DEVONSHIRE TERRACE AND BROADSTAIRS.
1840.
A Good Saying--Landor mystified--The Mirthful
Side of Dickens--Extravagant Flights--Humorous
Despair--Riding Exercise--First of the
Ravens--The Groom Topping--The Smoky
Chimneys--Juryman at an Inquest--Practical
Humanity--Publication of _Clock's_ First
Number--Transfer of _Barnaby_ settled--A True
Prediction--Revisiting Old Scenes--C. D. to
Chapman & Hall--Terms of Sale of _Barnaby_--A
Gift to a Friend--Final Escape from
Bondage--Published Libels about him--Said to be
demented--To be insane and turned
Catholic--Begging Letter-Writers--A Donkey
asked for--Mr. Kindheart--Friendly
Meetings--Social Talk--Reconciling
Friends--Hint for judging Men.
IT was an excellent saying of the first Lord Shaftesbury, that, seeing
every man of any capacity holds within himself two men, the wise and the
foolish, each of them ought freely to be allowed his turn; and it was
one of the secrets of Dickens's social charm that he could, in strict
accordance with this saying, allow each part of him its turn; could
afford thoroughly to give rest and relief to what was serious in him,
and, when the time came to play his gambols, could surrender himself
wholly to the enjoyment of the time, and become the very genius and
embodiment of one of his own most whimsical fancies.
Turning back from the narrative of his last piece of writing to recall
a few occurrences of the year during which it had occupied him, I find
him at its opening in one of these humorous moods, and another friend,
with myself, enslaved by its influence. "What on earth does it all
mean?" wrote poor puzzled Mr. Landor to me, inclosing a letter from him
of the date of the 11th of February, the day after the royal nuptials of
that year. In this he had related to our old friend a wonderful
hallucination arising out of that event, which had then taken entire
possession of him. "Society is unhinged here," thus ran the letter, "by
her majesty's marriage, and I am sorry to add that I have fallen
hopelessly in love with the Queen, and wander up and down with vague and
dismal thoughts of running away to some uninhabited island with a maid
of honor, to be entrapped by conspiracy for that purpose. Can you
suggest any particular young person, serving in such a capacity, who
would suit me? It is too much perhaps to ask you to join the band of
noble youths (Forster is in it, and Maclise) who are to assist me in
this great enterprise, but a man of your energy would be invaluable. I
have my eye upon Lady . . . , principally because she is very beautiful
and has no strong brothers. Upon this, and other points of the scheme,
however, we will confer more at large when we meet; and meanwhile burn
this document, that no suspicion may arise or rumor get abroad."
The maid of honor and the uninhabited island were flights of fancy, but
the other daring delusion was for a time encouraged to such whimsical
lengths, not alone by him, but (under his influence) by the two friends
named, that it took the wildest forms of humorous extravagance; and of
the private confidences much interchanged, as well as of the style of
open speech in which our joke of despairing unfitness for any further
use or enjoyment of life was unflaggingly kept up, to the amazement of
bystanders knowing nothing of what it meant, and believing we had half
lost our senses, I permit myself to give from his letters one further
illustration. "I am utterly lost in misery," he writes to me on the 12th
of February, "and can do nothing. I have been reading _Oliver_,
_Pickwick_, and _Nickleby_ to get my thoughts together for the new
effort, but all in vain:
"My heart is at Windsor,
My heart isn't here;
My heart is at Windsor.
A following my dear.
I saw the Responsibilities this morning, and burst into tears. The
presence of my wife aggravates me. I loathe my parents. I detest my
house. I begin to have thoughts of the Serpentine, of the Regent's
Canal, of the razors up-stairs, of the chemist's down the street, of
poisoning myself at Mrs. ----'s table, of hanging myself upon the
pear-tree in the garden, of abstaining from food and starving myself to
death, of being bled for my cold and tearing off the bandage, of falling
under the feet of cab-horses in the New Road, of murdering Chapman &
Hall and becoming great in story (SHE must hear something of me
then--perhaps sign the warrant: or is that a fable?), of turning
Chartist, of heading some bloody assault upon the palace and saving Her
by my single hand--of being anything but what I have been, and doing
anything but what I have done. Your distracted friend, C. D." The wild
derangement of asterisks in every shape and form, with which this
incoherence closed, cannot here be given.
