BARNABY RUDGE.
1841.
Advantage in beginning _Barnaby_--Birth of
Fourth Child and Second Son--The Raven--A Loss
in the Family--Grip's Death--C. D. describes
his Illness--Family Mourners--Apotheosis by
Maclise--Grip the Second--The Inn at
Chigwell--A _Clock_ Dinner--Lord Jeffrey in
London--The _Lamplighter_--The _Pic Nic
Papers_--Character of Lord George Gordon--A
Doubtful Fancy--Interest in New
Labor--Constraints of Weekly Publication--The
Prison-Riots--A Serious Illness--Close of
_Barnaby_--Character of the Tale--Defects in
the Plot--The No-Popery Riots--Descriptive
Power displayed--Leading Persons in Story--Mr.
Dennis the Hangman.
THE letters of 1841 yield similar fruit as to his doings and sayings,
and may in like manner first be consulted for the literary work he had
in hand.
He had the advantage of beginning _Barnaby Rudge_ with a fair amount of
story in advance, which he had only to make suitable, by occasional
readjustment of chapters, to publication in weekly portions; and on this
he was engaged before the end of January. "I am at present" (22d
January, 1841) "in what Leigh Hunt would call a kind of impossible
state,--thinking what on earth Master Humphrey can think of through four
mortal pages. I added, here and there, to the last chapter of the
_Curiosity Shop_ yesterday, and it leaves me only four pages to write."
(They were filled by a paper from Humphrey introductory of the new
tale, in which will be found a striking picture of London from midnight
to the break of day.) "I also made up, and wrote the needful insertions
for, the second number of _Barnaby_,--so that I came back to the mill a
little." Hardly yet; for after four days he writes, having meanwhile
done nothing, "I have been looking (three o'clock) with an appearance of
extraordinary interest and study at _one leaf_ of the _Curiosities of
Literature_ ever since half-past ten this morning--I haven't the heart
to turn over." Then on Friday the 29th better news came. "I didn't stir
out yesterday, but sat and _thought_ all day; not writing a line; not so
much as the cross of a t or dot of an i. I imaged forth a good deal of
_Barnaby_ by keeping my mind steadily upon him; and am happy to say I
have gone to work this morning in good twig, strong hope, and cheerful
spirits. Last night I was unutterably and impossible-to-form-an-idea-of-ably
miserable. . . . By-the-by, don't engage yourself otherwise than to me
for Sunday week, because it's my birthday. I have no doubt we shall have
got over our troubles here by that time, and I purpose having a snug
dinner in the study." We had the dinner, though the troubles were not
over; but the next day another son was born to him. "Thank God," he
wrote on the 9th, "quite well. I am thinking hard, and have just written
to Browne inquiring when he will come and confer about the raven." He
had by this time resolved to make that bird, whose accomplishments had
been daily ripening and enlarging for the last twelve months to the
increasing mirth and delight of all of us, a prominent figure in
_Barnaby_; and the invitation to the artist was for a conference how
best to introduce him graphically.
The next letter mentioning _Barnaby_ was from Brighton (25th February),
whither he had flown for a week's quiet labor: "I have (it's four
o'clock) done a very fair morning's work, at which I have sat very
close, and been blessed besides with a clear view of the end of the
volume. As the contents of one number usually require a day's thought at
the very least, and often more, this puts me in great spirits. I
think--that is, I hope--the story takes a great stride at this point,
and takes it WELL. Nous verrons. Grip will be strong, and I build
greatly on the Varden household."
Upon his return he had to lament a domestic calamity, which, for its
connection with that famous personage in _Barnaby_, must be mentioned
here. The raven had for some days been ailing, and Topping had reported
of him, as Shakspeare of Hamlet, that he had lost his mirth and foregone
all customary exercises; but Dickens paid no great heed, remembering his
recovery from an illness of the previous summer when he swallowed some
white paint; so that the graver report which led him to send for the
doctor came upon him unexpectedly, and nothing but his own language can
worthily describe the result. Unable from the state of his feelings to
write two letters, he sent the narrative to Maclise, under an enormous
black seal, for transmission to me; and thus it befell that this
fortunate bird receives a double passport to fame, so great a humorist
having celebrated his farewell to the present world, and so great a
painter his welcome to another.
