Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

she sometimes labors; more, she felt herself unfit for the life she had to lead as my wife, and that she would be far better away. I have uniformly replied, that she must bear our misfortune, and fight the fight out to the end; that the children were the first consideration; and that I feared they must bind us together "in appearance."

"At length, within these three weeks, it was suggested to me by Forester, that, even for their sakes, it would be better to reconstruct and re-arrange the unhappy home. I empowered him to treat with Mrs. Dickens, as the friend of both us for one and twenty years. Mrs. Dickens wished to add, on her part, Mark Lemon, and did so. On Saturday last, Lemon wrote to Forester, that Mrs. Dickens "gratefully and thankfully accepted" the terms I proposed to her. Of the pecuniary part of them, I will say, that they are as generous as if Mrs. Dickens were a lady of distinction, and I a man of fortune.

"The remaining parts of them are easily described, - my eldest boy to live with Mrs. Dickens, and to take care of her; my eldest girl to keep my house; both my girls, and all my children but the eldest son, to live with me, in continued companionship of their Aunt Georgine, for whom they have all the tenderest affections that I have ever seen among young people, and who has a higher claim (as I have often declared for many years) upon my affection, respect, and gratitude than anybody in this world.

"I hope that no one who may become acquainted with what I write here can possibly be so cruel and unjust as to put any misconstruction on our separation so far. My older children all understand it perfectly, and all accept it as inevitable;

"There is not a shadow of doubt or concealment among us. My eldest son and I are one as to it all.

"Two wicked persons, who should have spoken very differently of me, in consideration of earned respect and gratitude, have (as I am told, and, indeed, to my pesonal knowledge) coupled with this separation the name of a young lady for whom I have a great attachment and regard. I will not repeat the name: I honor it too much. Upon my soul and honor, there is not upon this earth a more virtuous and spotless creature than that young lady. I know her to be innocent and pure, and as good as my own daughters.

"Further: I am quite sure that Mrs. Dickens, having received this assurance from me, must now believe it, in the respect I know her to have for me, and in the perfect confidence I know her, in her better moments, to repose in my truthfulness.

"On this head, again, there is not a shadow of a doubt or concealment between my children and me. All is open and plain among us as though we were brothers and sisters. They are perfectly certain that I would not deceive them; and the confidence among us is without a fear. C. D.'"

One of the sons of Charles Dickens is an officer in the British army; and another is a student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

A lady writer in "The New-York Tribune" thus describes a party at the house of Dickens:

"It was in June, 1852, just eighteen years before the date of his death, that I first saw Charles Dickens in London. I had sent a letter to him from his friend, Mr. G. P. R. James. Mrs. Dickens called, at his request, and invited me to a dinner, kindly promising that I should meet a number of the authors and artists that I most desired to see. I have in my mind still a perfectly distinct picture of the bright, elegant interior of Tavistock House, and of its inmates, of my host himself, then in his early prime; of Mrs. Dickens, a plump, rosy, English, handsome woman, with a certain air of absentmindedness, yet gentle and kindly; Miss Hogarth, a very lovely person, with charming manners; and the young ladies, then very young, real English girls, fresh and simple, and innocent-looking as English daisies. was received in the library. Mr. Dickens - how clearly he stands before me now, with his frank, encouraging smile, and the light of welcome in his eyes!—was then slight in person, and rather pale than otherwise. The symmetrical form of his head, and the fine, spirited bearing of the whole figure, struck me at once; then the hearty bonhomie, the wholesome sweetness of his

I

smile, but, more than any thing else, the great beauty of his eyes. They were the eyes of a master, with no consciousness of mastery in them: they were brilliant without hardness, and searching without sharpness. I felt, I always felt, that they read me clearly and deeply, yet could never fear their keen scrutiny. They never made you feel uncomfortable. I can but think it a pity, that, in so many of the pictures we have of him, the effect of his eyes is nearly lost by their being cast down. They had in them all the humor and all the humanity of the man. You saw in them all the splendid possibilities of his genius, all the manly tenderness of his nature.

66

Approaching Mr. Dickens as I did, with what he would have considered extravagant hero-worship, I was surprised to find myself speedily and entirely at my ease. Still he seemed to put forth no effort to make me feel so. In manner he was more quiet than I expected, simple, and apparently unconscious. In conversation he was certainly not brilliant, after the manner of a professional talker. His talk did not bubble with puns, nor scintillate with epigrams; but it was racy and suggestive, with a fine flavor of originality and satire; and the effect of every thing he said was doubled by the expression of those wonderful eyes. They were great listening eyes. When I remember how they would kindle at even my crude criticisms, my awkward attempts to convey to him the ideas and emotions which my visit to the Old World had called out, I can imagine the eager look, the kindred

flash, with which they must have responded to the wonderful talk of Douglas Jerrold and the lightning-like play of his wit, to the splendid cynicism of Carlyle, to the titanic fancies of Landor, to the dramatic wordpainting of Browning. At such times, the whole sympathetic, mobile face must almost have worn the look of that of

'Some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken.'

"So completely, in his generous appreciation and hospitable interest, did Mr. Dickens seem to pass out of himself, that I had strange difficulty in realizing that he was he; that the alert, jaunty figure, dressed with extreme nicety, and in a style bordering on the ornate, and with such elegant and luxurious surroundings, was indeed the great friend of the people, the romancer of common life; that the kindly, considerate host who saw every thing, heard every thing, was the poetic, dramatic novelist, who, next to Shakspeare, had been for years the god of my idolatry.'

66 I need not here describe that dinner-party. A partial list of the guests will show how brilliant it must have been: Charles Kemble and his daughter Adelaide (Madame Sartoris); Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall) and his accomplished wife; Emil Devrient, the great German actor; John Kenyon, the poet-banker; and his grand friend, Walter Savage Landor.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"O night of nights! I had heard Landor talk, and

« AnteriorContinuar »