BETWEEN PICKWICK AND NICKLEBY.
1837-1838.
Edits _Life of Grimaldi_--His Own Opinion of
it--An Objection answered--His Recollections of
1823--Completion of _Pickwick_--A Purpose long
entertained--Relations with Chapman &
Hall--Payments made for _Pickwick_--Agreement
for _Nicholas Nickleby_--_Oliver Twist_
characterized--Reasons for Acceptance with
every Class--Nightmare of an Agreement--Letter
to Mr. Bentley--Proposal as to _Barnaby
Rudge_--Result of it--Birth of Eldest
Daughter--_Young Gentlemen and Young
Couples_--First Number of _Nicholas
Nickleby_--2d of April, 1838.
NOT remotely bearing on the stage, nevertheless, was the employment on
which I found him busy at his return from Brighton; one result of his
more satisfactory relations with Mr. Bentley having led to a promise to
edit for him a life of the celebrated clown Grimaldi. The manuscript had
been prepared from autobiographical notes by a Mr. Egerton Wilks, and
contained one or two stories told so badly, and so well worth better
telling, that the hope of enlivening their dullness at the cost of very
little labor constituted a sort of attraction for him. Except the
preface, he did not write a line of this biography, such modifications
or additions as he made having been dictated by him to his father; whom
I found often in the supreme enjoyment of the office of amanuensis. He
had also a most indifferent opinion of the mass of material which in
general composed it, describing it to me as "twaddle," and his own
modest estimate of the book, on its completion, may be guessed from the
number of notes of admiration (no less than thirty) which accompanied
his written mention to me of the sale with which it started in the first
week of its publication: "Seventeen hundred _Grimaldis_ have been
already sold, and the demand increases daily!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
It was not to have all its own way, however. A great many critical
faults were found; and one point in particular was urged against his
handling such a subject, that he could never himself even have seen
Grimaldi. To this last objection he was moved to reply, and had prepared
a letter for the _Miscellany_, "from editor to sub-editor," which it was
thought best to suppress, but of which the opening remark may now be not
unamusing: "I understand that a gentleman unknown is going about this
town privately informing all ladies and gentlemen of discontented
natures, that, on a comparison of dates and putting together of many
little circumstances which occur to his great sagacity, he has made the
profound discovery that I can never have seen Grimaldi whose life I have
edited, and that the book must therefore of necessity be bad. Now, sir,
although I was brought up from remote country parts in the dark ages of
1819 and 1820 to behold the splendor of Christmas pantomimes and the
humor of Joe, in whose honor I am informed I clapped my hands with great
precocity, and although I even saw him act in the remote times of 1823,
yet as I had not then aspired to the dignity of a tail-coat, though
forced by a relentless parent into my first pair of boots, I am
willing, with the view of saving this honest gentleman further time and
trouble, to concede that I had not arrived at man's estate when Grimaldi
left the stage, and that my recollections of his acting are, to my loss,
but shadowy and imperfect. Which confession I now make publickly, and
without mental qualification or reserve, to all whom it may concern. But
the deduction of this pleasant gentleman that therefore the Grimaldi
book must be bad, I must take leave to doubt. I don't think that to edit
a man's biography from his own notes it is essential you should have
known him, and I don't believe that Lord Braybrooke had more than the
very slightest acquaintance with Mr. Pepys, whose memoirs he edited two
centuries after he died."
Enormous meanwhile, and without objection audible on any side, had been
the success of the completed _Pickwick_, which we celebrated by a
dinner, with himself in the chair and Talfourd in the vice-chair,
everybody in hearty good humor with every other body; and a copy of
which I received from him on the 11th of December in the most luxurious
of Hayday's bindings, with a note worth preserving for its closing
allusion. The passage referred to in it was a comment, in delicately
chosen words, that Leigh Hunt had made on the inscription at the grave
in Kensal Green:[14] "Chapman & Hall have just sent me, with a copy of
our deed, three 'extra-super' bound copies of _Pickwick_, as per
specimen inclosed. The first I forward to you, the second I have
presented to our good friend Ainsworth, and the third Kate has retained
for herself. Accept your copy with one sincere and most comprehensive
expression of my warmest friendship and esteem; and a hearty renewal, if
there need be any renewal when there has been no interruption, of all
those assurances of affectionate regard which our close friendship and
communion for a long time back has every day implied. . . . That beautiful
passage you were so kind and considerate as to send me, has given me the
only feeling akin to pleasure (sorrowful pleasure it is) that I have yet
had, connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion; for
whom my love and attachment will never diminish, and by whose side, if
it please God to leave me in possession of sense to signify my wishes,
my bones, whenever or wherever I die, will one day be laid. Tell Leigh
Hunt when you have an opportunity how much he has affected me, and how
deeply I thank him for what he has done. You cannot say it too
strongly."