"You will be greatly shocked" (the letter is dated Friday evening,
March 12, 1841) "and grieved to hear that the Raven is no more. He
expired to-day at a few minutes after twelve o'clock at noon. He had
been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result,
conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer
might be lingering about his vitals without having any serious effect
upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was taken so much worse
that I sent an express for the medical gentleman (Mr. Herring), who
promptly attended, and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under
the influence of this medicine, he recovered so far as to be able at
eight o'clock P.M. to bite Topping. His night was peaceful. This morning
at daybreak he appeared better; received (agreeably to the doctor's
directions) another dose of castor oil; and partook plentifully of some
warm gruel, the flavor of which he appeared to relish. Towards eleven
o'clock he was so much worse that it was found necessary to muffle the
stable-knocker. At half-past, or thereabouts, he was heard talking to
himself about the horse and Topping's family, and to add some incoherent
expressions which are supposed to have been either a foreboding of his
approaching dissolution, or some wishes relative to the disposal of his
little property: consisting chiefly of half-pence which he had buried in
different parts of the garden. On the clock striking twelve he appeared
slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along
the coach-house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed _Halloa old
girl!_ (his favorite expression), and died.
"He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity, and
self-possession, which cannot be too much admired. I deeply regret that
being in ignorance of his danger I did not attend to receive his last
instructions. Something remarkable about his eyes occasioned Topping to
run for the doctor at twelve. When they returned together our friend was
gone. It was the medical gentleman who informed me of his decease. He
did it with great caution and delicacy, preparing me by the remark that
'a jolly queer start had taken place;' but the shock was very great
notwithstanding. I am not wholly free from suspicions of poison. A
malicious butcher has been heard to say that he would 'do' for him: his
plea was that he would not be molested in taking orders down the mews,
by any bird that wore a tail. Other persons have also been heard to
threaten: among others, Charles Knight, who has just started a weekly
publication price fourpence: _Barnaby_ being, as you know, threepence. I
have directed a post-mortem examination, and the body has been removed
to Mr. Herring's school of anatomy for that purpose.
"I could wish, if you can take the trouble, that you could inclose this
to Forster immediately after you have read it. I cannot discharge the
painful task of communication more than once. Were they ravens who took
manna to somebody in the wilderness? At times I hope they were, and at
others I fear they were not, or they would certainly have stolen it by
the way. In profound sorrow, I am ever your bereaved friend C. D. Kate
is as well as can be expected, but terribly low, as you may suppose. The
children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles. But that was
play."
[Illustration: [Sideways text: apotheosis] My dear Forster
Dickens desires me transmit to you the enclosed announcement of the
Raven's decease - which took place in Devonshire Terrace
March 1841
HIC DM]
Maclise's covering letter was an apotheosis, to be rendered only in
fac-simile.
In what way the loss was replaced, so that _Barnaby_ should have the
fruit of continued study of the habits of the family of birds which Grip
had so nobly represented, Dickens has told in the preface to the story;
and another, older, and larger Grip, obtained through Mr. Smithson, was
installed in the stable, almost before the stuffed remains of his
honored predecessor had been sent home in a glass case, by way of
ornament to his master's study.
I resume our correspondence on what he was writing: "I see there is yet
room for a few lines" (25th March), "and you are quite right in wishing
what I cut out to be restored. I did not want Joe to be so short about
Dolly, and really wrote his references to that young lady carefully,--as
natural things with a meaning in them. Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the
greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious
old inn opposite the churchyard,--such a lovely ride,--such beautiful
forest scenery,--such an out-of-the-way, rural place,--such a sexton! I
say again, name your day." The day was named at once; and the whitest of
stones marks it, in now sorrowful memory. His promise was exceeded by
our enjoyment; and his delight in the double recognition, of himself and
of _Barnaby_, by the landlord of the nice old inn, far exceeded any
pride he would have taken in what the world thinks the highest sort of
honor.
