WRITING THE PICKWICK PAPERS.
1837.
First Letter from him--As he was Thirty-five
Years ago--Mrs. Carlyle and Leigh Hunt--Birth
of Eldest Son--From Furnival's Inn to Doughty
Street--A Long-Remembered Sorrow--I visit
him--Hasty Compacts with Publishers--Self-sold
into Quasi-Bondage--Agreements for Editorship
and Writing--Mr. Macrone's Scheme to reissue
_Sketches_--Attempts to prevent it--Exorbitant
Demand--Impatience of Suspense--Purchase
advised--_Oliver Twist_--Characters real to
himself--Sense of Responsibility for his
Writings--Criticism that satisfied him--Help
given with his Proofs--Writing _Pickwick_, Nos.
14 and 15--Scenes in a Debtors' Prison--A
Recollection of Smollett--Reception of
_Pickwick_--A Popular Rage--Mr. Carlyle's
"Dreadful" Story--Secrets of
Success--_Pickwick_ inferior to Later
Books--Exception for Sam Weller and Mr.
Pickwick--Personal Habits of C. D.--Reliefs
after Writing--Natural Discontents--The Early
Agreements--Tale to follow _Oliver
Twist_--Compromise with Mr. Bentley--Trip to
Flanders--First Visit to Broadstairs--Piracies
of _Pickwick_--A Sufferer from
Agreements--First Visit to Brighton--What he is
doing with _Oliver Twist_--Reading De Foe--"No
Thoroughfare"--Proposed Help to Macready.
THE first letter I had from him was at the close of 1836, from
Furnival's Inn, when he sent me the book of his opera of the _Village
Coquettes_, which had been published by Mr. Bentley; and this was
followed, two months later, by his collected _Sketches_, both first and
second series; which he desired me to receive "as a very small testimony
of the donor's regard and obligations, as well as of his desire to
cultivate and avail himself of a friendship which has been so pleasantly
thrown in his way. . . . In short, if you will receive them for my sake and
not for their own, you will very greatly oblige me." I had met him in
the interval at the house of our common friend Mr. Ainsworth, and I
remember vividly the impression then made upon me.
Very different was his face in those days from that which photography
has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness
first attracted you, and then a candor and openness of expression which
made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He
had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide nostril, eyes
wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humor and
cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with
sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and symmetrical, and
the air and carriage of it were extremely spirited. The hair so scant
and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant
abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a
vestige of hair or whisker; but there was that in the face as I first
recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted on
it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and
practical power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several
feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books,
and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and
motion flashed from every part of it. _It was as if made of steel_, was
said of it, four or five years after the time to which I am referring,
by a most original and delicate observer, the late Mrs. Carlyle. "What
a face is his to meet in a drawing-room!" wrote Leigh Hunt to me, the
morning after I made them known to each other. "It has the life and soul
in it of fifty human beings." In such sayings are expressed not alone
the restless and resistless vivacity and force of which I have spoken,
but that also which lay beneath them of steadiness and hard endurance.
Several unsuccessful efforts were made by each to get the other to his
house before the door of either was opened at last. A son had been born
to him on Twelfth-day (the 6th January, 1837), and before the close of
the following month he and his wife were in the lodgings at Chalk they
had occupied after their marriage. Early in March there is a letter from
him accounting for the failure of a promise to call on me because of "a
crew of house-agents and attorneys" through whom he had nearly missed
his conveyance to Chalk, and been made "more than half wild besides."
This was his last letter from Furnival's Inn. In that same month he went
to 48, Doughty Street; and in his first letter to me from that address,
dated at the close of the month, there is this passage: "We only called
upon you a second time in the hope of getting you to dine with us, and
were much disappointed not to find you. I have delayed writing a reply
to your note, meaning to call upon you. I have been so much engaged,
however, in the pleasant occupation of 'moving' that I have not had
time; and I am obliged at last to write and say that I have been long
engaged to the _Pickwick_ publishers to a dinner in honor of that hero
which comes off to-morrow. I am consequently unable to accept your kind
invite, which I frankly own I should have liked much better."
