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THE LIFE
OF
[Illustration: Signature: Charles Dickens]
[Illustration]
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
THREE VOLUMES IN TWO.
VOL. I.
* * * * *
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1875.
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
VOL. I.
1812-1842.
TO THE
DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS,
MY GOD-DAUGHTER MARY
AND
HER SISTER KATE,
=This Book is Dedicated=
BY THEIR FRIEND,
AND THEIR FATHER'S FRIEND AND EXECUTOR,
JOHN FORSTER
NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
SUCH has been the rapidity of the demand for successive impressions of
this book, that I have found it impossible, until now, to correct at
pages 31, 87, and 97 three errors of statement made in the former
editions; and some few other mistakes, not in themselves important, at
pages 96, 101, and 102. I take the opportunity of adding that the
mention at p. 83 is not an allusion to the well-known "Penny" and
"Saturday" Magazines, but to weekly periodicals of some years' earlier
date resembling them in form. One of them, I have since found from a
later mention by Dickens himself, was presumably of a less wholesome and
instructive character. "I used," he says, "when I was at school, to take
in the _Terrific Register_, making myself unspeakably miserable, and
frightening my very wits out of my head, for the small charge of a penny
weekly; which, considering that there was an illustration to every
number in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least one body,
was cheap." An obliging correspondent writes to me upon my reference to
the Fox-under-the-hill, at p. 62: "Will you permit me to say that the
house, shut up and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of
a curious and most precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past
Salisbury Street. . . . It was once, I think, the approach to the halfpenny
boats. The house is now shut out from the water-side by the Embankment."
PALACE GATE HOUSE, KENSINGTON,
_23d December, 1871_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I. 1812-1822.
Pages 21-46.
CHILDHOOD. AET. 1-10.
PAGE
Birth at Landport in Portsea 21
Family of John Dickens 22
Powers of observation in children 23
Two years old 23
In London, aet. 2-3 23
In Chatham, aet. 4-9 23
Vision of boyhood 24
The queer small child 25
Mother's teaching 26
Day-school in Rome Lane 27
Retrospects of childhood 27
David Copperfield and Charles Dickens 28
Access to small but good library 29
Tragedy-writing 30
Comic-song singing 31
Cousin James Lamert 31
First taken to theatre 32
At Mr. Giles's school 32
Encored in the recitations 33
Boyish recollections 33
Birthplace of his fancy 35
Last night in Chatham 35
In London 36
First impressions 36
Bayham Street, Camden-town 36
Faculty of early observation 37
His description of his father 38
Small theatre made for him 38
Sister Fanny at Royal Academy of Music 39
Walks about London 39
Biography and autobiography 40
At his godfather's and his uncle's 41
First efforts at description 42
"Res Angusta Domi" 42
Mother exerting herself 43
Father in the Marshalsea 43
Visit to the prison 44
Captain Porter 44
Old friends disposed of 45
At the pawnbroker's 46
CHAPTER II. 1822-1824.
Pages 47-70.
HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD. AET. 10-12.
Mr. Dilke's half-crown 48
Story of boyhood told 48
D. C. and C. D. 48
Enterprise of the cousins Lamert 49
First employment in life 51
Blacking-warehouse 51
A poor little drudge 52
Bob Fagin and Poll Green 52
"Facilis Descensus" 52
Crushed hopes 53
The home in Gower Street 53
Regaling alamode 54
Home broken up 54
At Mrs. Roylance's in Camden-town 55
Sundays in prison 55
Pudding-shops and coffee-shops 56
What was and might have been 57
Thomas and Harry 58
A lodging in Lant Street 59
Meals in the Marshalsea 59
C. D. and the Marchioness 60
Originals of Garland family 60
Adventure with Bob Fagin 61
Saturday-night shows 61
Appraised officially 62
Publican and wife at Cannon Row 63
Marshalsea incident in _Copperfield_ 64
Incident as it occurred 65
Materials for _Pickwick_ 66
Sister Fanny's musical prize 66
From Hungerford Stairs to Chandos Street 67
Father's quarrel with James Lamert 68
Quits the warehouse 68
Bitter associations of servitude 69
What became of the blacking business 70
CHAPTER III. 1824-1830.
Pages 71-95.
SCHOOL-DAYS AND START IN LIFE. AET. 12-18.
Outcome of boyish trials 71
Disadvantage in later years 72
Advantages 73
Next move in life 74
Wellington House Academy 74
Revisited and described 75
Letter from a schoolfellow 76
C. D.'s recollections of school 77
Schoolfellow's recollections of C. D. 77
Fac-simile of schoolboy letter 79
Daniel Tobin 81
Another schoolfellow's recollections 82
Writing tales and getting up plays 83
Master Beverley scene-painter 84
Street-acting 84
The schoolfellows after forty years 85
Smallness of the world 86
In attorneys' offices 87
At minor theatres 88
The father on the son's education 89
Studying short-hand 90
In British Museum reading-room 90
Preparing for the gallery 91
D. C. for C. D. 91
A real Dora in 1829 92
The same Dora in 1855 93
Dora changed into Flora 94
Ashes of youth and hope 95
CHAPTER IV. 1831-1835.
Pages 96-106.
REPORTERS' GALLERY AND NEWSPAPER LITERATURE.
AET. 19-23.
Reporting for _True Sun_ 96
First seen by me 97
Reporting for _Mirror_ and _Chronicle_ 97
First published piece 97
Discipline and experiences of reporting 98
Life as a reporter 99
John Black 100
Mr. Thomas Beard 101
A letter to his editor 102
Incident of reporting days 102
The same more correctly told 103
Origin of "Boz" 104
Captain Holland 104
Mr. George Hogarth 105
Sketches in _Evening Chronicle_ 105
C. D.'s first hearty appreciator 106
CHAPTER V. 1836.
Pages 107-115.
FIRST BOOK, AND ORIGIN OF PICKWICK. AET. 24.
_Sketches by Boz_ 107
Fancy-piece by N. P. Willis: a poor English author 107
Start of _Pickwick_ 108
Marriage to Miss Hogarth 108
First connection with Chapman & Hall 109
Mr. Seymour's part in _Pickwick_ 109
Letters relating thereto 110
C. D.'s own account 110
False claims refuted 111
Pickwick's original, his figure and his name 112
First sprightly runnings of genius 113
The _Sketches_ characterized 114
Mr. Seymour's death 115
New illustrator chosen 115
Mr. Hablot K. Browne 115
C. D. leaves the gallery 116
_Strange Gentleman_ and _Village Coquettes_ 116
CHAPTER VI. 1837.
Pages 117-140.
WRITING THE PICKWICK PAPERS. AET. 25.
