Charles Dickens

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Title:     Charles Dickens
Author: Francis Darwin [More Titles by Darwin]

My aim is to give some account of Charles Dickens’ personality, to think of him as a man rather than a writer. For the facts of his life I have to depend largely on Forster’s biography, {199} which is doubtless trustworthy, but the personality of the author does not tend to make it attractive. In this way the little book by Miss M. Dickens is valuable: it gives in simple and touching words an impression of the affection that Dickens inspired.

She writes:—"No man was so inclined naturally to derive his happiness from home affairs. He was full of the kind of interest in a house which is commonly confined to women, and his care of and for us as wee children did most certainly ‘pass the love of women.’ His was a tender and most affectionate nature."

When he "was arranging and rehearsing his readings from Dombey, the death of ‘little Paul’ caused him such real anguish, that he told us he could only master his intense emotion by keeping the picture of Plorn, {200a} well, strong, and hearty, steadily before his eyes." {200b}

He took the children every 24th December to a toy-shop in Holborn to choose their own Christmas presents and any that they liked to give to their friends.

"Although I believe we were often an hour or more in the shop before our several tastes were satisfied, he never showed the least impatience, was always interested, and as desirous as we, that we should choose exactly what we liked best. . . ."

"My father insisted that my sister Katie and I should teach the polka step to Mr Leech and himself, . . . often he would practise gravely in a corner, without either partner or music." He once got out of bed having waked with the fear he had forgotten it, and rehearsed to his own whistling by the light of a rushlight.

Miss Dickens continues:—"There never existed, I think, in all the world, a more thoroughly tidy or methodical creature than was my father. He was tidy in every way—in his mind, in his handsome and graceful person, in his work, in keeping his writing, table drawers, in his large correspondence—in fact in his whole life.

"And then his punctuality! It was almost frightful to an unpunctual mind. This again was another phase of his extreme tidiness; it was also the outcome of his excessive thoughtfulness and consideration for others."

Naturally enough Miss Dickens makes no reference to the unhappy separation of Dickens and his wife, which took place in 1858. In the article on Dickens in the Dictionary of National Biography, Carlyle is quoted as saying:—"No crime and no misdemeanour specifiable on either side; unhappy together, these two, good many years past, and they at length end it."

The father of Charles Dickens was not a successful personage. He was in the Navy Pay Office; he was generally in financial trouble, and is indeed supposed to be the original of Micawber. Like that personage he was imprisoned for debt, and thus Charles Dickens learned early in life the misery as well as the comedy of a debtor’s prison, an experience of which he made brilliant use in Little Dorrit and elsewhere.

Forster points out that David Copperfield, who was in many ways drawn from his creator, had as a man a strong memory of his childhood; the most durable of his early impressions were received at Chatham, and, as Forster remarks, "the associations that were around him when he died were those which at the outset of his life had affected him most strongly."

In an essay on travelling, Dickens {201} describes his meeting a "very queer small boy" whom he takes in his carriage, and as they pass Gads-hill Place (where Dickens afterwards lived and died) the boy begs him to stop that they may look at the house. On being asked whether he admired the house:—"Bless you, sir," said the very queer small boy, "when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it—And . . . my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it. Though that’s impossible." Dickens was actually a queer small boy—very small, very sickly, who was unable to join in the active games of his schoolfellows. In 1855 we again meet with the house that was to be his home for the remainder of his life. He wrote to Wills (Letters, i. 393):—"I saw, at Gads Hill . . . a little freehold to be sold. The spot and the very house are literally ‘a dream of my childhood,’ and I should like to look at it before I go to Paris."

One of the many things in David Copperfield which are autobiographical is the account {202a} of his delight over his father’s little collection of books. "From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe {202b} came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii—and did me no harm. . . . I have been Tom Jones (a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. . . . I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and travels . . . . and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees: the perfect realisation of Captain Somebody of the Royal British Navy."

After a time they moved to London, where they lived poorly in what was then a wretched enough neighbourhood, Bayham St., Camden-town. There he degenerated into a neglected domestic drudge, apparently quite without education, a state of things he inwardly resented.

In reading George Colman’s Broad Grins he came upon a description of Covent Garden, and "stole to the market by himself to compare it with the book." He remembered Covent Garden in writing Pickwick. In chap. xlvii., Job Trotter is sent in the evening to tell Perker that Dodson and Fogg have taken Mrs Bardell in execution for her costs. Perker goes back to his dinner guests, and poor Job has to spend the night in a vegetable basket in Covent Garden.

