The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To W. W. F. DE CERJAT,1 16 JANUARY 1854

MS Lehigh University Special Collections, Bethlehem, PA. Address: William W. F. De Cerjat Esqre | Elysée | Lausanne | Switzerland.

Tavistock House, London | Monday Sixteenth January 1854

My Dear Cerjat. Guilty. The accused pleads guilty, but throws himself upon the mercy of the Court.2 He humbly represents that his usual hour for getting up, in the course of his travels,3 was three o’Clock in the morning, and his usual hour for going to bed, nine or ten the next night. That the places in which he chiefly deviated from these rules of hardship, were Rome and Venice;4 and that at those cities of Fame he shut himself up in solitude, and wrote Christmas papers for the incomparable publication known as Household Words.5 That his correspondence at all times, arising out of the business of the said Household Words alone, was very heavy. That his offence, though undoubtedly committed, was unavoidable, and that a nominal punishment will meet the justice of the case.

We had only three bad days out of the whole time. After Naples,6 which was very hot, we had very cold, clear, bright weather.When we got to Chamounix, we found the greater part of the Inns shut up and the people gone – no visitors whatsoever – and plenty of snow.7 These were the very best circumstances under which to see the place, and we stayed a couple of days at the Hotel de Londres (hastily re-furbished for our entertainment) and climbed through the snow to the Mer de Glace,8 and thoroughly enjoyed it. Then we went, in Mule procession (I walking) to the old hotel at Martigny, where Collins was ill, and I suppose I bored Egg to death by talking all the evening about the time when you and I were there together. Naples (a place always painful to me, in the intense degradation of the people)9 seems to have only three classes of inhabitants left in it – priests, soldiers (standing army one hundred thousand strong) and spies.10 Of Maccaroni we ate very considerable quantities everywhere; also, for the benefit of Italy, we took our share of every description of Wine.At Naples I found Layard the Nineveh Traveller,11 who is a friend of mine and an admirable fellow; so we fraternised and went up Vesuvius together,12 and ate more Maccaroni and drank more Wine. At Rome, the day after our arrival, they were making a Saint at St. Peters:13 on which occasion I was surprised to find what an immense number of pounds of wax candles it takes to make the regular, genuine article. From Turin to Paris, over the Mont Cenis, we made only one journey.14 The Rhone being frozen and foggy was not to be navigated, so we posted from Lyons to Chalons15 – and everybody else was doing the like – and there were no horses to be got – and we were stranded at midnight in amazing little cabarets, with nothing worth mentioning to eat in them, except the iron stove – which was rusty, and the billiard table – which was musty. We left Turin on a Tuesday evening, and arrived in Paris on the Friday evening; where I found my son Charley hot – or I should rather say, cold – from Germany,16 with his arms and legs so grown out of his coat and trousers that I was ashamed of him, and was reduced to the necessity of taking him, under cover of night, to a ready made establishment in the Palais Royal, where they put him into balloon-waisted pantaloons and increased my confusion. Leaving Calais on the evening of Sunday the 10th. of December,17 fact of18 distinguished author’s being aboard was telegraphed to Dover, whereupon authorities of Dover Railway detained Train to London for distinguished author’s arrival – rather to the exasperation of British public. D. A. arrived home between 10 and 11 that night thankful, and found all well and happy.

I think you see the Times, and if so you will have seen a very graceful and good account of the Birmingham readings.19 It was the most remarkable scene that England could produce I think, in the way of a vast, intelligent assemblage, and the success was  most wonderful and prodigious – perfectly overwhelming and astounding altogether. They wound up by giving my wife a piece of Plate, having given me one before; and when you come to dine here (may it be soon!) it shall be duly displayed in the centre of the table.

Tell Mrs. Cerjat,20 to whom my love and all our loves, that I have highly excited them at home here by giving them an account in detail of all your daughters;21 further, that the22 way in which Catherine and Georgina have questioned and crossquestioned me about you all, notwithstanding, is maddening. Mrs. Watson23 has been obliged to pass her Christmas at Brighton alone with her younger children, in consequence of her two eldest boys coming home to Rockingham from school, with the hooping cough.24 The quarantine expires to day, however, and she dines here, on her way back into Northamptonshire, tomorrow.25 There is great talk about Prince Albert’s interference in foreign politics, and the Queen is supposed to be undecided whether to open Parliament in person or not: fearing his present unpopularity.26 The sad affair of the Preston strike remains unsettled,27 and I hear on strong authority that, if that were settled, the Manchester people are prepared to strike next.28 Provisions very dear, but the people very temperate and quiet in general. So ends this jumble – which looks like the index to a chapter in a book,29 I find when I read it over.

