Kate Douglas Wiggin, the little girl pictured above, authored several books of her own as an adult. Below she recalls her childhood chance meeting with Charles Dickens, who was in the United States lecturing.
She loved him,
as many children did. Wiggin idolized Charles Dickens and read and re-read his popular works. So, if you feel you only slogged through a Dicken's novel this summer, know that legions of literate 19th Century teenyboppers really, really thought his work was riveting.
Welcome back to school!
From A Child's Journey with Dickens, by Kate Douglas Wiggin:
THERE IS AN INDIAN MYTH which
relates that when the gaze of the Siva rested for the first time on
Tellatonea, the most beautiful of women, his desire to see her was so
great that his body became all eyes. Such a transformation, I fear,
was perilously near to being my fate! Half an hour passed, perhaps,
and one gentleman after another came from here or there to exchange a
word of greeting with the famous novelist, so that he was never for a
moment alone, thereby inciting in my breast my first, and about my
last, experience of the passion of jealousy. Suddenly, however, Mr.
Osgood arose, and with an apology went into the smoking-car. I never
knew how it happened; I had no plan, no preparation, no intention, no
provocation; but invisible ropes pulled me out of my seat and,
speeding up the aisle, I planted myself timorously down, an unbidden
guest, in the seat of honor. I had a moment to recover my equanimity,
for Dickens was looking out of the window, but he turned in a moment,
and said with justifiable surprise,
“God bless my soul, where
did you come from?”
“I came from Hollis,
Maine,” I stammered, “and I’m going to Charlestown
to visit my uncle. My mother and her cousin went to your reading last
night, but of course, three couldn’t go from the same family,
so I stayed at home. Nora, that’s my little sister, stayed at
home, too. She’s too small to go on a journey, but she wanted
to go to the reading dreadfully. There was a lady there who had never
heard of Betsey
Trotwood, and had only read two of your books!”
“Well, upon my word!”
he said, “You do not mean to say that you have read them!”
“Of course I have,” I
replied, “every one of them but the two that we are going to
buy in Boston, and some of them six times.”
“Bless my soul!” he
exclaimed again. “Those long thick books, and you such a slip
of a thing.”
“Of course,” I
explained conscientiously, “I do skip some of the very dull
parts once in a while —not the short dull parts, but the long
ones.”
He laughed heartily. “Now,
that is something that I hear very little about,” he said. “I
distinctly want to learn more about those very dull parts.”
And whether to amuse himself or
to amuse me, I do not know, but he took out a notebook and pencil
from his pocket and proceeded to give me an exhausting and exhaustive
examination on this subject; the books in which the dull parts
predominated and the characters and subjects which principally
produced them. He chuckled so constantly during this operation that I
could hardly help believing myself extraordinarily agreeable, so I
continued dealing these infant blows under the delusion that I was
flinging him bouquets.
It was not
long before one of my hands was in his and his arm around my waist
while we talked of many things. They say, I believe, that his hands
were “undistinguished” in shape, and that he wore too
many rings. Well, those criticisms must come from persons who never
felt the warmth of his handclasp! For my part, I am glad that Pullman
chair cars had not come into fashion, else I should never have
experienced the delicious joy of snuggling up to Genius and of being
distinctly encouraged in the attitude.
I wish I could
recall still more of his conversation, but I was too happy, too
exhilarated, and too inexperienced to take conscious notes of the
interview. I remember feeling that I had never known anybody so well
and so intimately, and that I talked with him as one talks under
cover of darkness or before the flickering light of a fire. It seems
to me, as I look back now and remember how the little soul of me came
out and sat in the sunshine of his presence, that I must have had
some premonition that the child, who would come to be one of the
least of writers, was then talking with one of the greatest —talking,
too, of the author’s profession and high calling. All the
little details of the meeting stand out as clearly as though it had
happened yesterday. I can see every article of his clothing and of my
own: the other passengers in the car, the landscape through the
window, and above all the face of Dickens, deeply lined, with
sparkling eyes and an amused, waggish smile that curled the corners
of his mouth under his grizzled mustache. A part of our conversation
was given to a Boston newspaper next day by the author himself, or by
Mr. Osgood, and a little more was added a few years after by an old
lady who sat in the next seat to us. (The pronoun “us”
seems ridiculously intimate, but I have no doubt I used it, quite
unabashed, at that date.)
