YATES AND DICKENS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1112, 21 January 1885, Page 3

YATES AND DICKENS.

In his recently - published autobiography, Edward Yates devotes a chapter to Dickens. To him the latter was "friend, counsellor, companion, and employer," so it is a befitting tribute that he should have devoted a separate chapter to " niy experience of him . . .not without a hope of giving some insight into his character." Mr Yates throws no new light on tho circumatancea which, led to the separation of Dickens and his wife. "My intimacy with Dickens," he says, " hia kindness to me, my devotion to him, were such that my lips are sealed and paralysed as regards circumstances which, if I felt lest responsibility and less delicacy, I might be at liberty to state." Mr Yates describes life at Gadshill for visitors as being delightful : — " You breakfasted at nine, smoked your cigar, read the papers, and pottered about the garden until luncheon at one. All the morning Dickons was at work, either in the study . . . or in the chalet. . . . After luncheon (a substantial meal, though Dickens generally took little but bread and cheese and a glass of ale) the party would assemble in the hall, which was hung round with a capital set of Hogarth prints, now in my possession, and settle on their plans. Some drove, som walked, some pottered. ... I, of course, elected to walk with Dickens." Many of Dickon's private letters, says Mr Yatea, read like excerpts from his published works. For instance, in reply to a request to take the chair at a dinner given on behalf of the Orthopoedic Hospital, he writes : — " For a good many years I have suffered a great deal from charities, but never anything like what I suffer now. . . . Benevolent men get behind the piera of the gates, lying .in wait for my going out ; and when I peep shrinkingly from my study window I see the not-bellied shadows projected on the ground. . . . Benevolent ares-sneaks get lost in the kitchen, and are found to impede the circulation of the knife-cleaning machine. My man has been heard to say, ' that if it was a wicious plan, well and good— that ain't door work ; but when all the Christian virtues is always a-shouldering and a-helbering on you in the 'all, a-tryino; to get past you and cut into master's room, why, no wages as you couldn't name would make it up to you.' As an editor Me Yates found Dickens most painstaking and conscientous. He was, it appears, a .ruthless "cutter," and the very last time I saw him at the office he laughed immensely as 1 said, when I noticed him run his blue pen through about; half a column of a proof before him : "Poor gentleman ; there's fifteen shillings lost to him for ever." Mr Yates gives a picture of Dickens in i 854, when he first made his acquaintance :— His, hair, though still worn somawhat long, was beginning to be sparse ; his cheeks were shaved ;he had a moustache, and a " door-knocker " beard encircling liis mouth and chin. His eyes were wonderfully bright and piercing, with a keen, eager outlook ; his bearing hearty, and somewhat aggressive. He wore, on that occasion, a loose jacket and wide trousers, and sat back in his chair, with one leg under him and his hand in his pocket, very much as in Friths portrait."