That Saturday's celebration of his twelfth number, the anniversary of
the birth of _Pickwick_, preceded by but a few weeks a personal sorrow
which profoundly moved him. His wife's next younger sister, Mary, who
lived with them, and by sweetness of nature even more than by graces of
person had made herself the ideal of his life, died with a terrible
suddenness that for the time completely bore him down.[11] His grief and
suffering were intense, and affected him, as will be seen, through many
after-years. The publication of _Pickwick_ was interrupted for two
months, the effort of writing it not being possible to him. He moved for
change of scene to Hampstead, and here, at the close of May, I visited
him, and became first his guest. More than ordinarily susceptible at the
moment to all kindliest impressions, his heart opened itself to mine. I
left him as much his friend, and as entirely in his confidence, as if I
had known him for years. Nor had many weeks passed before he addressed
to me from Doughty Street words which it is my sorrowful pride to
remember have had literal fulfillment: "I look back with unmingled
pleasure to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of
our attachment. It shall go hard, I hope, ere anything but Death impairs
the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted." It remained unweakened
till death came.
There were circumstances that drew us at once into frequent and close
communication. What the sudden popularity of his writings implied, was
known to others some time before it was known to himself; and he was
only now becoming gradually conscious of all the disadvantage this had
placed him at. He would have laughed if, at this outset of his wonderful
fortune in literature, his genius acknowledged by all without misgiving,
young, popular, and prosperous, any one had compared him to the luckless
men of letters of former days, whose common fate was to be sold into a
slavery which their later lives were passed in vain endeavors to escape
from. Not so was his fate to be, yet something of it he was doomed to
experience. He had unwittingly sold himself into a quasi-bondage, and
had to purchase his liberty at a heavy cost, after considerable
suffering.
It was not until the fourth or fifth number of _Pickwick_ (in the latter
Sam Weller made his first appearance) that its importance began to be
understood by "the trade," and on the eve of the issue of its sixth
number, the 22d August, 1836, he had signed an agreement with Mr.
Bentley to undertake the editorship of a monthly magazine to be started
the following January, to which he was to supply a serial story; and
soon afterwards he had agreed with the same publisher to write two other
tales, the first at a specified early date; the expressed remuneration
in each case being certainly quite inadequate to the claims of a writer
of any marked popularity. Under these Bentley agreements he was now
writing, month by month, the first half of _Oliver Twist_, and, under
his Chapman & Hall agreement, the last half of _Pickwick_, not even by a
week in advance of the printer with either; when a circumstance became
known to him of which he thus wrote to me:
"I heard half an hour ago, on authority which leaves me in no doubt
about the matter (from the binder of _Pickwick_, in fact), that Macrone
intends publishing a new issue of my _Sketches_ in monthly parts of
nearly the same size and in just the same form as the _Pickwick Papers_.
I need not tell you that this is calculated to injure me most seriously,
or that I have a very natural and most decided objection to being
supposed to presume upon the success of the _Pickwick_, and thus foist
this old work upon the public in its new dress for the mere purpose of
putting money in my own pocket. Neither need I say that the fact of my
name being before the town, attached to three publications at the same
time, must prove seriously prejudicial to my reputation. As you are
acquainted with the circumstances under which these copyrights were
disposed of, and as I know I may rely on your kind help, may I beg you
to see Macrone, and to state in the strongest and most emphatic manner
my feeling on this point? I wish him to be reminded of the sums he paid
for those books; of the sale he has had for them; of the extent to which
he has already pushed them; and of the very great profits he must
necessarily have acquired from them. I wish him also to be reminded that
no intention of publishing them in this form was in the remotest manner
hinted to me, by him or on his behalf, when he obtained possession of
the copyright. I then wish you to put it to his feelings of common
honesty and fair dealing whether after this communication he will
persevere in his intention." What else the letter contained need not be
quoted, but it strongly moved me to do my best.