I remember Dickens asked, “What
book of mine do you like best?” and I answered, “Oh, I
like David Copperfield much the best. That is the one I have
read six times.”
“Six times! — good,
good! I am glad that you like Davy; so do I — I like it best,
too!” he replied, clapping his hands. And that was the only
remark he made which attracted the attention of the other passengers,
who looked in our direction now and then, I have been told, smiling
at the interview, but preserving its privacy with the utmost
friendliness.
“Of course,” I added,
“I almost said Great Expectations, because that comes
next. We named our little yellow dog Mr. Pip. They told father he was
part rat terrier, and we were all so pleased. Then one day father
showed him a trap with a mouse in it. The mouse wiggled its tail just
a little, and Pip was so frightened that he ran under the barn and
stayed there the rest of the day. Then all the neighbors made fun of
him, and you can think how Nora and I love him when he’s had
such a hard time, just like Pip in Great Expectations!”
Here again my
new friend’s mirth was delightful to behold, so much so that my
embarrassed mother, who had been watching me for half an hour, almost
made up her mind to drag me away before the very eyes of our fellow
passengers. I had never been thought an amusing child in the family
circle; what then, could I be saying to the most distinguished and
popular author in the universe?
“We have another dog,”
I went on, “and his name is Mr. Pocket. We were playing with
Pip, who is a smooth dog, one day, when a shaggy dog came along that
didn’t belong to anybody, and hadn’t any home. He liked
Pip and Pip liked him, so we kept him, and named him Pocket after
Pip’s friend. The real Mr. Pip and Mr. Pocket met first in Miss
Havisham’s garden, and they had such a funny fight it always
makes father laugh till he can’t read! Then they became great
friends. Perhaps you remember Mr. Pip and Mr. Pocket?”
And Dickens thought he did,
which, perhaps, is not strange, considering that he was the author of
their respective beings. Mr.
Harry Furniss declares that Great Expectations was
Dickens’s favorite novel, but I can only say that to me he
avowed his special fondness for David Copperfield.
“Did you want to go to my
reading very much?” Dickens asked me.
Here was a subject that had never
once been touched upon in all the past days — a topic that
stirred the very depths of my disappointment and sorrow, fairly
choking me, and making my lip tremble by its unexpectedness, as I
faltered, “Yes, more than tongue can tell.”
I looked up a second later, when
I was sure that the tears in my eyes were not going to fall, and to
my astonishment saw that Dickens’s eyes were in precisely the
same state of moisture. That was a never-to-be-forgotten moment,
although I was too young to appreciate the full significance of it.
“Do you cry when you read
out loud?” I asked curiously. “We all do in our family.
And we never read about Tiny Tim, or about Steerforth when his body
is washed up on the beach, on Saturday nights, or our eyes are too
swollen to go to Sunday School.”
“Yes, I cry when I read
about Steerforth,” he answered quietly, and I felt no
astonishment.
“We cry the worst when it
says, ‘All the men who carried him had known him and gone
sailing with him, and seen him merry and bold,’” I said,
growing very tearful in reminiscence.
We were now fast approaching our
destination, the station in Boston, and the passengers began to
collect their wraps and bundles. Mr. Osgood had two or three times
made his appearance, but had been waved away with a smile by Dickens
— a smile that seemed to say, “You will excuse me, I
know, but this child has the right of way.”
“You are not traveling
alone?” he asked as he arose to put on his overcoat.
“Oh, no,” I answered,
coming down to earth for the first time since I had taken my seat
beside him. “Oh, no, I had a mother, but I forgot all about
her.”
He replied, “You are a
passed-mistress of the art of flattery!” But this remark was
told me years afterward by the old lady who was sitting in the next
seat and who overheard as much of the conversation as she possibly
could, so she informed me.
Dickens took
me back to the forgotten mother and introduced himself, and I, still
clinging to his hand, left the car and walked with him down the
platform until he disappeared in the carriage with Mr. Osgood,
leaving me with the feeling that I must continue my existence somehow
in a dull and dreary world.
