[Boston—Sunday, 22 December 1867]
Sunday. Another week has gone—we are again at home in our dear little nook by the Charles and tonight the lover of Christmas comes to have dinner with us. We had a merry time last Sunday and after we had separated the Hotel must needs take fire—to be sure I had been packing & was in my first sleep and knew nothing distinctly of it but it was an escape all the same & Mr Dickens rushed out to help, as he always seems to do.
I have only found time to write a good many letters or notes chiefly for J. & read a book or two since our return. Christmas absorbs us as it may well do since it comes but once in the year.
Put green holly in C.D.’s room yesterday—in the church today—and some yesterday also at home.
I really laugh over my own earnestness as I find myself fingering the candy babys & bonnets and all the nonsense for our tree. Such a small tree as it is too—a cat if lively could jump over it.
At night came Mr Dickens & Mr Dolby, Mr Lowell & Mabel, Mr & Mrs Dorr to dinner. It was really a beautiful Christmas festival as we intended it should be for the love of this new apostle of Christmas. Mr Dickens talked all the time as he always will do, generously, when the moment comes that he sees it is expected. Of Sir Sam. Baker, of Froude, of Fechter again, this time as if he did not know the man but spoke critically as if he were a stranger seeing Lowell’s face when his name was mentioned which inclined itself sneeringly.
We played games at table afterward which turned out so queerly that we had storms of laughter.
What a shame it is to write down anything respecting one’s contact with Charles Dickens and have it so slight as my accounts are but the subtle turns of conversation are so difficult to render—the way in which he represents the woman who will not on any account be induced to look at him while he is reading and at whom he looks steadily endeavoring to compel the eyes to move—all these queer turns are too delicate to be set down. I thought I should have had a convulsion of laughter when poor Mrs Dorr said, Miss Laura Howe sat down in her Mrs D’s room and wrote out a charade in such an unparalleled & brilliant manner that nobody could have out shone her—not even the present company (“in the same given time, I trust?” said Dickens)—no, no, said the lady persistently.
“Mrs Bigg” has at last brought matters to a crisis & is no more invited into Mr Dickens’s room nor does he ask her to drive. There was a little widow at the Westminster Hotel, a friend of the wife of the proprietor (herself a good woman) who had sent Mr Dickens flowers & had expressed a strong desire to see him. At last he one day appointed an interview and the little widow made a pleasant visit. As she left the room she was assaulted by “Mrs Bigg” literally with the fists as proper witnesses testify and chastised for what she styled her daring at going into Mr Dickens’s room. I can not easily believe this tale which Mr Dickens took quite hard of me. “I assure you it is so” he said, “and all I can say is how queer it is that I should be perpetually having things happen to me with regard to people that nobody else in the world can be found to believe.”
I really had a feeling of sadness mingled with my pleasure when I received a Xmas present of a pretty handkerchief from the kind-hearted creature.
