Dickens talked of Frédérick Lemaître; he is upwards of sixty years old now; but he has always lived a wretched life, a low, poor fellow; yet he will surprise the actors continually by the new points he will make. He will come in at rehearsal, go about the stage in an abject wretched manner, with clothes torn and soiled as he has just emerged from his vulgar, vicious haunts, and without giving sign or glimmer of his power. Presently he says to the prompter, who always has a tallow candle burning on his box, “Give me your candle”; then he will blow it out and with the snuff make a cross upon his book. “What are you going to do, Frédérick?” the actors say. “I don’t know yet; you’ll see by and by,” he says, and day after day perhaps will pass, until one night when he will suddenly flash upon them some wonderful point. They, the actors, watching him, try to hold themselves prepared, and if he gives them the least hint will mould their parts to fit his. Sometimes he will ask for a chair. “What will you do with it, Frédérick?” He does not reply, but night after night the chair is placed there until he makes his point. He often comes hungry to the theatre, and the manager must give him a dinner and pay for it before he will go on. Fechter, from whom these particulars come, tells Dickens that there can be nothing more wonderful than his acting in the old scene of the miserable father who kills his own son at the inn. The son, coming in rich and handsome, and seeing this old sot about to be driven from the porch by the servant, tells the man to give him meat and wine. While he eats and drinks, the wretch sees how freely the rich man handles his gold and resolves to kill him. Fechter’s description, with his own knowledge of Lemaître, had so inspired Dickens that he was able to reproduce him again for us.
Wednesday, April 15.—[On returning from a reading in “Steinway Hall, than which nothing could be worse for reading or speaking”]: He soon came up after a little soup, when he called for brandy and lemons and made such a burnt brandy punch as has been seldom tasted this side of the “pond.” As the punch blazed his spirits rose and he began to sing an old-fashioned comic song such as in the old days was given between the plays at the theatre. One song led to another until we fell into inextinguishable laughter, for anything more comic than his renderings of the chorus cannot be imagined. Surely there is no living actor who could excel him in these things if he chose to exert his ability. His rendering of “Chrush ke lan ne chouskin!!” or a lingo which sounded like that (the refrain of an old Irish song) was something tremendous. We laughed till I was really afraid he would make himself too hoarse to read the next night. He gave a queer old song full of rhymes, obtained with immense difficulty and circumlocution, to the word “annuity,” which it appeared has been sought by an old woman with great assiduity and granted with immense incongruity. The negro minstrels have in great part supplanted these queer old English, Irish, and Scotch ballads, but they are sure to come up again from time to time. We did not separate until 12, and felt the next morning (as he said) as if we had had a regular orgy. They did not forget, Dolby and he, to pay a proper tribute to “Maryland, My Maryland,” and “Dixie” as very stirring ballads.
[After another reading, from which Dickens came home extremely tired]: We ran in at once to talk with him and he soon cheered up. When I first pushed open the door he was a perfect picture of prostration, his head thrown back without support on the couch, the blood suffusing his throat and temples again where he had been very white a few minutes before. This is a physical peculiarity with Dickens which I have never seen before in a man, though women are very subject to that thing. Excitement and exercise of reading will make the blood rush into his hands until they become at times almost black, and his face and head (especially since he has become so fatigued) will turn from red to white and back to red again without his being conscious of it.
Friday, April 17.—Weather excessively warm, sky often overcast. Last evening Mr. Dickens read again and for the last time “Copperfield” and “Bob Sawyer.” He was much exhausted and said he watched a man who was carried out in a fainting condition to see how they managed it, with the lively interest of one who was about to go through the same scene himself. The heat from the gas around him was intolerable. After the reading we went into his room to have a little soup, “broiled bones,” and a sherry cobbler. His spirits were good in spite of fatigue, the thought of home and the memories of England coming back vividly. We, finally, from talk of English scenery, found ourselves in Stratford. He says there is an inn at Rochester, very old, which he has no doubt Shakespeare haunted. This conviction came forcibly upon him one night as he was walking that way and discovered Charles’s Wain setting over the chimney just as Shakespeare has described. “When you come to Gad’s Hill, please God, I will show you Charles’s Wain setting over the old roof.”