"I have shut myself up" (26th March) "by myself to-day, and mean to try
and 'go it' at the _Clock_; Kate being out, and the house peacefully
dismal. I don't remember altering the exact part you object to, but if
there be anything here you object to, knock it out ruthlessly." "Don't
fail" (April the 5th) "to erase anything that seems to you too strong.
It is difficult for me to judge what tells too much, and what does not.
I am trying a very quiet number to set against this necessary one. I
hope it will be good, but I am in very sad condition for work. Glad you
think this powerful. What I have put in is more relief, from the raven."
Two days later: "I have done that number, and am now going to work on
another. I am bent (please Heaven) on finishing the first chapter by
Friday night. I hope to look in upon you to-night, when we'll dispose of
the toasts for Saturday. Still bilious--but a good number, I hope,
notwithstanding. Jeffrey has come to town, and was here yesterday." The
toasts to be disposed of were those to be given at the dinner on the
10th to celebrate the second volume of _Master Humphrey_: when Talfourd
presided, when there was much jollity, and, according to the memorandum
drawn up that Saturday night now lying before me, we all in the greatest
good humor glorified each other: Talfourd proposing the _Clock_,
Macready Mrs. Dickens, Dickens the publishers, and myself the artists;
Macready giving Talfourd, Talfourd Macready, Dickens myself, and myself
the comedian Mr. Harley, whose humorous songs had been the not least
considerable element in the mirth of the evening.
Five days later he writes, "I finished the number yesterday, and,
although I dined with Jeffrey, and was obliged to go to Lord Denman's
afterwards (which made me late), have done eight slips of the
_Lamplighter_ for Mrs. Macrone, this morning. When I have got that off
my mind, I shall try to go on steadily, fetching up the _Clock_
lee-way." The _Lamplighter_ was his old farce,[36] which he now turned
into a comic tale; and this, with other contributions given him by
friends and edited by him as _Pic Nic Papers_, enabled him to help the
widow of his old publisher in her straitened means by a gift of L300. He
had finished his work of charity before he next wrote of _Barnaby
Rudge_, but he was fetching up his lee-way lazily. "I am getting on"
(29th of April) "very slowly. I want to stick to the story; and the fear
of committing myself, because of the impossibility of trying back or
altering a syllable, makes it much harder than it looks. It was too bad
of me to give you the trouble of cutting the number, but I knew so well
you would do it in the right places. For what Harley would call the
'onward work' I really think I have some famous thoughts." There is an
interval of a month before the next allusion: "Solomon's expression" (3d
of June) "I meant to be one of those strong ones to which strong
circumstances give birth in the commonest minds. Deal with it as you
like. . . . Say what you please of Gordon" (I had objected to some points
in his view of this madman, stated much too favorably as I thought), "he
must have been at heart a kind man, and a lover of the despised and
rejected, after his own fashion. He lived upon a small income, and
always within it; was known to relieve the necessities of many people;
exposed in his place the corrupt attempt of a minister to buy him out
of Parliament; and did great charities in Newgate. He always spoke on
the people's side, and tried against his muddled brains to expose the
profligacy of both parties. He never got anything by his madness, and
never sought it. The wildest and most raging attacks of the time allow
him these merits: and not to let him have 'em in their full extent,
remembering in what a (politically) wicked time he lived, would lie upon
my conscience heavily. The libel he was imprisoned for when he died, was
on the Queen of France; and the French government interested themselves
warmly to procure his release,--which I think they might have done, but
for Lord Grenville." I was more successful in the counsel I gave against
a fancy he had at this part of the story, that he would introduce as
actors in the Gordon riots three splendid fellows who should order,
lead, control, and be obeyed as natural guides of the crowd in that
delirious time, and who should turn out, when all was over, to have
broken out from Bedlam; but, though he saw the unsoundness of this, he
could not so readily see, in Gordon's case, the danger of taxing
ingenuity to ascribe a reasonable motive to acts of sheer insanity. The
feeblest parts of the book are those in which Lord George and his
secretary appear.