The "deed" mentioned was one executed in the previous month to restore
to him a third ownership in the book which had thus far enriched all
concerned but himself. The original understanding respecting it Mr.
Edward Chapman thus describes for me: "There was no agreement about
_Pickwick_ except a verbal one. Each number was to consist of a sheet
and a half, for which we were to pay fifteen guineas; and we paid him
for the first two numbers at once, as he required the money to go and
get married with. We were also to pay more according to the sale, and I
think _Pickwick_ altogether cost us three thousand pounds." Adjustment
to the sale would have cost four times as much, and of the actual
payments I have myself no note; but, as far as my memory serves, they
are overstated by Mr. Chapman. My impression is that, above and beyond
the first sum due for each of the twenty numbers (making no allowance
for their extension after the first to thirty-two pages), successive
checks were given, as the work went steadily on to the enormous sale it
reached, which brought up the entire sum received to two thousand five
hundred pounds. I had, however, always pressed so strongly the
importance to him of some share in the copyright, that this at last was
conceded in the deed above mentioned, though five years were to elapse
before the right should accrue; and it was only yielded as part
consideration for a further agreement entered into at the same date (the
19th of November, 1837), whereby Dickens engaged to "write a new work,
the title whereof shall be determined by him, of a similar character and
of the same extent as the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_," the
first number of which was to be delivered on the 15th of the following
March, and each of the numbers on the same day of each of the successive
nineteen months; which was also to be the date of the payment to him, by
Messrs. Chapman & Hall, of twenty several sums of one hundred and fifty
pounds each for five years' use of the copyright, the entire ownership
in which was then to revert to Dickens. The name of this new book, as
all the world knows, was _The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby_;
and between April, 1838, and October, 1839, it was begun and finished
accordingly.
All through the interval of these arrangements _Oliver Twist_ had been
steadily continued. Month by month, for many months, it had run its
opening course with the close of _Pickwick_, as we shall see it close
with the opening of _Nickleby_; and the expectations of those who had
built most confidently on the young novelist were more than confirmed.
Here was the interest of a story simply but well constructed; and
characters with the same impress of reality upon them, but more
carefully and skillfully drawn. Nothing could be meaner than the
subject, the progress of a parish or workhouse boy, nothing less so than
its treatment. As each number appeared, his readers generally became
more and more conscious of what already, as we have seen, had revealed
itself amid even the riotous fun of _Pickwick_, that the purpose was not
solely to amuse; and, far more decisively than its predecessor, the new
story further showed what were the not least potent elements in the
still increasing popularity that was gathering around the writer. His
qualities could be appreciated as well as felt in an almost equal degree
by all classes of his various readers. Thousands were attracted to him
because he placed them in the midst of scenes and characters with which
they were already themselves acquainted; and thousands were reading him
with no less avidity because he introduced them to passages of nature
and life of which they before knew nothing, but of the truth of which
their own habits and senses sufficed to assure them. Only to genius are
so revealed the affinities and sympathies of high and low, in regard to
the customs and usages of life; and only a writer of the first rank can
bear the application of such a test. For it is by the alliance of
common habits, quite as much as by the bonds of a common humanity, that
we are all of us linked together; and the result of being above the
necessity of depending on other people's opinions, and that of being
below it, are pretty much the same. It would equally startle both high
and low to be conscious of the whole that is implied in this close
approximation; but for the common enjoyment of which I speak such
consciousness is not required; and for the present Fagin may be left
undisturbed in his school of practical ethics with only the Dodger,
Charley Bates, and his other promising scholars.
