Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2309 page)

Of what otherwise occupied him at Broadstairs in 1848 there is not much to mention until the close of his holiday. He used to say that he never went for more than a couple of days from his own home without something befalling him that never happened to anyone else, and his Broadstairs adventure of the present summer verged closer on tragedy than comedy. Returning there one day in August after bringing up his boys to school, it had been arranged that his wife should meet him at Margate; but he had walked impatiently far beyond the place for meeting when at last he caught sight of her, not in the small chaise but in a large carriage and pair followed by an excited crowd, and with the youth that should have been driving the little pony bruised and bandaged on the box behind the two prancing horses. “You may faintly imagine my amazement at encountering this carriage, and the strange people, and Kate, and the crowd, and the bandaged one, and all the rest of it.” And then in a line or two I had the story. “At the top of a steep hill on the road, with a ditch on each side, the pony bolted, upon which what does John do but jump out! He says he was thrown out, but it cannot be. The reins immediately became entangled in the wheels, and away went the pony down the hill madly, with Kate inside rending the Isle of Thanet with her screams. The accident might have been a fearful one, if the pony had not, thank Heaven, on getting to the bottom, pitched over the side; breaking the shaft and cutting her hind legs, but in the most extraordinary manner smashing her own way apart. She tumbled down, a bundle of legs with her head tucked underneath, and left the chaise standing on the bank! A Captain Devaynes and his wife were passing in their carriage at the moment, saw the accident with no power of preventing it, got Kate out, laid her on the grass, and behaved with infinite kindness. All’s well that ends well, and I think she’s really none the worse for the fright. John is in bed a good deal bruised, but without any broken bone, and likely soon to come right; though for the present plastered all over, and, like Squeers, a brown-paper parcel chock-full of nothing but groans. The women generally have no sympathy for him whatever; and the nurse says, with indignation, how could he go and leave an unprotected female in the shay!”

Holiday incidents there were many, but none that need detain us. This was really a summer idleness: for it was the interval between two of his important undertakings, there was no periodical yet to make demands on him, and only the task of finishing his
Haunted Man
for Christmas lay ahead. But he did even his nothings in a strenuous way, and on occasion could make gallant fight against the elements themselves. He reported himself, to my horror, thrice wet through on a single day, “dressed four times,” and finding all sorts of great things, brought out by the rains, among the rocks on the sea-beach. He also sketched now and then morsels of character for me, of which I will preserve one. “F is philosophical, from sunrise to bedtime: chiefly in the French line, about French women going mad, and in that state coming to their husbands, and saying, ‘Mon ami, je vous ai trompé. Voici les lettres de mon amant!’ Whereupon the husbands take the letters and think them waste paper, and become extra-philosophical at finding that they really
were
the lover’s effusions: though what there is of philosophy in it all, or anything but unwholesomeness, it is not easy to see.” (A remark that it might not be out of place to offer to Mr. Taine’s notice.) “Likewise about dark shades coming over our wedded Emmeline’s face at parties; and about F handing her to her carriage, and saying, ‘May I come in, for a lift homeward?’ and she bending over him out of window, and saying in a low voice, I dare not! And then of the carriage driving away like lightning, leaving F more philosophical than ever on the pavement.” Not till the close of September I heard of work intruding itself, in a letter twitting me for a broken promise in not joining him: “We are reasonably jolly, but rurally so; going to bed o’ nights at ten, and bathing o’ mornings at half-past seven; and not drugging ourselves with those dirty and spoiled waters of Lethe that flow round the base of the great pyramid.” Then, after mention of the friends who had left him, Sheriff Gordon, the Leeches, Lemon, Egg and Stone: “reflection and pensiveness are coming. I have not

‘ — seen Fancy write
With a pencil of light
On the blotter so solid, commanding the sea!’

but I shouldn’t wonder if she were to do it, one of these days. Dim visions of divers things are floating around me; and I must go to work, head foremost, when I get home. I am glad, after all, that I have not been at it here; for I am all the better for my idleness, no doubt. . . . Roche was very ill last night, and looks like one with his face turned to the other world, this morning. When
are
you coming? Oh what days and nights there have been here, this week past!” My consent to a suggestion in his next letter, that I should meet him on his way back, and join him in a walking-excursion home, got me full absolution for broken promises; and the way we took will remind friends of his later life, when he was lord of Gadshill, of an object of interest which he delighted in taking them to see. “You will come down booked for Maidstone (I will meet you at Paddock-wood), and we will go thither in company over a most beautiful little line of railroad. The eight miles walk from Maidstone to Rochester, and the visit to the Druidical altar on the wayside, are charming. This could be accomplished on the Tuesday; and Wednesday we might look about us at Chatham, coming home by Cobham on Thursday. . . .”

