DURING AND AFTER NICKLEBY.
1838-1839.
The Cottage at Twickenham--Daniel
Maclise--Ainsworth and other Friends--Mr.
Stanley of Alderley--Petersham
Cottage--Childish Enjoyments--Writes a Farce
for Covent Garden--Entered at the Middle
Temple--We see Wainewright in Newgate--_Oliver
Twist_ and the _Quarterly_--Hood's _Up the
Rhine_--Shakspeare Society--Birth of Second
Daughter--House-Hunting--_Barnaby_ at his Tenth
Page--Letter from Exeter--A Landlady and her
Friends--A Home for his Father and
Mother--Autobiographical--Visit to an
Upholsterer--Visit from the Same.
THE name of his old gallery-companion may carry me back from the days to
which the close of _Nickleby_ had led me to those when it was only
beginning. "This snow will take away the cold weather," he had written,
in that birthday letter of 1838 already quoted, "and then for
Twickenham." Here a cottage was taken, nearly all the summer was passed,
and a familiar face there was Mr. Beard's. There, with Talfourd and with
Thackeray and Jerrold, we had many friendly days, too; and the social
charm of Maclise was seldom wanting. Nor was there anything that
exercised a greater fascination over Dickens than the grand enjoyment of
idleness, the ready self-abandonment to the luxury of laziness, which we
both so laughed at in Maclise, under whose easy swing of indifference,
always the most amusing at the most aggravating events and times, we
knew that there was artist-work as eager, energy as unwearying, and
observation almost as penetrating as Dickens's own. A greater enjoyment
than the fellowship of Maclise at this period it would indeed be
difficult to imagine. Dickens hardly saw more than he did, while yet he
seemed to be seeing nothing; and the small esteem in which this rare
faculty was held by himself, a quaint oddity that gave to shrewdness
itself in him an air of Irish simplicity, his unquestionable turn for
literature, and a varied knowledge of it not always connected with such
intense love and such unwearied practice of one special and absorbing
art, combined to render him attractive far beyond the common. His fine
genius and his handsome person, of neither of which at any time he
seemed himself to be in the slightest degree conscious, completed the
charm. Edwin Landseer, all the world's favorite, and the excellent
Stanfield, came a few months later, in the Devonshire-Terrace days; but
another painter-friend was George Cattermole, who had then enough and to
spare of fun as well as fancy to supply ordinary artists and humorists
by the dozen, and wanted only a little more ballast and steadiness to
have had all that could give attraction to good-fellowship. A friend now
especially welcome, too, was the novelist Mr. Ainsworth, who shared with
us incessantly for the three following years in the companionship which
began at his house; with whom we visited, during two of those years,
friends of art and letters in his native Manchester, from among whom
Dickens brought away his Brothers Cheeryble, and to whose sympathy in
tastes and pursuits, accomplishments in literature, open-hearted
generous ways, and cordial hospitality, many of the pleasures of later
years were due. Frederick Dickens, to whom soon after this a treasury
clerkship was handsomely given, on Dickens's application, by Mr. Stanley
of Alderley, known in and before those Manchester days, was for the
present again living with his father, but passed much time in his
brother's home; and another familiar face was that of Mr. Thomas Mitton,
who had known him when himself a law-clerk in Lincoln's Inn, through
whom there was introduction of the relatives of a friend and partner,
Mr. Smithson, the gentleman connected with Yorkshire mentioned in his
preface to _Nickleby_, who became very intimate in his house. These, his
father and mother and their two younger sons, with members of his wife's
family, and his married sisters and their husbands, Mr. and Mrs. Burnett
and Mr. and Mrs. Austin, are figures that all associate themselves
prominently with the days of Doughty Street and the cottages of
Twickenham and Petersham as remembered by me in the summers of 1838 and
1839.
In the former of these years the sports were necessarily quieter[24]
than at Petersham, where extensive garden-grounds admitted of much
athletic competition, from the more difficult forms of which I in
general modestly retired, but where Dickens for the most part held his
own against even such accomplished athletes as Maclise and Mr. Beard.