Some ailments which dated from an earlier period in his life made
themselves felt in the spring of the year, as I remember, and increased
horse-exercise was strongly recommended to him. "I find it will be
positively necessary to go, for five days in the week, at least," he
wrote to me in March, "on a perfect regimen of diet and exercise, and am
anxious therefore not to delay treating for a horse." We were now in
consequence, when he was not at the sea-side, much on horseback in
suburban lanes and roads; and the spacious garden of his new house was
also turned to healthful use at even his busiest times of work. I mark
this, too, as the time when the first of his ravens took up residence
there; and as the beginning of disputes with two of his neighbors about
the smoking of the stable-chimney, which his groom Topping, a highly
absurd little man with flaming red hair, so complicated by secret
devices of his own, meant to conciliate each complainant alternately and
having the effect of aggravating both, that law-proceedings were only
barely avoided. "I shall give you," he writes, "my latest report of the
chimney in the form of an address from Topping, made to me on our way
from little Hall's at Norwood the other night, where he and Chapman and
I had been walking all day, while Topping drove Kate, Mrs. Hall, and her
sisters, to Dulwich. Topping had been regaled upon the premises, and was
just drunk enough to be confidential. 'Beggin' your pardon, sir, but the
genelman next door sir, seems to be gettin' quite comfortable and
pleasant about the chimley.'--'I don't think he is, Topping.'--'Yes he
is sir I think. He comes out in the yard this morning and says,
_Coachman_ he says' (observe the vision of a great large fat man called
up by the word) _is that your raven_ he says, _Coachman? or is it Mr.
Dickens's raven?_ he says. My master's sir, I says. Well, he says, It's
a fine bird. _I think the chimley 'ill do now Coachman,--now the jint's
taken off the pipe_ he says. I hope it will sir, I says; my master's a
genelman as wouldn't annoy no genelman if he could help it, I'm sure;
and my missis is so afraid of havin' a bit o' fire that o' Sundays our
little bit o' weal or wot not, goes to the baker's a purpose.--_Damn the
chimley, Coachman_, he says, _it's a smokin' now_.--It ain't a smokin'
your way sir, I says; Well he says _no more it is, Coachman, and as long
as it smokes anybody else's way, it's all right and I'm agreeable_.' Of
course I shall now have the man from the other side upon me, and very
likely with an action of nuisance for smoking into his conservatory."
A graver incident, which occurred to him also among his earliest
experiences as tenant of Devonshire Terrace, illustrates too well the
always practical turn of his kindness and humanity not to deserve
relation here. He has himself described it in one of his minor writings,
in setting down what he remembered as the only good that ever came of a
beadle. Of that great parish functionary, he says, "having newly taken
the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan parish, a
house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class family
mansion involving awful responsibilities, I became the prey." In other
words, he was summoned, and obliged to sit, as juryman at an inquest on
the body of a little child alleged to have been murdered by its mother;
of which the result was, that, by his persevering exertion, seconded by
the humane help of the coroner, Mr. Wakley, the verdict of himself and
his fellow-jurymen charged her only with concealment of the birth. "The
poor desolate creature dropped upon her knees before us with
protestations that we were right (protestations among the most affecting
that I have ever heard in my life), and was carried away insensible. I
caused some extra care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to
be retained for her defense when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and
her sentence was lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was
right." How much he felt the little incident, at the actual time of its
occurrence, may be judged from the few lines written to me next morning:
"Whether it was the poor baby, or its poor mother, or the coffin, or my
fellow-jurymen, or what not, I can't say, but last night I had a most
violent attack of sickness and indigestion, which not only prevented me
from sleeping, but even from lying down. Accordingly Kate and I sat up
through the dreary watches."