Dickens the elder was arrested for debt and imprisoned in the Marshalsea, and the description of borrowing Captain Porter’s knife and fork, and his thinking that he should not like to borrow that gentleman’s comb, were written before he ever thought of David Copperfield. {203} There is, of course, much that is autobiographical in David Copperfield. "For, the poor little lad, with good ability and a most sensitive nature, turned at the age of ten into a ‘labouring hind’ in the service of Murdstone and Grinby" . . . was indeed himself. Dickens described in an autobiographical fragment the details of the mechanical work of covering the pots of paste-blacking. It is interesting to find Dickens making use in Oliver Twist of the name Fagin, who was one of his fellow pasters. Another boy was Poll Green, part of whose name appears in that of the celebrated Mr Sweelepipe in Martin Chuzzlewit. Another of his characters is connected with this period, for during his father’s imprisonment the boy lodged with an old lady subsequently immortalised as Mrs Pipchin. Afterwards he remonstrated with his father with many tears, and a lodging was found for him in Lant Street in the Borough as being nearer to the prison, and here it was that Bob Sawyer lodged. The little maid who waited on his father and mother in the Marshalsea was the model for the Marchioness in the Old Curiosity Shop (Forster, i., p. 39). After a time his father came out of prison, and Charles the younger got some schooling at Wellington House Academy, which supplied "some of the lighter traits of Salem-house" in David Copperfield.

Dickens began life as a lawyer’s clerk of a humble sort, and thus gained the knowledge of which he made such admirable use in Pickwick and elsewhere.

But his energy in learning shorthand and becoming a professional reporter at the age of nineteen was a much more important step. Forster quotes Beard, "the friend he first made in that line when he entered the gallery," as saying that "there never was such a reporter."

Dickens saw the last of the old coaching days, and he describes his experience as a reporter—work which largely contributed to his literary success:—

"I have had to charge for half a dozen breakdowns in half a dozen times as many miles. Also for the damage of a great-coat from the drippings of a blazing wax-candle, in writing through the smallest hours of the night in a swiftly flying carriage and pair."

"I have been . . . belated on miry by-roads, towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheel-less carriage with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr Black . . . in the broadest of Scotch."

We see plainly enough whence came the description {205} of the chase after Jingle and Miss Wardle. "‘I see his head,’ exclaimed the choleric old man, ‘Damme, I see his head. . . ‘ The countenance of Mr Jingle, completely coated with mud thrown up by the wheels, was plainly discernible at the window of his chaise, and the motion of his arm, which he was waving violently towards the postillions, denoted that he was encouraging them to increased exertion."

"I never did feel such a jolting in my life," said poor Mr Pickwick; but it was under such conditions that Dickens worked through the nights transcribing his shorthand notes.

While he was still a reporter his career as an author began.

In a letter to Wilkie Collins, 6th June 1856, Dickens relates that he began "to write fugitive pieces for the old Monthly Magazine" when he was in "the gallery" for the Mirror of Parliament. His op. 1 was Mrs Joseph Porter over the Way; and when it appeared in the glory of print "I walked down," he wrote, "to Westminster Hall and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen."

This was followed by several other articles in the Monthly Magazine, the last in February 1835 was the first to bear the immortal signature of Boz, {206} and in 1836 the series of Sketches by Boz was published.

In the same year, 1836, a notice appeared in the Times of 26th March "that on the 31st would be published the first shilling number of the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club." The original plan had been to make Pickwick an essentially sporting book, but to this Dickens demurred on account of his ignorance of such matters, and poor Mr Winkle remains as a sacrifice to the idea.

It is curious how important the illustrations of his books seemed to Dickens; there are constant references to the subject in his Letters, nor does he seem to have been generally satisfied.

Illustrations in fiction are in my judgment only tolerable when a book is read for the first time in an illustrated edition, e.g. Du Maurier’s Trilby. But when a reader has formed his own idea of a character, those of the artist jar on preconceived impressions. Seymour was selected to illustrate Pickwick, but he committed suicide between the appearance of the first and second numbers; then a single number was illustrated by Mr Buss; and finally Hablot Browne was selected, and he was, in Forster’s words, "not unworthily associated with the masterpieces of Dickens’ genius."

Personally I feel nothing but astonishment that the illustrations should have been liked by anybody. Dickens was, however, saved from a worse fate—that of being illustrated by Thackeray, who, in speaking of Dickens at a Royal Academy dinner, said, "I recollect walking up to his chambers in Furnival’s Inn with two or three drawings in my hand, which strange to say, he did not find suitable."

Forster’s chapter on the writing of Pickwick contains some personal recollections of the author which may find a place here. "Very different was his face in those days, circa 1837, from that which photography has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He had a capital forehead . . . eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humour and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with sensibility." He speaks, too, of the beardless face and rich brown hair in "most luxuriant abundance." What remained to the last was the expression of "keenness and practical power," and the "eager, restless, energetic outlook" which suggested a man of action rather than a writer of books. Leigh Hunt said of it, "What a face . . . to meet in a drawing-room! . . . It had the life and soul in it of fifty human beings."

