DICKENS’S FIRST READING in his new and final series of London readings was at St James’s Hall on the evening of 11 January. The plan for the rest of that month was for him to read twice a week—on Tuesdays and Fridays—and then once a week after that until the series was to be completed on 15 March.
Frank Beard and his other physicians were totally opposed to these readings, of course, and even more opposed to Dickens’s making the frequent voyages into town by rail. To appease them, Dickens rented the Miller Gibson house at 5 Hyde Park Place (just opposite the Marble Arch) from January to the first of June, although he again told everyone he had done this so that his daughter Mary would have a local place to stay, as she became busier in society that winter and spring.
With Dickens in London most of the time, one would think that he and I would have crossed paths frequently as in the old days, but when he was not reading he was working on his book, and I continued working on mine.
Frank Beard had asked me if I might join Charley Dickens and him on nightly attendance at the Inimitable’s readings, but I declined for reasons of both work and my own health. Beard was there every night in case of emergency and he admitted to me that he was actively worried that Dickens might die on stage. That night of the first performance, Frank had said to Charley, “I have had some steps put up at the side of the platform. You must be there every night, and if you see your father falter in the least, you must run and catch him and bring him off to me, or, by Heaven, he’ll die before them all.”
Dickens did not die that first night.
He read from David Copperfield and the ever-popular Trial from Pickwick, and the evening, according to his own later accounts, “went with the greatest brilliancy.” But afterwards, with the Inimitable collapsed on his sofa in his dressing room, Beard found that Dickens’s pulse had gone from its normal 72 to 95.
And it continued to rise during and after each subsequent performance.
Dickens had scheduled two of his performances for afternoons and even one in the morning after a request for that hour from actors and actresses who wished to see him read but who could not come later in the day or evening. It was at this unusual morning reading on 21 January, with the seats filled with tittering and chattering young actresses, that Dickens first did the Murder reading again. Several of the periwinkles fainted, more had to be helped out, and even some of the actors in the audience cried out in alarm.
Dickens was too exhausted afterwards to show his usual delight at such a response. Beard later told me that the author’s pulse that morning, in mere anticipation of Nancy’s Murder, had risen to 90 and after the performance, with Dickens prostrated on the sofa and unable to get his breath back—“He was panting like a dying man” were Beard’s precise words to me—the Inimitable’s pulse was at 112 and even fifteen minutes later had dropped only to 100.
Within two days—he was meeting Carlyle for the last time— Dickens’s arm was in a sling.
Still he went on, continuing the reading series as planned. His pulse rose to 114—then 118—then 124.
At each intermission, Beard had two strong men ready to half-carry Dickens to his dressing room, where the Inimitable would lie panting, too breathless to speak except for meaningless syllables or incoherent sounds, for at least a full ten minutes before the author of so many long books could speak a single coherent sentence. Then Beard or Dolby would help Dickens take a few swallows of weak brandy mixed with water and Dickens would rise, put a fresh flower in his lapel, and rush back onto the platform.
His pulse rate continued to rise at each performance.
On the first evening of March 1870, Dickens performed his final reading from his beloved David Copperfield.
On 8 March, he murdered Nancy for the last time. Some days after that, I happened to meet Charles Kent in Piccadilly, and over luncheon Kent told me that on his way to the stage for that final Murder, Dickens had whispered to him, “I shall tear myself to pieces.”
According to Frank Beard, he had already torn himself to pieces. But he went on.
It was in the middle of March—right when the tour was taking its greatest toll on the man—that the Queen summoned Dickens to Buckingham Palace for an audience.
Dickens had not been able to walk the previous evening or that morning, but he managed to hobble into Her Majesty’s presence. Court etiquette did not allow him to sit (although the previous year, receiving the same honour, old Carlyle, announcing that he was a feeble old man, had helped himself to a chair and etiquette be d— ned).
Dickens stood throughout the interview. (But so did Victoria, leaning slightly on the back of a sofa—an advantage denied to the author standing racked in pain in front of her.)
This interview had come about partially because Dickens had shown some American Civil War photographs to Mr Arthur Helps, Clerk of the Privy Council, and Helps had mentioned them to Her Majesty. Dickens had forwarded the photographs to her.
With his usual sense of mischief, Dickens had sent the hapless Helps a note in which he pretended to believe that he was being summoned to the palace in order to be made a baronet. “We will have ‘Of Gad’s Hill Place’ attached to the title of the Baronetcy, please,” he wrote, “— on account of the divine William and Falstaff. With this stipulation, my blessing and forgiveness are enclosed.”
Reports were that Mr Helps and other members of the court were quite beside themselves with embarrassment over the misunderstanding until someone explained the Inimitable’s sense of humour to them.
During the interview with the Queen, Dickens quickly turned the subject to the prescient dream that President Abraham Lincoln was purported to have had—and told others about—the night before he was assassinated. Such portents of imminent death were obviously on the Inimitable’s mind at that time, and he had brought up the Lincoln dream with many of his friends.
Her Majesty reminded him of the time she had attended the performance of The Frozen Deep some thirteen years earlier. The two discussed the evident fate of the Franklin Expedition for a few moments, then the current state of Arctic exploration, and then somehow got onto the perennial issue of the servant problem. From there the long royal audience’s conversation shifted to national education and the appalling price of butcher’s meat.
I can only imagine and envision, Dear Reader, much as you must so many decades beyond all this, how that audience must have looked and sounded, with Her Majesty standing next to the sofa and behaving, as Dickens later told Georgina, “strangely shy… and like a girl in manner,” and Dickens standing ramrod straight yet seemingly relaxed, perhaps with his hands clasped behind him, while his left leg and foot and left arm were throbbing and aching and threatening to betray him into collapse.
Before the audience ended, Her Majesty is reported to have said softly, “You know, it is one of our greatest regrets that we have never had the opportunity to hear one of your readings.”
“I regret it as well, Ma’am,” said Dickens. “I am sorry, but as of just two days ago, they are now finally over. After all these years, my readings are over.”
“And a private reading would be out of the question?” said Victoria.
“I fear it would be, Your Majesty. And I would not care to give a private reading at any event. You see, Ma’am, a mixed audience is essential to the success of my readings. This may not be the case with other authors who read for the public, but it has always been the case for me.”
“We understand,” said Her Majesty. “And we also understand that it would be inconsistent for you to alter your decision. We happen to know, Mr Dickens, that you are the most consistent of men.” She smiled then, and Dickens later confided to Forster that he was sure she was thinking of that time thirteen years before when he had flatly refused to appear before Her Majesty still in his costume and makeup after the comedic farce that had followed The Frozen Deep.