Bar-leaping, bowling, and quoits were among the games carried on with
the greatest ardor; and in sustained energy, what is called keeping it
up, Dickens certainly distanced every competitor. Even the lighter
recreations of battledoor and bagatelle were pursued with relentless
activity; and at such amusements as the Petersham races, in those days
rather celebrated, and which he visited daily while they lasted, he
worked much harder himself than the running horses did.
What else his letters of these years enable me to recall, that could
possess any interest now, may be told in a dozen sentences. He wrote a
farce by way of helping the Covent Garden manager which the actors could
not agree about, and which he turned afterwards into a story called _The
Lamplighter_. He entered his name among the students at the inn of the
Middle Temple, though he did not eat dinners there until many years
later. We made together a circuit of nearly all the London prisons, and,
in coming to the prisoners under remand while going over Newgate,
accompanied by Macready and Mr. Hablot Browne,[25] were startled by a
sudden tragic cry of "My God! there's Wainewright!" In the
shabby-genteel creature, with sandy disordered hair and dirty moustache,
who had turned quickly round with a defiant stare at our entrance,
looking at once mean and fierce, and quite capable of the cowardly
murders he had committed, Macready had been horrified to recognize a man
familiarly known to him in former years, and at whose table he had
dined. Between the completion of _Oliver_ and its publication, Dickens
went to see something of North Wales; and, joining him at Liverpool, I
returned with him.[26] Soon after his arrival he had pleasant
communication with Lockhart, dining with him at Cruikshank's a little
later; and this was the prelude to a _Quarterly_ notice of _Oliver_ by
Mr. Ford, written at the instance of Lockhart, but without the raciness
he would have put into it, in which amende was made for previous less
favorable remarks in that review. Dickens had not, however, waited for
this to express publicly his hearty sympathy with Lockhart's handling of
some passages in his admirable _Life of Scott_ that had drawn down upon
him the wrath of the Ballantynes. This he did in the _Examiner_; where
also I find him noticing a book by Thomas Hood: "rather poor, but I have
not said so, because Hood is too, and ill besides." In the course of the
year he was taken into Devonshire to select a home for his father, on
the removal of the latter (who had long given up his reporting duties)
from his London residence; and this he found in a cottage at Alphington,
near Exeter, where he placed the elder Dickens with his wife and their
youngest son. The same year closed Macready's Covent Garden management,
and at the dinner to the retiring manager, when the Duke of Cambridge
took the chair, Dickens spoke with that wonderful instinct of knowing
what to abstain from saying, as well as what to say, which made his
after-dinner speeches quite unique. Nor should mention be omitted of the
Shakspeare Society, now diligently attended, of which Procter, Talfourd,
Macready, Thackeray, Henry Davison, Blanchard, Charles Knight, John
Bell, Douglas Jerrold, Maclise, Stanfield, George Cattermole, the good
Tom Landseer, Frank Stone, and other old friends were members, and
where, out of much enjoyment and many disputings,[27] there arose, from
Dickens and all of us, plenty of after-dinner oratory. The closing
months of this year of 1839 had special interest for him. At the end of
October another daughter was born to him, who bears the name of that
dear friend of his and mine, Macready, whom he asked to be her
godfather; and before the close of the year he had moved out of Doughty
Street into Devonshire Terrace, a handsome house with a garden of
considerable size, shut out from the New Road by a high brick wall
facing the York Gate into Regent's Park. These various matters, and his
attempts at the _Barnaby_ novel on the conclusion of _Nickleby_, are the
subject of his letters between October and December.
"Thank God, all goes famously. I have worked at _Barnaby_ all day, and
moreover seen a beautiful (and reasonable) house in Kent Terrace, where
Macready once lived, but larger than his." Again (this having gone off):
"_Barnaby_ has suffered so much from the house-hunting, that I mustn't
chop to-day." Then (for the matter of the Middle Temple), "I return the
form. It's the right temple, I take for granted. _Barnaby_ moves, not at
race-horse speed, but yet as fast (I think) as under these unsettled
circumstances could possibly be expected." Or again: "All well.