A touching proof of Dickens’ sensibility is given by the fact that the writing of Pickwick was interrupted for two months by the death of his wife’s younger sister Mary.

The Quarterly Review, Oct. 1837, referring to the fact that Pickwick and Oliver Twist were appearing at the same time, said, "Indications are not wanting that the particular vein of humour which has hitherto yielded so much attractive metal, is worked out. . . . The fact is, Mr Dickens writes too often and too fast. . . . If he persists much longer in this course it requires no gift of prophecy to foretell his fate—he has risen like a rocket, and he will come down like the stick"—a singularly incorrect prediction.

The success of Pickwick {208} was enormous, but the profits reaped by the author can hardly share in that adjective. There was no agreement about its publication, except a verbal one. For each number Dickens was to receive fifteen guineas, and the publishers paid him at once for the first two numbers "as he required the money to go and get married with." Besides these payments he seems at the time to have received only £2500. In 1839 Dickens wrote to Forster of "the immense profits which Oliver has realised to its publisher, and is still realising," and "the paltry, wretched sum it brought to me." . . .

His friends made an important part of Dickens’ life. One of the earliest was Macready, {209} the actor, to whom he first wrote apparently in 1837, inviting him to a Pickwick dinner. He here addresses him as "My dear Sir," but in 1838 he becomes "My dear Macready."

In that year Dickens wrote a farce for Macready, which, however, had to be withdrawn, and its author wrote characteristically, "Believe me that I have no other feeling of disappointment . . . but that arising from the not having been able to be of use to you." Macready remained a close friend as long as he lived, and Dickens does not seem to have suffered from the churlishness referred to in the Dictionary of National Biography.

In 1851 Macready appeared on the stage for the last time in public. Dickens wrote (27th Feb. 1851):—"No light portion of my life arose before me when the quiet vision to which I am beholden, in I don’t know how great a degree, or for how much—who does?—faded so nobly from my bodily eyes last night."

There must have been a certain innocence in Macready or the following letter (May 24, 1851) would not have been appropriate: "Always go into some respectable shop or apply to a policeman. You will know him by his being dressed in blue, with very dull silver buttons, and by the top of his hat being made of sticking plaster. . . . I would recommend you to see X at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Anybody will show it to you. It is near the Strand, and you may know it by seeing no company whatever at any of the doors. Cab fares are eighteen-pence a mile. A mile London measure is half a Dorsetshire mile, recollect. Porter is two pence per pint. . . . The Zoological Gardens are in the Regent’s Park and the price of admission is one shilling."

Another artist who became a close friend of Dickens was Stanfield, of whom we first hear as making one of a trip to Cornwall in 1842. His friendship with Cattermole, the painter, began in 1839 and suffered no diminution. His early letters to this correspondent are on the illustrations for the Old Curiosity Shop, where we find minute instruction about the drawing of Mrs Jarley’s Wax Work cart and other detailed points.

Dickens speaks of being nearly dead with grief at the loss of little Nell. He says he looks at Cattermole’s beautiful illustrations with a pleasure he cannot describe in words.

He seems, too, to have been in 1840 on familiar terms with Daniel Maclise. Only two letters to this friend exist, whom Miss Dickens describes as a "much-loved friend and most intimate companion" of her father.

In January 1842 Dickens started for America, and on 31st January he writes—"I can give you no conception of my welcome here. There never was a king or emperor upon the earth so cheered and followed by crowds."

Reference to Miss Martineau meets with showers of abuse. "She told us of some of our faults, and Americans can’t bear to be told of their faults."

"In respect of not being left alone, and of being horribly disgusted by tobacco-chewing and tobacco spittle, I have suffered considerably" (i., p. 67).

"In every town where we stay, though it be only for a day, we hold a regular levée or drawing-room, where I shake hands on an average with five or six hundred people. . . Think of two hours of this every day, and the people coming by hundreds, all fresh, and piping hot, and full of questions, when we are literally exhausted and can hardly stand."

One of the few entirely satisfactory occurrences was the gift of a dog called Boz, who was re-named Mr Snittle Timbery after a character in Nicholas Nickleby. He lived to be very old and went everywhere with his master (i., p. 70, note).

At Niagara he got some peace, which was much needed because of "the incessant persecutions of the people, by land and water, on stage-coach, railway car, and steamer, which exceeds anything you can picture to yourself by the utmost stretch of your imagination" (i., p. 71).

And on the copyright scandal he writes in the same letter: "Is it not a horrible thing that scoundrel book-sellers should grow rich here from publishing books, the authors of which do not reap one farthing from their issue by scores of thousands; and that every vile blackguard, and detestable newspaper, so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a scullery door-mat, should be able to publish these same writings, side by side, cheek by jowl, with the coarsest and most obscene companions?" Not that he had much hope of reform, but he could not help crying, "Stop, thief!"

