him greatly, and whom he had previously known at
Genoa. The younger lady's conversation would have shocked the prim
maids and matrons of that day. She asked Dickens if he had ever "read
such infernal trash" as Mrs. Gore's; and exclaimed "Oh God! what a
sermon we had here, last Sunday." Dickens and his two daughters--"who
were decidedly in the way, as we agreed afterwards"--dined by
invitation with the mother and daughter. The daughter asked him if he
smoked. "Yes," said Dickens, "I generally take a cigar after dinner
when I'm alone." Thereupon said the young lady, "I'll give you a good
'un when we go upstairs." But the sequel must be told in the
novelist's own inimitable style. "Well, sir," he wrote, "in due course
we went upstairs, and there we were joined by an American lady
residing in the same hotel ... also a daughter ... American lady
married at sixteen; American daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for
sisters, &c. &c. &c. When that was over, the younger of our
entertainers brought out a cigar-box, and gave me a cigar, made of
negrohead she said, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The
box was full of cigarettes--good large ones, made of pretty strong
tobacco; I always smoke them here, and used to smoke them at Genoa,
and I knew them well. When I lighted my cigar, daughter lighted hers,
at mine; leaned against the mantelpiece, in conversation with me; put
out her stomach, folded her arms, and with her pretty face cocked up
sideways and her cigarette smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill,
laughed, and talked, and smoked, in the most gentlemanly manner I
ever beheld. Mother immediately lighted her cigar; American lady
immediately lighted hers; and in five minutes the room was a cloud of
smoke, with us four in the centre pulling away bravely, while American
lady related stories of her 'Hookah' upstairs, and described different
kinds of pipes. But even this was not all. For presently two Frenchmen
came in, with whom, and the American lady, daughter sat down to whist.
The Frenchmen smoked of course (they were really modest gentlemen and
seemed dismayed), and daughter played for the next hour or two with a
cigar continually in her mouth--never out of it. She certainly smoked
six or eight. Mother gave in soon--I think she only did it out of
vanity. American lady had been smoking all the morning. I took no
more; and daughter and the Frenchmen had it all to themselves.
Conceive this in a great hotel, with not