Cornelius Felton

Dickens writes to friend, Cornelius Felton, about how in a different life he would like to have been a Theatre Manager.

Transcript:

The wig and whiskers are in a state of the highest preservation. The play comes off, next Wednesday night, the Twenty Fifth. What would I give to see you in the front row of the centre box—your spectacles gleaming not unlike those of my dear friend Pickwick—your face radiant with as broad a grin as a staid Professor may indulge in—and your very coat, waistcoat, and shoulders, expressive of the rum and water we should drink together, when the performance was over! I would give something if you could only stumble into that very dark and dusty Theatre in the day and see me, with my coat off, the Stage Manager and Universal Director, urging impracticable ladies and impossible gentlemen on to the very confines of insanity— shouting and driving about, in my own person, to an extent which would justify any philanthropic stranger in clapping me into a strait waistcoat without further enquiry— endeavouring to goad Hamlet into some dim and faint understanding of a prompter's duties—and struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and inextricable entanglement of speech and action, as you would grow giddy in contemplating. This kind of voluntary hard labour used to be my great delight. The furor has come strong upon me again; and I begin to be once more of opinion that nature intended me for the Lessee of a National Theatre—and that pen ink and paper have spoiled a Manager.

Image taken by Lewis Bush, 2025. This image is provided under Creative Commons License 4.0 until 1 April 2031, made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.