The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To GEORGINA HOGARTH, 1 DECEMBER 1861 

MS State University of Buffalo, New York. Address: Miss Hogarth | Gad’s Hill Place | Higham | by Rochester.

Waterloo Hotel, Edinburgh1

Sunday First December, 1861.

My Dearest Georgy.

Everything triumphant here. The profit of yesterday only,2 was over a Hundred Pounds,3 and the appreciation is over all other appreciation. I expect that the cram tomorrow night4 will be enormous. This morning they write from Glasgow for “more tickets”; so, though trade is notoriously bad there, I hope we shall do well there.5

I found the Gordon house6 quite inscrutable. It was impossible to tell from any thing one saw, what the skeletons were or where they went. A good house, and a pretty drawing room. A very good dinner (but not profuse – and no dessert whatever), and no approach to excess in drinking. Mrs. Gordon7 is extraordinarily handsome just now, most remarkably handsome. She sat at the head of the table like a proud woman who thought sometimes that she might have been happier and better with another man. The girl8 is heavy, shy, large, and awkward and not pretty; but she is not disagreeable. I have a very good impression of the eldest boy,9 and have invited him to Gad’s Hill to talk with Charley, before he goes to China. His much cleverer than Andrew,10 and seems willing to work and anxious to work. Also they are all very pleasant with one another. In the evening, Charley11 got into the back drawing room, and sang and acted (in Italian) all the parts and all the points in Lucrezia Borgia.12  Certainly the most extraordinary thing of the kind, I ever saw in my life. Childish, inoffensive, passionate. Very graceful indeed, and with a quality in it that he cannot possibly have derived from any people he has ever seen in the parts. There were only Peter Fraser13 there, a Mr. Hutchinson,14 an old Scotch Lady whom I know, a Lady staying in the house, and the family. I left at 10 1⁄215

But yesterday Gordon told me that he (Gordon) had been discovered drunk on the stairs at “any hour” in the morning, and that he didn’t know how he got there, or “how many Tumblers” he had taken. I asked when Peter Fraser went? and he said “at about twelve.” And then it came out that he and Andrew had sat up drinking alone! Last night there came to the Hall, two young men of gentlemanly appearance, exceedingly drunk, who asked for Andrew who was not there. Some difficulty was experienced in getting them out, and I heard the noise as I read. One of them fell down the stone steps, and cut his head open near the eye.

Headland16 dines there with me today. I will report further of the house.17 Mrs. Gordon is going out with me tomorrow, to buy me something I want; and I think she will speak to me about these things. I notice a desire in her to be confidential. She is a noble audience. After Dombey yesterday morning, she came into my room in such a genuine state of tears and pain and pleasure, that one must have been interested in her, even if one had known nothing else, and she had not been so remarkably handsome. Yes, to the Chintz Curtains.18 Yes also to the marble floorcloth on the Landing. My reason is, that I think the pattern least liable to be trodden out.

19Give my love to Mamie, and tell her I had her letter this morning with much pleasure. To her question will there be War with America?20 I answer Yes. I fear the North to be utterly mad and War to be unavoidable.a I do not doubt that England could shell the City of New York off the face of the earth in two days. Tell Mamie that I have asked Letitia21 (who is in a most wretched state) if she would like to go to Gad’s, along with her friend Miss Sunderland22 for a week or so, while you are away? If she should go (but I don’t think she will), she is to write to Mamie. I should like everything in the way of eating and drinking to be provided for her, and Marsh23 to take her out in the Basket just as he would take us.

I am excessively tired and not very well, and am going to try a walk. So goodbye, dearest Georgy, for the present.

