A Hero to his Readings Manager

Abstract

[For the 1866 readings tour, Dickens prepared a new item, Doctor Marigold, derived from his recent Christmas story] and, in order to test its suitability for its purpose, a private rehearsal was given on March 18, at Southwick Place, Hyde Park, in a furnished house which Mr. Dickens had taken for the season. This audience consisted of the members of his family, and Mr. Robert Browning, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Mr. Charles Fechter, Mr. John Forster, Mr. Arthur Chappell, Mr. Charles Kent, and myself. It is hardly necessary to say that the verdict was unanimously favourable. Everybody was astonished by the extraordinary ease and fluency with which the patter of the ‘Cheap Jack’ was delivered, and the subtlety of the humour which pervaded the whole presentation. To those present, the surprise was no less great than the results were pleasing; indeed, it is hard to see how it could well have been otherwise, for seldom, and but too seldom in the world’s history, do we find a man gifted with such extraordinary powers, and, at the same time, possessed of such a love of method, such will, such energy, and such a capacity for taking pains.