imself. Dickens may have felt, as
the years began to tell, that he required the excitement of the
readings for mental stimulus, and that he would not even have written
as much as he did without them. Be that as it may, the success at
Birmingham, where a sum of from L400 to L500 was realized, the
requests that poured in upon him to read at other places, the
invariably renewed success whenever he did so, the clear evidence that
a large sum was to be realized if he determined to come forward on his
own account, all must have contributed to scatter Forster's objections
to the winds. On the 29th of April, 1858, at St. Martin's Hall, in
London, he started his career as a paid public reader, and he
continued to read, with shorter or longer periods of intermission,
till his death. But into the story of his professional tours it is not
my intention just now to enter. I shall only stay to say a few words
about the character and quality of his readings.

That they were a success can readily be accounted for. The mere desire
to see and hear Dickens, the great Dickens, the novelist who was more
than popular, who was the object of real personal affection on the
part of the English-speaking race,--this would have drawn a crowd at
any time. But Dickens was not the man to rely upon such sources of
attraction, any more than an actress who is really an actress will
consent to rely exclusively on her good looks. "Whatever is worth
doing at all is worth doing well," such as we have seen was one of the
governing principles of his life; and he read very well. Of
nervousness there was no trace in his composition. To some one who
asked him whether he ever felt any shyness as a speaker, he answered,
"Not in the least; the first time I took the chair (at a public
dinner) I felt as much confidence as if I had done the thing a hundred
times." This of course helped him much as a reader, and gave him full
command over all his gifts. But the gifts were also assiduously
cultivated. He laboured, one might almost say, agonized, to make
himself a master of the art. Mr. Dolby, who acted as his "manager,"
during the tours undertaken from 1866 to 1870, tells us that before
producing "Dr. Marigold," he not only gave a kind of semi-public
rehearsal, but had rehearsed it to himself considerably over two
hundred times. Writing to Forster Dickens says: "You have no idea how
I have worked at them [the readings].... I have tested all the serious
passion in them by