You make my hair stand on end; an agreeable sensation, for I am charmed to find that I have any. Why don't you come yourself and look after Garrick ? I should be truly delighted to receive you. My dear Fitzgerald, always faithfully yours. DXXXVI. ANONYMOUS GAD'S HILL, Thursday, 27th December, 1866. DEAR MADAM, -You make an absurd though common mistake, in supposing that any human creature can help you to be an authoress, if you cannot become one in virtue of your own powers. I know nothing about "impenetrable barrier," "outsiders," and "charmed circles." I know that any one who can write what is suitable to the requirements of my own journal for instance - is a person I am heartily glad to discover, and do not very often find. And I believe this to be no rare case in periodical literature. I cannot undertake to advise you in the abstract, as I number my unknown correspondents by the hundred. But if you offer anything to me for insertion in "All the Year Round," you may be sure that it will be honestly read, and that it will be judged by no test but its own merits and adaptability to those pages. But I am bound to add that I do not regard successful fiction as a thing to be achieved in "leisure moments." Faithfully yours. DXXXVII. W. C. MACREADY GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, Kent, MY DEAREST MACREADY, I have received your letter with the utmost pleasure, and we all send our most affectionate love to you, Mrs. Macready, Katie, Johnny, and the boy of boys. All good Christmas and New Year greetings are to be understood as included. You will be interested in knowing that, encouraged by the success of summer cricket-matches, I got up a quantity of footraces and rustic sports in my field here on the 26th last past : as I have never yet had a case of drunkenness, the landlord of The Falstaff had a drinking-booth on the ground. All the prizes I gave were in money, too. We had two thousand people here. Among the crowd were soldiers, navvies, and labourers of all kinds. Not a stake was pulled up, or a rope slackened, or one farthing's worth of damage done. To every competitor (only) a printed bill of general rules was given, with the concluding words: "Mr. Dickens puts every man upon his honour to assist in preserving order." There was not a dispute all day, and they went away at sunset rending the air with cheers, and leaving every flag on a six hundred yards' course as neat as they found it when the gates were opened at ten in the morning. Surely this is a bright sign in the neighbourhood of such a place as Chatham! "Mugby Junction " turned, yesterday afternoon, the extraordinary number of two hundred and fifty thousand! In the middle of next month I begin a new course of fortytwo readings. If any of them bring me within reach of Cheltenham, with an hour to spare, I shall come on to you, even for that hour. More of this when I am afield and have my list, which Dolby (for Chappell) is now preparing. Forster and Mrs. Forster were to have come to us next Monday, to stay until Saturday. I write "were," because I hear that Forster (who had a touch of bronchitis when he wrote to me on Christmas Eve) is in bed. Katie, who has been ill of low nervous fever, was brought here yesterday from London. She bore the journey much better than I expected, and so I hope will soon recover. This is my little stock of news. I begin to discover in your riper years, that you have been secretly vain of your handwriting all your life. For I swear I see no change in it! What it always was since I first knew it (a year or two!) it is. This I will maintain against all comers. Ever affectionately, my dearest Macready. DXXXVIII. M. DE CERJAT GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, Kent, New Year's Day, 1867. MY DEAR CERJAT, - Thoroughly determined to be beforehand with "the middle of next summer," your penitent friend and remorseful correspondent thus addresses you. The big dog, on a day last autumn, having seized a little girl (sister to one of the servants) whom he knew, and was bound VOL. II. to respect, was flogged by his master, and then sentenced to be shot at seven next morning. He went out very cheerfully with the half-dozen men told off for the purpose, evidently thinking that they were going to be the death of somebody unknown. But observing in the procession an empty wheelbarrow and a double-barrelled gun, he became meditative, and fixed the bearer of the gun with his eyes. A stone deftly thrown across him by the village blackguard (chief mourner) caused him to look round for an instant, and he then fell dead, shot through the heart. Two posthumous children are at this moment rolling on the lawn; one will evidently inherit his ferocity, and will probably inherit the gun. The pheasant was a little ailing towards Christmas Day, and was found dead under some ivy in his cage, with his head under his wing, on the morning of the twenty-seventh of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six. I, proprietor of the remains of the two deceased, am working hard, getting up "Barbox " and "The Boy at Mugby," with which I begin a new series of readings in London on the fifteenth. Next morning I believe I start into the country. When I read, I don't write. I only edit, and have the proofsheets sent me for the purpose. Here are your questions an swered. As to the Reform question, it should have been, and could have been, perfectly known to any honest man in England that the more intelligent part of the