With such work as this in hand, it will hardly seem surprising that as
the time for beginning _Nickleby_ came on, and as he thought of his
promise for November, he should have the sense of "something hanging
over him like a hideous nightmare." He felt that he could not complete
the _Barnaby Rudge_ novel by the November of that year, as promised, and
that the engagement he would have to break was unfitting him for
engagements he might otherwise fulfill. He had undertaken what, in
truth, was impossible. The labor of at once editing the _Miscellany_ and
supplying it with monthly portions of _Oliver_ more than occupied all
the time left him by other labors absolutely necessary. "I no sooner get
myself up," he wrote, "high and dry, to attack _Oliver_ manfully, than
up come the waves of each month's work, and drive me back again into a
sea of manuscript." There was nothing for it but that he should make
further appeal to Mr. Bentley. "I have recently," he wrote to him on the
11th of February, 1838, "been thinking a great deal about _Barnaby
Rudge_. _Grimaldi_ has occupied so much of the short interval I had
between the completion of the _Pickwick_ and the commencement of the new
work, that I see it will be wholly impossible for me to produce it by
the time I had hoped, with justice to myself or profit to you. What I
wish you to consider is this: would it not be far more to your interest,
as well as within the scope of my ability, if _Barnaby Rudge_ began in
the _Miscellany_ immediately on the conclusion of _Oliver Twist_, and
were continued there for the same time, and then published in three
volumes? Take these simple facts into consideration. If the _Miscellany_
is to keep its ground, it _must_ have some continuous tale from me when
_Oliver_ stops. If I sat down to _Barnaby Rudge_, writing a little of it
when I could (and with all my other engagements it would necessarily be
a very long time before I could hope to finish it that way), it would be
clearly impossible for me to begin a new series of papers in the
_Miscellany_. The conduct of three different stories at the same time,
and the production of a large portion of each, every month, would have
been beyond Scott himself. Whereas, having _Barnaby_ for the
_Miscellany_, we could at once supply the gap which the cessation of
_Oliver_ must create, and you would have all the advantage of that
prestige in favor of the work which is certain to enhance the value of
_Oliver Twist_ considerably. Just think of this at your leisure. I am
really anxious to do the best I can for you as well as for myself, and
in this case the pecuniary advantage must be all on your side." This
letter nevertheless, which had also requested an overdue account of the
sales of the _Miscellany_, led to differences which were only adjusted
after six months' wrangling; and I was party to the understanding then
arrived at, by which, among other things, _Barnaby_ was placed upon the
footing desired, and was to begin when _Oliver_ closed.
Of the progress of his _Oliver_, and his habits of writing at the time,
it may perhaps be worth giving some additional glimpses from his letters
of 1838. "I was thinking about _Oliver_ till dinner-time yesterday," he
wrote on the 9th of March,[15] "and, just as I had fallen upon him tooth
and nail, was called away to sit with Kate. I did eight slips, however,
and hope to make them fifteen this morning." Three days before, a little
daughter had been born to him, who became a little god-daughter to me;
on which occasion (having closed his announcement with a postscript of
"I can do nothing this morning. What time will you ride? The sooner the
better, for a good long spell"), we rode out fifteen miles on the great
north road, and, after dining at the Red Lion in Barnet on our way home,
distinguished the already memorable day by bringing in both hacks dead
lame.
On that day week, Monday, the 13th, after describing himself "sitting
patiently at home waiting for _Oliver Twist_ who has not yet arrived,"
which was his pleasant form of saying that his fancy had fallen into
sluggishness that morning, he made addition not less pleasant as to some
piece of painful news I had sent him, now forgotten: "I have not yet
seen the paper, and you throw me into a fever. The comfort is, that all
the strange and terrible things come uppermost, and that the good and
pleasant things are mixed up with every moment of our existence so
plentifully that we scarcely heed them." At the close of the month Mrs.
Dickens was well enough to accompany him to Richmond, for now the time
was come to start _Nickleby_; and, having been away from town when
_Pickwick's_ first number came out, he made it a superstition to be
absent at all future similar times. The magazine-day of that April
month, I remember, fell upon a Saturday, and the previous evening had
brought me a peremptory summons: "Meet me at the Shakspeare on Saturday
night at eight; order your horse at midnight, and ride back with me."
Which was done accordingly. The smallest hour was sounding from St.
Paul's into the night before we started, and the night was none of the
pleasantest; but we carried news that lightened every part of the road,
for the sale of _Nickleby_ had reached that day the astonishing number
of nearly fifty thousand! I left him working with unusual cheerfulness
at _Oliver Twist_ when I left the Star and Garter on the next day but
one, after celebrating with both friends on the previous evening an
anniversary[16] which concerned us all (their second and my
twenty-sixth), and which we kept always in future at the same place,
except when they were living out of England, for twenty successive
years. It was a part of his love of regularity and order, as well as of
his kindliness of nature, to place such friendly meetings as these under
rules of habit and continuance.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] See _ante_, p. 120.
[15] There is an earlier allusion I may quote, from a letter in January,
for its mention of a small piece written by him at this time, but not
included in his acknowledged writings: "I am as badly off as you. I have
not done the _Young Gentlemen_, nor written the preface to _Grimaldi_,
nor thought of _Oliver Twist_, or even supplied a subject for the
plate." The _Young Gentlemen_ was a small book of sketches which he
wrote anonymously as the companion to a similar half-crown volume of
_Young Ladies_ (not written by him), for Messrs. Chapman & Hall. He
added subsequently a like volume of _Young Couples_, also without his
name.
[16] See _ante_, p. 113.