Editing Charles Dickens (section)

==Later life==
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| caption1 = Aftermath of the [[Staplehurst rail crash]] in 1865
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| caption2 = Dickens, {{c.}} 1866, by Ernest Edwards
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On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ellen Ternan, Dickens was involved in the [[Staplehurst rail crash]] in Kent. The train's first seven carriages plunged off a [[cast iron]] bridge that was under repair and ten passengers were killed.<ref>{{cite news |title=Charles Dickens letter underlines impact of rail crash on author |url=https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/culture/16224/expert-comment-charles-dickens-letter-sold-at-auction-underlines-impact-of-rail-crash-on-author |access-date=23 January 2024 |publisher=University of Kent}}</ref> The only [[First class travel|first-class]] carriage to remain on the track—which was left hanging precariously off the bridge—was the one in which Dickens was travelling.<ref name="Grass">{{cite book |last=Grass |first=Sean |title=Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend A Publishing History |date=2017 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |pages=9, 10}}</ref> For three hours before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water.<ref name="Grass"/> Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for ''[[Our Mutual Friend]]'', and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=959–961}}.</ref>

Dickens later used the experience of the crash as material for his short [[ghost story]], "[[The Signal-Man]]", in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. He also based the story on several previous [[Lists of rail accidents|rail accidents]], such as the [[Clayton Tunnel rail crash]] in Sussex of 1861. Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the [[inquest]] to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://omf.ucsc.edu/dickens/staplehurst-disaster.html |title=The Staplehurst Disaster |access-date=28 February 2015 |archive-date=7 January 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150107132217/http://omf.ucsc.edu/dickens/staplehurst-disaster.html |url-status=live}}</ref> After the crash, Dickens was nervous when travelling by train and would use alternative means when available.<ref name="UOC">{{cite web |url=http://omf.ucsc.edu/dickens/staplehurst-disaster.html |title=The Staplehurst Disaster |publisher=University of California: Santa Cruz |access-date=15 November 2012 |archive-date=9 September 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130909075818/http://omf.ucsc.edu/dickens/staplehurst-disaster.html |url-status=live}}</ref> In 1868 he wrote, "I have sudden vague rushes of terror, even when riding in a hansom cab, which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable." Dickens's son, Henry, recalled, "I have seen him sometimes in a railway carriage when there was a slight jolt. When this happened he was almost in a state of panic and gripped the seat with both hands."<ref name="UOC"/>

===Second visit to the United States===
[[File:Buying tickets for a Charles Dickens reading at Steinway Hall, New York, New York, 1867.jpg|thumb|left|Crowd of spectators buying tickets for a Dickens reading at [[Steinway Hall]], New York City, in 1867]]
While he contemplated a second visit to the United States, the outbreak of the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] in America in 1861 delayed his plans.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Waller |first=John O. |date=1960 |title=Charles Dickens and the American Civil War |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4173318 |journal=Studies in Philology |volume=57 |issue=3 |pages=535–548 |jstor=4173318 |issn=0039-3738}}</ref> On 9 November 1867, over two years after the war, Dickens set sail from [[Liverpool]] for his second American reading tour. Landing in [[Boston]], he devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]] and his American publisher, [[James T. Fields]]. In early December, the readings began. He performed 76 readings, netting £19,000, from December 1867 to April 1868.<ref name="Hobsbaum1998">{{harvnb|Hobsbaum|1998|p=271}}.</ref> Dickens shuttled between Boston and New York, where he gave 22 readings at [[Steinway Hall]]. Although he had started to suffer from what he called the "true American [[catarrh]]", he kept to a schedule that would have challenged a much younger man, even managing to squeeze in some sleighing in [[Central Park]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Forster |first=John |title=The Life of Charles Dickens: 1852 – 1870, Volume 3 |date=1874 |publisher=Chapman and Hall |page=363}}</ref>

During his travels, he saw a change in the people and the circumstances of America. His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at [[Delmonico's Restaurant|Delmonico's]] on 18 April, when he promised never to denounce America again. By the end of the tour Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. On 23 April he boarded the [[Cunard]] liner {{SS|Russia|1867|2}} to return to Britain,<ref>{{cite book |last=Wills |first=Elspeth |title=The Fleet 1840 – 2010 |date=2010 |publisher=The Open Agency |location=London |isbn=9-780954-245184 |page=23}}</ref> barely escaping a [[tax lien|federal tax lien]] against the proceeds of his lecture tour.<ref>{{harvnb|Jackson|1995|p=333}}.</ref>{{clear}}

===Farewell readings===
[[File:Dickensposter nottingham1869.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Poster promoting a reading by Dickens in [[Nottingham]] dated 4 February 1869, two months before he had a mild stroke]]