We left him early, hoping he would sleep, but he hardly closed his eyes all night. Whether he was haunted by visions of home, or what the cause was, we cannot discover, but whatever it may be, his strength fails under such unnatural and continual excitement.
Saturday, April 18.—Mr. Dickens has a badly sprained foot. We like our rooms at his hotel—47 is the number. Last night was “Marigold” and “Gamp” for the last time. He threw in a few touches for our amusement and a great deal of vigor into the whole. Afterward we took supper together, when he told us some remarkable things. Among others he rehearsed a scene described to him years ago by Dr. Eliotson of London of a man about to be hanged. His last hour had approached as the doctor entered the cell of the criminal, who was as justly sentenced as ever a wretch was for having cut off the end of his own illegitimate child. The man was rocking miserably in his chair back and forth in a weak, maudlin condition, while the clergyman in attendance, who had spoken of him as repentant and religious in his frame of mind, was administering the sacrament. The wine stood in a cup at one side until the sacred words were said, when at the proper moment the clergyman gave it to the man, who was still rocking backward and forward, muttering, “What will my poor mother think of this?” Finding the cup in his hands, he looked into it for a moment as if trying to collect himself, and then, putting on his regular old pothouse manner, he said, “Gen’lemen, I drink your health,” and drained the cup in a drunken way. “I think,” said C. D., “it is thirty years since I heard Dr. Eliotson tell me this, but I shall never forget the horror that scene inspired in my mind.” The talk had taken this turn from the fact of a much-dreaded Press dinner which is to come off tonight and which jocosely assumed the idea of a hanging to their minds. C. D. said he had often thought how restricted one’s conversation must become with a man who was to be hanged in half an hour. “You could not say, if it rains, ‘We shall have fine weather tomorrow!’ for what would that be to him? For my part, I think I should confine my remarks to the times of Julius Cæsar and King Alfred!!” He then related a story of a condemned man out of whom no evidence could be elicited. He would not speak. At last he was seated before a fire for a few moments, just before his execution, when a servant entered and smothered what fire there was with a huge hodful of coal. “In half an hour that will be a good fire,” he was heard to murmur.
Mr. Dickens has now read 76 times. It seems like a dream.
Sunday, April 19.—Last night the great New York Press dinner came off. It was a close squeeze with Mr. Dickens to get there at all. He had been taken lame the night before, his foot becoming badly swollen and painful. In spite of a skilful physician he grew worse and worse every hour, and when the time for the dinner arrived he was unable to bear anything upon his foot. So long as he was above ground, however, it was a necessity he should go, and an hour and a half after the time appointed, with his foot sewed up in black silk, he made his way to Delmonico’s. Poor man! Nothing could be more unfortunate, but he bore this difficult part off in a stately and composed manner as if it were a sign of the garter he were doffing for the first time instead of a badge of ill health. The worst of it is that the papers will telegraph news of his illness to England. This seems to disturb him more than anything else. Ah! What a mystery these ties of love are—such pain, such ineffable happiness—the only happiness. After his return he repeated to me from memory every word of his speech without dropping one. He never thinks of such a thing as writing his speeches, but simply turns it over in his mind and “balances the sentences,” when he is all right. He produced an immense effect on the Press of New York, tremendous applause responding to every sentence. Curtis’s speech was very beautiful. “I think him the very best speaker I ever heard,” said C. D. “I am sure he would produce a great effect in England from the sympathetic quality he possesses.” I have seldom seen a finer exercise of energy of will than Mr. Dickens’s attendance on this dinner. It brought its own reward, too, for he returned with his foot feeling better. He made a rum punch in his room, where we sat until one o’clock. After repeating his speech, he gave us an imitation of old Rogers as he would repeat a quatrain:—
“The French have sense in what they do
Which we are quite without,