The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-13 00:00:00

THE LATE CHARLES DICKENS.

The public regret for the sudden loss of so widely
popular an author as Charles Dickens is vividly displayed
in the eagerness to obtain every scrap of intelligence
which his friends or associates can furnish. Many sin-
gular and touching incidents have been mentioned in con-
nection with his unlooked-for end. A melancholy signi-
ficance now attaches to the last words in the last num-
ber of " Edwin Drood," in which the story, in the anthor's
words, " Comes to an end for a time." It is
related of him that when startled and distressed by
the news of the death of Thackeray even more
sudden than his own, Charles Dickens said, " I wonder
whether I shall be missed as much." If he could have
foreseen the universal expressions of regret from the
Queen herself downwards, which are current to-day, he
would not have doubted the answer. Her Majesty always
prompt in expressing the sentiments of her people when
those sentiments most deserve the expression, has lost no
time in communicating her regret to the bereaved family,
and the following telegram has, through the agency of
the "Central Press," been forwarded throughout the
country :

" Mr. Arthur Helps, on becoming acquainted with the
death of Mr. Charles Dickens, telegraphed the lamentable
intelligence to the Queen at Balmoral, and immediately
received the following sympathetic reply :
" From Colonel Ponsonby to Mr. Helps, Council Office.
"The Queen commands me to express her deepest re-
gret at the sad news of Charles Dickens's death."
This feeling message was at once transmitted to the
family at Gadshill, and will doubtless tePd. More than any
other expression of human sympathytould possibly do, to
soothe them in their distress,

