The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870 — John Shaqi
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870Dickens, Charles
General
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870
Dickens, Charles
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Correspondence; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
The success at Belfast has been equal to the success here. Enormous! We
turned away half the town. I think them a better audience, on the whole,
than Dublin; and the personal affection there was something
overwhelming. I wish you and the dear girls could have seen the people
look at me in the street; or heard them ask me, as I hurried to the
hotel after reading last night, to "do me the honour to shake hands,
Misther Dickens, and God bless you, sir; not ounly for the light you've
been to me this night, but for the light you've been in mee house, sir
(and God love your face), this many a year." Every night, by-the-bye,
since I have been in Ireland, the ladies have beguiled John out of the
bouquet from my coat. And yesterday morning, as I had showered the
leaves from my geranium in reading "Little Dombey," they mounted the
platform, after I was gone, and picked them all up as keepsakes!
I have never seen _men_ go in to cry so undisguisedly as they did at
that reading yesterday afternoon. They made no attempt whatever to hide
it, and certainly cried more than the women. As to the "Boots" at night,
and "Mrs. Gamp" too, it was just one roar with me and them; for they
made me laugh so that sometimes I _could not_ compose my face to go on.
You must not let the new idea of poor dear Landor efface the former
image of the fine old man. I wouldn't blot him out, in his tender
gallantry, as he sat upon that bed at Forster's that night, for a
million of wild mistakes at eighty years of age.
I hope to be at Tavistock House before five o'clock next Saturday
morning, and to lie in bed half the day, and come home by the 10.50 on
Sunday.
Tell the girls that Arthur and I have each ordered at Belfast a trim,
sparkling, slap-up _Irish jaunting-car_!!! I flatter myself we shall
astonish the Kentish people. It is the oddest carriage in the world, and
you are always falling off. But it is gay and bright in the highest
degree. Wonderfully Neapolitan.
What with a sixteen mile ride before we left Belfast, and a sea-beach
walk, and a two o'clock dinner, and a seven hours' railway ride since, I
am--as we say here--"a thrifle weary." But I really am in wonderful
force, considering the work. For which I am, as I ought to be, very
thankful.
Arthur was exceedingly unwell last night--could not cheer up at all. He
was so very unwell that he left the hall(!) and became invisible after
my five minutes' rest. I found him at the hotel in a jacket and
slippers, and with a hot bath just ready. He was in the last stage of
prostration. The local agent was with me, and proposed that he (the
wretched Arthur) should go to his office and balance the accounts then
and there. He went, in the jacket and slippers, and came back in twenty
minutes, _perfectly well_, in consequence of the admirable balance. He
is now sitting opposite to me ON THE BAG OF SILVER, forty pounds (it
must be dreadfully hard), writing to Boulogne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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