Note.—In the Introduction to the present volume, p. 42, it is stated that Dickens’s “First Reading” in public was given at Birmingham in the Christmas of 1853. The offer to read on this public occasion was certainly the First which the great novelist made, but before the Christmas had come around he thought proper to give a trial Reading before a much smaller audience, in the quiet little city of Peterborough.—Ed.

It must be sixteen or seventeen years ago—I cannot fix the date exactly, though the affair made a strong impression on me at the time—that I witnessed Charles Dickens’s dÉbÛt as a public reader. The circumstances surrounding this event were so singular that I am tempted to recall them.

Scene, the City of Peterborough—dreamy and quiet enough then, though now a flourishing railroad terminus—a silent city, with a grand old Norman cathedral, round which the rooks cawed lazily all day, straggling narrow streets of brick-built houses, a large Corn Exchange, a Mechanics’ Institute, and about seven thousand inhabitants. The Mechanics’ Institute brought it all about. That well-meaning but weak-kneed organization was, I need hardly say, in debt. Mechanics’ Institutes always are in debt. That is their chief peculiarity, next to the fact that they never by any chance have any mechanics among their members. Our institution was no exception to the rule. On the contrary, it was a bright and shining example. No mechanics’ institute of its size anywhere around was so deeply in debt; none was more snobbishly exclusive in its membership. We had overrun our resources to such an extent that we could not even pay the rent of the building we occupied, and were in daily danger of being turned out of doors. Lectures on highly improving subjects had been tried, but the proceeds did not pay the printer. Concerts succeeded better, but the committee said they were immoral. We had given two monster tea meetings to pay off the debt, on which occasions all the cake required was supplied gratuitously by the members’ mothers, and all the members and their friends came in by free tickets and ate it up. Henry Vincent delivered us an oration; George Dawson propounded metaphysical sophistries for our intellectual mystification; but with all this we got no better of our troubles—every flounder we made only plunged us deeper into the mud. At last it was resolved to write to our Borough members. This was in the good old days of Whig supremacy; and all the land and all the houses round about us being owned by one great Whig earl, our borough was privileged to return two members to represent the opinions of that unprotected earl in Parliament. A contested election had just come to a close, and the honeyed promises and grateful pledges of our elected candidates were still fresh in our memory. So to our members the committee addressed their tearful entreaties—“deserving institution,”—“valuable agency of self-improvement,”—“pressing pecuniary embarrassments,” and so forth. Member No. 1 sent his compliments and a five pound note. Member No. 2 delayed writing for several days, and then had great pleasure in informing us that the celebrated author, Mr. Charles Dickens, had kindly consented to deliver a public reading on our behalf.

What an excitement it caused in the little city! Mr. Dickens at that time had made no public appearance as a reader. He had occasionally been heard of as giving selections from his works to small coteries of friends or in the private saloon of some distinguished patron of art. But he had nervously shrunk from any public dÉbÛt, unwilling, so it seemed, to weaken his reputation as a writer by any possible failure as a reader. This diffidence had taken so strong a hold of him that it might never have been overcome but for the insidious persuasions of “our member.” “Here was an opportunity,” he argued, “for testing the matter without risk: an antediluvian country town; an audience of farmers’ sons and daughters, rural shop-keepers, and a few country parsons—if interest could be excited in the stolid minds of such a Boeotian assemblage, the success of the reader would be assured wherever the English tongue was spoken. On the other hand, if failure resulted, none would be the wiser outside this Sleepy-Hollow circle.” The bait took, and Mr. Dickens consented to deliver a public reading in aid of the Peterborough Mechanics’ Institute. He only stipulated that the prices of admission should be such that every mechanic, if he chose, might come to hear him, and named two shillings, a shilling, and sixpence as the limit of charge.

Vain limitation!—a fortnight before the reading every place was taken, and half a guinea and a guinea were the current rates for front seat tickets.

Dickens himself came down and superintended the arrangements, so anxious was he as to the result. At one end of the large Corn Exchange before spoken of he had caused to be erected a tall pulpit of red baize, as much like a Punch and Judy show with the top taken off as anything. This was to be the reader’s rostrum. But, as the tall red pulpit looked lanky and very comical stuck up there alone, two dummy pulpits of similar construction were placed one on each side to bear it company. When the reader mounted into the middle box nothing was visible of him but his head and shoulders. So if it be really true, as was stated afterwards by an indiscreet supernumerary, that Mr. Dickens’s legs shook under him from first to last, the audience knew nothing of it. The whole character of the stage arrangements suggested that Mr. Dickens was sure of his head, but was not quite so sure of his legs.