First letter from him 117
As he was thirty-five years ago 118
Mrs. Carlyle and Leigh Hunt 119
Birth of eldest son 119
From Furnival's Inn to Doughty Street 119
A long-remembered sorrow 120
I visit him 120
Hasty compacts with publishers 121
Self-sold into quasi-bondage 121
Agreements for editorship and writing 121
Mr. Macrone's scheme to reissue _Sketches_ 122
Attempts to prevent it 123
Exorbitant demand 123
Impatience of suspense 123
Purchase advised 124
_Oliver Twist_ 125
Characters real to himself 125
Sense of responsibility for his writings 126
Criticism that satisfied him 126
Help given with his proofs 126
Writing _Pickwick_, Nos. 14 and 15 127
Scenes in a debtors' prison 128
A recollection of Smollett 128
Reception of _Pickwick_ 129
A popular rage 129
Mr. Carlyle's "dreadful" story 130
Secrets of success 130
_Pickwick_ inferior to later books 131
Exception for Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick 131
Personal habits of C. D. 132
Reliefs after writing 133
Natural discontents 134
The early agreements 134
Tale to follow _Oliver Twist_ 135
Compromise with Mr. Bentley 135
Trip to Flanders 135
First visit to Broadstairs 136
Piracies of _Pickwick_ 137
A sufferer from agreements 138
First visit to Brighton 138
What he is doing with _Oliver Twist_ 139
Reading De Foe 139
"No Thoroughfare" 139
Proposed help to Macready 140
CHAPTER VII. 1837-1838.
Pages 141-151.
BETWEEN PICKWICK AND NICKLEBY. AET. 25-26.
Edits _Life of Grimaldi_ 141
His own opinion of it 142
An objection answered 142
His recollections of 1823 142
Completion of _Pickwick_ 143
A purpose long entertained 144
Relations with Chapman & Hall 144
Payments made for _Pickwick_ 145
Agreement for _Nicholas Nickleby_ 145
_Oliver Twist_ characterized 146
Reasons for acceptance with every class 146
Nightmare of an agreement 147
Letter to Mr. Bentley 147
Proposal as to _Barnaby Rudge_ 148
Result of it 148
Birth of eldest daughter 149
_Young Gentlemen_ and _Young Couples_ 149
First number of _Nicholas Nickleby_ 150
2d of April, 1838 150
CHAPTER VIII. 1838.
Pages 152-164.
OLIVER TWIST. AET. 26.
Interest in characters at close of _Oliver_ 152
Writing of the last chapter 153
Cruikshank illustrations 154
Etchings for last volume 154
How executed 154
Slander respecting them exposed 155
Falsehood ascribed to the artist 155
Reputation of the new tale 156
Its workmanship 157
Social evils passed away 157
Living only in what destroyed them 157
Chief design of the story 158
Its principal figures 158
Comedy and tragedy of crime 159
Reply to attacks 160
Le Sage, Gay, and Fielding 160
Likeness to them 161
Again the shadow of _Barnaby_ 161
Appeal to Mr. Bentley for delay 161
A very old story 162
"Sic vos non vobis" 162
_Barnaby_ given up by Mr. Bentley 163
Resignation of _Miscellany_ 163
Parent parting from child 164
CHAPTER IX. 1838-1839.
Pages 165-179.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. AET. 26-27.
Doubts of success dispelled 165
Realities of English life 166
Characters self-revealed 167
Miss Bates and Mrs. Nickleby 167
Smike and Dotheboys 167
A favorite type of humanity 168
Sydney Smith and Newman Noggs 168
Kindliness and breadth of humor 169
Goldsmith and Smollett 169
Early and later books 170
Biographical not critical 171
Characteristics 171
Materials for the book 171
Birthday letter 172
A difficulty at starting 172
Never in advance with _Nickleby_ 173
Always with later books 173
Enjoying a play 174
At the Adelphi 174
Writing Mrs. Nickleby's love-scene 175
Sydney Smith vanquished 175
Winding up the story 176
Parting from creatures of his fancy 177
The Nickleby dinner 178
Persons present 178
The Maclise portrait 178
CHAPTER X. 1838-1839.
Pages 180-190.
DURING AND AFTER NICKLEBY. AET. 26-27.
The Cottage at Twickenham 180
Daniel Maclise 180
Ainsworth and other friends 181
Mr. Stanley of Alderley 182
Petersham cottage 182
Childish enjoyments 182
Writes a farce for Covent Garden 183
Entered at the Middle Temple 183
We see Wainewright in Newgate 184
_Oliver Twist_ and the _Quarterly_ 184
Hood's _Up the Rhine_ 185
Shakspeare Society 185
Birth of second daughter 186
House-hunting 186
_Barnaby_ at his tenth page 186
Letter from Exeter 187
A landlady and her friends 187
A home for his father and mother 188
Autobiographical 189
Visit to an upholsterer 189
Visit from the same 190
CHAPTER XI. 1839.
Pages 191-199.
NEW LITERARY PROJECT. AET. 27-28.
Thoughts for the future 191
Doubts of old serial form 192
Suggestion for his publishers 192
My mediation with them 193
Proposed weekly publication 193
Design of it 193
Old favorites to be revived 194
Subjects to be dealt with 194
Chapters on Chambers 194
Gog and Magog Relaxations 194
Savage Chronicles 195
Others as well as himself to write 195
Travels to Ireland and America in view 195
Stipulation as to property and payments 196
Great hopes of success 197
Assent of his publishers 197
No planned story 197
Terms of agreement 197
Notion for his hero 198
A name hit upon 199
Sanguine of the issue 199
CHAPTER XII. 1840-1841.
Pages 200-216.
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. AET. 28-29.
Visit to Walter Landor 200
First thought of Little Nell 200
Hopeful of Master Humphrey 201
A title for the child-story 202
First sale of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ 202
Its original plan abandoned 203
Reasons for this 203
To be limited to one story 203
Disadvantages of weekly publication 204
A favorite description 204
In Bevis Marks for Sampson Brass 205
At Lawn House, Broadstairs 205
Dedication of his first volume to Rogers 205
Chapters 43-45 206
Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness 207
Masterpiece of kindly fun 207
Closing of the tale 208
Effect upon the writer 208
Making-believe very much 209
The end approaching 209
The realities of fiction 209
Death of Little Nell 210
My share in the close 211
A suggestion adopted by him 211
Success of the story 211
Useful lessons 212
Its mode of construction 213
Character and characteristics 213
The art of it 213
A recent tribute 214
Harte's "Dickens in Camp" 215
CHAPTER XIII. 1840.
Pages 217-231.
DEVONSHIRE TERRACE AND BROADSTAIRS. AET. 28.
A good saying 217
Landor mystified 218
The mirthful side of Dickens 218
Extravagant flights 218
Humorous despair 219
Riding exercise 220
First of the ravens 220
The groom Topping 220
The smoky chimneys 221
Juryman at an inquest 222
Practical humanity 222
Publication of _Clock's_ first number 222
Transfer of _Barnaby_ settled 223
A true prediction 224
Revisiting old scenes 224
C. D. to Chapman & Hall 224
Terms of sale of _Barnaby_ 225
A gift to a friend 226
Final escape from bondage 226
Published libels about him 227
Said to be demented 227
To be insane and turned Catholic 228
Begging letter-writers 228
A donkey asked for 228
Mr. Kindheart 229
Friendly meetings 229
Social talk 229
Reconciling friends 230
Hint for judging men 230
CHAPTER XIV. 1841.
Pages 232-248.
BARNABY RUDGE. AET. 29.
Advantage in beginning _Barnaby_ 232
Birth of fourth child and second son 233
The Raven 233
A loss in the family 234
Grip's death 235
C. D. describes his illness 235
Family mourners 236
Apotheosis by Maclise 237
Grip the second 239
The inn at Chigwell 239
A _Clock_ Dinner 240
Lord Jeffrey in London 240
The _Lamplighter_ 240
The _Pic Nic Papers_ 241
Character of Lord George Gordon 241
A doubtful fancy 242
Interest in new labor 243
Constraints of weekly publication 243
The prison-riots 244
A serious illness 244
Close of _Barnaby_ 244
Character of the tale 245
Defects in the plot 245
The No-Popery riots 245
Descriptive power displayed 246
Leading persons in story 247
Mr. Dennis the hangman 248
CHAPTER XV. 1841.
