[290] In a volume called Home and Abroad, by Mr. David Macrae, is printed a correspondence with Dickens on matters alluded to in the text, held in 1861, which will be found to confirm all that is here said.
[291] This letter is facsimile'd in A Christmas Memorial of Charles Dickens by A. B. Hume (1870), containing an Ode to his Memory written with feeling and spirit.
[292] I may quote here from a letter (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 5th Sept. 1858) sent me by the editor of the Northern Express. "The view you take of the literary character in the abstract, or of what it might and ought to be, expresses what I have striven for all through my literary life—never to allow it to be patronized, or tolerated, or treated like a good or a bad child. I am always animated by the hope of leaving it a little better understood by the thoughtless than I found it."—To James B. Manson, Esq.
[293] Henry Ryder-Taylor, Esq. Ph.D. 8th Sept. 1868.
[294] By way of instance I subjoin an amusing insertion made by him in an otherwise indifferently written paper descriptive of the typical Englishman on the foreign stage, which gives in more comic detail experiences of his own already partly submitted to the reader ([ii. 127]). "In a pretty piece at the Gymnase in Paris, where the prime minister of England unfortunately ruined himself by speculating in railway shares, a thorough-going English servant appeared under that thorough-going English name Tom Bob—the honest fellow having been christened Tom, and born the lawful son of Mr. and Mrs. Bob. In an Italian adaptation of Dumas' preposterous play of Kean, which we once saw at the great theatre of Genoa, the curtain rose upon that celebrated tragedian, drunk and fast asleep in a chair, attired in a dark blue blouse fastened round the waist with a broad belt and a most prodigious buckle, and wearing a dark red hat of the sugar-loaf shape, nearly three feet high. He bore in his hand a champagne-bottle, with the label Rhum, in large capital letters, carefully turned towards the audience; and two or three dozen of the same popular liquor, which we are nationally accustomed to drink neat as imported, by the half gallon, ornamented the floor of the apartment. Every frequenter of the Coal Hole tavern in the Strand, on that occasion, wore a sword and a beard. Every English lady, presented on the stage in Italy, wears a green veil; and almost every such specimen of our fair countrywomen carries a bright red reticule, made in the form of a monstrous heart. We do not remember to have ever seen an Englishman on the Italian stage, or in the Italian circus, without a stomach like Daniel Lambert, an immense shirt-frill, and a bunch of watch-seals each several times larger than his watch, though the watch itself was an impossible engine. And we have rarely beheld this mimic Englishman, without seeing present, then and there, a score of real Englishmen sufficiently characteristic and unlike the rest of the audience, to whom he bore no shadow of resemblance." These views as to English people and society, of which Count d'Orsay used always to say that an average Frenchman knew about as much as he knew of the inhabitants of the moon, may receive amusing addition from one of Dickens's letters during his last visit to France; which enclosed a cleverly written Paris journal containing essays on English manners. In one of these the writer remarked that he had heard of the venality of English politicians, but could not have supposed it to be so shameless as it is, for, when he went to the House of Commons, he heard them call out "Places! Places!" "Give us Places!" when the Minister entered.
[295] The letter is addressed to Miss Harriet Parr, whose book called Gilbert Massenger is the tale referred to.
[296] See the introductory memoir from his pen now prefixed to every edition of the popular and delightful Legends and Lyrics.
[297] On this remonstrance and Dickens's reply the Times had a leading article of which the closing sentences find fitting place in his biography. "If there be anything in Lord Russell's theory that Life Peerages are wanted specially to represent those forms of national eminence which cannot otherwise find fitting representation, it might be urged, for the reasons we have before mentioned, that a Life Peerage is due to the most truly national representative of one important department of modern English literature. Something may no doubt be said in favour of this view, but we are inclined to doubt if Mr. Dickens himself would gain anything by a Life Peerage. Mr. Dickens is pre-eminently a writer of the people and for the people. To our thinking, he is far better suited for the part of the 'Great Commoner' of English fiction than for even a Life Peerage. To turn Charles Dickens into Lord Dickens would be much the same mistake in literature that it was in politics to turn William Pitt into Lord Chatham."
[298] One of the many repetitions of the same opinion in his letters may be given. "Lord John's note" (September 1853) "confirms me in an old impression that he is worth a score of official men; and has more generosity in his little finger than a Government usually has in its whole corporation." In another of his public allusions, Dickens described him as a statesman of whom opponents and friends alike felt sure that he would rise to the level of every occasion, however exalted; and compared him to the seal of Solomon in the old Arabian story inclosing in a not very large casket the soul of a giant.
[299] In a memoir by Dr. Shelton McKenzie which has had circulation in America, there is given the following statement, taken doubtless from publications at the time, of which it will be strictly accurate to say, that, excepting the part of its closing averment which describes Dickens sending a copy of his works to her Majesty by her own desire, there is in it not a single word of truth. "Early in 1870 the Queen presented a copy of her book upon the Highlands to Mr. Dickens, with the modest autographic inscription, 'from the humblest to the most distinguished author of England.' This was meant to be complimentary, and was accepted as such by Mr. Dickens, who acknowledged it in a manly, courteous letter. Soon after, Queen Victoria wrote to him, requesting that he would do her the favour of paying her a visit at Windsor. He accepted, and passed a day, very pleasantly, in his Sovereign's society. It is said that they were mutually pleased, that Mr. Dickens caught the royal lady's particular humour, that they chatted together in a very friendly manner, that the Queen was never tired of asking questions about certain characters in his books, that they had almost a tête-à-tête luncheon, and that, ere he departed, the Queen pressed him to accept a baronetcy (a title which descends to the eldest son), and that, on his declining, she said, 'At least, Mr. Dickens, let me have the gratification of making you one of my Privy Council.' This, which gives the personal title of 'Right Honourable,' he also declined—nor, indeed, did Charles Dickens require a title to give him celebrity. The Queen and the author parted, well pleased with each other. The newspapers reported that a peerage had been offered and declined—but even newspapers are not invariably correct. Mr. Dickens presented his Royal Mistress with a handsome set of all his works, and, on the very morning of his death, a letter reached Gad's Hill, written by Mr. Arthur Helps, by her desire, acknowledging the present, and describing the exact position the books occupied at Balmoral—so placed that she could see them before her when occupying the usual seat in her sitting-room. When this letter arrived, Mr. Dickens was still alive, but wholly unconscious. What to him, at that time, was the courtesy of an earthly sovereign?" I repeat that the only morsel of truth in all this rigmarole is that the books were sent by Dickens, and acknowledged by Mr. Helps at the Queen's desire. The letter did not arrive on the day of his death, the 9th of June, but was dated from Balmoral on that day.