He left for Scotland after the middle of June, but he took work with
him. "You may suppose," he wrote from Edinburgh on the 30th, "I have not
done much work; but by Friday night's post from here I hope to send the
first long chapter of a number and both the illustrations; from Loch
Earn on Tuesday night, the closing chapter of that number; from the same
place on Thursday night, the first long chapter of another, with both
the illustrations; and, from some place which no man ever spelt but
which sounds like Ballyhoolish, on Saturday, the closing chapter of that
number, which will leave us all safe till I return to town." Nine days
later he wrote from "Ballechelish," "I have done all I can or need do in
the way of _Barnaby_ until I come home, and the story is progressing (I
hope you will think) to good strong interest. I have left it, I think,
at an exciting point, with a good dawning of the riots. In the first of
the two numbers I have written since I have been away, I forget whether
the blind man, in speaking to Barnaby about riches, tells him they are
to be found in _crowds_. If I have not actually used that word, will you
introduce it? A perusal of the proof of the following number (70) will
show you how, and why." "Have you," he wrote shortly after his return
(29th July), "seen No. 71? I thought there was a good glimpse of a
crowd, from a window--eh?" He had now taken thoroughly to the interest
of his closing chapters, and felt more than ever the constraints of his
form of publication. "I am warming up very much" (on the 5th August from
Broadstairs) "about _Barnaby_. Oh! if I only had him, from this time to
the end, in monthly numbers. _N'importe!_ I hope the interest will be
pretty strong,--and, in every number, stronger." Six days later, from
the same place: "I was always sure I could make a good thing of
_Barnaby_, and I think you'll find that it comes out strong to the last
word. I have another number ready, all but two slips. Don't fear for
young Chester. The time hasn't come----there we go again, you see, with
the weekly delays. I am in great heart and spirits with the story, and
with the prospect of having time to think before I go on again." A
month's interval followed, and what occupied it will be described
shortly. On the 11th September he wrote, "I have just burnt into
Newgate, and am going in the next number to tear the prisoners out by
the hair of their heads. The number which gets into the jail you'll have
in proof by Tuesday." This was followed up a week later: "I have let all
the prisoners out of Newgate, burnt down Lord Mansfield's, and played
the very devil. Another number will finish the fires, and help us on
towards the end. I feel quite smoky when I am at work. I want elbow-room
terribly." To this trouble, graver supervened at his return, a serious
personal sickness not the least; but he bore up gallantly, and I had
never better occasion than now to observe his quiet endurance of pain,
how little he thought of himself where the sense of self is commonly
supreme, and the manful duty with which everything was done that, ailing
as he was, he felt it necessary to do. He was still in his sick-room
(22d October) when he wrote, "I hope I sha'n't leave off any more, now,
until I have finished _Barnaby_." Three days after that, he was busying
himself eagerly for others; and on the 2d of November the printers
received the close of _Barnaby Rudge_.
This tale was Dickens's first attempt out of the sphere of the life of
the day and its actual manners. Begun during the progress of _Oliver
Twist_, it had been for some time laid aside; the form it ultimately
took had been comprised only partially within its first design; and the
story in its finished shape presented strongly a special purpose, the
characteristic of all but his very earliest writings. Its scene is laid
at the time when the incessant execution of men and women, comparatively
innocent, disgraced every part of the country; demoralizing thousands,
whom it also prepared for the scaffold. In those days the theft of a few
rags from a bleaching-ground, or the abstraction of a roll of ribbons
from a counter, was visited with the penalty of blood; and such laws
brutalized both their ministers and victims. It was the time, too, when
a false religious outcry brought with it appalling guilt and misery.
