secret depths of the human heart and soul. Dickens said that he would aid me with the scenario and “do the odd editorial chore,” which I immediately understood to mean that the play would be his and I would just be the mechanism to put words on paper.
I agreed to do it.
We began work on it in Paris—or rather
I
began work on it while Dickens flitted in and out between dinners with friends, banquets, and other social occasions—and by the end of that hot summer of 1856 we were both at his home in London. Our habits, writerly and otherwise, did not always mesh. In France, I enjoyed the Casino until the early morning hours and Dickens insisted on breakfast between eight and nine. There were more than a few occasions where I had to breakfast alone on pâté de foi gras around noontime. Also, in both Tavistock House and later at Gad’s Hill, Dickens’s work hours were between nine AM and either two or three PM, and
everyone
in the house, family and guests alike, was expected to stay equally busy during that time. I have seen Dickens’s daughters or Georgina pretend to read proof sheets while Dickens was locked away in his study. At that time—it was before the second Wilkie Collins had begun to fight me for my writing desk and instruments—I preferred working late at night, so I often would have to find a nook in the library in Dickens’s home where I could smoke a cigar and nap in privacy during the day. And more than a few times Dickens would emerge unexpectedly from his study to roust me out of my hiding place and order me back to work.
My work—our work—on the play continued through the autumn of that year. I had conceived of a main character (to be played by Dickens, of course) named Richard Wardour—a sort of combination of what was known about the indomitable Sir John Franklin and his second-in-command, a rather common Irish fellow named Francis Crozier—and my idea was that the Wardour character would be older, perhaps not very competent (after all, the men on Franklin’s Expedition had, apparently, all died), and a bit demented. Perhaps even somewhat of a villain.
Dickens completely rewrote this idea, changing Richard Wardour into a young, intelligent, complex, angry, but—in the end—totally self-sacrificing character.
“Perpetually seeking and never finding true affection”
was the phrasing in Dickens’s voluminous notes on the re-creation of his character. He wrote many of the character’s monologues by himself and actually kept them to himself until our final rehearsals (yes, I was one of the primary actors in the amateur production). When visiting or staying at his home, I would see Dickens starting out or ending his twenty-mile walks through the country fields of Finchley and Neasden, rehearsing his Wardour monologues in a booming voice—
“Young, with a fair sad face, with kind tender eyes, with a soft clear voice. Young and loving and merciful. I keep her face in my mind, though I can keep nothing else. I must wander, wander, wander—restless, sleepless, and homeless—till I find her!”
With hindsight, it is easy to see the truth and depth of these sentiments in Charles Dickens that year when his marriage was ending (and ending by his own choice). The writer had spent his entire life waiting for and searching for that fair sad face with the kind tender eyes and soft clear voice. For Dickens, his imagination was always more real than the reality of daily life, and he had imagined this true, virginal, attentive, young, beautiful (and merciful) woman since his own youth.
My play premiered at Dickens’s Tavistock House on 6 January, 1857—Twelfth Night, which Dickens always celebrated with some special programme, and his son Charley’s twentieth birthday. The author had gone to great lengths to make the experience as professional as possible: having carpenters turn the schoolroom at his home into a theatre that could hold more than fifty people comfortably, ripping out a small
I agreed to do it.
We began work on it in Paris—or rather
I
began work on it while Dickens flitted in and out between dinners with friends, banquets, and other social occasions—and by the end of that hot summer of 1856 we were both at his home in London. Our habits, writerly and otherwise, did not always mesh. In France, I enjoyed the Casino until the early morning hours and Dickens insisted on breakfast between eight and nine. There were more than a few occasions where I had to breakfast alone on pâté de foi gras around noontime. Also, in both Tavistock House and later at Gad’s Hill, Dickens’s work hours were between nine AM and either two or three PM, and
everyone
in the house, family and guests alike, was expected to stay equally busy during that time. I have seen Dickens’s daughters or Georgina pretend to read proof sheets while Dickens was locked away in his study. At that time—it was before the second Wilkie Collins had begun to fight me for my writing desk and instruments—I preferred working late at night, so I often would have to find a nook in the library in Dickens’s home where I could smoke a cigar and nap in privacy during the day. And more than a few times Dickens would emerge unexpectedly from his study to roust me out of my hiding place and order me back to work.
My work—our work—on the play continued through the autumn of that year. I had conceived of a main character (to be played by Dickens, of course) named Richard Wardour—a sort of combination of what was known about the indomitable Sir John Franklin and his second-in-command, a rather common Irish fellow named Francis Crozier—and my idea was that the Wardour character would be older, perhaps not very competent (after all, the men on Franklin’s Expedition had, apparently, all died), and a bit demented. Perhaps even somewhat of a villain.
Dickens completely rewrote this idea, changing Richard Wardour into a young, intelligent, complex, angry, but—in the end—totally self-sacrificing character.
“Perpetually seeking and never finding true affection”
was the phrasing in Dickens’s voluminous notes on the re-creation of his character. He wrote many of the character’s monologues by himself and actually kept them to himself until our final rehearsals (yes, I was one of the primary actors in the amateur production). When visiting or staying at his home, I would see Dickens starting out or ending his twenty-mile walks through the country fields of Finchley and Neasden, rehearsing his Wardour monologues in a booming voice—
“Young, with a fair sad face, with kind tender eyes, with a soft clear voice. Young and loving and merciful. I keep her face in my mind, though I can keep nothing else. I must wander, wander, wander—restless, sleepless, and homeless—till I find her!”
With hindsight, it is easy to see the truth and depth of these sentiments in Charles Dickens that year when his marriage was ending (and ending by his own choice). The writer had spent his entire life waiting for and searching for that fair sad face with the kind tender eyes and soft clear voice. For Dickens, his imagination was always more real than the reality of daily life, and he had imagined this true, virginal, attentive, young, beautiful (and merciful) woman since his own youth.
My play premiered at Dickens’s Tavistock House on 6 January, 1857—Twelfth Night, which Dickens always celebrated with some special programme, and his son Charley’s twentieth birthday. The author had gone to great lengths to make the experience as professional as possible: having carpenters turn the schoolroom at his home into a theatre that could hold more than fifty people comfortably, ripping out a small
Similar Books