The Daily News states that when Mr. Dickens visited
the Queen a few months since her Majesty was personally
occupied with the consideration of some means by which
she might, in her public capacity, express her sense of the
'.value of Mr. Dickens's services to his country and to
literature. The Queen was ready to confer any distinction
which Mr. Dickens's known views and tastes would permit
him to accept, and after more than one title of
honour had been declined, her Majesty desired that he
would, at least, accept e, place in her Privy Council. A
pleasant anecdote of the Queen's kindly appreciation of
his works has been told. When Mr. Helps, the Clerk of
the Council, was last at Balmoral, her Majesty called
him into her own private library, and shewed him the
complete set of Mr. Dickens's works which he
had recently sent to her among her chosen
authors. She directed Mr. Helps, knowing his
friendship for Charles Dickens; to tell the author where
she had placed his books. She little thought the kindly
message would come too late, for it did not reach Gads-
hill till • owner lay unconscious. The following
particulars of the circumstances attending Mr. Dickens'
death have been supplied :—Some particulars are sup-
phed to Us of the circumstances surrounding the
death of Mr. Charles Dickens. He was at
Rochester on Tuesday the 7th inst. ; on Wednesday he
was employed at his literary labours until dinner time.
When at dinner he was seized with a violent pain-in the
head, and fell down becoming totally unconscious.
He was placed on a sofa in the dining-room as
it was not considered advisable to remove him upstairs.
Mr. S. Steele, of Strood, his local medical adviser, was
sent for, and found him labouring under a severe form of
apoplexy. Stertorous breathing had taken place, and the
extremities very soon became cold. Mr. Steele remained
with him until near midnight, when Mr. F. Carr Beard,
surgeon, of Welbeck-street, London, an old personal
friend of Mr. Dickens, arrived with Mrs. Collins, and
Miss Dickens, daughters of the great novelist. Mr. Beard
immediately consulted with Mr. Steele, but they had
little hope. Mr. Dickens was still unconscious, and
remained in that state up to the time of his death. Mr.
Beard remained with him all night. Dr. J. Russell
Reynolds, the eminent physician of Grosvenor-
street, was telegraphed for, and arrived on Thursday
afternoon. He agreed with Messrs. Beard and Steele, in
considering the case a hopeless one from the first. The
death took place at a quarter past six. The deceased
was well on the Wednesday, and wrote a great deal during
the day. He had lately had no premonitory symptoms
of an affection of the brain. He had not been ill since his
indisposition, about twelve months since, arising from
the fatigue of travelling. A post-mortem examination
has been talked of, but seems uncertain. The day of his
death was, strange to say, the anniversary of the Staple-
hurst accident, in which it will be remembered he was in
great peril, and from which some of those nearest to him
consider he received a physical shock from which he
never really recovered. The friends in the habit
of meeting Mr. Dickens privately recall now the
energy with which he depicted that dreadful
scene, and how as the climax of his story came, and its
dread interest grew, he would rise from the table, and
literally act the parts of the several sufferers to whom he
had lent a helping hand. Now that he is gone it is re-
membered, too, with absolute pain, that one of the first
surgeons of the day, who was present when this Staple-
hurst story was told soon after its occurrence, remarked
that " the worst of these railway accidents was the
difficulty of determining the period at which the sys-
tem could be said to have survived the shock, and
that instances were on record of two or three years having
gone by before the life sufferer knew that he was seriously
hurt." But the medical testimony as to the imme-
diate cause of Mr. Dickens's death is definite and
precise. Apoplexy—an effusion of blood on the
brain, the cause an overstrained system, and the
result one which was only staved off twelvemonths
ago, when he was induced to obey his doctor's injunctions
and to suspend his readings in public—has carried him
away at a comparatively early age. Several of our con-
temporaries give interesting details of matters which have
come specially under their individual observati an. The
Daily News, with which Dickens was so intimately
associated, tells us how he carried his habit of thorough
energy and earnestness, even into his amateur theatricals.
" Charles Dickens was eminently dramatic in his genius
and his tastes. Some of his dearest and closest friends
were actors, and from the time of Mr. Macready to that
of Mr. Fetcher his chosen intimates included many of the
chief lights of the British stage. As an amateur actor he
himself was unsurpassed and unsurpassable. Those
who remember the performances on behalf of
the Guild of Literature and Art; those given
privately at Tavistock-house about a dozen years
ago ; and those held on behalf of the Douglas Jerrold
Memorial Fund, know that the dramatic readings which
took the world by storm of late years were the ripened
fruit of a long and intense admiration for and leaning to
the stage. The most powerful and the most painful of
Mr. Dickens's impersonations—Fagin, the Jew—Bill
Sikes, the murderer, and his victim—had their germ in
the delineation of the light-house keeper, in the drama
written by Mr. Wilkie Collins expressly for his
friend ; and some of the most competent judges
have declared that the English stage lost an orna-
ment, which would have revived its brightest
days, by Charles Dickens succeeding as an author and
making literature his profession. But Mr. Dickens's
earnestness was such that he not only took upon his own
shoulders the most arduous tasks connected with the
amateur performances for charitable objects with which
he so often associated himself, but superintended the
minutest detail, and often worked with his own hands to en-
sure what he held to be the necessary effect. There are men
living who remember his occupying himself for a whole
day with hammer and nails on the stage of Miss
Kelly's Theatre, while it was matter for playful jocularity
among brave spirits who have gone before that Dickens
had converted himself into an amateur cheek-taker, and
sat in the receipt of custom with Arthur Smith all day
long at the Gallery of Illustration, when the Jerrold
performances were about to be given. This is not the
place' to speak of the intense and laborious care he
bestowed upon the performances given at his
London house, or of the days he devoted to the
superintendence of stage effects. The only place
at which there was a chance of seeing Dickens at this
time, said his intimates, was on the amateur stage, and
there, absorbed in the subject of the hour, he would be
found, resting one arm in the hand of the other, looking
at the drops, and cogitating upon their effect for the
coming night, or working like any scene-shifter at the
properties. This was Dickens all over. He never rested,
and never seemed to tire. His active mind has,
alas ! worn out his frame, and he has died, like
Kempenfelt, pen in hand, literally from over-work."
This activity he carried into everything. It has been
remarked that " Thackeray in Houndsditch, Thackeray in
Bethnal-green or at Camden-town, would have appeared
anomalous ; as well could we picture Carlyle at Cre-
morne, or Tennyson at Garraway's ; but Charles Dickens,
when in town, was übiquitous. He was to be met, by
those who knew him, everywhere—and who did not
know him ? Who had not heard him, and who had not
seen his photographs in the shop windows ? The
omnibus conductors knew him, the street-boys knew
him ; and perhaps the locality where his recognition would
have been least frequent —for all that he was a member
of the Athenaeum Club—was Pall-mall. Elsewhere he
would turn up in the oddest places, and in the most in-
clement weather ; in Ratcliff Highway, on Haverstock-
hill, on Camberwell-green, in Gray's Inn-lane, in the
Wandsworth-road, at Hammersmith Broadway, in Nor-
ton Folgate, and at Kensal New Town. A hansom
whirled you by the Bell and Horns at Brompton, and
there was Charles Dickens striding, as with seven-league
boots, seemingly in the direction of North-end, Fulham.
The Metropolitan Railway sent you forth at
Lisson-grove, and you met Charles Dickens plod-
ding speedily towards the Yorkshire Stingo. He
was to be met rapidly skirting the grim brick
wall of the prison in Coldbath-fields, or trudging
along the Seven Sisters-road at Holloway, or
bearing, under a steady press of sail, undernath Highgate
Archway, or pursuing the even tenor of his way up the
Vauxhall Bridge-road. He seemed to prefer the. lengthy
thoroughfares of our exterior boulevards to narrow
and intricate streets. They offered, perhaps, a
better opportunity for • fair and honest walking,
and for the performance of that self-appointed
task of pedestrianism which for so many years
he had undertaken, an ! which well-nigh undeviatingly,
and wherever he was—in London, at home at Gaxishill,
in
France, in Italy, or in America—he performed to its last
rood and furlong. Where he- had travelled longest,
where he had looked deepest and learned most, was in
inner London. He was no Regent-street lounger ;
he scarcely ever mentions Pall Mall ; he rarely
alludes to Piccadilly : he is not much at home in
fashionable squares ; he is not to be found in the
Ladies' Mile ; he is not at home at Brompton, or in the
Regent's Park, or in Great Gaunt-street, or at Green-
wich, or Richmond, or any of the localities so well be-
loved by Thackeray. But he knew all about the back
streets behind Holborn, the courts and alleys of the
Borough, the shabby sidling streets of the remoter
suburbs, the crooked little alleys of the City, the dank
and oozy wharfs of the water,side. He was at home in all
lodging-houses, station-houses, cottages, hovels, Cheap
Jackie caravans, workhouses, prisons, - school-rooms,