I found Mr. Macrone inaccessible to all arguments of persuasion,
however. That he had bought the book for a small sum at a time when the
smallest was not unimportant to the writer, shortly before his marriage,
and that he had since made very considerable profits by it, in no way
disturbed his position that he had a right to make as much as he could
of what was his, without regard to how it had become so. There was
nothing for it but to change front, and, admitting it might be a less
evil to the unlucky author to repurchase than to let the monthly issue
proceed, to ask what further gain was looked for; but so wide a mouth
was opened at this that I would have no part in the costly process of
filling it. I told Dickens so, and strongly counseled him to keep quiet
for a time.
But the worry and vexation were too great with all the work he had in
hand, and I was hardly surprised next day to receive the letter sent me;
which yet should be prefaced with the remark that suspense of any kind
was at all times intolerable to the writer. The interval between the
accomplishment of anything, and "its first motion," Dickens never could
endure, and he was too ready to make any sacrifice to abridge or end it.
This did not belong to the strong side of his character, and advantage
was frequently taken of the fact. "I sent down just now to know whether
you were at home (two o'clock), as Chapman & Hall were with me, and, the
case being urgent, I wished to have the further benefit of your kind
advice and assistance. Macrone and H---- (arcades ambo) waited on them
this morning, and after a long discussion peremptorily refused to take
one farthing less than the two thousand pounds. H---- repeated the
statement of figures which he made to you yesterday, and put it to Hall
whether he could say from his knowledge of such matters that the
estimate of probable profit was exorbitant. Hall, whose judgment may be
relied on in such matters, could not dispute the justice of the
calculation. And so the matter stood. In this dilemma it occurred to
them (my _Pickwick_ men), whether, if the _Sketches_ _must_ appear in
monthly numbers, it would not be better for them to appear for their
benefit and mine conjointly than for Macrone's sole use and behoof;
whether they, having all the _Pickwick_ machinery in full operation,
could not obtain for them a much larger sale than Macrone could ever
get; and whether, even at this large price of two thousand pounds, we
might not, besides retaining the copyright, reasonably hope for a good
profit on the outlay. These suggestions having presented themselves,
they came straight to me (having obtained a few hours' respite) and
proposed that we should purchase the copyrights between us for the two
thousand pounds, and publish them in monthly parts. I need not say that
no other form of publication would repay the expenditure; and they wish
me to explain by an address that _they_, who may be fairly put forward
as the parties, have been driven into that mode of publication, or the
copyrights would have been lost. I considered the matter in every
possible way. I sent for you, but you were out. I thought of"--what need
not be repeated, now that all is past and gone--"and consented. Was I
right? I think you will say yes." I could not say no, though I was glad
to have been no party to a price so exorbitant; which yet profited
extremely little the person who received it. He died in hardly more than
two years; and if Dickens had enjoyed the most liberal treatment at his
hands, he could not have exerted himself more generously for the widow
and children.
His new story was now beginning largely to share attention with his
_Pickwick Papers_, and it was delightful to see how real all its people
became to him. What I had most, indeed, to notice in him, at the very
outset of his career, was his indifference to any praise of his
performances on the merely literary side, compared with the higher
recognition of them as bits of actual life, with the meaning and purpose
on their part, and the responsibility on his, of realities rather than
creatures of fancy. The exception that might be drawn from _Pickwick_ is
rather in seeming than substance. A first book has its immunities, and
the distinction of this from the rest of the writings appears in what
has been said of its origin. The plan of it was simply to amuse. It was
to string together whimsical sketches of the pencil by entertaining
sketches of the pen; and, at its beginning, where or how it was to end
was as little known to himself as to any of its readers. But genius is a
master as well as a servant, and when the laughter and fun were at their
highest something graver made its appearance. He had to defend himself
for this; and he said that, though the mere oddity of a new acquaintance
was apt to impress one at first, the more serious qualities were
discovered when we became friends with the man. In other words he might
have said that the change was become necessary for his own
satisfaction. The book itself, in teaching him what his power was, had
made him more conscious of what would be expected from its use; and this
never afterwards quitted him. In what he was to do hereafter, as in all
he was doing now, with _Pickwick_ still to finish and _Oliver_ only
beginning, it constantly attended him. Nor could it well be otherwise,
with all those fanciful creations so real, to a nature in itself so
practical and earnest; and in this spirit I had well understood the
letter accompanying what had been published of _Oliver_ since its
commencement the preceding February, which reached me the day after I
visited him. Something to the effect of what has just been said, I had
remarked publicly of the portion of the story sent to me; and his
instant warm-hearted acknowledgment, of which I permit myself to quote a
line or two, showed me in what perfect agreement we were: "How can I
thank you? Can I do better than by saying that the sense of poor
Oliver's reality, which I know you have had from the first, has been the
highest of all praise to me? None that has been lavished upon me have I
felt half so much as that appreciation of my intent and meaning. You
know I have ever done so, for it was your feeling for me and mine for
you that first brought us together, and I hope will keep us so till
death do us part. Your notices make me grateful, but very proud: so have
a care of them."