His first seaside holiday in 1849 was at Brighton, where he passed some weeks in February; and not, I am bound to add, without the usual
un
usual adventure to signalize his visit. He had not been a week in his lodgings, where Leech and his wife joined him, when both his landlord and the daughter of his landlord went raving mad, and the lodgers were driven away to the Bedford hotel. “If you could have heard the cursing and crying of the two; could have seen the physician and nurse quoited out into the passage by the madman at the hazard of their lives; could have seen Leech and me flying to the doctor’s rescue; could have seen our wives pulling us back; could have seen the M.D. faint with fear; could have seen three other M.D.’s come to his aid; with an atmosphere of Mrs. Gamps, strait-waistcoats, struggling friends and servants, surrounding the whole; you would have said it was quite worthy of me, and quite in keeping with my usual proceedings.” The letter ended with a word on what then his thoughts were full of, but for which no name had yet been found. “A sea-fog to-day, but yesterday inexpressibly delicious. My mind running, like a high sea, on names — not satisfied yet, though.” When he next wrote from the seaside, in the beginning of July, he had found the name; had started his book; and was “rushing to Broadstairs” to write the fourth number of
David Copperfield
.

In this came the childish experiences which had left so deep an impression upon him, and over which he had some difficulty in throwing the needful disguises. “Fourteen miles to-day in the country,” he had written to me on the 21st of June, “revolving number four!” Still he did not quite see his way. Three days later he wrote: “On leaving you last night, I found myself summoned on a special jury in the Queen’s Bench to-day. I have taken no notice of the document,
and hourly expect to be dragged forth to a dungeon for contempt of court. I think I should rather like it. It might help me with a new notion or two in my difficulties. Meanwhile I shall take a stroll to-night in the green fields from 7 to 10, if you feel inclined to join.” His troubles ended when he got to Broadstairs, from which he wrote on the tenth of July to tell me that agreeably to the plan we had discussed he had introduced a great part of his MS. into the number. “I really think I have done it ingeniously, and with a very complicated interweaving of truth and fiction. Vous verrez. I am getting on like a house afire in point of health, and ditto ditto in point of number.”

In the middle of July the number was nearly done, and he was still doubtful where to pass his longer summer holiday. Leech wished to join him in it, and both desired a change from Broadstairs. At first he thought of Folkestone,
but disappointment there led to a sudden change. “I propose” (15th of July) “returning to town to-morrow by the boat from Ramsgate, and going off to Weymouth or the Isle of Wight, or both, early the next morning.” A few days after, his choice was made.

He had taken a house at Bonchurch, attracted there by the friend who had made it a place of interest for him during the last few years, the Reverend James White, with whose name and its associations my mind connects inseparably many of Dickens’s happiest hours. To pay him fitting tribute would not be easy, if here it were called for. In the kindly shrewd Scotch face, a keen sensitiveness to pleasure and pain was the first thing that struck any common observer. Cheerfulness and gloom coursed over it so rapidly that no one could question the tale they told. But the relish of his life had outlived its more than usual share of sorrows; and quaint sly humour, love of jest and merriment, capital knowledge of books, and sagacious quips at men, made his companionship delightful. Like his life, his genius was made up of alternations of mirth and melancholy. He would be immersed, at one time, in those darkest Scottish annals from which he drew his tragedies; and overflowing, at another, into Sir Frizzle Pumpkin’s exuberant farce. The tragic histories may probably perish with the actor’s perishable art; but three little abstracts of history written at a later time in prose, with a sunny clearness of narration and a glow of picturesque interest to my knowledge unequalled in books of such small pretension, will find, I hope, a lasting place in literature. They are filled with felicities of phrase, with breadth of understanding and judgment, with manful honesty, quiet sagacity, and a constant cheerful piety, valuable for all and priceless for the young. Another word I permit myself to add. With Dickens, White was popular supremely for his eager good fellowship; and few men brought him more of what he always liked to receive. But he brought nothing so good as his wife. “He is excellent, but she is better,” is the pithy remark of his first Bonchurch letter; and the true affection and respect that followed is happily still borne her by his daughters.