The day of the first publication of _Master Humphrey_ (Saturday, 4th
April) had by this time come, and, according to the rule observed in his
two other great ventures, he left town with Mrs. Dickens on Friday, the
3d. With Maclise we had been together at Richmond the previous night;
and I joined him at Birmingham the day following with news of the sale
of the whole sixty thousand copies to which the first working had been
limited, and of orders already in hand for ten thousand more! The
excitement of the success somewhat lengthened our holiday; and, after
visiting Shakspeare's house at Stratford and Johnson's at Lichfield, we
found our resources so straitened in returning, that, employing as our
messenger of need his younger brother Alfred, who had joined us from
Tamworth, where he was a student-engineer, we had to pawn our gold
watches at Birmingham.
At the end of the following month he went to Broadstairs, and not many
days before (on the 20th of May) a note from Mr. Jordan on behalf of Mr.
Bentley opened the negotiations formerly referred to,[31] which
transferred to Messrs. Chapman & Hall the agreement for _Barnaby Rudge_.
I was myself absent when he left, and in a letter announcing his
departure he had written, "I don't know of a word of news in all London,
but there will be plenty next week, for I am going away, and I hope
you'll send me an account of it. I am doubtful whether it will be a
murder, a fire, a vast robbery, or the escape of Gould, but it will be
something remarkable no doubt. I almost blame myself for the death of
that poor girl who leaped off the monument upon my leaving town last
year. She would not have done it if I had remained, neither would the
two men have found the skeleton in the sewers." His prediction was quite
accurate, for I had to tell him, after not many days, of the potboy who
shot at the queen. "It's a great pity," he replied, very sensibly, "they
couldn't suffocate that boy, Master Oxford, and say no more about it.
To have put him quietly between two feather beds would have stopped his
heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is,
she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of
whom may perchance be better shots and use other than Brummagem
firearms." How much of this actually came to pass, the reader knows.
From the letters of his present Broadstairs visit, there is little
further to add to their account of his progress with his story; but a
couple more lines may be given for their characteristic expression of
his invariable habit upon entering any new abode, whether to stay in it
for days or for years. On a Monday night he arrived, and on the Tuesday
(2d of June) wrote to me, "_Before_ I tasted bit or drop yesterday, I
set out my writing-table with extreme taste and neatness, and improved
the disposition of the furniture generally." He stayed till the end of
June; when Maclise and myself joined him for the pleasure of posting
back home with him and Mrs. Dickens, by way of his favorite Chatham and
Rochester and Cobham, where we passed two agreeable days in revisiting
well-remembered scenes. I had meanwhile brought to a close the treaty
for repurchase of _Oliver_ and surrender of _Barnaby_, upon terms which
are succinctly stated in a letter written by him to Messrs. Chapman &
Hall on the 2d of July, the day after our return:
"The terms upon which you advance the money to-day for the purchase of
the copyright and stock[32] of _Oliver_ on my behalf are understood
between us to be these. That this 2250_l._ is to be deducted from the
purchase-money of a work by me entitled _Barnaby Rudge_, of which two
chapters are now in your hands, and of which the whole is to be written
within some convenient time to be agreed upon between us. But if it
should not be written (which God forbid!) within five years, you are to
have a lien to this amount on the property belonging to me that is now
in your hands, namely, my shares in the stock and copyright of _Sketches
by Boz_, _The Pickwick Papers_, _Nicholas Nickleby_, _Oliver Twist_, and
_Master Humphrey's Clock_; in which we do not include any share of the
current profits of the last-named work, which I shall remain at liberty
to draw at the times stated in our agreement. Your purchase of _Barnaby
Rudge_ is made upon the following terms. It is to consist of matter
sufficient for ten monthly numbers of the size of _Pickwick_ and
_Nickleby_, which you are, however, at liberty to divide and publish in
fifteen smaller numbers if you think fit. The terms for the purchase of
this edition in numbers, and for the copyright of the whole book for six
months after the publication of the last number, are 3000_l._ At the
expiration of the six months the whole copyright reverts to me." The
sequel was, as all the world knows, that Barnaby became successor to
Little Nell, the money being repaid by the profits of the _Clock_; but I
ought to mention also the more generous sequel that my own small
service had, on my receiving from him, after not many days, an antique
silver-mounted jug of great beauty of form and workmanship, but with a
wealth far beyond jeweler's chasing or artist's design in the written
words that accompanied it.[33] I accepted them to commemorate, not the
help they would have far overpaid, but the gladness of his own escape
from the last of the agreements that had hampered the opening of his
career, and the better future that was now before him.