There was nothing written by him after this date which I did not see
before the world did, either in manuscript or proofs; and in connection
with the latter I shortly began to give him the help which he publicly
mentioned twenty years later in dedicating his collected writings to me.
One of his letters reminds me when these corrections began, and they
were continued very nearly to the last. They lightened for him a labor
of which he had more than enough imposed upon him at this time by
others, and they were never anything but an enjoyment to me. "I have,"
he wrote, "so many sheets of the _Miscellany_ to correct before I can
begin _Oliver_, that I fear I shall not be able to leave home this
morning. I therefore send your revise of the _Pickwick_ by Fred, who is
on his way with it to the printers. You will see that my alterations are
very slight, but I think for the better." This was the fourteenth number
of the _Pickwick Papers_. Fred was his next younger brother, who lived
with him at the time.
The number following this was the famous one in which the hero finds
himself in the Fleet; and another of his letters will show what
enjoyment the writing of it had given to himself. I had sent to ask him
where we were to meet for a proposed ride that day. "HERE," was his
reply. "I am slippered and jacketed, and, like that same starling who is
so very seldom quoted, can't get out. I am getting on, thank Heaven,
like 'a house o' fire,' and think the next _Pickwick_ will bang all the
others. I shall expect you at one, and we will walk to the stable
together. If you know anybody at Saint Paul's, I wish you'd send round
and ask them not to ring the bell so. I can hardly hear my own ideas as
they come into my head, and say what they mean."
The exulting tone of confidence in what he had thus been writing was
indeed well justified. He had as yet done nothing so remarkable, in
blending humor with tragedy, as his picture of what the poor side of a
debtors' prison was in the days of which we have seen that he had
himself had bitter experience; and we have but to recall, as it rises
sharply to the memory, what is contained in this portion of a work that
was not only among his earliest but his least considered as to plan, to
understand what it was that not alone had given him his fame so early,
but that in itself held the germ of the future that awaited him. Every
point was a telling one, and the truthfulness of the whole unerring. The
dreadful restlessness of the place, undefined yet unceasing,
unsatisfying and terrible, was pictured throughout with De Foe's minute
reality; while points of character were handled in that greater style
which connects with the richest oddities of humor an insight into
principles of character universal as nature itself. When he resolved
that Sam Weller should be occupant of the prison with Mr. Pickwick, he
was perhaps thinking of his favorite Smollett, and how, when Peregrine
Pickle was inmate of the Fleet, Hatchway and Pipes refused to leave him;
but Fielding himself might have envied his way of setting about it. Nor
is any portion of his picture less admirable than this. The comedy
gradually deepening into tragedy; the shabby vagabonds who are the
growth of debtors' prisons, contrasting with the poor simple creatures
who are their sacrifices and victims; Mr. Mivins and Mr. Smangle side by
side with the cobbler ruined by his legacy, who sleeps under the table
to remind himself of his old four-poster; Mr. Pickwick's first night in
the marshal's room, Sam Weller entertaining Stiggins in the snuggery,
Jingle in decline, and the chancery prisoner dying; in all these scenes
there was writing of the first order, a deep feeling of character, that
delicate form of humor which has a quaintly pathetic turn in it as well,
comedy of the richest and broadest kind, and the easy handling
throughout of a master in his art. We place the picture by the side of
those of the great writers of this style, of fiction in our language,
and it does not fall by the comparison.
