I hear from London that the general question in society is, what will be blown up next by the Fenians.
With love to Mrs. Fields, Believe me,
Ever affectionately yours,
And hers,
Charles Dickens
Saturday night, January 4.—All in readiness. Mr. Dickens arrived punctually with Mr. Osgood at half-past nine. Hot supper was soon in order and we put ourselves at it. The dear “chief” was in the best of good humor in spite of a cold which hangs about him and stuffs up head and throat, only leaving him for two hours at night when he reads. ’Tis something to be in first-rate mood with such a cold....
The Readings have been so successful in New York he cannot fail to be pleased, and he does not fail to show it. Kate Field, New Year’s Eve, placed a basket of flowers on his table; he had seen her bright eyes and sensitive face, he said. I was glad for Kate, because he wrote her a little note, which pleased her, of course.
Wednesday, January 8, 12 A.M.—I take up the pen again, having bade our guest a most unwilling farewell. Last night he read “Copperfield” and the Trial from “Pickwick.” It was an enormous house, packed in every extremity, receipts in gold about five hundred and ten pounds!! He was pleased, naturally, and read marvellously well even for him. He was somewhat excited and a good deal tired when he returned, and in spite of a light supper and stiff glass of punch, which usually contains soporific qualities, he could not sleep until near morning. He has been in the best of spirits during this visit—when he came downstairs last night to take a cup of coffee before leaving, he turned to J., saying, “The hour has almost come when I to sulphurous and tormenting gas must render up myself!” He has been afflicted with catarrh, which comes and goes and distracts him with a buzzing in his head. It usually leaves him for the two reading hours. This is convenient, but it probably returns with worse force.
Sunday night dinner went off brilliantly. Longfellow, Appleton, Mr. and Mrs. Thaxter came to meet “the chief” and ourselves. Unfortunately there was one empty seat which Rowse, the artist, had promised to fill, but was ill at the last and could not—curiously enough we had asked Osgood, Miss Putnam, and Mr. Gay besides, all kept away by accident when they would have given their eyes to come. In the course of the day he had been to see (with O. W. H.) the ground of the Parkman murder which has lately been so clearly described by Sir Emerson Tennent in “All the Year Round”; in the evening the talk turned naturally enough that way, when, after much surmise with regard to the previous life of the man, Mr. Longfellow looked up and with an assured, clear tone, said: “Now I have a story to tell! A year or two before this event took place Dr. Webster invited a party of gentlemen to a dinner at this house, I believe to meet some foreigner who was interested in science. The doctor himself was a chemist, and after dinner he had a large bowl placed in the centre of the table with some chemical mixture in it which he set on fire after turning the lamp low. A lurid light came from the bowl which caused a livid look upon the faces of those who sat round the table, and while all were observing the ghastly effect, Dr. Webster rose and, pulling a bit of rope from somewhere about his person, put it around his neck, reached his head over the bowl to heighten the effect, hung it on one side, and lolled his tongue out to give the appearance of a man who had been hanged!!! The whole scene was terrible and ghastly in the extreme, and, remembered in the light of what followed, had a prescience frightful to contemplate.”[26]