DCCXIII. MRS. FREDERICK POLLOCK 5, Hyde Park PLACE, W., Monday, May 2, 1870. MY DEAR MRS. POLLOCK, Pray tell the illustrious Philip van Artevelde, that I will deal with the nefarious case in question if I can. I am a little doubtful of the practicability of doing so, and frisking outside the bounds of the law of libel. I have that high opinion of the law of England generally, which one is likely to derive from the impression that it puts all the honest men under the diabolical hoofs of all the scoundrels. It makes me cautious of doing right; an admirable instance of its wisdom! I was very sorry to have gone astray from you that Sunday; but as the earlier disciples entertained angels unawares, so the later often miss them hap-hazard. Your description of La Font's acting is the complete truth in one short sentence: Nature's triumph over art; reversing the copy-book axiom ! But the Lord deliver us from Plessy's mechanical ingenuousness!! And your petitioner will ever pray. Faithfully yours. DCCXIV. MRS. E. M. WARD 5, HYDE PARK PLACE, W., Wednesday, May 11, 1870. MY DEAR MRS. Ward, -I grieve to say that I am literally laid by the heels, and incapable of dining with you to-morrow. A neuralgic affection of the foot, which usually seizes me about twice a year, and which will yield to nothing but days of fomentation and horizontal rest, set in last night, and has caused me very great pain ever since, and will too clearly be no better until it has had its usual time in which to wear itself out. I send my kindest regard to Ward, and beg to be pitied. Believe me, faithfully yours always. DCCXV. J. B. BUCKSTONE 1 Sunday, May 15, 1870. MY DEAR BUCKSTONE, -I send a duplicate of this note to the Haymarket, in case it should miss you out of town. For a few years I have been liable, at wholly uncertain and incalculable times, to a severe attack of neuralgia in the foot, about once in the course of a year. It began in an injury to the finer muscles or nerves, occasioned by over-walking in the deep snow. When it comes on I cannot stand, and can bear no covering whatever on the sensitive place. One of these seizures is upon me now. Until it leaves me I could no more walk into St. James's Hall than I could fly in the air. I hope you will present my duty to the Prince of Wales, and assure his Royal Highness that nothing short of my being (most unfortunately) disabled for the moment would have prevented my attending, as trustee of the Fund,2 at the dinner, and warmly expressing my poor sense of the great and inestimable service his Royal Highness renders to a most deserving institution by so kindly commending it to the public. Faithfully yours always. DCCXVI. WILLIAM. CHARLES KENT 5, HYDE PARK PLACE, W., Tuesday, May 17, 1870. MY DEAR Kent, Many, many thanks! It is only my neuralgic foot. It has given me such a sharp twist this time that I have not been able, in its extreme sensitiveness, to put any covering upon it except scalding fomentations. Having viciously bubbled and blistered it in all directions, I hope it now begins to see the folly of its ways. P. S.-I hope the Sun shines. Affectionately ever. 1 Printed in Mackenzie's Life of Dickens. 2 The General Theatrical Fund. DCCXVII. MR. RUSDEN ATHENEUM, Friday Evening, May 20, 1870. MY DEAR MR. RUSDEN, - I received your most interesting and clear-sighted letter about Plorn just before the departure of the last mail from here to you. I did not answer then because another incoming mail was nearly due, and I expected (knowing Plorn so well) that some communication from him such as he made to you would come to me. I was not mistaken. The same arguing of the squatter question-vegetables and all — appeared. This gave me an opportunity of touching on those points by this mail, without in the least compromising you. I cannot too completely express my concurrence with your excellent idea that his correspondence with you should be regarded as confidential. Just as I could not possibly suggest a word more neatly to the point, or more thoughtfully addressed, to such a young man than your reply to his letter, I hope you will excuse my saying that it is a perfect model of tact, good sense, and good feeling. I had been struck by his persistently ignoring the possibility of his holding any other position in Australasia than his present position, and had inferred from it a homeward tendency. What is most curious to me is that he is very sensible, and yet does not seem to understand that he has qualified himself for no public examinations in the old country, and could not possibly hold his own against