_Barnaby_ has reached his tenth page. I have just turned lazy, and have
passed into _Christabel_, and thence to _Wallenstein_." At last the
choice was made. "A house of great promise (and great premium),
'undeniable' situation, and excessive splendor, is in view. Mitton is
in treaty, and I am in ecstatic restlessness. Kate wants to know whether
you have any books to send her, so please to shoot here any literary
rubbish on hand." To these I will only add a couple of extracts from his
letters while in Exeter arranging his father's and mother's new home.
They are very humorous; and the vividness with which everything, once
seen, was photographed in his mind and memory, is pleasantly shown in
them.
"I took a little house for them this morning" (5th March, 1839: from
the New London Inn), "and if they are not pleased with it I shall be
grievously disappointed. Exactly a mile beyond the city on the Plymouth
road there are two white cottages: one is theirs and the other belongs
to their landlady. I almost forget the number of rooms, but there is
an excellent parlor with two other rooms on the ground floor, there is
really a beautiful little room over the parlor which I am furnishing
as a drawing-room, and there is a splendid garden. The paint and paper
throughout is new and fresh and cheerful-looking, the place is clean
beyond all description, and the neighborhood I suppose the most
beautiful in this most beautiful of English counties. Of the landlady,
a Devonshire widow with whom I had the honor of taking lunch
to-day, I must make most especial mention. She is a fat, infirm,
splendidly-fresh-faced country dame, rising sixty and recovering from an
attack 'on the nerves'--I thought they never went off the stones, but I
find they try country air with the best of us. In the event of my
mother's being ill at any time, I really think the vicinity of this
good dame, the very picture of respectability and good humor, will be
the greatest possible comfort. _Her_ furniture and domestic arrangements
are a capital picture, but that I reserve till I see you, when I
anticipate a hearty laugh. She bears the highest character with the
bankers and the clergyman (who formerly lived in _my_ cottage himself),
and is a kind-hearted worthy capital specimen of the sort of life, or I
have no eye for the real and no idea of finding it out.
"This good lady's brother and his wife live in the next nearest cottage,
and the brother transacts the good lady's business, the nerves not
admitting of her transacting it herself, although they leave her in her
debilitated state something sharper than the finest lancet. Now, the
brother having coughed all night till he coughed himself into such a
perspiration that you might have 'wringed his hair,' according to the
asseveration of eye-witnesses, his wife was sent for to negotiate with
me; and if you could have seen me sitting in the kitchen with the two
old women, endeavoring to make them comprehend that I had no evil
intentions or covert designs, and that I had come down all that way to
take some cottage and had _happened_ to walk down that road and see that
particular one, you would never have forgotten it. Then, to see the
servant-girl run backwards and forwards to the sick man, and when the
sick man had signed one agreement which I drew up and the old woman
instantly put away in a disused tea-caddy, to see the trouble and the
number of messages it took before the sick man could be brought to sign
another (a duplicate) that we might have one apiece, was one of the
richest scraps of genuine drollery I ever saw in all my days. How, when
the business was over, we became conversational; how I was facetious,
and at the same time virtuous and domestic; how I drank toasts in the
beer, and stated on interrogatory that I was a married man and the
father of two blessed infants; how the ladies marveled thereat; how one
of the ladies, having been in London, inquired where I lived, and, being
told, remembered that Doughty Street and the Foundling Hospital were in
the Old Kent Road, which I didn't contradict,--all this and a great deal
more must make us laugh when I return, as it makes me laugh now to think
of. Of my subsequent visit to the upholsterer recommended by the
landlady; of the absence of the upholsterer's wife, and the timidity of
the upholsterer fearful of acting in her absence; of my sitting behind a
high desk in a little dark shop, calling over the articles in
requisition and checking off the prices as the upholsterer exhibited the
goods and called them out; of my coming over the upholsterer's daughter
with many virtuous endearments, to propitiate the establishment and
reduce the bill; of these matters I say nothing, either, for the same
reason as that just mentioned. The discovery of the cottage I seriously
regard as a blessing (not to speak it profanely) upon our efforts in
this cause. I had heard nothing from the bank, and walked straight
there, by some strange impulse, directly after breakfast. I am sure they
may be happy there; for if I were older, and my course of activity were
run, I am sure _I_ could, with God's blessing, for many and many a
year.". . .