It was the Christmas Carol that Mr. Dickens read; the night was Christmas Eve. As the clock struck the appointed hour, a red, jovial face, unrelieved by the heavy moustache which the novelist has since assumed, a broad, high forehead, and a perfectly Micawber-like expanse of shirt-collar and front appeared above the red baize box, and a full, sonorous voice rang out the words, “Marley-was-dead-to-begin-with”—then paused, as if to take in the character of the audience. No need of further hesitation. The voice held all spellbound. Its depth of quiet feeling when the ghost of past Christmases led the dreamer through the long-forgotten scenes of his boyhood—its embodiment of burly good nature when old Fezziwig’s calves were twinkling in the dance—its tearful suggestiveness when the spirit of Christmases to come pointed to the nettle-grown, neglected grave of the unloved man—its exquisite pathos by the death-bed of Tiny Tim, dwell yet in memory like a long-known tune. That one night’s reading in the quaint little city, so curiously brought about, so ludicrous almost in its surroundings, committed Mr. Dickens to the career of a public reader; and he has since derived nearly as large an income from his readings as from the copyright of his novels. Only he signally failed to carry out his wish of making his first bow before an uneducated audience. The vote of thanks which closed the proceedings was moved by the senior marquis of Scotland and seconded by the heir of the wealthiest peer in England.

One other incident suggests itself in this connection. Somewhere about this time three notable men stood together in a print-shop in this same city—a singular three-cornered shop, with three fiddles dangling forlorn and dusty from the ceiling, and everything from piano-fortes to hair-brushes comprised in its stock-in-trade. They stood there one whole morning, laughing heartily at the perplexities of the little shopwoman, who in her nervousness continually transposed the first letters of words, sometimes with very comical effect. Thus, instead of saying, “Put the bottle in the cupboard,” she would remark, “Put the cottle in the bupboard.” The laughing trio were Dickens, Albert Smith, and Layard the traveller, now our minister to the court of Madrid. I strongly suspect that the eccentricity of the medical student in Albert Smith’s Adventures of Mr. Ledbury—the student who invites his friends to “poke a smipe” when he means them to “smoke a pipe”—was born on that occasion, and that Charles Dickens was robbed by his friend of some thunder which he intended to use himself.

But to return to the “Readings.” One glance at the platform is sufficient to convince the audience that Mr. Dickens thoroughly appreciates “stage effect.” A large screen of maroon cloth occupies the background; before it stands a light table of peculiar design, on the inner left-hand corner of which there peers forth a miniature desk, large enough to accommodate the reader’s book. On the right hand of the table, and somewhat below its level, is a shelf, where repose a carafe of water and a tumbler. This is covered with velvet, somewhat lighter in colour than the screen. No drapery conceals the table, whereby it is plain that Mr. Dickens believes in expression of figure as well as of face, and does not throw away everything but his head and arms, according to the ordinary habit of ordinary speakers. About twelve feet above the platform, and somewhat in advance of the table, is a horizontal row of gas-jets with a tin reflector; and midway in both perpendicular gas-pipes there is one powerful jet with glass chimney. By this admirable arrangement, Mr. Dickens stands against a dark background in a frame of gaslight, which throws out his face and figure to the best advantage.

He comes! A lithe, energetic man, of medium stature, crosses the platform at the brisk gait of five miles an hour, and takes his position behind the table. This is Charles Dickens, whose name has been a household word for thirty years in England. He has a broad, full brow, a fine head,—which, for a man of such power and energy, is singularly small at the base of the brain,—and a cleanly cut profile.

There is a slight resemblance between Mr. Dickens and the Emperor of the French in the latter respect, owing mainly to the nose; but it is unnecessary to add that the faces of the two men are totally different. Mr. Dickens’s eyes are light-blue, and his mouth and jaw, without having any claim to beauty, possess a strength that is not concealed by the veil of iron-gray moustache and generous imperial. His head is but slightly graced with iron-gray hair, and his complexion is florid. There is a twinkle in his eye, as he enters, that, like a promissory note, pledges itself to any amount of fun—within sixty minutes.