Pages 249-262.
PUBLIC DINNER IN EDINBURGH. AET. 29.
His son Walter Landor 249
Dies in Calcutta (1863) 250
C. D. and the new poor-law 250
Moore and Rogers 251
Jeffrey's praise of Little Nell 251
Resolve to visit Scotland 251
Edinburgh dinner proposed 252
Sir David Wilkie's death 252
Peter Robertson 253
Professor Wilson 253
A fancy of Scott 254
Lionization made tolerable 254
Thoughts of home 255
The dinner and speeches 255
His reception 256
Wilson's eulogy 256
Home yearnings 257
Freedom of city voted to him 257
Speakers at the dinner 257
Politics and party influences 258
Whig jealousies 259
At the theatre 260
Hospitalities 260
Moral of it all 260
Proposed visit to the Highlands 261
Maclise and Macready 261
Guide to the Highlands 262
Mr. Angus Fletcher (Kindheart) 262
CHAPTER XVI. 1841.
Pages 263-276.
ADVENTURES IN THE HIGHLANDS. AET. 29.
A fright 264
Fletcher's eccentricities 264
The Trossachs 264
The traveler's guide 265
A comical picture 265
Highland accommodation 265
Grand scenery 266
Changes in route 267
A waterfall 267
Entrance to Glencoe 267
The pass of Glencoe 268
Loch Leven 269
A July evening 269
Postal service at Loch Earn Head 269
The maid of the inn 270
Impressions of Glencoe 270
An adventure 271
Torrents swollen with rain 271
Dangerous traveling 272
Incidents and accidents 272
Broken-down bridge 273
A fortunate resolve 273
Post-boy in danger 274
The rescue 274
Narrow escape 274
A Highland inn and inmates 275
English comfort at Dalmally 275
Dinner at Glasgow proposed 276
Eagerness for home 276
CHAPTER XVII. 1841.
Pages 277-283.
AGAIN AT BROADSTAIRS. AET. 29.
Peel and his party 277
Getting very radical 278
Thoughts of colonizing 278
Political squib by C. D. 278
Fine old English Tory times 279
Mesmerism 280
Metropolitan prisons 280
Book by a workman 280
An August day by the sea 281
Another story in prospect 281
_Clock_ discontents 281
New adventure 282
Agreement for it signed 282
The book that proved to be _Chuzzlewit_ 283
Peel and Lord Ashley 283
Visions of America 283
CHAPTER XVIII. 1841.
Pages 284-291.
EVE OF THE VISIT TO AMERICA. AET. 29.
Greetings from America 284
Reply to Washington Irving 284
Difficulties in the way 285
Resolve to go 286
Wish to revisit scenes of boyhood 286
Proposed book of travel 286
Arrangements for the journey 287
Impatience of suspense 287
Resolve to leave the children 288
Mrs. Dickens reconciled 288
A grave illness 288
Domestic griefs 289
The old sorrow 289
At Windsor 290
Son Walter's christening 290
At Liverpool with the travelers 291
CHAPTER XIX. 1842.
Pages 292-309.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. AET. 30.
Rough passage 293
A steamer in a storm 293
Resigned to the worst 293
Of himself and fellow-travelers 294
The Atlantic from deck 294
The ladies' cabin 294
Its occupants 295
Card-playing on the Atlantic 295
Ship-news 296
A wager 297
Halifax harbor 297
Ship aground 297
Captain Hewitt 298
Speaker of House of Assembly 299
Ovation to C. D. 299
Arrival at Boston 300
Incursion of editors 300
At Tremont House 300
The welcome 301
Deputations 301
Dr. Channing to C. D. 302
Public appearances 302
A secretary engaged 303
Bostonians 303
General characteristics 304
Personal notices 304
Perils of steamers 305
A home-thought 305
American institutions 306
How first impressed 306
Reasons for the greeting 306
What was welcomed in C. D. 307
Old World and New World 308
Daniel Webster as to C. D. 308
Channing as to C. D. 308
Subsequent disappointments 309
New York invitation to dinner}
Fac-similes of signatures }
Additional fac-similes } Facing page 309.
New York invitation to ball }
Fac-similes of signatures }
Additional fac-similes }
CHAPTER XX. 1842.
Pages 310-334.
SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. AET. 30.
Second letter 310
International copyright 311
Third letter 311
The dinner at Boston 312
Worcester, Springfield, and Hartford 313
Queer traveling 313
Levees at Hartford and New Haven 313
At Wallingford 314
Serenades 314
Cornelius C. Felton 315
Payment of personal expenses declined 315
At New York 315
Irving and Colden 315
Description of the ball 316
Newspaper accounts 317
A phase of character 317
Opinion in America 318
International copyright 318
American authors in regard to it 319
Outcry against the nation's guest 319
Declines to be silent on copyright 319
Speech at dinner 320
Irving in the chair 320
Chairman's break-down 321
An incident afterwards in London 321
Results of copyright speeches 322
A bookseller's demand for help 322
Suggestion for copyright memorial 323
Henry Clay's opinion 323
Life in New York 324
Distresses of popularity 324
Intentions for future 325
Refusal of invitations 325
Going south and west 325
As to return 326
Dangers incident to steamers 326
Slavery 327
Ladies of America 327
Party conflicts 328
Non-arrival of Cunard steamer 328
Copyright petition for Congress 328
No hope of the Caledonia 329
A substitute for her 330
Anxiety as to letters 330
Of distinguished Americans 330
Hotel bills 331
Thoughts of the children 331
Acadia takes Caledonia's place 332
Letter to C. D. from Carlyle 332
Carlyle on copyright 332
Argument against stealing 333
Rob Roy's plan worth bettering 334
C. D. as to Carlyle 334
CHAPTER XXI. 1842.
Pages 335-357.
PHILADELPHIA, WASHINGTON, AND THE SOUTH. AET. 30.
At Philadelphia 335
Rule in printing letters 335
Promise as to railroads 336
Experience of them 337
Railway-cars 337
Charcoal stoves 337
Ladies' cars 338
Spittoons 338
Massachusetts and New York 339
Police-cells and prisons 339
House of detention and inmates 340
Women and boy prisoners 341
Capital punishment 342
A house of correction 342
Four hundred single cells 343
Comparison with English prisons 344
Inns and landlords 344
At Washington 344
Hotel extortion 345
Philadelphia penitentiary 345
The solitary system 345
Solitary prisoners 346
Talk with inspectors 346
Bookseller Carey 347
Changes of temperature 347
Henry Clay 348
Proposed journeyings 348
Letters from England 349
Congress and Senate 349
Leading American statesmen 349
The people of America 350
Englishmen "located" there 350
"Surgit amari aliquid" 351
The copyright petition 351
At Richmond 351
Irving appointed to Spain 352
Experience of a slave city 353
Incidents of slave-life 353
Discussion with a slaveholder 353
Feeling of South to England 354
Levees at Richmond 354
One more banquet accepted 355
My gift of _Shakspeare_ 355
Home letters and fancies 356
Self-reproach of a noble nature 356
Washington Irving's leave-taking 357
CHAPTER XXII. 1842.