any competition for anything to which I could get him nominated. But I must not trouble you about my boys as if they were yours. It is enough that I can never thank you for your goodness to them in a generous consideration of me. I believe the truth as to France to be that a citizen Frenchman never forgives, and that Napoleon will never live down the coup d'état. This makes it enormously difficult for any welladvised English newspaper to support him, and pretend not to know on what a volcano his throne is set. Informed as to his designs on the one hand, and the perpetual uneasiness of his police on the other (to say nothing of a doubtful army), the "Times" has a difficult game to play. My own impression is that if it were played too boldly for him, the old deplorable national antagonism would revive in his going down. That the wind will pass over his Imperiality on the sands of France I In no country on the earth, but have not the slightest doubt. least of all there, can you seize people in their houses on political warrants, and kill in the streets, on no warrant at all, without raising a gigantic Nemesis- not very reasonable in detail, perhaps, but none the less terrible for that. The commonest dog or man driven mad is a much more alarming creature than the same individuality in a sober and commonplace condition. Your friend is setting the world right generally all round (including the flattened ends, the two poles), and, as a Minister said to me the other day, "has the one little fault of omniscience." You will probably have read before now that I am going to be everything the Queen can make me.1 If my authority be worth anything, believe on it that I am going to be nothing but what I am, and that that includes my being as long as I live, Your faithful and heartily obliged. DCCXVIII. ALFRED TENNYSON DICKENS 2 ATHENÆUM CLUB, Friday Night, May 20, 1870. MY DEAR ALFRED,3 — I have just time to tell you under my own hand that I invited Mr. Bear to a dinner of such guests as he would naturally like to see, and that we took to him very much, and got on with him capitally. I am doubtful whether Plorn is taking to Australia. Can you find out his real mind? I notice that he always writes as if his present life were the be-all and the end-all of his emigration, and as if I had no idea of you two becoming proprietors, and aspiring to the first positions in the colony, without casting off the old connection. From Mr. Bear I had the best accounts of you. I told him that they did not surprise me, for I had unbounded faith in you. For which take my love and blessing. They will have told you all the news here, and that I am hard at work. This is not a letter so much as an assurance that I never think of you without hope and comfort. Ever, my dear Alfred, Your affectionate Father. 1 An allusion to an unfounded rumour. 2 Charles Dickens's son, Alfred Tennyson. 8 This letter did not reach Australia until after the telegraph had brought news to the sons of their father's death. to DCCXIX. MRS. BANCROFT GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, Kent, MY DEAR MRS. BANCROFT,I am most heartily obliged you for your kind note, which I received here only last night, having come here from town circuitously to get a little change of air on the road. My sense of your interest cannot be better proved than by my trying the remedy you recommend, and that I will do immediately. As I shall be in town on Thursday, my troubling you to order it would be quite unjustifiable. I will use your name in applying for it, and will report the result after a fair trial. Whether this remedy succeeds or fails as to the neuralgia, I shall always consider myself under an obligation to it for having indirectly procured me the great pleasure of receiving a communication from you; for I hope I may lay claim to being one of the most earnest and delighted of your many artistic admirers. Believe me, faithfully yours. DCCXX. WILLIAM CHARLES KENT GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESter, Kent, MY DEAR KENT, To-morrow is a very bad day for me to make a call, as, in addition to my usual office business, I have a mass of accounts to settle with Wills. But I hope I may be ready for you at three o'clock. If I can't be—why, then I shan't be. You must really get rid of those Opal enjoyments. They are too overpowering: "These violent delights have violent ends." I think it was a father of your church who made the wise remark to a young gentleman who got up early (or stayed out late) at Verona ? Ever affectionately, C. D. 1 Miss Marie Wilton. |