People may think in perusing Mr. Dickens’s books that he must be a man of large humanity, of forgiving nature, of generous impulses; in hearing him read they know that he must be such a man. This, of course, does not alone make a great artist; but equally, of course, it goes a long way towards making one. To this general and catholic qualification for his task Mr. Dickens adds special advantages of a high order. He has action of singular ease and felicity, a remarkably expressive eye, and a mobility of the facial muscles which belongs to actors of the highest grade. As in the case of Garrick, it is impossible to say whether love or terror, humour or despair, are best simulated in a countenance which expresses each and all on occasion with almost absolute perfection. This is, no doubt, due in a great measure not to natural qualities only, but to a varied and peculiar experience. Some will have it that actors, like poets, are born, not made, but this is only true in a limited and guarded sense.

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL. [349]

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honour to read to you ‘A Christmas Carol,’ in four staves. Stave one, Marley’s Ghost. Marley was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

At the close of this paragraph our first impression is that Mr. Dickens’s voice is limited in power, husky, and naturally monotonous. If he succeeds in overcoming these defects, it will be by dramatic genius. We begin to wonder why Mr. Dickens constantly employs the rising inflexion, and never comes to a full stop; but we are so pleasantly introduced to Scrooge, that our spirits revive.

“Foul weather didn’t know where to leave him. The heaviest rain and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect,—they often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scrooge never did.” Here the magnetic current between reader and listener sets in, and when Scrooge’s clerk “put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed;” the connexion is tolerably well established. We see old Scrooge very plainly, growling and snarling at his pleasant nephew; and when that nephew invites that uncle to eat a Christmas dinner with him, and Mr. Dickens goes on to relate that Scrooge said “he would see him—yes, I am sorry to say he did,—he went the whole length of the expression, and said he would see him in that extremity first.” He makes one dive at our sense of humour, and takes it captive. Mr. Dickens is Scrooge; he is the two portly gentlemen on a mission of charity; he is twice Scrooge when, upon one of the portly gentlemen remarking that many poor people would rather die than go to the workhouse, he replies: “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population;” and thrice Scrooge, when, turning upon his clerk, he says, “You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?” It is the incarnation of a hard-hearted, hard-fisted, hard-voiced miser.

“If quite convenient, sir.” A few words, but they denote Bob Cratchit in three feet of comforter exclusive of fringe, in well-darned, thread-bare clothes, with a mild, frightened voice, so thin that you can see through it!Then there comes the change when Scrooge, upon going home, “saw in the knocker, Marley’s face!” Of course Scrooge saw it, because the expression of Mr. Dickens’s face makes us see it “with a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” There is good acting in this scene, and there is fine acting when the dying flame leaps up as though it cried, “I know him! Marley’s ghost!” With what gusto Mr. Dickens reads that description of Marley, and how, “looking through his waistcoat, Scrooge could see the two buttons on his coat behind.”

Nothing can be better than the rendering of the Fezziwig party, in Stave Two. You behold Scrooge gradually melting into humanity; Scrooge, as a joyous apprentice; that model of employers, Fezziwig; Mrs. Fezziwig “one vast substantial smile,” and all the Fezziwigs. Mr. Dickens’s expression as he relates how “in came the housemaid with her cousin the baker, and in came the cook with her brother’s particular friend the milkman,” is delightfully comic, while his complete rendering of that dance where “all were top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them,” is owing to the inimitable action of his hands. They actually perform upon the table, as if it were the floor of Fezziwig’s room, and every finger were a leg belonging to one of the Fezziwig’s family. This feat is only surpassed by Mr. Dickens’s illustration of Sir Roger de Coverley, as interpreted by Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig, when “a positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves,” and he “cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs!” It is a maze of humour. Before the close of the stave, Scrooge’s horror at sight of the young girl once loved by him, and put aside for gold, shows that Mr. Dickens’s power is not purely comic.

But the best of all, is Stave Three. We distinctly see that “Cratchit” family. There are the potatoes that “knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled;” there is Mrs. Cratchit, fluttering and cackling like a motherly hen with a young brood of chickens; and there is everybody. The way those two young Cratchits hail Martha, and exclaim—“There’s such a goose, Martha!” can never be forgotten. By some conjuring trick, Mr. Dickens takes off his own head and puts on a Cratchit’s. Later Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim come in. Assuredly it is Bob’s thin voice that pipes out, “Why, where’s our Martha?” and it is Mrs. Cratchit who shakes her head and replies, “Not coming!” Then Bob relates how Tiny Tim behaved: “as good as gold and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you have ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas-day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.” There is a volume of pathos in these words, which are the most delicate and artistic rendering of the whole reading.