At the opening of August he was with Mrs. Dickens for some days in
Devonshire, on a visit to his father, but he had to take his work with
him; and, as he wrote to me, they had only one real holiday, when
Dawlish, Teignmouth, Babbicombe, and Torquay were explored, returning to
Exeter at night. In the beginning of September he was again at
Broadstairs.
"I was just going to work," he wrote on the 9th, "when I got this
letter, and the story of the man who went to Chapman & Hall's knocked
me down flat. I wrote until now (a quarter to one) against the grain,
and have at last given it up for one day. Upon my word it is
intolerable. I have been grinding my teeth all the morning. I think I
could say in two lines something about the general report with
propriety. I'll add them to the proof" (the preface to the first volume
of the _Clock_ was at this time in preparation), "giving you full power
to cut them out if you should think differently from me, and from C. and
H., who in such a matter must be admitted judges." He refers here to a
report, rather extensively circulated at the time, and which through
various channels had reached his publishers, that he was suffering from
loss of reason and was under treatment in an asylum.[34] I would have
withheld from him the mention of it, as an absurdity that must quickly
pass away, but against my wish it had been communicated to him, and I
had difficulty in keeping within judicious bounds his extreme and very
natural wrath.
A few days later (the 15th) he wrote, "I have been rather surprised of
late to have applications from Roman Catholic clergymen, demanding
(rather pastorally, and with a kind of grave authority) assistance,
literary employment, and so forth. At length it struck me that, through
some channel or other, I must have been represented as belonging to that
religion. Would you believe that in a letter from Lamert, at Cork, to my
mother, which I saw last night, he says, 'What do the papers mean by
saying that Charles is demented, and, further, _that he has turned Roman
Catholic_?'--!" Of the begging-letter-writers, hinted at here, I ought
earlier to have said something. In one of his detached essays he has
described, without a particle of exaggeration, the extent to which he
was made a victim by this class of swindler, and the extravagance of the
devices practiced on him; but he has not confessed, as he might, that
for much of what he suffered he was himself responsible, by giving so
largely, as at first he did, to almost every one who applied to him.
What at last brought him to his senses in this respect, I think, was the
request made by the adventurer who had exhausted every other expedient,
and who desired finally, after describing himself reduced to the
condition of a traveling Cheap Jack in the smallest way of crockery,
that a donkey might be left out for him next day, which he would duly
call for. This I perfectly remember, and I much fear that the applicant
was the Daniel Tobin before mentioned.[35]
Many and delightful were other letters written from Broadstairs at this
date, filled with whimsical talk and humorous description relating
chiefly to an eccentric friend who stayed with him most of the time,
and is sketched in one of his published papers as Mr. Kindheart; but all
too private for reproduction now. He returned in the middle of October,
when we resumed our almost daily ridings, foregatherings with Maclise at
Hampstead and elsewhere, and social entertainments with Macready,
Talfourd, Procter, Stanfield, Fonblanque, Elliotson, Tennent, D'Orsay,
Quin, Harness, Wilkie, Edwin Landseer, Rogers, Sydney Smith, and Bulwer.
Of the genius of the author of _Pelham_ and _Eugene Aram_ he had, early
and late, the highest admiration, and he took occasion to express it
during the present year in a new preface which he published to _Oliver
Twist_. Other friends became familiar in later years; but, disinclined
as he was to the dinner-invitations that reached him from every quarter,
all such meetings with those whom I have named, and in an especial
manner the marked attentions shown him by Miss Coutts which began with
the very beginning of his career, were invariably welcome.
