer—A Reading in Scheffer's Studio—Scheffer's Opinion of the Likeness—A Duchess murdered—A Chance Encounter, and what came of it.
In Paris Dickens's life was passed among artists, and in the exercise of his own art. His associates were writers, painters, actors, or musicians, and when he wanted relief from any strain of work he found it at the theatre. The years since his last residence in the great city had made him better known, and the increased attentions pleased him. He had to help in preparing for a translation of his books into French; and this, with continued labour at the story he had in hand, occupied him as long as he remained. It will be all best told by extracts from his letters; in which the people he met, the theatres he visited, and the incidents, public or private, that seemed to him worthy of mention, reappear with the old force and liveliness.