In 1868–69, Dickens gave a series of "farewell readings" in England, Scotland and Ireland, beginning on 6 October. He managed, of a contracted 100 readings, to give 75 in the provinces, with a further 12 in London.<ref name="Hobsbaum1998"/> As he pressed on he was affected by giddiness and fits of paralysis. He had a stroke on 18 April 1869 in Chester.<ref name=Tomalin2011p377>{{harvnb|Tomalin|2011|p=377}}</ref> He collapsed on 22 April 1869, at [[Preston, Lancashire]]; on doctor's advice, the tour was cancelled.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=1043–1044}}.</ref> After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on his final novel, ''[[The Mystery of Edwin Drood]]''. Described as a "dark and gothic" tale, his unfinished novel focuses on Drood's uncle, John Jasper, a drug-addicted choirmaster.<ref>{{cite news |title=Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens's last mystery finally solved? |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-16483950 |access-date=25 November 2024 |publisher=BBC}}</ref> It was fashionable in the 1860s to 'do the slums' and, in company, Dickens visited [[opium den]]s in [[Shadwell]] in the East End of London, where he witnessed an elderly addict called "[[Lascar|Laskar]] Sal", who formed the model for "Opium Sal" in ''Edwin Drood''.<ref>{{harvnb|Foxcroft|2007|p=53}}.</ref>

After Dickens regained enough strength, he arranged, with medical approval, for a final series of readings to partly make up to his sponsors what they had lost due to his illness. There were 12 performances, on 11 January to 15 March 1870; the last at 8:00pm at [[St. James's Hall]], London. Though in grave health by then, he read ''A Christmas Carol'' and ''The Trial from Pickwick''. On 2 May, he made his last public appearance at a [[Royal Academy of Arts|Royal Academy]] banquet in the presence of the [[Edward VII of the United Kingdom|Prince]] and [[Alexandra of Denmark|Princess of Wales]], paying a special tribute on the death of his friend, illustrator Daniel Maclise.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=1069–1070}}.</ref>

===Death===
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| caption1 = [[Luke Fildes|Samuel Luke Fildes]] ''– The Empty Chair''. Fildes was illustrating ''Edwin Drood'' at the time of Dickens's death. The engraving shows Dickens's empty chair in his study at [[Gads Hill Place]]. It appeared in the Christmas 1870 edition of ''[[The Graphic]]'' and thousands of prints of it were sold.<ref>{{cite web |title=Luke Fildes |url=http://www.thefamousartists.com/luke-fildes |publisher=TheFamousArtists.com |access-date=9 March 2012 |archive-date=14 March 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120314174753/http://www.thefamousartists.com/luke-fildes |url-status=live}}</ref>
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| caption2 = Dickens's grave in [[Westminster Abbey]]
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| caption3 = A 1905 transcribed copy of the death certificate of Charles Dickens
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On 8 June 1870, Dickens had another stroke at his home after a full day's work on ''Edwin Drood''. He never regained consciousness. The next day, he died at Gads Hill Place. Biographer Claire Tomalin has suggested Dickens was actually in Peckham when he had had the stroke and his mistress Ellen Ternan and her maids had him taken back to Gads Hill so that the public would not know the truth about their relationship.<ref name=Tomalin2011p395>{{harvnb|Tomalin|2011|pp=395–396, 484}}</ref> Contrary to his wish to be buried at [[Rochester Cathedral]] "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner",<ref>{{harvnb|Forster|2006|p=628}}.</ref> he was laid to rest in the [[Poets' Corner]] of [[Westminster Abbey]]. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads:

{{blockquote|To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9&nbsp;June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world.<ref>{{harvnb|Hughes|1891|p=226}}.</ref>}}

A letter from Dickens to the Clerk of the [[Privy Council]] in March indicates he had been offered and accepted a [[baronetcy]], which was not gazetted before his death.<ref>Charles Dickens Was Offered A Baronetcy, ''The Sphere'', 2 July 1938, p34.</ref> His last words were "On the ground" in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=1077–1078}}.</ref>{{refn|A contemporary obituary in ''[[The Times]]'', alleged that Dickens's last words were: "Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of Art." Reprinted from ''The Times'', London, August 1870 in {{harvnb|Bidwell|1870|p=223}}.|group="nb"}} On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey, Dean [[Arthur Penrhyn Stanley]] delivered a memorial elegy, lauding "the genial and loving humorist whom we now mourn", for showing by his own example "that even in dealing with the darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius could still be clean, and mirth could be innocent". Pointing to the fresh flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley assured those present that "the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue."<ref>{{harvnb|Stanley|1870|pp=144–147:146}}.</ref>

In his will, drafted more than a year before his death, Dickens left the care of his £80,000 estate (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|80000|1870|r=-6}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}){{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} to his long-time colleague John Forster and his "best and truest friend" Georgina Hogarth who, along with Dickens's two sons, also received a tax-free sum of £8,000 (equivalent to £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|8000|1870|r=-5}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}).{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} He confirmed his wife Catherine's annual allowance 
of £600 (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|600|1870|r=-4}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}).{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} He bequeathed £19 19s (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|19.95|1870|r=-3}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}){{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} to each servant in his employment at the time of his death.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka//CD-Forster-13.html |title=John Forster, "The Life of Charles Dickens" (13) |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131225202712/http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka//CD-Forster-13.html |archive-date=25 December 2013}}</ref>