Pages 358-380.
CANAL-BOAT JOURNEYS: BOUND FAR WEST. AET. 30.
Character in the letters 358
The _Notes_ less satisfactory 359
Personal narrative in letters 359
The copyright differences 360
Social dissatisfactions 360
A fact to be remembered 361
Literary merits of the letters 361
Personal character portrayed 362
On board for Pittsburgh 362
Choicest passages of _Notes_ 362
Queer stage-coach 363
Something revealed on the top 364
At Harrisburg 364
Treaties with Indians 365
Local legislatures 365
A levee 365
Morning and night in canal-boat 366
At and after breakfast 366
Making the best of it 367
Hardy habits 368
By rail across mountain 368
Mountain scenery 369
New settlements 369
Original of Eden in _Chuzzlewit_ 369
A useful word 370
Party in America 371
Home news 371
Meets an early acquaintance 372
"Smallness of the world" 372
Queer customers at levees 372
Our anniversary 373
The Cincinnati steamer 374
Frugality in water and linen 374
Magnetic experiments 375
Life-preservers 376
Bores 376
Habits of neatness 377
Wearying for home 377
Another solitary prison 378
New terror to loneliness 378
Arrival at Cincinnati 378
Two judges in attendance 379
The city described 379
On the pavement 380
CHAPTER XXIII. 1842.
Pages 381-406.
THE FAR WEST: TO NIAGARA FALLS. AET. 30.
Descriptions in letters and in _Notes_ 381
Outline of westward travel 382
An Arabian-Night city 383
A temperance festival 383
A party at Judge Walker's 383
The party from another view 384
Young lady's description of C. D. 384
Mournful results of boredom 385
Down the Mississippi 386
Listening and watching 386
A levee at St. Louis 386
Compliments 387
Lord Ashburton's arrival 387
Talk with a judge on slavery 388
A negro burnt alive 388
Feeling of slaves themselves 389
American testimony 389
Pretty little scene 390
A mother and her husband 390
The baby 391
St. Louis in sight 392
Meeting of wife and husband 392
Trip to a prairie 393
On the prairie at sunset 393
General character of scenery 394
The prairie described 394
Disappointment and enjoyment 394
Soiree at Planter's House Inn 395
Good fare 395
No gray heads in St. Louis 396
Dueling 396
Mrs. Dickens as a traveler 397
From Cincinnati to Columbus 397
What a levee is like 398
From Columbus to Sandusky 398
The travelers alone 399
A log house inn 400
Making tidy 400
A monetary crisis 400
Americans not a humorous people 401
The only recreations 401
From Sandusky to Buffalo 402
On Lake Erie 402
Reception and consolation of a mayor 403
From Buffalo to Niagara 403
Nearing the Falls 404
The Horse-shoe 404
Effect upon him of Niagara 405
The old recollection 405
Looking forward 406
CHAPTER XXIV. 1842.
Pages 407-418.
NIAGARA AND MONTREAL. AET. 30.
Last two letters 407
Dickens vanquished 407
Obstacles to copyright 408
Two described 408
Value of literary popularity 409
Substitute for literature 410
The secretary described 410
His paintings 411
The lion and ---- 411
Toryism of Toronto 412
Canadian attentions 412
Proposed theatricals 413
Last letter 413
The private play 414
Stage manager's report 414
Bill of the performance 415
The lady performers 417
A touch of Crummles 417
HOME 418
PAGE
Autograph of C. D. (1837) _Fly-leaf_
C. D. aet. 27. From Maclise's Painting, by Graves, A.R.A. _Title-page_
Fac-simile of Letter written in Boyhood 79
Outline of the Maclise Painting of 1839. Engraved by Jeens 178
Apotheosis of Grip the Raven, by Maclise, R.A. 237
Fac-simile of C. D.'s autograph signature Boz (1841) 276
Fac-simile of Invitation to the Public Dinner in New York, with
the signatures 309
Fac-simile of Invitation to the Public Ball in New York, with
the signatures 309
Fac-simile of the Bill of the Private Play in Canada 415
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD
1812-1822.
Birth at Landport in Portsea--Family of John
Dickens--Powers of Observation in Children--Two
Years Old--In London, aet. 2-3--In Chatham, aet.
4-9--Vision of Boyhood--The Queer Small
Child--Mother's Teaching--Day-School in Rome
Lane--Retrospects of Childhood--David
Copperfield and Charles Dickens--Access to
Small but Good
Library--Tragedy-Writing--Comic-Song
Singing--Cousin James Lamert--First taken to
Theatre--At Mr. Giles's School--Encored in the
Recitations--Boyish Recollections--Birthplace
of his Fancy--Last Night in Chatham--In
London--First Impressions--Bayham Street,
Camden-town--Faculty of Early Observation--His
Description of his Father--Small Theatre made
for him--Sister Fanny at Royal Academy of
Music--Walks about London--Biography and
Autobiography--At his Godfather's and his
Uncle's--First Efforts at Description--"Res
Angusta Domi"--Mother exerting Herself--Father
in the Marshalsea--Visit to the Prison--Captain
Porter--Old Friends disposed of--At the
Pawnbroker's.
CHARLES DICKENS, the most popular novelist of the century, and one of
the greatest humorists that England has produced, was born at Landport
in Portsea on Friday, the 7th of February, 1812.
His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy-pay office, was at this
time stationed in the Portsmouth dockyard. He had made acquaintance with
the lady, Elizabeth Barrow, who became afterwards his wife, through her
elder brother, Thomas Barrow, also engaged on the establishment at
Somerset House; and she bore him in all a family of eight children, of
whom two died in infancy. The eldest, Fanny (born 1810), was followed by
Charles (entered in the baptismal register of Portsea as Charles John
Huffham, though on the very rare occasions when he subscribed that name
he wrote Huffam); by another son, named Alfred, who died in childhood;
by Letitia (born 1816); by another daughter, Harriet, who died also in
childhood; by Frederick (born 1820); by Alfred Lamert (born 1822); and
by Augustus (born 1827); of all of whom only the second daughter now
survives.
Walter Scott tells us, in his fragment of autobiography, speaking of the
strange remedies applied to his lameness, that he remembered lying on
the floor in the parlor of his grandfather's farm-house, swathed up in a
sheepskin warm from the body of the sheep, being then not three years
old. David Copperfield's memory goes beyond this. He represents himself
seeing so far back into the blank of his infancy as to discern therein
his mother and her servant, dwarfed to his sight by stooping down or
kneeling on the floor, and himself going unsteadily from the one to the
other. He admits this may be fancy, though he believes the power of
observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for
its closeness and accuracy, and thinks that the recollection of most of
us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose. But
what he adds is certainly not fancy. "If it should appear from anything
I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close
observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I
undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics." Applicable as
it might be to David Copperfield, this was simply and unaffectedly true
of Charles Dickens.
He has often told me that he remembered the small front garden to the
house at Portsea, from which he was taken away when he was two years
old, and where, watched by a nurse through a low kitchen-window almost
level with the gravel walk, he trotted about with something to eat, and
his little elder sister with him. He was carried from the garden one day
to see the soldiers exercise; and I perfectly recollect that, on our
being at Portsmouth together while he was writing _Nickleby_, he
recognized the exact shape of the military parade seen by him as a very
infant, on the same spot, a quarter of a century before.