"The theatre is open here, and Charles Kean is to-night playing for his
last night. If it had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gone, but I
was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My
quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is _such_ a waiter! Knowles
(not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles of the Cheetham Hill Road[28]) is an
ass to him. This sounds bold, but truth is stranger than fiction.
By-the-by, not the least comical thing that has occurred was the visit
of the upholsterer (with some further calculations) since I began this
letter. I think they took me here at the New London for the Wonderful
Being I am; they were amazingly sedulous; and no doubt they looked for
my being visited by the nobility and gentry of the neighborhood. My
first and only visitor came to-night: a ruddy-faced man in faded black,
with extracts from a feather-bed all over him; an extraordinary and
quite miraculously dirty face; a thick stick; and the personal
appearance altogether of an amiable bailiff in a green old age. I have
not seen the proper waiter since, and more than suspect I shall not
recover this blow. He was announced (by _the_ waiter) as 'a person.' I
expect my bill every minute. . . .
"The waiter is laughing outside the door with another waiter--this is
the latest intelligence of my condition."
FOOTNOTES:
[24] We had at Twickenham a balloon club for the children, of which I
appear to have been elected the president on condition of supplying all
the balloons, a condition which I seem so insufficiently to have
complied with as to bring down upon myself the subjoined resolution. The
Snodgering Blee and Popem Jee were the little brother and sister, for
whom, as for their successors, he was always inventing these surprising
descriptive epithets. "Gammon Lodge, Saturday evening, June 23d, 1838.
Sir, I am requested to inform you that at a numerous meeting of the
Gammon Aeronautical Association for the Encouragement of Science and the
Consumption of Spirits (of Wine)--Thomas Beard Esquire, Mrs. Charles
Dickens, Charles Dickens, Esquire, the Snodgering Blee, Popem Jee, and
other distinguished characters being present and assenting, the vote of
censure of which I inclose a copy was unanimously passed upon you for
gross negligence in the discharge of your duty, and most unjustifiable
disregard of the best interests of the Society. I am, Sir, your most
obedient servant, Charles Dickens, Honorary Secretary. To John Forster,
Esquire."
[25] Not Mr. Procter, as, by an oversight of his own, Dickens caused to
be said in an interesting paper on Wainewright which appeared in his
weekly periodical.
[26] I quote from a letter dated Llangollen, Friday morning, 3d Nov.
1838: "I wrote to you last night, but by mistake the letter has gone on
Heaven knows where in my portmanteau. I have only time to say, go
straight to Liverpool by the first Birmingham train on Monday morning,
and at the Adelphi Hotel in that town you will find me. I trust to you
to see my dear Kate and bring the latest intelligence of her and the
darlings. My best love to them."
[27] One of these disputes is referred to by Charles Knight in his
Autobiography; and I see in Dickens's letters the mention of another in
which I seem to have been turned by his kindly counsel from some folly I
was going to commit: "I need not, I am sure, impress upon you the
sincerity with which I make this representation. Our close and hearty
friendship happily spares me the necessity. But I will add this--that
feeling for you an attachment which no ties of blood or other
relationship could ever awaken, and hoping to be to the end of my life
your affectionate and chosen friend, I am convinced that I counsel you
now as you would counsel me if I were in the like case; and I hope and
trust that you will be led by an opinion which I am sure cannot be wrong
when it is influenced by such feelings as I bear towards you, and so
many warm and grateful considerations."
[28] This was the butler of Mr. Gilbert Winter, one of the kind
Manchester friends whose hospitality we had enjoyed with Mr. Ainsworth,
and whose shrewd, quaint, old-world ways come delightfully back to me as
I write his once well-known and widely-honored name.