great masses were deeply dissatisfied with the state of representation, but were in a very moderate and patient condition, awaiting the better intellectual cultivation of numbers of their fellows. The old insolent resource of assailing them and making the most audaciously wicked statements that they are politically indifferent has borne the inevitable fruit. The perpetual taunt, "Where are they? has called them out with the answer: “Well, then, if you must know, here we are." The intolerable injustice of vituperating the bribed to an assembly of bribers has goaded their sense of justice beyond endurance. And now, what they would have taken they won't take, and whatever they are steadily bent upon having they will get. Rely upon it, this is the real state of the case. As to your friend "Punch," you will find him begin to turn at the very self-same instant when the new game shall manifestly become the losing one. You may notice his shoes pinching him a little already. My dear fellow, I have no more power to stop that mutilation of my books than you have. It is as certain as that every inventor of anything designed for the public good, and offered to the English Government, becomes ipso facto a criminal, to have his heart broken on the circumlocutional wheel. It is as certain as that the whole Crimean story will be retold whenever this country again goes to war. And to tell the truth, I have such a very small opinion of what the great genteel have done for us, that I am very philosophical indeed concerning what the great vulgar may do, having a decided opinion that they can't do worse. This is the time of year when the theatres do best, there being still numbers of people who make it a sort of religion to see Christmas pantomimes. Having my annual houseful, I have, as yet, seen nothing. Fechter has neither pantomime nor burlesque, but is doing a new version of the old "Trente Ans de la Vie d'un Joueur." I am afraid he will not find his account in it. On the whole, the theatres, except in the articles of scenery and pictorial effect, are poor enough. But in some of the smaller houses there are actors who, if there were any dramatic headquarters as a school, might become very good. The most hopeless feature is, that they have the smallest possible idea of an effective and harmonious whole, each "going in" for himself or herself. The music-halls attract an immense public, and don't refine the general taste. But such things as they do are well done of their kind, and always briskly and punctually. The American yacht race is the last sensation. I hope the general interest felt in it on this side will have a wholesome interest on that. It will be a woeful day when John and Jonathan throw their caps into the ring. The French Emperor is indubitably in a dangerous state. His Parisian popularity wanes, and his army are discontented with him. I hear on high authority that his secret police are always making discoveries that render him desperately uneasy. You know how we have been swindling in these parts. But perhaps you don't know that Mr. the "eminent " contractor, before he fell into difficulties, settled one million of money on his wife. Such a good and devoted husband! My daughter Katie has been very ill of nervous fever. On the 27th of December she was in a condition to be brought down here (old high-road and post-horses), and has been steadily getting better ever since. Her husband is here too, and is on the whole as well as he ever is or ever will be, I fear. We played forfeit-games here, last night, and then pool. For a billiard-room has been added to the house since you were here. Come and play a match with me. Always affectionately. DXXXIX. MISS HOGARTH ADELPHI HOTEL, LIVERPOOL, Monday, January 21, 1867. MY DEAREST GEORGY, -First I send you my most affectionate wishes for many, many happy returns of your birthday. That done, from my heart of hearts, I go on to my small report of myself. The readings have produced such an immense effect here that we are coming back for two more in the middle of February. Marigold" and the "Trial," on Friday night, and the 66 Carol," on Saturday afternoon, were a perfect furore; and the surprise about "Barbox" has been amusingly great. It is a most extraordinary thing, after the enormous sale of that Christmas number, that the provincial public seem to have combined to believe that it won't make a reading. From Wolverhampton and Leeds we have exactly the same expression of feelings beforehand. Exactly as I made "Copperfield” — always to the poorest houses I had with Headland, and against that luminary's entreaty - so I should have to make this, if I had n't "Marigold" always in demand. It being next to impossible for people to come out at night with horses, we have felt the weather in the stalls, and expect to do so through this week. The half-crown and shilling publics have crushed to their places most splendidly. The enthusiasm has been unbounded. On Friday night I quite astonished myself; but I was taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa at the hall for half an hour. I attribute it to my distressing inability to sleep at night, and to nothing worse. Scott does very well indeed. As a dresser he is perfect. In a quarter of an hour after I go into the retiring-room, where all my clothes are airing and everything is set out neatly in its own allotted space, I am ready; and then he goes softly out, and sits outside the door. In the morning he is equally punctual, |