Ah, that Christmas dinner! We feel as if we were eating every morsel of it. There are “the two young Cratchits,” who “crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn;” there is Tiny Tim, who “beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried, ‘Hoorray,’” in such a still, small voice. And there is that goose! I see it with my naked eye. And O the pudding! “A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding.” Mr. Dickens’s sniffing and smelling of that pudding would make a starving family believe that they had swallowed it, holly and all. It is infectious.

What Mr. Dickens does is very frequently infinitely better than anything he says, or the way he says it; yet the doing is as delicate and intangible as the odour of violets, and can be no better described. Nothing of its kind can be more touchingly beautiful than the manner in which Bob Cratchit—previous to proposing “a merry Christmas to us all, my dears, God bless us”—stoops down, with tears in his eyes and places Tiny Tim’s withered little hand in his, “as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.” It is pantomime worthy of the finest actor.

Admirable is Mrs. Cratchit’s ungracious drinking to Scrooge’s health, and Martha’s telling how she had seen a lord, and how he “was much about as tall as Peter!”

It is a charming cabinet picture, and so likewise is the glimpse of Christmas at Scrooge’s nephew’s. The plump sister is “satisfactory, O perfectly satisfactory,” and Topper is a magnificent fraud on the understanding; a side-splitting fraud. We see Fred get off the sofa, and stamp at his own fun, and we hear the plump sister’s voice when she guesses the wonderful riddle, “It’s your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!” Altogether, Mr. Dickens is better than any comedy.

What a change in Stave Four! There sit the gray-haired rascal “Old Joe,” with his crooning voice; Mr. Dilber, and those robbers of dead men’s shrouds; there lies the body of the plundered, unknown man; there sit the Cratchits weeping over Tiny Tim’s death, a scene that would be beyond all praise were Bob’s cry, “My little, little child!” a shade less dramatic. Here, and only here, Mr. Dickens forgets the nature of Bob’s voice, and employs all the power of his own, carried away apparently by the situation. Bob would not thus give way to his feelings. Finally, there is Scrooge, no longer a miser, but a human being, screaming at the “conversational” boy in Sunday clothes, to buy him the prize turkey “that never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped ’em off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.” There is Bob Cratchit behind time, trying to overtake nine o’clock, “that fled fifteen minutes before.” There is Scrooge poking Bob in the ribs, and vowing he will raise his salary; and there is at last happiness for all, as Tiny Tim exclaims, “God bless us every one!”

It is difficult to see how the “Christmas Carol” can be read and acted better. The only improvement possible is in the ghosts, who are, perhaps, too monotonous; a way ghosts have when they return to earth. Solemnity and monotony are not synonymous terms, yet every theatrical ghost insists that they are, and Mr. Dickens is no exception to the rule. If monotony is excusable in anyone, however, it is in him; for, when one actor is obliged to represent twenty-three different characters, giving to everyone an individual tone, he may be pardoned if his ghosts are not colloquial.

Talk of sermons and churches! There never was a more beautiful sermon than this of “The Christmas Carol.” Sacred names do not necessarily mean sacred things.

SIKES AND NANCY. [353a]

“Although amongst his friends, and such of the outside world as had been admitted to the private performances of the Tavistock House theatricals, Mr. Dickens was known to possess much dramatic power, it was not until within the last few weeks [353b] that he found scope for its exhibition on the platform. Although the characters in his previous readings had each a distinct and defined individuality—and in true artistic spirit the comparatively insignificant characters have as much finish bestowed upon their representation as the heroes and heroines, e.g. the fat man on ’Change who replies ‘God knows,’ to the query as to whom Scrooge had left his money—a bit of perfect Dutch painting—one could not help feeling that the personation was but a half-personation given under restraint; that the reader was ‘underacting,’ as it is professionally termed, and one longed to see him give his dramatic genius full vent. That wish has now been realised. When Mr. Dickens called round him some half-hundred of his friends and acquaintances on whose discrimination and knowledge of public audiences he had reliance, and when, after requesting their frank verdict on the experiment, he commenced the new reading, ‘Sikes and Nancy,’ until, gradually warming with excitement, he flung aside his book and acted the scene of the murder, shrieked the terrified pleadings of the girl, growled the brutal savagery of the murderer, brought looks, tones, gestures simultaneously into play to illustrate his meaning, there was no one, not even of those who had known him best, or who believed in him most, but was astonished at the power and the versatility of his genius.