To speak here of the pleasure his society afforded, would anticipate the
fitter mention to be made hereafter. But what in this respect
distinguishes nearly all original men, he possessed eminently. His place
was not to be filled up by any other. To the most trivial talk he gave
the attraction of his own character. It might be a small
matter,--something he had read or observed during the day, some quaint
odd fancy from a book, a vivid little out-door picture, the laughing
exposure of some imposture, or a burst of sheer mirthful enjoyment,--but
of its kind it would be something unique, because genuinely part of
himself. This, and his unwearying animal spirits, made him the most
delightful of companions; no claim on good-fellowship ever found him
wanting; and no one so constantly recalled to his friends the
description Johnson gave of Garrick, as the cheerfulest man of his age.
Of what occupied him in the way of literary labor in the autumn and
winter months of the year, some description has been given; and, apart
from what has already thus been said of his work at the closing chapters
of _The Old Curiosity Shop_, nothing now calls for more special
allusion, except that in his town-walks in November, impelled thereto by
specimens recently discovered in his country-walks between Broadstairs
and Ramsgate, he thoroughly explored the ballad literature of
Seven-Dials, and took to singing himself, with an effect that justified
his reputation for comic singing in his childhood, not a few of these
wonderful productions. His last successful labor of the year was the
reconciliation of two friends; and his motive, as well as the principle
that guided him, as they are described by himself, I think worth
preserving. For the first: "In the midst of this child's death, I, over
whom something of the bitterness of death has passed, not lightly
perhaps, was reminded of many old kindnesses, and was sorry in my heart
that men who really liked each other should waste life at arm's length."
For the last: "I have laid it down as a rule in my judgment of men, to
observe narrowly whether some (of whom one is disposed to think badly)
don't carry all their faults upon the surface, and others (of whom one
is disposed to think well) don't carry many more beneath it. I have long
ago made sure that our friend is in the first class; and when I know
all the foibles a man has, with little trouble in the discovery, I begin
to think he is worth liking." His latest letter of the year, dated the
day following, closed with the hope that we might, he and I, enjoy
together "fifty more Christmases, at least, in this world, and eternal
summers in another." Alas!
FOOTNOTES:
[31] See _ante_, p. 163.
[32] By way of a novelty to help off the stock, he had suggested (17th
June), "Would it not be best to print new title-pages to the copies
sheets and publish them as a new edition, with an interesting Preface? I
am talking about all this as though the treaty were concluded, but I
hope and trust that in effect it is, for negotiation and delay are worse
to me than drawn daggers." See my remark _ante_, p. 123.
[33] "Accept from me" (July 8, 1840), "as a slight memorial of your
attached companion, the poor keepsake which accompanies this. My heart
is not an eloquent one on matters which touch it most, but suppose this
claret-jug the urn in which it lies, and believe that its warmest and
truest blood is yours. This was the object of my fruitless search, and
your curiosity, on Friday. At first I scarcely knew what trifle (you
will deem it valuable, I know, for the giver's sake) to send you; but I
thought it would be pleasant to connect it with our jovial moments, and
to let it add, to the wine we shall drink from it together, a flavor
which the choicest vintage could never impart. Take it from my
hand,--filled to the brim and running over with truth and earnestness. I
have just taken one parting look at it, and it seems the most elegant
thing in the world to me, for I lose sight of the vase in the crowd of
welcome associations that are clustering and wreathing themselves about
it."
[34] Already he had been the subject of similar reports on the occasion
of the family sorrow which compelled him to suspend the publication of
_Pickwick_ for two months (_ante_, p. 120), when, upon issuing a brief
address in resuming his work (30th June, 1837), he said, "By one set of
intimate acquaintances, especially well informed, he has been killed
outright; by another, driven mad; by a third, imprisoned for debt; by a
fourth, sent per steamer to the United States; by a fifth, rendered
incapable of mental exertion for evermore; by all, in short, represented
as doing anything but seeking in a few weeks' retirement the restoration
of that cheerfulness and peace of which a sad bereavement had
temporarily deprived him."
[35] See _ante_, p. 81.