Of course there is something strange to be recorded of the Bonchurch holiday, but it does not come till nearer the ending; and, with more attention to Mrs. Malaprop’s advice to begin with a little aversion, might probably not have come at all. He began with an excess of liking. Of the Undercliff he was full of admiration. “From the top of the highest downs,” he wrote in his second letter (28th of July) “there are views which are only to be equalled on the Genoese shore of the Mediterranean; the variety of walks is extraordinary; things are cheap, and everybody is civil. The waterfall acts wonderfully, and the sea bathing is delicious. Best of all, the place is certainly cold rather than hot, in the summer time. The evenings have been even chilly. White very jovial, and emulous of the inimitable in respect of gin-punch. He had made some for our arrival. Ha! ha! not bad for a beginner. . . . I have been, and am, trying to work this morning; but I can’t make anything of it, and am going out to think. I am invited by a distinguished friend to dine with you on the first of August, but I have pleaded distance and the being resident in a cave on the sea shore; my food, beans; my drink, the water from the rock. . . . I must pluck up heart of grace to write to Jeffrey, of whom I had but poor accounts from Gordon just before leaving. Talfourd delightful, and amuses me mightily. I am really quite enraptured at his success, and think of his happiness with uncommon pleasure.” Our friend was now on the bench; which he adorned with qualities that are justly the pride of that profession, and with accomplishments that have become more rare in its highest places than they were in former times. His elevation only made those virtues better known. Talfourd assumed nothing with the ermine but the privilege of more frequent intercourse with the tastes and friends he loved, and he continued to be the most joyous and least affected of companions. Such small oddities or foibles as he had made him secretly only dearer to Dickens, who had no friend he was more attached to; and the many happy nights made happier by the voice so affluent in generous words, and the face so bright with ardent sensibility, come back to me sorrowfully now. “Deaf the prais’d ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.” The poet’s line has a double application and sadness.

He wrote again on the first of August. “I have just begun to get into work. We are expecting the Queen to come by very soon, in grand array, and are going to let off ever so many guns. I had a letter from Jeffrey yesterday morning, just as I was going to write to him. He has evidently been very ill, and I begin to have fears for his recovery. It is a very pathetic letter, as to his state of mind; but only in a tranquil contemplation of death, which I think very noble.” His next letter, four days later, described himself as continuing still at work; but also taking part in dinners at Blackgang, and picnics of “tremendous success” on Shanklin Down. “Two charity sermons for the school are preached to-day, and I go to the afternoon one. The examination of said school t’other day was very funny. All the boys made Buckstone’s bow in the
Rough Diamond
, and some in a very wonderful manner recited pieces of poetry, about a clock, and may we be like the clock, which is always a going and a doing of its duty, and always tells the truth (supposing it to be a slap-up chronometer I presume, for the American clock in the school was lying frightfully at that moment); and after being bothered to death by the multiplication table, they were refreshed with a public tea in Lady Jane Swinburne’s garden.” (There was a reference in one of his letters, but I have lost it, to a golden-haired lad of the Swinburnes whom his own boys used to play with, since become more widely known.) “The rain came in with the first tea-pot, and has been active ever since. On Friday we had a grand, and what is better, a very good dinner at ‘parson’ Fielden’s, with some choice port. On Tuesday we are going on another picnic; with the materials for a fire, at my express stipulation; and a great iron pot to boil potatoes in. These things, and the eatables, go to the ground in a cart. Last night we had some very good merriment at White’s, where pleasant Julian Young and his wife (who are staying about five miles off) showed some droll new games” — and roused the ambition in my friend to give a “mighty conjuring performance for all the children in Bonchurch,” for which I sent him the materials and which went off in a tumult of wild delight. To the familiar names in this letter I will add one more, grieving freshly even now to connect it with suffering. “A letter from Poole has reached me since I began this letter, with tidings in it that you will be very sorry to hear. Poor Regnier has lost his only child; the pretty daughter who dined with us that nice day at your house, when we all pleased the poor mother by admiring her so much. She died of a sudden attack of malignant typhus. Poole was at the funeral, and writes that he never saw, or could have imagined, such intensity of grief as Regnier’s at the grave. How one loves him for it. But is it not always true, in comedy and in tragedy, that the more real the man the more genuine the actor?”