Ever Most affecy 

CD

• 1. CD arrived in Edinburgh, 26 Nov, during his Third Provincial Tour. He read at the Queen Street Hall on 27-30 Nov and 2 Dec, returning for an extra reading, 7 Dec: see Pilgrim Letters 12, pp. 692-3.
• 2. Word written over caret.
• 3. CD read twice, Dombey and Son in the afternoon, David Copperfield in the evening. He reported himself “rather tired”, having taken “unusual pains” (To Wills, 1 Dec).
• 4. He read Nicholas Nickleby and the Pickwick Trial. The ticket arrangements were chaotic and CD inside the hall and John Gordon (below) outside controlled the crowds as best they could (To Hogarth, 3 Dec, and To Wills, 3 Dec). The demand determined CD to return for the extra 7 Dec reading.
• 5. He read four nights at the City Hall, Glasgow, 3-6 Dec, reporting “200 Stalls let” for the first night (To Wills, 3 Dec).
• 6. CD dined, 29 Nov, at 6 Gloucester Place, Edinburgh, home of John Thomson Gordon (1813-65), advocate; sheriff of Aberdeen, 1847-8; of Midlothian, 1849-65: see Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 314n. CD had seen him in Edinburgh, June 41, and judged him “a very masterly speaker...who ought to become a distinguished man” (Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 314). Although Gordon was a heavy drinker, CD’s friendship with him was of long standing and never broken.
• 7. Née Mary Wilson, daughter of John Wilson (“Christopher North”), died 1874; she married Gordon, 1837.
• 8. Jane Gordon, born 1846.
• 9. John Wilson Gordon, born 1839.
• 10. Andrew Rutherford Gordon; the second son, born 1840. Lieut RN, 1861; retired with the same rank, 1870.
• 11. Charles Dickens Gordon (1850-1918); the fourth son. Took Anglican orders; later, a Roman Catholic.
• 12. The opera (1833) by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848).
• 13. Peter S. Fraser, publisher and bookseller; a friend of CD: see Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 563n.
• 14. Unidentified.
• 15. No full stop in MS: the sentence an afterthought, crammed in at the end of the line.
• 16. Thomas Hughes Headland (?1806-88); assisted Arthur Smith in CD’s first series of public readings, 1858: see Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 606n. Involved with the later readings; on Smith’s illness in 1861, agreed to take over arrangements (Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 460) and after Smith’s death (1 Oct) became manager of the readings. For managerial problems with this reading tour, see To Hogarth, 22 Nov, and To Wills, 22 Nov, Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 513-5, 516-7.
• 17. See To Hogarth, 3 Dec, and To Wills, 3 Dec, Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 530, 531-2.
• 18. Part of the redecoration and furnishing of Gad’s Hill: see To Barber, [?Nov 61], Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 528.
• 19. This letter’s MS has been largely scored through in pencil, presumably when The Letters of Charles Dickens, Edited by His Sister-in-Law and His Eldest Daughter was being prepared: the passage marked here, not scored through in MS, was inserted in that volume with omission as the final paragraph of To Georgina Hogarth, 3 Dec 61, Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 530, from which it should be deleted
• 20. On the outbreak of the American Civil War, Britain (13 May 61) issued a declaration of neutrality. The Confederacy sent two accredited representatives to plead the Southern cause in Britain and France (also neutral). They sailed from Cuba in the British mail ship, Trent, which on 8 Nov was stopped by a Federal warship and the representatives removed. The news arrived in England, 27 Nov. Indignation was wide-spread, demands being made that the emissaries be restored with sufficient apology (The Times, 29 Nov). War with the North was averted and the emissaries presented the Confederacy’s case, with little success, in both Britain and France.
• 21. CD’s sister, the widow of Henry Austin. CD had been advising her about the best course of action in the aftermath of Austin’s death: see e.g. To Mrs Austin, 22, 25 Nov, 1 Dec, Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 513, 520-1, 529. He had invited her to Gad’s Hill, 22 Nov.
• 22. Not otherwise identified: not the Gad’s Hill housekeeper, Miss Sutherland, as given in Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 513n.
• 23. James Marsh, CD’s groom: see frontispiece, Pilgrim Letters 10, for photograph of Marsh and the basket-carriage or basket-phaeton, and also Marylian Watney, The Elegant Carriage, 1961, pp. 36-7 & plate XVIII, and Leon Litvack, 'Dickens in the Eye of the Beholder: The Photographs of Robert Hindry Mason, Dickens Studies Annual 47 (2016), pp. 174, 190.