When his father was again brought up by his duties to London from
Portsmouth, they went into lodgings in Norfolk Street, Middlesex
Hospital; and it lived also in the child's memory that they had come
away from Portsea in the snow. Their home, shortly after, was again
changed, on the elder Dickens being placed upon duty in Chatham
dockyard; and the house where he lived in Chatham, which had a
plain-looking whitewashed plaster front and a small garden before and
behind, was in St. Mary's Place, otherwise called the Brook, and next
door to a Baptist meeting-house called Providence Chapel, of which a Mr.
Giles, to be presently mentioned, was minister. Charles at this time
was between four and five years old;[1] and here he stayed till he was
nine. Here the most durable of his early impressions were received; and
the associations that were around him when he died were those which at
the outset of his life had affected him most strongly.
The house called Gadshill Place stands on the strip of highest ground in
the main road between Rochester and Gravesend. Often had we traveled
past it together, years and years before it became his home, and never
without some allusion to what he told me when first I saw it in his
company, that amid the recollections connected with his childhood it
held always a prominent place, for, upon first seeing it as he came from
Chatham with his father, and looking up at it with much admiration, he
had been promised that he might himself live in it, or in some such
house, when he came to be a man, if he would only work hard enough.
Which for a long time was his ambition. The story is a pleasant one, and
receives authentic confirmation at the opening of one of his essays on
traveling abroad, when as he passes along the road to Canterbury there
crosses it a vision of his former self:
"So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh were the horses, and so
fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and the
widening river was bearing the ships, white-sailed or black-smoked, out
to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.
"'Holloa!' said I to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'
"'At Chatham,' says he.
"'What do you do there?' says I.
"'I go to school,' says he.
"I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the very queer
small boy says, 'This is Gadshill we are coming to, where Falstaff went
out to rob those travelers, and ran away.'
"'You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I.
"'All about him,' said the very queer small boy. 'I am old (I am nine),
and I read all sorts of books. But _do_ let us stop at the top of the
hill, and look at the house there, if you please!'
"'You admire that house?' said I.
"'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 now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever
since I can recollect, 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!' said
the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the
house out of window with all his might.
"I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy; for
that house happens to be _my_ house, and I have reason to believe that
what he said was true."
The queer small boy was indeed his very self. He was a very little and a
very sickly boy. He was subject to attacks of violent spasm which
disabled him for any active exertion. He was never a good little
cricket-player. He was never a first-rate hand at marbles, or peg-top,
or prisoner's base. But he had great pleasure in watching the other
boys, officers' sons for the most part, at these games, reading while
they played; and he had always the belief that this early sickness had
brought to himself one inestimable advantage, in the circumstance of his
weak health having strongly inclined him to reading. It will not appear,
as my narrative moves on, that he owed much to his parents, or was other
than in his first letter to Washington Irving he described himself to
have been, a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy;"
but he has frequently been heard to say that his first desire for
knowledge, and his earliest passion for reading, were awakened by his
mother, who taught him the first rudiments not only of English, but
also, a little later, of Latin. She taught him regularly every day for a
long time, and taught him, he was convinced, thoroughly well. I once put
to him a question in connection with this to which he replied in almost
exactly the words he placed five years later in the mouth of David
Copperfield: "I faintly remember her teaching me the alphabet; and when
I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of
their shapes, and the easy good nature of O and S, always seem to
present themselves before me as they used to do."
Then followed the preparatory day-school, a school for girls and boys to
which he went with his sister Fanny, and which was in a place called
Rome (pronounced Room) Lane. Revisiting Chatham in his manhood, and
looking for the place, he found it had been pulled down to make a new
street, "ages" before; but out of the distance of the ages arose
nevertheless a not dim impression that it had been over a dyer's shop;
that he went up steps to it; that he had frequently grazed his knees in
doing so; and that in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady
little shoe, he generally got his leg over the scraper.[2] Other similar
memories of childhood have dropped from him occasionally in his lesser
writings; whose readers may remember how vividly portions of his boyhood
are reproduced in his fancy of the Christmas-tree, and will hardly have
forgotten what he says, in his thoughtful little paper on Nurses'
stories, of the doubtful places and people to which children may be
introduced before they are six years old, and forced, night after night,
to go back to against their wills, by servants to whom they are
intrusted. That childhood exaggerates what it sees, too, has he not
tenderly told? How he thought the Rochester High Street must be at least
as wide as Regent Street, which he afterwards discovered to be little
better than a lane; how the public clock in it, supposed to be the
finest clock in the world, turned out to be as moon-faced and weak a
clock as a man's eyes ever saw; and how in its town-hall, which had
appeared to him once so glorious a structure that he had set it up in
his mind as the model on which the genie of the lamp built the palace
for Aladdin, he had painfully to recognize a mere mean little heap of
bricks, like a chapel gone demented. Yet not so painfully, either, when
second thoughts wisely came. "Ah! who was I that I should quarrel with
the town for being changed to me, when I myself had come back, so
changed, to it? All my early readings and early imaginations dated from
this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and
guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the
wiser and so much the worse!"
And here I may at once expressly mention, what already has been hinted,
that even as Fielding described himself and his belongings in Captain
Booth and Amelia, and protested always that he had writ in his books
nothing more than he had seen in life, so it may be said of Dickens in
more especial relation to David Copperfield. Many guesses have been made
since his death, connecting David's autobiography with his own;
accounting, by means of such actual experiences, for the so frequent
recurrence in his writings of the prison-life, its humor and pathos,
described in them with such wonderful reality; and discovering in what
David tells Steerforth at school of the stories he had read in his
childhood, what it was that had given the bent to his own genius. There
is not only truth in all this, but it will very shortly be seen that the
identity went deeper than any had supposed, and covered experiences not
less startling in the reality than they appear to be in the fiction.
Of the "readings" and "imaginations" which he describes as brought away
from Chatham, this authority can tell us. It is one of the many passages
in _Copperfield_ which are literally true, and its proper place is here.
"My father had left a small collection of books in a little room
up-stairs to which I had access (for it adjoined my own), and which
nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room,
_Roderick Random_, _Peregrine Pickle_, _Humphrey Clinker_, _Tom Jones_,
the _Vicar of Wakefield_, _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas_, and _Robinson
Crusoe_ 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; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; _I_
knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now how I found time, in the
midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those
books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled
myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by
impersonating my favorite characters in them. . . . I have been Tom Jones
(a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have
sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I
verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and
travels--I forget what, now--that were on those shelves; 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
realization of Captain Somebody, of the royal British Navy, in danger of
being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great
price. . . . When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a
summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my
bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighborhood, every stone
in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of
its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some
locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the
church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back,
stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I _know_ that
Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlor of our
little village ale-house." Every word of this personal recollection had
been written down as fact, some years before it found its way into
_David Copperfield_; the only change in the fiction being his omission
of the name of a cheap series of novelists then in course of
publication, by which his father had become happily the owner of so
large a lump of literary treasure in his small collection of books.
