erature.

CHAPTER XI.

SECOND SERIES OF READINGS.

1861-1863.

Daughter Kate's Marriage--Wedding Party--Sale
of Tavistock House--Brother Alfred's
Death--Metropolitan Readings--Proposed
Provincial Readings--Good of doing Nothing--New
Subjects for Readings--Mr. Arthur Smith's
Death--Eldest Son's Marriage--Audience at
Brighton--Audiences at Canterbury and
Dover--Alarming Scene at Newcastle--Impromptu
Reading Hall at Berwick-on-Tweed--In
Scotland--At Torquay--At
Liverpool--Metropolitan Success--Offer from
Australia--Writing or Reading not always
possible--Arguments for and against going to
Australia--Readings in Paris--A Religious
Richardson's Show--Exiled Ex-potentate.

AT the end of the first year of residence at Gadshill it was the remark
of Dickens that nothing had gratified him so much as the confidence with
which his poorer neighbours treated him. He had tested generally their
worth and good conduct, and they had been encouraged in illness or
trouble to resort to him for help. There was pleasant indication of the
feeling thus awakened, when, in the summer of 1860, his younger daughter
Kate was married to Charles Alston Collins, brother of the novelist, and
younger son of the painter and academician, who might have found, if
spared to witness that summer-morning scene, subjects not unworthy of
his delightful pencil in many a rustic group near Gadshill. All the
villagers had turned out in honour of Dickens, and the carriages could
hardly get to and from the little church for the succession of triumphal
arches they had to pass through. It was quite unexpected by him; and
when the feu de joie of the blacksmith in the lane, whose enthusiasm had
smuggled a couple of small cannon into his forge, exploded upon him at
the return, I doubt if the shyest of men was ever so taken aback at an
ovation.

To name the principal persons present that day will indicate the faces
that (with addition of Miss Mary Boyle, Miss Marguerite Power, Mr.
Fechter, Mr. Charles Kent, Mr. Edmund Yates, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, and
members of the family of Mr. Frank Stone, whose sudden death[241] in the
preceding year had been a great grief to Dickens) were most familiar at
Gadshill in these later years. Mr. Frederic Lehmann was there with his
wife, whose sister, Miss Chambers, was one of the bridesmaids; Mr. and
Mrs.