On his return he wrote to Longman: "I have fought the fight across the Atlantic with the utmost energy I could command; have never been turned aside by any consideration for an instant; am fresher for the fray than ever; will battle it to death, and die game to the last." He was soon entangled in dinners; of his trials at a hospital dinner he wrote of listening to speeches and sentiments such "as any moderately intelligent dustman" would have blushed to have thought of. "Sleek, slobbering, bow-paunched, over-fed, apoplectic, snorting cattle, and the auditory leaping up in their delight."

In November 1843, he speaks of an opera he did in "damnable good nature for Hullah," who wrote "some very pretty music to it." He also did a farce "as a sort of practical joke." "It was funny—adapted from one of the published sketches called the ‘Great Winglebury Duel,’ and was published by Chapman and Hall." He devoutly wished these productions forgotten.

In a letter to Macready of 3rd January 1844, he speaks of sending him a little book which had been published 17th December 1843, and describes it as the greatest success, "I think, I have ever achieved." It seems to be the Christmas Carol, as on 4th January 1844 he wrote to Leman Blanchard in regard to a review of the Carol. "I must thank you because you have filled my heart up to the brim, and it is running over." In the summer of 1844 he started for a holiday abroad, but in November he travelled back to London to see The Chimes through the press, of which he wrote, 5th November 1844:—

"I believe I have . . . knocked the Carol out of the field. It will make a great uproar, I have no doubt." He adds (i., p. 145): "If you had seen Macready, last night, undisguisedly sobbing and crying on the sofa as I read The Chimes, you would have felt, as I did, what a thing it is to have power."

In 1845 we hear of private theatricals for the first time, when Dickens writes to Cattermole about taking a part in Every Man in his Humour. On a similar occasion in 1850 a master carpenter from one of the theatres said, "Ah, sir, it’s a universal observation in the profession, sir, that it was a great loss to the public when you took to writing books."

In 1847 we hear of more acting, Every Man in his Humour being given again for the benefit of Leigh Hunt, with the help of George Cruickshank, George Henry Lewes, and Augustus Egg, as new members of the Company (i., p. 177).

In 1846 he gave up all connection with the Daily News, which he had rashly agreed to edit. He went to Switzerland, taking a villa (Rosemount) there, from May till November. Here he wrote The Battle of Life and began Dombey. It was here that he made friends of M. de Cerjat, Mr Haldimand, and of Hon. Richard and Mrs Watson of Rockingham Castle, to whom he afterwards dedicated his favourite book, David Copperfield.

It was at this time, too, that was founded his friendship with W. H. Wills, who became an assistant in editing All the Year Round, and in other ways.

In March 1846 he wrote to Wills:—"Tell Powell . . . that he needn’t ‘deal with’ the American notices of the Cricket. I never read one word of their abuse, and I should think it base to read their praises."

He wrote, 27th November 1846, to Mr Watson (from Paris):—"We are lodged at last in the most preposterous house in the world. . . . The bedrooms are like opera-boxes. The dining-rooms, stair-cases, and passages, quite inexplicable. . . . There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room. But it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints of a telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery."

Later impressions of Paris (1855–56) may find a place here. "A man who brought some little vases home last night said, ‘On connait bien en France, que Monsieur Dick-in prend sa position sur la dignité de la littérature. Ah! c’est grande chose! Et ces caractères sont si spirituellement tournées! Cette Madame Tojare (Todgers), ah! qu’elle est drôle et précisément comme une dame que je connais à Calais.’"

In the winter of 1856 he wrote:—"I met Madame Georges Sands the other day at a dinner got up by Madame Viardot. . . . The human mind cannot conceive anyone more astonishing opposed to all my preconceptions. If I had been shown her in a state of repose, and asked what I thought her to be, I should have said: ‘The Queen’s monthly nurse.’ Au reste, she has nothing of the bas bleu about her, and is very quiet and agreeable."

On 20th May 1855, he wrote to Stanfield about the scenery of a play by Wilkie Collins which was in preparation.

"There is only one scene in the piece, and that, my tarry lad, is the inside of a light-house. Will you come and paint it for us one night, and we’ll all turn to and help." And again to the same friend (22nd May 1855): "The great ambition of my life will be achieved at last, in the wearing of a pair of very coarse petticoat trousers."

He wrote to Stanfield about the performance—"Lemon and I did every conceivable absurdity, I think, in the farce; and they never left off laughing. . . . Then Scotch reels till 5 A.M."

Dickens could appreciate other actors, and he writes in 1862 of Fechter’s Hamlet as a "performance of extraordinary merit; by far the most coherent, consistent, and intelligible Hamlet I ever saw."