The usual result followed. The child took to writing, himself, and
became famous in his childish circle for having written a tragedy called
_Misnar_, the Sultan of India, founded (and very literally founded, no
doubt) on one of the _Tales of the Genii_. Nor was this his only
distinction. He told a story offhand so well, and sang small comic songs
so especially well, that he used to be elevated on chairs and tables,
both at home and abroad, for more effective display of these talents;
and when he first told me of this, at one of the Twelfth-night parties
on his eldest son's birthday, he said he never recalled it that his own
shrill little voice of childhood did not again tingle in his ears, and
he blushed to think what a horrible little nuisance he must have been to
many unoffending grown-up people who were called upon to admire him.
His chief ally and encourager in these displays was a youth of some
ability, much older than himself, named James Lamert, stepson to his
mother's sister, and therefore a sort of cousin, who was his great
patron and friend in his childish days. Mary, the eldest daughter of
Charles Barrow, himself a lieutenant in the navy, had for her first
husband a commander in the navy called Allen; on whose death by drowning
at Rio Janeiro she had joined her sister, the navy-pay clerk's wife, at
Chatham; in which place she subsequently took for her second husband Dr.
Lamert, an army-surgeon, whose son James, even after he had been sent to
Sandhurst for his education, continued still to visit Chatham from time
to time. He had a turn for private theatricals; and as his father's
quarters were in the ordnance hospital there, a great rambling place
otherwise at that time almost uninhabited, he had plenty of room in
which to get up his entertainments. The staff-doctor himself played his
part, and his portrait will be found in _Pickwick_.
By Lamert, I have often heard him say, he was first taken to the
theatre at the very tenderest age. He could hardly, however, have been
younger than Charles Lamb, whose first experience was of having seen
_Artaxerxes_ when six years old; and certainly not younger than Walter
Scott, who was only four when he saw _As You Like It_ on the Bath stage,
and remembered having screamed out, _Ain't they brothers?_ when
scandalized by Orlando and Oliver beginning to fight.[3] But he was at
any rate old enough to recollect how his young heart leaped with terror
as the wicked king Richard, struggling for life against the virtuous
Richmond, backed up and bumped against the box in which he was; and
subsequent visits to the same sanctuary, as he tells us, revealed to him
many wondrous secrets, "of which not the least terrific were, that the
witches in _Macbeth_ bore an awful resemblance to the thanes and other
proper inhabitants of Scotland; and that the good king Duncan couldn't
rest in his grave, but was constantly coming out of it and calling
himself somebody else."
During the last two years of Charles's residence at Chatham, he was sent
to a school kept in Clover Lane by the young Baptist minister already
named, Mr. William Giles. I have the picture of him here, very strongly
in my mind, as a sensitive, thoughtful, feeble-bodied little boy, with
an unusual sort of knowledge and fancy for such a child, and with a
dangerous kind of wandering intelligence that a teacher might turn to
good or evil, happiness or misery, as he directed it. Nor does the
influence of Mr. Giles, such as it was, seem to have been other than
favorable. Charles had himself a not ungrateful sense in after-years
that this first of his masters, in his little-cared-for childhood, had
pronounced him to be a boy of capacity; and when, about half-way through
the publication of _Pickwick_, his old teacher sent a silver snuff-box
with admiring inscription to the "inimitable Boz," it reminded him of
praise far more precious obtained by him at his first year's examination
in the Clover Lane academy, when his recitation of a piece out of the
_Humorist's Miscellany_ about Doctor Bolus had received, unless his
youthful vanity bewildered him, a double encore. A habit, the only bad
one taught him by Mr. Giles, of taking for a time, in very moderate
quantities, the snuff called Irish blackguard, was the result of this
gift from his old master; but he abandoned it after some few years, and
it was never resumed.
It was in the boys' playing-ground near Clover Lane in which the school
stood, that, according to one of his youthful memories, he had been, in
the hay-making time, delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an
immense pile "(of haycock)," by his countrymen the victorious British
"(boy next door and his two cousins)," and had been recognized with
ecstasy by his affianced one "(Miss Green)," who had come all the way
from England "(second house in the terrace)" to ransom and marry him. It
was in this playing-field, too, as he has himself recorded, he first
heard in confidence from one whose father was greatly connected, "being
under government," of the existence of a terrible banditti called _the
radicals_, whose principles were that the prince-regent wore stays, that
nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army and navy ought to be
put down; horrors at which he trembled in his bed, after supplicating
that the radicals might be speedily taken and hanged. Nor was it the
least of the disappointments of his visit in after-life to the scenes of
his boyhood that he found this play-field had been swallowed up by a
railway station. It was gone, with its two beautiful trees of hawthorn;
and where the hedge, the turf, and all the buttercups and daisies had
been, there was nothing but the stoniest of jolting roads.
He was not much over nine years old when his father was recalled from
Chatham to Somerset House, and he had to leave this good master, and the
old place endeared to him by recollections that clung to him afterwards
all his life long. It was here he had made the acquaintance not only of
the famous books that David Copperfield specially names, of _Roderick
Random_, _Peregrine Pickle_, _Humphrey Clinker_, _Tom Jones_, the _Vicar
of Wakefield_, _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas_, _Robinson Crusoe_, the
_Arabian Nights_, and the _Tales of the Genii_, but also of the
_Spectator_, the _Tatler_, the _Idler_, the _Citizen of the World_, and
Mrs. Inchbald's _Collection of Farces_. These latter had been, as well,
in the little library to which access was open to him; and of all of
them his earliest remembrance was the having read them over and over at
Chatham, not for the first, the second, or the third time. They were a
host of friends when he had no single friend; and in leaving the place,
I have often heard him say, he seemed to be leaving them too, and
everything that had given his ailing little life its picturesqueness or
sunshine. It was the birthplace of his fancy; and he hardly knew what
store he had set by its busy varieties of change and scene, until he saw
the falling cloud that was to hide its pictures from him forever. The
gay bright regiments always going and coming, the continual paradings
and firings, the successions of sham sieges and sham defenses, the plays
got up by his cousin in the hospital, the navy-pay yacht in which he had
sailed to Sheerness with his father, and the ships floating out in the
Medway with their far visions of sea,--he was to lose them all. He was
never to watch the boys at their games any more, or see them sham over
again the sham sieges and sham defenses. He was to be taken to London
inside the stage-coach Commodore; and Kentish woods and fields, Cobham
park and hall, Rochester cathedral and castle, and all the wonderful
romance together, including the red-cheeked baby he had been wildly in
love with, were to vanish like a dream. "On the night before we came
away," he told me, "my good master came flitting in among the
packing-cases to give me Goldsmith's _Bee_ as a keepsake. Which I kept
for his sake, and its own, a long time afterwards." A longer time
afterwards he recollected the stage-coach journey, and said in one of
his published papers that never had he forgotten, through all the
intervening years, the smell of the damp straw in which he was packed
and forwarded like game, carriage-paid. "There was no other inside
passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and
it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I expected
to find it."
The earliest impressions received and retained by him in London were of
his father's money involvements; and now first he heard mentioned "the
deed," representing that crisis of his father's affairs in fact which is
ascribed in fiction to Mr. Micawber's. He knew it in later days to have
been a composition with creditors; though at this earlier date he was
conscious of having confounded it with parchments of a much more
demoniacal description. One result from the awful document soon showed
itself in enforced retrenchment. The family had to take up its abode in
a house in Bayham Street, Camden-town.