Ever My Dear Cerjat. Heartily Your friend CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. William Woodley Frederick de Cerjat (d. 1869), member of an old Vaudois family. Resident at Lausanne, where CD came to know him as a friend in 1846.
• 2. Clearly CD had not written to Cerjat during his Italian travels (next note), though he had seen him 16 Oct when briefly in Lausanne on his journey.
• 3. CD travelled in Switzerland and Italy, 10 Oct-11 Dec 53: see Pilgrim Letters 7. His companions were Wilkie Collins (see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 310n) and the artist Augustus Egg (see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 113n).
• 4. CD arrived in Rome, 12 Nov, and in Venice, 24 Nov.
• 5. In Rome CD wrote “The Schoolboy's Story” and in Venice, “Nobody’s Story”, Household Words, Extra Christmas No. 1853, 1-5, 34-6.
• 6. CD arrived in Naples, 4 Nov, staying about a week.
• 7. CD stayed in Chamounix, 19-21 Oct: see also To Mrs CD, 20 & 21 Oct 53, Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 168.
• 8. The great glacier, terminating in the Glacier du Bois; the source of the river Arveron (modern Arve) in the valley of Chamounix. CD had been there in 1846: see PIlgrim Letters 4, pp. 594-5. The excursion from Chamounix took 21⁄2 hours by mule and 2 hours back. The “old” hotel (i.e. where they stayed in 1846) was the Hotel de la Grande Maison: PIlgrim Letters 4, p. 618n.
• 9. In 1845 CD had found the “condition of the common people” in Naples “abject and shocking” (To Forster, [11 Feb 45] and [?22 Feb 45], Pilgrim Letters 4, pp. 266 & 271).
• 10. For CD’s gloom about the state of Naples, see To Forster, [?4 Dec 53], Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 222 & n.
• 11. Austen Henry Layard (1817-94; Dictionary of National Biography), archaeologist and radical politician: see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 555n. He had published Nineveh and Babylon, on his second series of excavations, in Summer 53.
• 12. They “ascended Vesuvius in the Sunlight, and came down in the Moonlight, very merrily” (To Miss Coutts, 13 Nov 53, Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 189). CD had previously climbed Vesuvius, with Catherine Dickens and Georgina, Hogarth 21 Feb 45: To Mitton, 17 & 22 Feb 45, Pilgrim Letters 4, pp. 269-71.
• 13. In fact, the beatification (declaring “Blessed”), not the canonisation (declaring a “Saint”) of Giovanni Grande, 13 Nov 53. Grande (1546-1600), who worked in hospitals and prisons, punning on his Spanish surname, called himself the “Grande Pecador” – the “Great Sinner”: see also To Hogarth, 13 Nov 53, Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 192 & n.
• 14. CD left Turin, 6 Dec 53; here he gives Friday 9 Dec as the date of his Paris arrival: see also To Regnier, [10 Dec 53], Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 225hn.
• 15. The Rhone and the Saône meet at Lyons; Chalon is on the Saône (as CD knew: Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 223).
• 16. Charley, returning home for Christmas, was spending a year in Leipzig to improve his German and business experience. CD arranged for them to meet in Paris and travel on to London (To CD Jnr, 25 Nov 53, Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 208).
• 17. Sunday was 11 Dec; rapid travel presumably caused confusion, since To Regnier, [10 Dec 53], was misdated at the time. CD started from Paris on the Sunday morning.
• 18. “fact of” written above caret.
• 19. CD’s three readings on behalf of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, 27, 29 and 30 Dec 53. Reported in The Times, 2 Jan; Catherine was presented with a “silver flower-stand” on 31 Dec (Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 250nn). See also CD’s account of the third reading (of the Carol) specifically for working men: To Mrs Watson, 13 Jan 54, Pilgrim Letters 7, pp. 243-4.
• 20. Maria, daughter of Peter Holmes of Peterville, Co. Tipperary.
• 21. Cerjat had five daughters: see Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 165n.
• 22. “y” crossed out after “the”.
• 23. The Hon. Mrs Watson, née Lavinia Jane Quin (1816-88): see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 574n. Her husband, the Hon. Richard Watson, had died, 24 July 52.
• 24. “hooping” thus in original (rather than "whooping"). As well as George (b. 1841), Edward Spencer (b. 1843), and Mary Georgiana (b. 1845) – “the jolly boys, and the calm little girl”, CD called them (To Mrs Watson, 24 Jan 51, Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 266) – a daughter, Lavinia Grace, had been born posthumously, Feb 53. The boys were both at Eton.
• 25. Mrs Watson clearly confirmed, in reply to CD's letter of 13 Jan (Pilgrim Letters 7, p. 244), that she would stay two nights in London and dine with the Dickenses on 17 Jan, on her way home to Rockingham Castle.
• 26. The Prince was widely believed to exert an undue influence over his wife and to favour pro-Prussian and pro-Austrian policies. In the agitation over the Eastern Question, late 53-early 54, when Anglo-French support for Turkey against Russian aggression culminated in the declaration of war, Mar 54, popular feeling ran high against Albert. The Prince himself wrote, 27 Dec 53, that “treachery is the cry, and, guided by a friendly hand, the whole press has for the last week made ‘a dead set at the Prince’...My unconstitutional position, correspondence with Foreign Courts, dislike to Palmerston...are depicted as the causes of the decline of the State, the Constitution, and the nation” (quoted in Theodore Martin, The Life of His Royal Highness The Prince Consort, 1876, II, 535; see further ch. L). The Queen opened Parliament in person, 31 Jan 54; en route, “hisses were occasionally heard, but they were at once drowned amid the general cheering” (Household Narrative [1854], p. 25).
• 27. The Preston weavers had been on strike for over 20 weeks. CD visited Preston in late January and wrote “On Strike”, Household Words, 11 Feb 54, VIII, 555, later incorporating some of his observations in Hard Times.
• 28. There was a serious strike by the Manchester mill-workers the following year.
• 29. CD refers to the convention of providing a summary of a chapter at its head or on the contents page.