Of what the reception of the book had been up to this time, and of the
popularity Dickens had won as its author, this also will be the proper
place to speak. For its kind, its extent, and the absence of everything
unreal or factitious in the causes that contributed to it, it is
unexampled in literature. Here was a series of sketches, without the
pretense to such interest as attends a well-constructed story; put forth
in a form apparently ephemeral as its purpose; having none that seemed
higher than to exhibit some studies of cockney manners with help from a
comic artist; and after four or five parts had appeared, without
newspaper notice or puffing, and itself not subserving in the public
anything false or unworthy, it sprang into a popularity that each part
carried higher and higher, until people at this time talked of nothing
else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its sale,
outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
century, had reached to an almost fabulous number. Of part one, the
binder prepared four hundred; and of part fifteen, his order was for
more than forty thousand. Every class, the high equally with the low,
was attracted to it. The charm of its gayety and good humor, its
inexhaustible fun, its riotous overflow of animal spirits, its
brightness and keenness of observation, and, above all, the incomparable
ease of its many varieties of enjoyment, fascinated everybody. Judges on
the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the young and the
old, those who were entering life and those who were quitting it, alike
found it to be irresistible. "An archdeacon," wrote Mr. Carlyle
afterwards to me, "with his own venerable lips, repeated to me, the
other night, a strange profane story: of a solemn clergyman who had been
administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,
satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
person ejaculate, 'Well, thank God, _Pickwick_ will be out in ten days
any way!'--This is dreadful."
Let me add that there was something more in it all than the
gratification of mere fun and laughter, more even than the rarer
pleasure that underlies the outbreak of all forms of genuine humor.
Another chord had been struck. Over and above the lively painting of
manners which at first had been so attractive, there was something that
left deeper mark. Genial and irrepressible enjoyment, affectionate
heartiness of tone, unrestrained exuberance of mirth, these are not more
delightful than they are fleeting and perishable qualities; but the
attention eagerly excited by the charm of them in _Pickwick_ found
itself retained by something more permanent. We had all become suddenly
conscious, in the very thick of the extravaganza of adventure and fun
set before us, that here were real people. It was not somebody talking
humorously about them, but they were there themselves. That a number of
persons belonging to the middle and lower ranks of life (Wardles,
Winkles, Wellers, Tupmans, Bardells, Snubbinses, Perkers, Bob Sawyers,
Dodsons, and Foggs) had been somehow added to his intimate and familiar
acquaintance, the ordinary reader knew before half a dozen numbers were
out; and it took not many more to make clear to the intelligent reader
that a new and original genius in the walk of Smollett and Fielding had
arisen in England.
I do not, for reasons to be hereafter stated, think the _Pickwick
Papers_ comparable to the later books; but, apart from the new vein of
humor it opened, its wonderful freshness and its unflagging animal
spirits, it has two characters that will probably continue to attract to
it an unfading popularity. Its pre-eminent achievement is of course Sam
Weller,--one of those people that take their place among the supreme
successes of fiction, as one that nobody ever saw but everybody
recognizes, at once perfectly natural and intensely original. Who is
there that has ever thought him tedious? Who is so familiar with him as
not still to be finding something new in him? Who is so amazed by his
inexhaustible resources, or so amused by his inextinguishable laughter,
as to doubt of his being as ordinary and perfect a reality,
nevertheless, as anything in the London streets? When indeed the relish
has been dulled that makes such humor natural and appreciable, and not
his native fun only, his ready and rich illustration, his imperturbable
self-possession, but his devotion to his master, his chivalry and his
gallantry, are no longer discovered, or believed no longer to exist, in
the ranks of life to which he belongs, it will be worse for all of us
than for the fame of his creator. Nor, when faith is lost in that
possible combination of eccentricities and benevolences, shrewdness and
simplicity, good sense and folly, all that suggests the ludicrous and
nothing that suggests contempt for it, which form the delightful oddity
of Pickwick, will the mistake committed be one merely of critical
misjudgment. But of this there is small fear. Sam Weller and Mr.
