The last of the Memoranda, and the last words written by Dickens in the blank paper book containing them, are these. "'Then I'll give up snuff.' Brobity.—An alarming sacrifice. Mr. Brobity's snuff-box. The Pawnbroker's account of it?" What was proposed by this must be left to conjecture; but "Brobity" is the name of one of the people in his unfinished story, and the suggestion may have been meant for some incident in it. If so, it is the only passage in the volume which can be in any way connected with the piece of writing on which he was last engaged. Some names were taken for it from the lists, but there is otherwise nothing to recall Edwin Drood.
CHAPTER XIII.
THIRD SERIES OF READINGS.
1864-1867.
Death of Thackeray—Dickens on Thackeray—Mother's Death—Death of his Second Son—Our Mutual Friend—Revising a Play—Sorrowful New Year—Lameness—Fatal Anniversary—New Readings undertaken—Offer of Messrs. Chappell—Relieved from Management—Greater Fatigues involved—A Memorable Evening—Mrs. Carlyle—Offer for more Readings—Result of the Last—Grave Warnings—At Liverpool—At Manchester—At Birmingham—In Scotland—Exertion and its Result—An Old Malady—Audiences at Newcastle—Scene at Tynemouth—In Dublin—At Cambridge—Close of the Third Series—Desire in America to hear Dickens read—Sends Agent to America—Warning unheeded—For and against reading in America—Decision to go—Departure.
The sudden death of Thackeray on the Christmas eve of 1863 was a painful shock to Dickens. It would not become me to speak, when he has himself spoken, of his relations with so great a writer and so old a friend.
"I saw him first, nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw him last,[253] shortly before Christmas, at the Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three days . . . and that he had it in his mind to try a new remedy which he laughingly described. He was cheerful, and looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died. The long interval between these two periods is marked in my remembrance of him by many occasions when he was extremely humorous, when he was irresistibly extravagant, when he was softened and serious, when he was charming with children. . . . No one can be surer than I, of the greatness and goodness of his heart. . . . In no place should I take it upon myself at this time to discourse of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his subtle acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of his delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of his mastery over the English language. . . . But before me lies all that he had written of his latest story . . . and the pain I have felt in perusing it has not been deeper than the conviction that he was in the healthiest vigour of his powers when he worked on this last labour. . . . The last words he corrected in print were 'And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss.' God grant that on that Christmas Eve when he laid his head back on his pillow and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness of duty done, and of Christian hope throughout life humbly cherished, may have caused his own heart so to throb, when he passed away to his Redeemer's rest. He was found peacefully lying as above described, composed, undisturbed, and to all appearance asleep."
Other griefs were with Dickens at this time, and close upon them came the too certain evidence that his own health was yielding to the overstrain which had been placed upon it by the occurrences and anxieties of the few preceding years. His mother, whose infirm health had been tending for more than two years to the close, died in September 1863; and on his own birthday in the following February he had tidings of the death of his second son Walter, on the last day of the old year in the officers' hospital at Calcutta; to which he had been sent up invalided from his station, on his way home. He was a lieutenant in the 26th Native Infantry regiment, and had been doing duty with the 42nd Highlanders. In 1853 his father had thus written to the youth's godfather, Walter Savage Landor: "Walter is a very good boy, and comes home from school with honorable commendation and a prize into the bargain. He never gets into trouble, for he is a great favourite with the whole house and one of the most amiable boys in the boy-world. He comes out on birthdays in a blaze of shirt pin." The pin was a present from Landor; to whom three years later, when the boy had obtained his cadetship through the kindness of Miss Coutts, Dickens wrote again. "Walter has done extremely well at school; has brought home a prize in triumph; and will be eligible to 'go up' for his India examination soon after next Easter. Having a direct appointment he will probably be sent out soon after he has passed, and so will fall into that strange life 'up the country' before he well knows he is alive, or what life is—which indeed seems to be rather an advanced state of knowledge." If he had lived another month he would have reached his twenty-third year, and perhaps not then the advanced state of knowledge his father speaks of. But, never forfeiting his claim to those kindly paternal words, he had the goodness and simplicity of boyhood to the last.
Dickens had at this time begun his last story in twenty numbers, and my next chapter will show through what unwonted troubles, in this and the following year, he had to fight his way. What otherwise during its progress chiefly interested him, was the enterprise of Mr. Fechter at the Lyceum, of which he had become the lessee; and Dickens was moved to this quite as much by generous sympathy with the difficulties of such a position to an artist who was not an Englishman, as by genuine admiration of Mr. Fechter's acting. He became his helper in disputes, adviser on literary points, referee in matters of management; and for some years no face was more familiar than the French comedian's at Gadshill or in the office of his journal. But theatres and their affairs are things of a season, and even Dickens's whim and humour will not revive for us any interest in these. No bad example, however, of the difficulties in which a French actor may find himself with English playwrights, will appear in a few amusing words from one of his letters about a piece played at the Princess's before the Lyceum management was taken in hand.