On the same subject he wrote to Macready: "Fechter doing wonders over the way here, with a picturesque French drama. Miss Kate Terry, in a small part in it, perfectly charming. . . . She has a tender love-scene in this piece, which is a really beautiful and artistic thing. . . . I told Fechter: ‘That this is the very best piece of womanly tenderness I have ever seen on the stage, and you’ll find that no audience can miss it.’" {216}

Dombey was published early in 1848, and during the whole of 1849 and the summer and autumn of 1850 he was writing David Copperfield. In Sir Walter Raleigh’s Shakespeare, 1907, p. 31, it is suggested that "if the father of Charles Dickens lent his likeness to Mr Micawber, it is at least possible that some not unkindly memories of the paternal advice of John Shakespeare have been preserved for us in the sage maxims of Polonius."

In March 1852 the first number of Bleak House appeared, and he wrote to Mary Boyle, 22nd July 1852:—"I am not quite sure that I ever did like, or ever shall like, anything quite so well as Copperfield. But I foresee, I think, some very good things in Bleak House." In November he records that the sale is half as large again as Copperfield. In the winter of 1850 he showed his appreciation of Mrs Gaskell by writing to her (31st January 1850): "I do honestly know that there is no living English writer whose aid I would desire to enlist in preference to the authoress of Mary Barton (a book that most profoundly affected and impressed me)." . . . .

In September 1857, he writes to Miss Hogarth from Allonby, telling her of the homage he receives in the North—station-masters help him to alight, deputations await him at hotels, crowds see him off. The landlady at Allonby was immensely fat, and her husband said that once on a time he could tuck his arm round her waist. "‘And can’t you do it now,’ I said, ‘you insensible dog? Look at me! Here’s a picture!’ Accordingly, I got round as much of her as I could; and this gallant action was the most successful I have ever performed, on the whole."

In 1853 he took the Château des Moulineaux at Boulogne, whence he wrote asking a friend to visit him. He described his château:—"Excellent light wines on the premises, French cookery, millions of roses, two cows (for milk punch), vegetables cut for the pot, and handed in at the kitchen window; five summer-houses, fifteen fountains (with no water in ’em), and thirty-seven clocks (keeping, as I conceive, Australian time)."

In September of the same year (1853) he writes to Walter Savage Landor:—"I may now write to thank you for the happiness you have given me by honouring my name with such generous mention on (? in) such a noble place, in your great book. . . . Believe me, I receive the dedication like a great dignity, the worth of which I hope I thoroughly know."

In this year, too, he gave his first public readings, which took place at Birmingham, and well would it have been for him had he never embarked on this exhausting occupation. He describes his reading:—"A vast intelligent assemblage, and the success was most wonderful and prodigious—perfectly overwhelming and astounding altogether." No wonder that he was tempted to continue such a triumph! A passage in a letter to Cerjat shows how celebrated he already was:—"He embarked at Calais for Dover, and the ‘Fact of distinguished Author’s being abroad, was telegraphed to Dover; thereupon authorities of Dover Railway detained train to London for distinguished author’s arrival, rather to the exasperation of British public.’"

In November 1854 he speaks of being "used up" after writing Hard Times. He had intended to take a long rest, "when the idea [of that book] laid hold of me by the throat, in a very violent manner, and because the compression and close condensation necessary for that disjointed form of publication gave me perpetual trouble. But I really was tired, which is a result so very incomprehensible that I can’t forget it."

Dickens took pains with his style even in his letters, and it gives one a shock to find him writing that Adelaide Proctor "don’t live at the place to which her letters are addressed," where I should write "doesn’t."

In 1855 he began Little Dorrit in Paris, a book he originally christened Nobody’s Fault, and the change was certainly a wise one.

In this year we find him assisting at the birth of an admirable book:—"Sydney Smith’s daughter {219} has privately printed the life of her father with selections from his letters, which has great merit and often presents him exactly as he used to be. I have strongly urged her to publish it" (i., p. 390).

In planning his public readings about this time, he writes (29th January 1855, in regard to David Copperfield):—"I never can approach the book with perfect composure (it had such perfect possession of me when I wrote it)."

One of the many instances of his scrupulous honesty is his refusal of an invitation to a Lord Mayor’s dinner. "I do not think it consistent with my respect for myself, or for the art I profess, to blow hot and cold in the same breath; and to laugh at an institution in print, and accept the hospitality of its representative while the ink is staring us all in the face."

In returning from reading at Sheffield, "a tremendous success," he describes his experiences: "At two or three o’clock in the morning I stopped at Peterboro’ again, and thought of you all disconsolately. The lady in the refreshment-room was very hard upon me, harder even than those fair enslavers usually are. She gave me a cup of tea, as if I were a hyena and she my cruel keeper with a strong dislike to me. I mingled my tears with it, and had a petrified bun of enormous antiquity in miserable meekness."

The Court of Chancery finds a place in more than one of his books. His strong feeling in regard to it is shown in the following extract from a letter to Wills: "It has become (through the vile dealing with those courts and the vermin they have called into existence) a positive precept of experience, that a man had better endure a great wrong than go, or suffer himself to be taken, into Chancery, with the dream of setting it right" (7th August 1856).