“Grandest of all the characters stands out Fagin, the Jew. The voice is husky and with a slight lisp, but there is no nasal intonation; a bent back, but no shoulder shrug; the conventional attributes are omitted, the conventional words are never spoken; and the Jew fence, crafty and cunning even in his bitter vengeance, is there before us, to the life.

“Next comes Nancy. Readers of the old editions of ‘Oliver Twist’ will doubtless recollect how desperately difficult it was to fight against the dreadful impression which Mr. George Cruikshank’s picture of Nancy left upon the mind, and how it required all the assistance of the author’s genius to preserve interest in the stunted, squab, round-faced trull whom the artist had depicted. Accurately delineating every other character in the book, and excelling all his previous and subsequent productions in his etching of ‘Fagin in the Condemned Cell,’ Mr. Cruikshank not merely did not convey the right idea of Nancy, which would have been bad enough, but conveyed the wrong one, which was worse. No such ill-favoured slut would have found a protector in Sikes, who amongst his set and in his profession was a man of mark. We all know Nancy’s position; but just because we know it we are certain she must have had some amount of personal comeliness, which Mr. Cruikshank has entirely denied her. In the reading we get none of the common side of her character, which peeps forth occasionally in the earlier volumes. She is the heroine, doing evil that good may come of it—breaking the trust reposed in her that the man she loves and they amongst whom she has lived may be brought to better lives. With the dread shadow of impending death upon her, she is thrillingly earnest, almost prophetic. Thus, in accordance with a favourite custom of the author, during the interview on the steps at London Bridge, not only does the girl’s language rise from the tone of everyday life and become imbued with dramatic imagery and fervour, but that eminently prosaic old person, Mr. Brownlow, becomes affected in the same manner, saying, ‘before this river wakes to life,’ and indulging in other romantic types and metaphors. This may be scarcely life-like, but it is very effective in the reading, enchaining the attention of the audience and forming a fine contrast to the simple pathos of the dialogue in the murder-scene, every word of which is in the highest degree natural and well-placed. It is here, of course, that the excitement of the audience is wrought to its highest pitch, and that the acme of the actor’s art is reached. The raised hands, the bent-back head, are good; but shut your eyes, and the illusion is more complete. Then the cries for mercy, the ‘Bill! dear Bill! for dear God’s sake!’ uttered in tones in which the agony of fear prevails even over the earnestness of the prayer, the dead, dull voice as hope departs, are intensely real. When the pleading ceases, you open your eyes in relief, in time to see the impersonation of the murderer seizing a heavy club, and striking his victim to the ground.

“Artistically speaking, the story of Sikes and Nancy ends at the point here indicated. Throughout the entire scene of the murder, from the entrance of Sikes into the house until the catastrophe, the silence was intense—the old phrase ‘a pin might have been heard to drop,’ could have been legitimately employed. It was a great study to watch the faces of the people—eager, excited, intent—permitted for once in a life-time to be natural, forgetting to be British, and cynical, and unimpassioned. The great strength of this feeling did not last into the concluding five minutes. The people were earnest and attentive; but the wild excitement so seldom seen amongst us died as Nancy died, and the rest was somewhat of an anti-climax.

“No one who appreciates great acting should miss this scene. It will be a treat such as they have not had for a long time, such as, from all appearances, they are not likely to have soon again. To them the earnestness and force, the subtlety, the nuances, the delicate lights and shades of the great dramatic art, will be exhibited by one of the first—if not the first—of its living masters; while those of far less intellectual calibre will understand the vigour of the entire performance, and be specially amused at the facial and vocal dexterity by which the crafty Fagin is, instantaneously changed into the chuckle-headed Noah Claypole.”

Mr. Dickens, as a reader, is an artist of the very first rank; and to say that his reading of the choicest portions of his own works is actually as fine in its way as the works themselves in theirs, is a compliment at once exceedingly high and richly deserved.

During his late visit to America, the great men of the land travelled from far and near to be present at the readings; the poet Longfellow went three nights in succession, and he afterwards declared to a friend that they were “the most delightful evenings of his life.”