The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833-1856Dickens, Charles
General
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833-1856
Dickens, Charles
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Correspondence; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
I am really more obliged to you for your kindness about "The Eagle" (as
I always call your house) than I can say. But when I come to town
to-morrow week, for the Liverpool and Manchester plays, I shall have
Kate and Georgy with me. Moreover I shall be continually going out and
coming in at unholy hours. Item, the timid will come at impossible
seasons to "go over" their parts with the manager. Item, two Jews with
musty sacks of dresses will be constantly coming backwards and forwards.
Item, sounds as of "groans" will be heard while the inimitable Boz is
"getting" his words--which happens all day. Item, Forster will
incessantly deliver an address by Bulwer. Item, one hundred letters per
diem will arrive from Manchester and Liverpool; and five actresses, in
very limp bonnets, with extraordinary veils attached to them, will be
always calling, protected by five mothers.
No, no, my actuary. Some congenial tavern is the fitting scene for these
things, if I don't get into Devonshire Terrace, whereof I have some
spark of hope. Eagles couldn't look the sun in the face and have such
enormities going on in their nests.
I am, for the time, that obscene thing, in short, now chronicled in the
Marylebone Register of Births--
A PLAYER,
Though still yours.
[Sidenote: Miss Power.]
BROADSTAIRS, KENT, _Tuesday, July 14th, 1847._
MY DEAR MISS POWER,
Though I am hopeless of Rosherville until after the 28th--for am I not
beckoned, by angels of charity and by local committees, to Manchester
and Liverpool, and to all sorts of bedevilments (if I may be allowed the
expression) in the way of managerial miseries in the meantime--here I
find myself falling into parenthesis within parenthesis, like Lord
Brougham--yet will I joyfully come up to London on Friday, to dine at
your house and meet the Dane, whose Books I honour, and whose--to make
the sentiment complete, I want something that would sound like "Bones, I
love!" but I can't get anything that unites reason with beauty. You, who
have genius and beauty in your own person, will supply the gap in your
kindness.
An advertisement in the newspapers mentioning the dinner-time, will be
esteemed a favour.
Some wild beasts (in cages) have come down here, and involved us in a
whirl of dissipation. A young lady in complete armour--at least, in
something that shines very much, and is exceedingly scaley--goes into
the den of ferocious lions, tigers, leopards, etc., and pretends to go
to sleep upon the principal lion, upon which a rustic keeper, who speaks
through his nose, exclaims, "Behold the abazid power of woobad!" and we
all applaud tumultuously.
Seriously, she beats Van Amburgh. And I think the Duke of Wellington
must have her painted by Landseer.
My penitent regards to Lady Blessington, Count D'Orsay, and my own
Marchioness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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