He wrote to Mrs Winter: "A necessity is upon me . . . of wandering about in my old wild way, to think. I could no more resist this on Sunday or yesterday than a man can dispense with food. . . . Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go my way whether or no" (3rd April 1855).

In September 1855 he was at Folkestone, whence he wrote to Mrs Watson about Little Dorrit, to which he at the time intended to give the name Nobody’s Fault: "The new story is everywhere—heaving in the sea, flying with the clouds, blowing in the wind. . . . I settle to nothing, and wonder (in the old way) at my own incomprehensibility" (16th September 1855).

In 1857 he came into possession of Gad’s Hill, and thus fulfilled the dream of his childhood.

There are many instances of his kindness to would-be authors. In a letter to a lady he says that he cannot tell her with what reluctance he gives an opinion against her story, in spite of much that is good in it. And about an article by another lady he writes to F. Stone (who approached Dickens on her behalf). He says: "These Notes are destroyed by too much smartness. For the love of God don’t condescend! Don’t assume the attitude of saying, ‘See how clever I am, and what fun everybody else is.’"

In a letter to Miss Hogarth from Dublin he wrote: "The success at Belfast has been equal to the success here. Enormous! . . . and the personal affection there was something overwhelming. . . . I have never seen men go in to cry undisguisedly as they did at that reading yesterday afternoon. They made no attempt whatever to hide it, and certainly cried more than the women. As to the ‘Boots’ [at the Holly Tree Inn] at night, and ‘Mrs Gamp’ too, it was just one roar with me and them, for they made me laugh so that sometimes I could not compose my face to go on."

With regard to the crowds at his readings he wrote to Miss Dickens: "Arthur {221} told you, I suppose, that he had his shirt-front and waistcoat torn off last night. He was perfectly enraptured in consequence. Our men got so knocked about that he gave them five shillings apiece on the spot. John passed several minutes upside against a wall, with his head among the people’s boots."

We hear of his readings in a letter to John Forster: "I cannot tell you what the demonstrations of personal regard and respect are; how the densest and most uncomfortably packed crowd will be hushed in an instant when I show my face."

And again to the same friend:—"At Aberdeen we were crammed to the street twice every day. . . And at the end of Dombey yesterday afternoon at Perth, in the cold light of day, they all got up . . . and thundered and waved their hats with that astonishing heartiness and fondness for me . . . that they took me completely off my legs."

Elsewhere he speaks of being overwhelmed with proposals to read in America, and adds, "Will never go, unless a small fortune be first paid down in money on this side of the Atlantic."

In the autumn he writes to Regnier, enclosing proofs of A Tale of Two Cities: "I want you to read it for two reasons. Firstly, because I hope it is the best story I have written. Secondly, because it treats of a very remarkable time in France; and I should very much like to know what you think of its being dramatised for a French theatre. . . . The story is an extraordinary success here" (15th Oct. 1859).

He felt strongly about public executions. Forster describes how Dickens saw the hanging of the Mannings, and says that "with the letter which Dickens wrote next day to the Times descriptive of what we had witnessed on that memorable morning, there began an active agitation against public executions," which was finally successful. But in 1860 the evil still existed; he wrote, 4th September 1860, to W. H. Wills: "Coming here from the station this morning, I met, coming from the execution of the Wentworth murderer, such a tide of ruffians as never could have flowed from any point but the gallows. Without any figure of speech it turned one white and sick to behold them" (4th Sept. 1860).

In December he wrote:—"Pray read Great Expectations. I think it is very droll. It is a very great success, and seems universally liked—I suppose because it opens funnily, and with an interest too."

In July 1861 he writes to Forster, telling him that he has altered the end of Great Expectations. This was done at the suggestion of Bulwer Lytton, who objected to Pip being left "a solitary man." The curious may read the original ending in Forster’s Life, vol. iv., p. 336.

We meet many instances of Dickens’ sensitiveness to the character of his audience. Thus he writes:—"I could have done perfectly if the audience had been bright, but they were an intent and staring audience."

"An excellent house to-night, and an audience positively perfect . . . an intelligent and delightful response in them, like the touch of a beautiful instrument."

He showed presence of mind, too, on an occasion. "The gas batten came down and it looked as if the room were falling. A lady in front row of stalls screamed and ran out wildly. He addressed her laughing, and saying ‘no danger,’ and she sat down to a thunder of applause."

I like his references to his children. He writes: "Why a boy of that age should seem to have on at all times a hundred and fifty pair of double-soled boots, and be always jumping a bottom stair with the whole hundred and fifty, I don’t know."

"Will you give my small Admiral, on his personal application, one sovereign? I have told him to come to you for that recognition of his meritorious services."