These are vices that leave more behind them than the first forms
assumed, and they involve a lesson sufficiently required to justify a
writer in dealing with them. There were also others grafted on them. In
Barnaby himself it was desired to show what sources of comfort there
might be, for the patient and cheerful heart, in even the worst of all
human afflictions; and in the hunted life of his outcast father, whose
crime had entailed not that affliction only but other more fearful
wretchedness, we have as powerful a picture as any in his writings of
the inevitable and unfathomable consequences of sin. But, as the story
went on, it was incident to these designs that what had been
accomplished in its predecessor could hardly be attained here, in
singleness of purpose, unity of idea, or harmony of treatment; and other
defects supervened in the management of the plot. The interest with
which the tale begins has ceased to be its interest before the close;
and what has chiefly taken the reader's fancy at the outset almost
wholly disappears in the power and passion with which, in the later
chapters, the great riots are described. So admirable is this
description, however, that it would be hard to have to surrender it
even for a more perfect structure of fable.
There are few things more masterly in any of his books. From the first
low mutterings of the storm to its last terrible explosion, this frantic
outbreak of popular ignorance and rage is depicted with unabated power.
The aimlessness of idle mischief by which the ranks of the rioters are
swelled at the beginning; the recklessness induced by the monstrous
impunity allowed to the early excesses; the sudden spread of this
drunken guilt into every haunt of poverty, ignorance, or mischief in the
wicked old city, where the rich materials of crime lie festering; the
wild action of its poison on all, without scheme or plan of any kind,
who come within its reach; the horrors that are more bewildering for
this complete absence of purpose in them; and, when all is done, the
misery found to have been self-inflicted in every cranny and corner of
London, as if a plague had swept over the streets: these are features in
the picture of an actual occurrence, to which the manner of the
treatment gives extraordinary force and meaning. Nor, in the sequel, is
there anything displayed with more profitable vividness than the law's
indiscriminate cruelty at last, in contrast with its cowardly
indifference at first; while, among the casual touches lighting up the
scene with flashes of reality that illumine every part of it, may be
instanced the discovery, in the quarter from which screams for succor
are loudest when Newgate is supposed to be accidentally on fire, of four
men who were certain in any case to have perished on the drop next day.
The story, which has unusually careful writing in it, and much manly
upright thinking, has not so many people eagerly adopted as of kin by
everybody, as its predecessors are famous for; but it has yet a fair
proportion of such as take solid form within the mind and keep hold of
the memory. To these belong in an especial degree Gabriel Varden and his
household, on whom are lavished all the writer's fondness and not a
little of his keenest humor. The honest locksmith with his jovial jug,
and the tink-tink-tink of his pleasant nature making cheerful music out
of steel and iron; the buxom wife, with her plaguy tongue that makes
every one wretched whom her kindly disposition would desire to make
happy; the good-hearted plump little Dolly, coquettish minx of a
daughter, with all she suffers and inflicts by her fickle winning ways
and her small self-admiring vanities; and Miggs the vicious and
slippery, acid, amatory, and of uncomfortable figure, sower of family
discontents and discords, who swears all the while she wouldn't make or
meddle with 'em "not for a annual gold-mine and found in tea and sugar:"
there is not much social painting anywhere with a better domestic moral
than in all these; and a nice propriety of feeling and thought regulates
the use of such satire throughout. No one knows more exactly how far to
go with that formidable weapon, or understands better that what
satirizes everything, in effect satirizes nothing.
Another excellent group is that which the story opens with, in the
quaint old kitchen of the Maypole; John Willett and his friends,
genuinely comic creations all of them. Then we have Barnaby and his
raven: the light-hearted idiot, as unconscious of guilt as of
suffering, and happy with no sense but of the influences of nature; and
the grave sly bird, with sufficient sense to make himself as unhappy as
rascally habits will make the human animal. There is poor brutish Hugh,
too, loitering lazily outside the Maypole door, with a storm of passions
in him raging to be let loose; already the scaffold's withered fruit, as
he is doomed to be its ripe offering; and though with all the worst
instincts of the savage, yet not without also some of the best. Still
farther out of kindly nature's pitying reach lurks the worst villain of
the scene: with this sole claim to consideration, that it was by
constant contact with the filthiest instrument of law and state he had
become the mass of moral filth he is. Mr. Dennis the hangman is a
portrait that Hogarth would have painted with the same wholesome
severity of satire which is employed upon it in _Barnaby Rudge_.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See _ante_, pp. 125 and 183.