Bayham Street was about the poorest part of the London suburbs then, and
the house was a mean small tenement, with a wretched little back-garden
abutting on a squalid court. Here was no place for new acquaintances to
him: no boys were near with whom he might hope to become in any way
familiar. A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow-Street officer lived
over the way. Many, many times has he spoken to me of this, and how he
seemed at once to fall into a solitary condition apart from all other
boys of his own age, and to sink into a neglected state at home which
had been always quite unaccountable to him. "As I thought," he said on
one occasion very bitterly, "in the little back-garret in Bayham Street,
of all I had lost in losing Chatham, what would I have given, if I had
had anything to give, to have been sent back to any other school, to
have been taught something anywhere!" He was at another school already,
not knowing it. The self-education forced upon him was teaching him, all
unconsciously as yet, what, for the future that awaited him, it most
behooved him to know.
That he took, from the very beginning of this Bayham-Street life, his
first impression of that struggling poverty which is nowhere more
vividly shown than in the commoner streets of the ordinary London
suburb, and which enriched his earliest writings with a freshness of
original humor and quite unstudied pathos that gave them much of their
sudden popularity, there cannot be a doubt. "I certainly understood it,"
he has often said to me, "quite as well then as I do now." But he was
not conscious yet that he did so understand it, or of the influence it
was exerting on his life even then. It seems almost too much to assert
of a child, say at nine or ten years old, that his observation of
everything was as close and good, or that he had as much intuitive
understanding of the character and weaknesses of the grown-up people
around him, as when the same keen and wonderful faculty had made him
famous among men. But my experience of him led me to put implicit faith
in the assertion he unvaryingly himself made, that he had never seen any
cause to correct or change what in his boyhood was his own secret
impression of anybody whom he had had, as a grown man, the opportunity
of testing in later years.
How it came that, being what he was, he should now have fallen into the
misery and neglect of the time about to be described, was a subject on
which thoughts were frequently interchanged between us; and on one
occasion he gave me a sketch of the character of his father, which, as I
can here repeat it in the exact words employed by him, will be the best
preface I can make to what I feel that I have no alternative but to
tell. "I know my father to be as kind-hearted and generous a man as
ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of his conduct
to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is
beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has watched night and day,
unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any
business, charge, or trust, that he did not zealously, conscientiously,
punctually, honorably discharge. His industry has always been untiring.
He was proud of me, in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic
singing. But, in the ease of his temper, and the straitness of his
means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of
educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I
had any claim upon him, in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into
cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own; and making myself useful in
the work of the little house; and looking after my younger brothers and
sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as
arose out of our poor way of living."
The cousin by marriage of whom I have spoken, James Lamert, who had
lately completed his education at Sandhurst and was waiting in hopes of
a commission, lived now with the family in Bayham Street, and had not
lost his taste for the stage, or his ingenuities in connection with it.
Taking pity on the solitary lad, he made and painted a little theatre
for him. It was the only fanciful reality of his present life; but it
could not supply what he missed most sorely, the companionship of boys
of his own age, with whom he might share in the advantages of school and
contend for its prizes. His sister Fanny was at about this time elected
as a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music; and he has told me what a
stab to his heart it was, thinking of his own disregarded condition, to
see her go away to begin her education, amid the tearful good wishes of
everybody in the house.
Nevertheless, as time went on, his own education still unconsciously
went on as well, under the sternest and most potent of teachers; and,
neglected and miserable as he was, he managed gradually to transfer to
London all the dreaminess and all the romance with which he had invested
Chatham. There were then at the top of Bayham Street some almshouses,
and were still when he revisited it with me nearly twenty-seven years
ago; and to go to this spot, he told me, and look from it over the
dust-heaps and dock-leaves and fields (no longer there when we saw it
together) at the cupola of St. Paul's looming through the smoke, was a
treat that served him for hours of vague reflection afterwards. To be
taken out for a walk into the real town, especially if it were anywhere
about Covent Garden or the Strand, perfectly entranced him with
pleasure. But most of all he had a profound attraction of repulsion to
St. Giles's. If he could only induce whomsoever took him out to take him
through Seven-Dials, he was supremely happy. "Good Heaven!" he would
exclaim, "what wild visions of prodigies of wickedness, want, and
beggary arose in my mind out of that place!" He was all this time, the
reader will remember, still subject to continual attacks of illness,
and, by reason of them, a very small boy even for his age.
That part of his boyhood is now very near of which, when the days of
fame and prosperity came to him, he felt the weight upon his memory as
a painful burden until he could lighten it by sharing it with a friend;
and an accident I will presently mention led him first to reveal it.
There is, however, an interval of some months still to be described, of
which, from conversations or letters that passed between us, after or
because of this confidence, and that already have yielded fruit to these
pages, I can supply some vague and desultory notices. The use thus made
of them, it is due to myself to remark, was contemplated then; for
though, long before his death, I had ceased to believe it likely that I
should survive to write about him, he had never withdrawn the wish at
this early time strongly expressed, or the confidences, not only then
but to the very eve of his death reposed in me, that were to enable me
to fulfill it.[4] The fulfillment indeed he had himself rendered more
easy by partially uplifting the veil in _David Copperfield_.
The visits made from Bayham Street were chiefly to two connections of
the family, his mother's elder brother and his godfather. The latter,
who was a rigger, and mast-, oar-, and block-maker, lived at Limehouse
in a substantial handsome sort of way, and was kind to his godchild. It
was always a great treat to him to go to Mr. Huffham's; and the London
night-sights as he returned were a perpetual joy and marvel. Here, too,
the comic-singing accomplishment was brought into play so greatly to the
admiration of one of the godfather's guests, an honest boat-builder,
that he pronounced the little lad to be a "progidy." The visits to the
uncle who was at this time fellow-clerk with his father, in Somerset
House, were nearer home. Mr. Thomas Barrow, the eldest of his mother's
family, had broken his leg in a fall; and, while laid up with this
illness, his lodging was in Gerrard Street, Soho, in the upper part of
the house of a worthy gentleman then recently deceased, a bookseller
named Manson, father to the partner in the celebrated firm of Christie &
Manson, whose widow at this time carried on the business. Attracted by
the look of the lad as he went up-stairs, these good people lent him
books to amuse him; among them Miss Porter's _Scottish Chiefs_,
Holbein's _Dance of Death_, and George Colman's _Broad Grins_. The
latter seized his fancy very much; and he was so impressed by its
description of Covent Garden, in the piece called "The Elder Brother,"
that he stole down to the market by himself to compare it with the book.
He remembered, as he said in telling me this, snuffing up the flavor of
the faded cabbage-leaves as if it were the very breath of comic fiction.
Nor was he far wrong, as comic fiction then and for some time after was.
It was reserved for himself to give sweeter and fresher breath to it.
Many years were to pass first, but he was beginning already to make the
trial.
His uncle was shaved by a very odd old barber out of Dean Street, Soho,
who was never tired of reviewing the events of the last war, and
especially of detecting Napoleon's mistakes, and rearranging his whole
life for him on a plan of his own. The boy wrote a description of this
old barber, but never had courage to show it. At about the same time,
taking for his model the description of the canon's housekeeper in _Gil
Blas_, he sketched a deaf old woman who waited on them in Bayham Street,
and who made delicate hashes with walnut-ketchup. As little did he dare
to show this, either; though he thought it, himself, extremely clever.