Pickwick are the Sancho and the Quixote of Londoners, and as little
likely to pass away as the old city itself.
Dickens was very fond of riding in these early years, and there was no
recreation he so much indulged, or with such profit to himself, in the
intervals of his hardest work. I was his companion oftener than I could
well afford the time for, the distances being great and nothing else to
be done for the day; but when a note would unexpectedly arrive while I
knew him to be hunted hard by one of his printers, telling me he had
been sticking to work so closely that he must have rest, and, by way of
getting it, proposing we should start together that morning at eleven
o'clock for "a fifteen-mile ride out, ditto in, and a lunch on the road"
with a wind-up of six o'clock dinner in Doughty Street, I could not
resist the good fellowship. His notion of finding rest from mental
exertion in as much bodily exertion of equal severity, continued with
him to the last; taking in the later years what I always thought the too
great strain of as many miles in walking as he now took in the saddle,
and too often indulging it at night; for, though he was always
passionately fond of walking, he observed as yet a moderation in it,
even accepting as sufficient my seven or eight miles' companionship.
"What a brilliant morning for a country walk!" he would write, with not
another word in his dispatch. Or, "Is it possible that you can't,
oughtn't, shouldn't, mustn't, _won't_ be tempted, this gorgeous day?"
Or, "I start precisely--precisely, mind--at half-past one. Come, come,
_come_, and walk in the green lanes. You will work the better for it all
the week. Come! I shall expect you." Or, "You don't feel disposed, do
you, to muffle yourself up and start off with me for a good brisk walk
over Hampstead Heath? I knows a good 'ous there where we can have a
red-hot chop for dinner, and a glass of good wine:" which led to our
first experience of Jack Straw's Castle, memorable for many happy
meetings in coming years. But the rides were most popular and frequent.
"I think," he would write, "Richmond and Twickenham, thro' the park, out
at Knightsbridge, and over Barnes Common, would make a beautiful ride."
Or, "Do you know, I shouldn't object to an early chop at some village
inn?" Or, "Not knowing whether my head was off or on, it became so
addled with work, I have gone riding the old road, and should be truly
delighted to meet or be overtaken by you." Or, "Where shall it be--_oh,
where_--Hampstead, Greenwich, Windsor? WHERE?????? while the day is
bright, not when it has dwindled away to nothing! For who can be of any
use whatsomdever such a day as this, excepting out of doors?" Or it
might be interrogatory summons to "A hard trot of three hours?" or
intimation as laconic "To be heard of at Eel-pie House, Twickenham!"
When first I knew him, I may add, his carriage for his wife's use was a
small chaise with a smaller pair of ponies, which, having a habit of
making sudden rushes up by-streets in the day and peremptory standstills
in ditches by night, were changed in the following year for a more
suitable equipage.
To this mention of his habits while at work when our friendship began, I
have to add what will complete the relation already given, in connection
with his _Sketches_, of the uneasy sense accompanying his labor that it
was yielding insufficient for himself while it enriched others, which is
a needful part of his story at this time. At midsummer, 1837, replying
to some inquiries, and sending his agreement with Mr. Bentley for the
_Miscellany_ under which he was writing _Oliver_, he went on: "It is a
very extraordinary fact (I forgot it on Sunday) that I have NEVER HAD
from him a copy of the agreement respecting the novel, which I never saw
before or since I signed it at his house one morning long ago. Shall I
ask him for a copy or no? I have looked at some memoranda I made at the
time, and I _fear_ he has my second novel on the same terms, under the
same agreement. This is a bad lookout, but we must try and mend it. You
will tell me you are very much surprised at my doing business in this
way. So am I, for in most matters of labor and application I am
punctuality itself. The truth is (though you do not need I should
explain the matter to you, my dear fellow), that if I had allowed myself
to be worried by these things, I could never have done as much as I
have. But I much fear, in my desire to avoid present vexations, I have
laid up a bitter store for the future." The second novel, which he had
promised in a complete form for a very early date, and had already
selected subject and title for, was published four years later as
_Barnaby Rudge_; but of the third he at present knew nothing but that he
was expected to begin it, if not in the magazine, somewhere or other
independently within a specified time.