And to Miss Boyle: "The little Admiral has gone to visit America in the Orlando . . . he went away much gamer than any giant, attented by a chest in which he could easily have stowed himself and a wife and family of his own proportions" (28th Dec. 1861).

Dogs were to Dickens almost as dear as children. In 1863 he writes to Percy Fitzgerald like a flattered parent: "I have been most heartily gratified by the perusal of your article on my dogs. It has given me an amount and a kind of pleasure very unusual, and for which I thank you earnestly. . . . I should be delighted to see you here. . . . I and my two latest dogs, a St Bernard and a bloodhound, would be charmed with your company."

At Boulogne, in 1856, he received a present of "the nicest of little dogs," which its master, a cobbler, could not afford to pay tax for. The dog escaped and got killed, and "I must lie to him—the cobbler—for life, and say that the dog is fat and happy" (ii., p. 58).

In the winter of 1862 he was reading at Cheltenham. Macready was in the audience, and Dickens writes: "I found him quite unable to speak, and able to do nothing but square his dear old jaw all on one side, and roll his eyes (half closed), like Jackson’s picture of him." Macready said: "I swear to heaven that, as a piece of passion and playfulness—er—indescribably mixed up together, it does—er—no, really, Dickens! amaze me as profoundly as it moves me. . . . How is it got at—er—how is it done—er—how one man can—well? It lays me on my—er—back, and it is of no use talking about it!" (ii., p. 196).

Dickens seems to have been thought to have done a wrong to Jews in general by his character Fagin in Oliver Twist. He wrote, 10th July 1863, to a Jewish lady that it "unfortunately was true of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew." The real reply to her letter was Riah in Our Mutual Friend.

Of that book he says: "It is a combination of drollery with romance, which requires a great deal of pains and a perfect throwing away of points that might be amplified, but I hope it is very good" (ii., p. 225).

In speaking of his public readings he refers to wearing a flower given him. This doubtless explains why, when he read at Cambridge, he wore first a red rose and then a white one in his buttonhole, which to my undergraduate mind seemed "dandiacal." Of this occasion he wrote: "The reception at Cambridge last night was something to be proud of in such a place. The colleges mustered in full force from the biggest guns to the smallest, and went far beyond even Manchester in the roars of welcome and the rounds of cheers. . . . The place was crammed, and the success the most brilliant I have ever seen" (ii., p. 284).

In 1867 we again come across a reference to the exhaustion caused by his public readings. "On Friday night I quite astonished myself; but I was taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa at the hall for half an hour."

In spite of protestations he went to America, and in regard to his visit he wrote in 1867: "I do not expect as much money as the calculators estimate, but I cannot set the hope of a large sum of money aside."

And from Boston he wrote to his daughter: "At the New York barriers, where the tickets are on sale, . . . speculators went up and down offering twenty dollars for anybody’s place. The money was in no case accepted" (ii., p. 310).

And again: "At nine o’clock this morning there were two thousand people in waiting, and they had begun to assemble in the bitter cold as early as two o’clock" (ii., p. 311).

And to Miss Hogarth, 16th December 1867, N.Y.:—"Dolby continues to be the most unpopular man in America (mainly because he can’t get four thousand people into a room that holds two thousand), and is reviled in print daily."

Dickens returned from America in April 1868, but soon made another visit. He wrote to Wilkie Collins from Boston:—"Being in Boston . . . I took it into my head to go over the medical school, and survey the holes and corners in which that extraordinary murder was done by Webster" (12th Jan. 1868).

This must be the man who (as I was told in the U.S.) said to his daughters, "What should you say if I were the murderer?" They were looking at the notice of a reward for the detection of the murderer. I think the body was burnt by Webster in his laboratory.

In regard to his readings, he wrote: "It was but this last year that I set to and learned every word of my readings; and from ten years ago to last night, I have never read to an audience but I have watched for an opportunity of striking out something better somewhere" (11th Feb. 1868).

He was evidently overstrained and was only kept going by stimulants. He wrote to Miss Dickens (29th March 1868): "I have coughed from two or three in the morning until five or six, and have been absolutely sleepless. I have had no appetite besides, and no taste."

And again, to the same correspondent, he writes that he has established this system:—"At seven in the morning (in bed) a tumbler of new cream and two tablespoonfuls of rum. At twelve, a sherry cobbler and a biscuit. At three (dinner-time) a pint of champagne. At five minutes to eight, an egg beaten up in a glass of sherry. Between the parts, the strongest beef-tea that can be made, drunk hot. At quarter past ten, soup, and anything to drink that I can fancy. . . . Dolby is as tender as a woman and as watchful as a doctor" (2nd April 1868).

On the return voyage he was asked to read, and "I respectfully replied that sooner than do it, I would assault the captain, and be put in irons."

