He had to leave the room before the proceedings were over. On the following Monday he read to his last American audience, telling them at the close that he hoped often to recall them, equally by his winter fire and in the green summer weather, and never as a mere public audience but as a host of personal friends. He sailed two days later in the "Russia," and reached England in the first week of May 1868.
CHAPTER XVII.
LAST READINGS.
1868-1870.
At Home—Project for Last Readings—What the Readings did and undid—Profit from all the Readings—Noticeable Changes—Proposed Reading from Oliver Twist—Parting from his Youngest Son—Death of his Brother Frederick—Old Friends—Sikes and Nancy Reading—Reading stopped—Mr. Syme's Opinion of the Lameness—Emerson Tennent's Funeral—Public Dinner in Liverpool—His Description of his Illness—Brought to Town—Sir Thomas Watson's Note of the Case—Close of Career as Public Reader.
Favourable weather helped him pleasantly home. He had profited greatly by the sea voyage, perhaps greatly more by its repose; and on the 25th of May he described himself to his Boston friends as brown beyond belief, and causing the greatest disappointment in all quarters by looking so well. "My doctor was quite broken down in spirits on seeing me for the first time last Saturday. Good Lord! seven years younger! said the doctor, recoiling." That he gave all the credit to "those fine days at sea," and none to the rest from such labours as he had passed through, the close of the letter too sadly showed. "We are already settling—think of this!—the details of my farewell course of readings."
Even on his way out to America that enterprise was in hand. From Halifax he had written to me. "I told the Chappells that when I got back to England, I would have a series of farewell readings in town and country; and then read No More. They at once offer in writing to pay all expenses whatever, to pay the ten per cent. for management, and to pay me, for a series of 75, six thousand pounds." The terms were raised and settled before the first Boston readings closed. The number was to be a hundred; and the payment, over and above expenses and per centage, eight thousand pounds. Such a temptation undoubtedly was great; and though it was a fatal mistake which Dickens committed in yielding to it, it was not an ignoble one. He did it under no excitement from the American gains, of which he knew nothing when he pledged himself to the enterprise. No man could care essentially less for mere money than he did. But the necessary provision for many sons was a constant anxiety; he was proud of what the Readings had done to abridge this care; and the very strain of them under which it seems certain that his health had first given way, and which he always steadily refused to connect especially with them, had also broken the old confidence of being at all times available for his higher pursuit. What affected his health only he would not regard as part of the question either way. That was to be borne as the lot more or less of all men; and the more thorough he could make his feeling of independence, and of ability to rest, by what was now in hand, the better his final chances of a perfect recovery would be. That was the spirit in which he entered on this last engagement. It was an opportunity offered for making a particular work really complete before he should abandon it for ever. Something of it will not be indiscernible even in the summary of his past acquisitions, which with a pardonable exultation he now sent me.
"We had great difficulty in getting our American accounts squared to the point of ascertaining what Dolby's commission amounted to in English money. After all, we were obliged to call in the aid of a money-changer, to determine what he should pay as his share of the average loss of conversion into gold. With this deduction made, I think his commission (I have not the figures at hand) was £2,888; Ticknor and Fields had a commission of £1,000, besides 5 per cent. on all Boston receipts. The expenses in America to the day of our sailing were 38,948 dollars;—roughly 39,000 dollars, or £13,000. The preliminary expenses were £614. The average price of gold was nearly 40 per cent., and yet my profit was within a hundred or so of £20,000. Supposing me to have got through the present engagement in good health, I shall have made by the Readings, in two years, £33,000: that is to say, £13,000 received from the Chappells, and £20,000 from America. What I had made by them before, I could only ascertain by a long examination of Coutts's books. I should say, certainly not less than £10,000: for I remember that I made half that money in the first town and country campaign with poor Arthur Smith. These figures are of course between ourselves; but don't you think them rather remarkable? The Chappell bargain began with £50 a night and everything paid; then became £60; and now rises to £80."