The first appeal made, in taking action upon his letter, had reference
to the immediate pressure of the _Barnaby_ novel; but it also opened up
the question of the great change of circumstances since these various
agreements had been precipitately signed by him, the very different
situation brought about by the extraordinary increase in the popularity
of his writings, and the advantage it would be to both Mr. Bentley and
himself to make more equitable adjustment of their relations. Some
misunderstandings followed, but were closed by a compromise in
September, 1837; by which the third novel was abandoned[12] on certain
conditions, and _Barnaby_ was undertaken to be finished by November,
1838. This involved a completion of the new story during the progress of
_Oliver_, whatever might be required to follow on the close of
_Pickwick_; and I doubted its wisdom. But it was accepted for the time.
He had meanwhile taken his wife abroad for a ten days' summer holiday,
accompanied by the shrewd observant young artist, Mr. Hablot Browne,
whose admirable illustrations to _Pickwick_ had more than supplied Mr.
Seymour's loss; and I had a letter from him on their landing at Calais
on the 2d of July:
"We have arranged for a post-coach to take us to Ghent, Brussels,
Antwerp, and a hundred other places, that I cannot recollect now and
couldn't spell if I did. We went this afternoon in a barouche to some
gardens where the people dance, and where they were footing it most
heartily,--especially the women, who in their short petticoats and light
caps look uncommonly agreeable. A gentleman in a blue surtout and silken
berlins accompanied us from the hotel, and acted as curator. He even
waltzed with a very smart lady (just to show us, condescendingly, how it
ought to be done), and waltzed elegantly, too. We rang for slippers
after we came back, and it turned out that this gentleman was the
Boots."
His later sea-side holiday was passed at Broadstairs, as were those of
many subsequent years, and the little watering-place has been made
memorable by his pleasant sketch of it. From his letters to myself a few
lines may be given of his first doings and impressions there.
Writing on the 3d of September, he reports himself just risen from an
attack of illness. "I am much better, and hope to begin _Pickwick No.
18_ to-morrow. You will imagine how queer I must have been when I tell
you that I have been compelled for four-and-twenty mortal hours to
abstain from porter or other malt liquor!!! I have done it
though--really. . . . I have discovered that the landlord of the Albion has
delicious hollands (but what is that to _you_? for you cannot sympathize
with my feelings), and that a cobbler who lives opposite to my bedroom
window is a Roman Catholic, and gives an hour and a half to his
devotions every morning behind his counter. I have walked upon the
sands at low-water from this place to Ramsgate, and sat upon the same at
high-ditto till I have been flayed with the cold. I have seen ladies and
gentlemen walking upon the earth in slippers of buff, and pickling
themselves in the sea in complete suits of the same. I have seen stout
gentlemen looking at nothing through powerful telescopes for hours, and,
when at last they saw a cloud of smoke, fancying a steamer behind it,
and going home comfortable and happy. I have found out that our next
neighbor has a wife and something else under the same roof with the rest
of his furniture,--the wife deaf and blind, and the something else given
to drinking. And if you ever get to the end of this letter _you_ will
find out that I subscribe myself on paper, as on everything else (some
atonement perhaps for its length and absurdity)," etc. etc.
In his next letter (from 12, High Street, Broadstairs, on the 7th) there
is allusion to one of the many piracies of _Pickwick_, which had
distinguished itself beyond the rest by a preface abusive of the writer
plundered: "I recollect this 'member of the Dramatic Authors' Society'
bringing an action once against Chapman who rented the City theatre, in
which it was proved that he had undertaken to write under special
agreement seven melodramas for five pounds, to enable him to do which a
room had been hired in a gin-shop close by. The defendant's plea was
that the plaintiff was always drunk, and had not fulfilled his contract.
Well, if the _Pickwick_ has been the means of putting a few shillings in
the vermin-eaten pockets of so miserable a creature, and has saved him
from a workhouse or a jail, let him empty out his little pot of filth
and welcome. I am quite content to have been the means of relieving him.