In Bayham Street, meanwhile, affairs were going on badly; the poor boy's
visits to his uncle, while the latter was still kept a prisoner by his
accident, were interrupted by another attack of fever; and on his
recovery the mysterious "deed" had again come uppermost. His father's
resources were so low, and all his expedients so thoroughly exhausted,
that trial was to be made whether his mother might not come to the
rescue. The time was arrived for her to exert herself, she said; and she
"must do something." The godfather down at Limehouse was reported to
have an Indian connection. People in the East Indies always sent their
children home to be educated. She would set up a school. They would all
grow rich by it. And then, thought the sick boy, "perhaps even I might
go to school myself."
A house was soon found at number four, Gower Street north; a large brass
plate on the door announced MRS. DICKENS'S ESTABLISHMENT; and the result
I can give in the exact words of the then small actor in the comedy,
whose hopes it had raised so high: "I left, at a great many other doors,
a great many circulars calling attention to the merits of the
establishment. Yet nobody ever came to school, nor do I recollect that
anybody ever proposed to come, or that the least preparation was made to
receive anybody. But I know that we got on very badly with the butcher
and baker; that very often we had not too much for dinner; and that at
last my father was arrested." The interval between the sponging-house
and the prison was passed by the sorrowful lad in running errands and
carrying messages for the prisoner, delivered with swollen eyes and
through shining tears; and the last words said to him by his father
before he was finally carried to the Marshalsea were to the effect that
the sun was set upon him forever. "I really believed at the time," said
Dickens to me, "that they had broken my heart." He took afterwards ample
revenge for this false alarm by making all the world laugh at them in
_David Copperfield_.
The readers of Mr. Micawber's history who remember David's first visit
to the Marshalsea prison, and how upon seeing the turnkey he recalled
the turnkey in the blanket in _Roderick Random_, will read with curious
interest what follows, written as a personal experience of fact two or
three years before the fiction had even entered into his thoughts:
"My father was waiting for me in the lodge, and we went up to his room
(on the top story but one), and cried very much. And he told me, I
remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe that if a
man had twenty pounds a year and spent nineteen pounds nineteen
shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that a shilling spent the
other way would make him wretched. I see the fire we sat before, now;
with two bricks inside the rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent
its burning too many coals. Some other debtor shared the room with him,
who came in by-and-by; and, as the dinner was a joint-stock repast, I
was sent up to 'Captain Porter' in the room overhead, with Mr. Dickens's
compliments, and I was his son, and could he, Captain P., lend me a
knife and fork?
"Captain Porter lent the knife and fork, with his compliments in return.
There was a very dirty lady in his little room; and two wan girls, his
daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought I should not have liked
to borrow Captain Porter's comb. The captain himself was in the last
extremity of shabbiness; and if I could draw at all, I would draw an
accurate portrait of the old, old, brown great-coat he wore, with no
other coat below it. His whiskers were large. I saw his bed rolled up in
a corner; and what plates, and dishes, and pots he had, on a shelf; and
I knew (God knows how) that the two girls with the shock heads were
Captain Porter's natural children, and that the dirty lady was not
married to Captain P. My timid, wondering station on his threshold was
not occupied more than a couple of minutes, I dare say; but I came down
again to the room below with all this as surely in my knowledge as the
knife and fork were in my hand."
How there was something agreeable and gipsy-like in the dinner after
all, and how he took back the captain's knife and fork early in the
afternoon, and how he went home to comfort his mother with an account of
his visit, David Copperfield has also accurately told. Then, at home,
came many miserable daily struggles that seemed to last an immense time,
yet did not perhaps cover many weeks. Almost everything by degrees was
sold or pawned, little Charles being the principal agent in those
sorrowful transactions. Such of the books as had been brought from
Chatham--_Peregrine Pickle_, _Roderick Random_, _Tom Jones_, _Humphrey
Clinker_, and all the rest--went first. They were carried off from the
little chiffonier, which his father called the library, to a bookseller
in the Hampstead Road, the same that David Copperfield describes as in
the City Road; and the account of the sales, as they actually occurred
and were told to me long before David was born, was reproduced word for
word in his imaginary narrative: "The keeper of this bookstall, who
lived in a little house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to
be violently scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I
went there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a
cut in his forehead or a black eye bearing witness to his excesses
overnight (I am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink); and he, with a
shaking hand, endeavoring to find the needful shillings in one or other
of the pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife,
with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off
rating him. Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to
call again; but his wife had always got some (had taken his, I dare say,
while he was drunk), and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs,
as we went down together."
The same pawnbroker's shop, too, which was so well known to David,
became not less familiar to Charles; and a good deal of notice was here
taken of him by the pawnbroker, or by his principal clerk who officiated
behind the counter, and who, while making out the duplicate, liked of
all things to hear the lad conjugate a Latin verb and translate or
decline his _musa_ and _dominus_. Everything to this accompaniment went
gradually; until, at last, even of the furniture of Gower Street number
four there was nothing left except a few chairs, a kitchen table, and
some beds. Then they encamped, as it were, in the two parlors of the
emptied house, and lived there night and day.
All which is but the prelude to what remains to be described.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "I shall cut this letter short, for they are playing Masaniello in
the drawing-room, and I feel much as I used to do when I was a small
child a few miles off, and Somebody (who, I wonder, and which way did
_She_ go, when she died) hummed the evening hymn to me, and I cried on
the pillow,--either with the remorseful consciousness of having kicked
Somebody else, or because still Somebody else had hurt my feelings in
the course of the day." From Gadshill, 24 Sept. 1857. "Being here again,
or as much here as anywhere in particular."
[2] "The mistress of the establishment holds no place in our memory;
but, rampant on one eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and
narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who
triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating
way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of
his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp
tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an
otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we conclude
that he was of French extraction, and his name _Fidele_. He belonged to
some female, chiefly inhabiting a back parlor, whose life appears to us
to have been consumed in sniffing, and in wearing a brown beaver
bonnet."--_Reprinted Pieces_, 287. (In such quotations as are made from
his writings, the _Charles Dickens Edition_ will be used.)
[3] "A few weeks' residence at home convinced me, who had till then been
an only child in the house of my grandfather, that a quarrel between
brothers was a very natural event."--Lockhart's _Life_, i. 30.
[4] The reader will forgive my quoting from a letter of the date of the
22d April, 1848. "I desire no better for my fame, when my personal
dustiness shall be past the control of my love of order, than such a
biographer and such a critic." "You know me better," he wrote, resuming
the same subject on the 6th of July, 1862, "than any other man does, or
ever will." In an entry of my diary during the interval between these
years, I find a few words that not only mark the time when I first saw
in its connected shape the autobiographical fragment which will form the
substance of the second chapter of this biography, but also express his
own feeling respecting it when written: "20 January, 1849. The
description may make none of the impression on others that the reality
made on him. . . . Highly probable that it may never see the light. No
wish. Left to J. F. or others." The first number of _David Copperfield_
appeared five months after this date; but though I knew, even before he
adapted his fragment of autobiography to the eleventh number, that he
had now abandoned the notion of completing it under his own name, the
"_no wish_," or the discretion left me, was never in any way
subsequently modified. What follows, from the same entry, refers to the
manuscript of the fragment: "No blotting, as when writing fiction; but
straight on, as when writing ordinary letter."