When he arrived at home the two Newfoundland dogs behaved exactly as usual: this may remind us of another C.D. My father used to tell us how, after his five years’ voyage in the Beagle, he went into the yard at his Shrewsbury home and whistled in a particular way, and the dog came for a walk as if he had done the same thing the day before. Two of Dickens’ dogs were, however, greatly excited: the faithful Mrs Bouncer being one of them.

A letter to Cerjat (1868) gives an echo from the great railway accident in which Dickens had so lucky an escape:—

"My escape in the Staplehurst accident of three years ago is not to be obliterated from my nervous system. To this hour I have sudden vague rushes of terror, even when riding {228} in a hansom cab, which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable. I used to make nothing of driving a pair of horses habitually through the most crowded parts of London. I cannot now drive, with comfort myself, on the country roads here; and I doubt if I could ride at all in the saddle."

In 1866 he consulted Dr Beard about symptoms of grave significance. And in 1869 Beard went down to Preston and put a stop to a projected reading, and ruled, with the approval of Sir Thomas Watson, that anything like a reading tour must be finally stopped.

In January and March 1870, he was working at Edwin Drood, his unfinished book. He gave some farewell readings, and his last public appearance was at the Royal Academy dinner, where he spoke of Maclise.

His daughter has given a touching account of his death. He was at Gad’s Hill on 30th May 1870 at work over Edwin Drood, but there was "an appearance of fatigue and weariness about him very unlike his usual air of fresh activity."

On 8th June 1870 he owned to being very ill. He became incoherent, and being advised to lie down, he said indistinctly, "Yes, on the ground," and these were his last words. In the evening of 9th June, he shuddered, gave one sigh, a tear rolled down his face, and he died.

Dickens had wished to be buried in the little churchyard of Shorne in Kent; but the authorities of Rochester Cathedral asked that he might be buried there. Finally, Dean Stanley intervened and he was buried on 14th June in Westminster Abbey. His daughter says that every year on the ninth of June flowers are strewn by "unknown hands on that spot so sacred to us, and to all who knew and loved him."

NOTES:

{199} My authorities are:—The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, 2 vols., 1882; The Life of Charles Dickens, by John Forster, 8th Edit., 1872; My Father as I recall him, by Mamie Dickens, Roxburghe Press, N.D. The authoress says that "it is twenty-six years since my father died"; this would make the date of her book 1896.

{200a} His son.

{200b} M. Dickens, p. 26.

{201} Forster, i., p. 4.

{202a} Forster, i., p. 9.

{202b} In writing to Walter Savage Landor (Letters, ii., p. 48), 1856, he asks (in reference to Robinson Crusoe) if it is not a testimony to the homely force of truth that—"One of the most popular books on earth has nothing in it to make anyone laugh or cry. Yet I think, with some confidence, that you never did either over any passage in Robinson Crusoe. In particular, I took Friday’s death as one of the least tender and (in the true sense) least sentimental things ever written. . . ." He goes on:—"It is a book I read very much; and the wonder of its prodigious effect on me and everyone, and the admiration thereof, grows on me the more I observe this curious fact."

{203} Was it chance or intention that gave his hero the initials D.C., an inversion of C.D.?

{205} Pickwick, chap. ix.

{206} A corruption of Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield.

{208} His sense of the reality of his characters is shown by his daughter’s recollection of her father pointing out the exact spot where Mr Winkle called out, "Whoa! I have dropped my whip."

{209} William Charles Macready, 1793–1873, the son of William Macready, actor and manager, was born in London; his mother was an actress.

In 1803 he went to Rugby, the idea being that he should go to the Bar. In 1810 Macready made his first appearance on the stage, taking the part of Romeo with considerable success. Mrs Siddons, with whom he acted, encouraged him—telling him to "study, study, study, and do not marry till you are thirty." During the four years he remained with his father he played seventy-four parts. He seems to have failed to agree with his father, and took an engagement at Bath in 1814. In 1816 he made his first appearance at Covent Garden. Kean was in the audience and applauded loudly. His Richard III. (in London 1819) took a firm hold of the public and established "a dangerous rivalry for Kean." His temper seems to have been violent, for in 1836 he knocked down Bunn as "a damned scoundrel" and had to pay damages. In 1837 he was manager of Covent Garden Theatre. He was the original Claude Melnotte in 1838.

In 1850 he played at Windsor Castle under Charles Kean, who "sent him a courteous message and received a characteristically churlish reply." He took the last of many farewell performances in 1851. His diary and reminiscences have been edited by Sir F. Pollock.

{216} In 1858 he wrote to a friend asking him to convey a note of thanks "to the author of Scenes of Clerical Life whose two first stories I can never say enough of, I think them so truly admirable." He adds that they are undoubtedly by a woman.

{219} Lady Holland.

{221} Mr Arthur Smith, his friend and secretary.

{228} It was curious that he should use so provincial an expression as riding in a cab.

[The end]
Francis Darwin's essay: Charles Dickens

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