Besides, he seems to have suffered by agreements!"
His own troubles in that way were compromised for the time, as already
hinted, at the close of this September month; and at the end of the
month following, after finishing _Pickwick_ and resuming _Oliver_, the
latter having been suspended by him during the recent disputes, he made
his first visit to Brighton. The opening of his letter of Friday the 3d
of November is full of regrets that I had been unable to join them
there: "It is a beautiful day, and we have been taking advantage of it,
but the wind until to-day has been so high and the weather so stormy
that Kate has been scarcely able to peep out of doors. On Wednesday it
blew a perfect hurricane, breaking windows, knocking down shutters,
carrying people off their legs, blowing the fires out, and causing
universal consternation. The air was for some hours darkened with a
shower of black hats (second-hand), which are supposed to have been
blown off the heads of unwary passengers in remote parts of the town,
and have been industriously picked up by the fishermen. Charles Kean was
advertised for _Othello_ 'for the benefit of Mrs. Sefton, having most
kindly postponed for this one day his departure for London.' I have not
heard whether he got to the theatre, but I am sure nobody else did. They
do _The Honeymoon_ to-night, on which occasion I mean to patronize the
drayma. We have a beautiful bay-windowed sitting-room here, fronting the
sea, but I have seen nothing of B.'s brother who was to have shown me
the lions, and my notions of the place are consequently somewhat
confined: being limited to the pavilion, the chain-pier, and the sea.
The last is quite enough for me, and, unless I am joined by some male
companion (_do you think I shall be?_), is most probably all I shall
make acquaintance with. I am glad you like _Oliver_ this month:
especially glad that you particularize the first chapter. I hope to do
great things with Nancy. If I can only work out the idea I have formed
of her, and of the female who is to contrast with her, I think I may
defy Mr. ---- and all his works.[13] I have had great difficulty in
keeping my hands off Fagin and the rest of them in the evenings; but, as
I came down for rest, I have resisted the temptation, and steadily
applied myself to the labor of being idle. Did you ever read (of course
you have, though) De Foe's _History of the Devil_? What a capital thing
it is! I bought it for a couple of shillings yesterday morning, and have
been quite absorbed in it ever since. We must have been jolter-headed
geniuses not to have anticipated M.'s reply. My best remembrances to
him. I see H. at this moment. I must be present at a rehearsal of that
opera. It will be better than any comedy that was ever played. Talking
of comedies, I still see NO THOROUGHFARE staring me in the face, every
time I look down that road. I have taken places for Tuesday next. We
shall be at home at six o'clock, and I shall hope at least to see you
that evening. I am afraid you will find this letter extremely dear at
eightpence, but if the warmest assurances of friendship and attachment,
and anxious lookings-forward to the pleasure of your society, be worth
anything, throw them into the balance, together with a hundred good
wishes and one hearty assurance that I am," etc. etc. "CHARLES DICKENS.
No room for the flourish--I'll finish it the next time I write to you."
The flourish that accompanied his signature is familiar to every one.
The allusion to the comedy expresses a fancy he at this time had of
being able to contribute some such achievement in aid of Macready's
gallant efforts at Covent Garden to bring back to the stage its higher
associations of good literature and intellectual enjoyment. It connects
curiously now that unrealized hope with the exact title of the only
story he ever helped himself to dramatize, and which Mr. Fechter played
at the Adelphi three years before his death.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Her epitaph, written by him, remains upon a gravestone in the
cemetery at Kensal Green: "Young, beautiful, and good, God numbered her
among his angels at the early age of seventeen."
[12] I have a memorandum in Dickens's writing that five hundred pounds
was to have been given for it, and an additional two hundred and fifty
pounds on its sale reaching three thousand copies; but I feel certain it
was surrendered on more favorable terms.
[13] The allusion was to the supposed author of a paper in the
_Quarterly Review_ (Oct. 1837), in the course of which there was much
high praise, but where the writer said at the close, "Indications are
not wanting that the particular vein of humor 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."