Dickens cannot have been very long at Wellington House Academy, for
before May, 1827, he had been at another school near Brunswick Square,
and had also obtained, and quitted, some employment in the office of a
solicitor in New Square, Lincoln's Inn Fields. It seems clear,
therefore, that the whole of his school life might easily be computed
in months; and in May, 1827, it will be remembered, he was still but a
lad of fifteen. At that date he entered the office of a second
solicitor, in Gray's Inn this time, on a salary of thirteen shillings
and sixpence a week, afterwards increased to fifteen shillings. Here
he remained till November, 1828, again picking up a good deal of
information that cannot perhaps be regarded as strictly legal, but
such as he was afterwards able to turn to admirable account. He would
seem to have studied the profession exhaustively in all its branches,
from the topmost Tulkinghorns and Perkers, to the lowest pettifoggers
like Pell and Brass, and also to have given particular attention to
the parasites of the law--the Guppys and Chucksters; and altogether to
have stored his mind, as he had done at school, with a series of
invaluable notes and observations. All very well, no doubt, as we
look at the matter now. But then it must often have seemed to the
ambitious, energetic lad, that he was wasting his time. Was he to
remain for ever a lawyer's clerk who has not the means to be an
articled clerk, and who can never, therefore, aspire to become a
full-blown solicitor? Was he to spend the future obscurely in the
dingy purlieus of the law? His father, in whose career "something," as
Mr. Micawber would have said, had at last "turned up," was now a
reporter for the press. The son determined to be a reporter too.
He threw himself into this new career with characteristic energy. Of
course a reporter is not made in a day. It takes many months of
drudgery to obtain such skill in shorthand as shall enable the pen of
the ready-writer to keep up with the winged words of speech, and make
dots and lines that shall be readable. Dickens laboured hard to
acquire the art. In the intervals of his work he made it a kind of
holiday task to attend the Reading-room of the British Museum, and so
remedy the defects in the literary part of his education. But the best
powers of his mind were directed to "Gurney's system of shorthand."
And in time he had his reward. He earned and justified the reputation
of being one of the best reporters of his day.
I shall not quote the autobiographical passages in "David Copperfield"
which bear on the difficulties of stenography. The book is in
everybody's hands. But I cannot forego the pleasure of brightening my
pages with Dickens' own description of his experiences as a reporter,
a description contained in one of those charming felicitous speeches
of his which are almost as unique in kind as his novels. Speaking in
May, 1865, as chairman of a public dinner on behalf of the Newspaper
Press Fund, he said: "I have pursued the calling of a reporter under
circumstances of which many of my brethren at home in England here,
many of my modern successors, can form no adequate conception. I have
often transcribed for the printer, from my shorthand notes, important
public speeches, in which the strictest accuracy was required, and a
mistake in which would have been, to a young man, severely
compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark
lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild country,
and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of
fifteen miles an hour. The very last time I was at Exeter, I strolled
into the castle-yard there to identify, for the amusement of a friend,
the spot on which I once took, as we used to call it, an election
speech of my noble friend Lord Russell, in the midst of a lively fight
maintained by all the vagabonds in that division of the county, and
under such pelting rain, that I remember two good-natured colleagues,
who chanced to be at leisure, held a pocket-handkerchief over my
note-book, after the manner of a State canopy in an ecclesiastical
procession. I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back
row of the old gallery in the old House of Commons; and I have worn my
feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of
Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep, kept
in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning
home from excited political meetings in the country to the waiting
press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every
description of vehicle known in this country. I have been, in my
time, belated in miry by-roads, towards the small hours, forty or
fifty miles from London, in a wheel-less carriage, with exhausted
horses, and drunken postboys, and have got back in time for
publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the
late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of
hearts I ever knew."
What shall I add to this? That the papers on which he was engaged as a
reporter, were _The True Sun_, _The Mirror of Parliament_, and _The
Morning Chronicle_; that long afterwards, little more than two years
before his death, when addressing the journalists of New York, he gave
public expression to his "grateful remembrance of a calling that was
once his own," and declared, "to the wholesome training of severe
newspaper work, when I was a very young man, I constantly refer my
first success;" that his income as a reporter appears latterly to have
been some five guineas a week, of course in addition to expenses and
general breakages and damages; that there is independent testimony to
his exceptional quickness in reporting and transcribing, and to his
intelligence in condensing; that to an observer so keen and apt, the
experiences of his business journeys in those more picturesque and
eventful ante-railway days must have been invaluable; and, finally,
that his connection with journalism lasted far into 1836, and so did
not cease till some months after "Pickwick" had begun to add to the
world's store of merriment and laughter.
But I have not really reached "Pickwick" yet, nor anything like it.
That master-work was not also a first work. With all Dickens' genius,
he had to go through some apprenticeship in the writer's art before
coming upon the public as the most popular novelist of his time. Let
us go back for a little to the twilight before the full sunrise, nay,
to the earliest streak upon the greyness of night, to his first
original published composition. Dickens himself, and in his preface to
"Pickwick" too, has told us somewhat about that first paper of his;
how it was "dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and
trembling, into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court
in Fleet Street;" how it was accepted, and "appeared in all the glory
of print;" and how he was so filled with pleasure and pride on
purchasing a copy of the magazine in which it was published, that he
went into Westminster Hall to hide the tears of joy that would come
into his eyes. The paper thus joyfully wept over was originally
entitled "A Dinner at Poplar Walk," and now bears, among the "Sketches
by Boz," the name of "Mr. Minns and his Cousin"; the periodical in
which it was published was _The Old Monthly Magazine_, and the date of
publication was January 1, 1834.
"A Dinner at Poplar Walk" may be pronounced a very fairly told tale.
It is, no doubt, always easy to be wise after the event, in criticism
particularly easy, and when once a writer has achieved success, there
is but too little difficulty in showing that his earlier productions
were prophetic of his future greatness. At the risk, however, of
incurring a charge of this kind, I repeat that Dickens' first story is
well told, and that the editor of _The Old Monthly Magazine_ showed
due discernment in accepting it and encouraging his unknown
contributor to further efforts. Quite apart from the fact that the
author was only a young fellow of some two or three and twenty, both
this first story and the stories that followed it in _The Old Monthly
Magazine_, during 1834 and the early part of 1835, possessed qualities
of a very remarkable kind. So also did the humorous descriptive papers
shortly afterwards published in _The Evening Chronicle_, papers that,
with the stories, now compose the book known as "Sketches by Boz." Sir
Arthur Helps, speaking of Dickens, just after Dickens' death,[5] said,
"His powers of observation were almost unrivalled.... Indeed, I have
said to myself when I have been with him, he sees and observes nine
facts for any two that I see and observe." This particular faculty is,
I think, almost as clearly discernible in the "Sketches" as in the
author's later and greater works. London--its sins and sorrows, its
gaieties and amusements, its suburban gentilities, and central
squalor, the aspects of its streets, and the humours of the dingier
classes among its inhabitants,--all this had certainly never been so
seen and described before. The power of exact minute delineation
lavished upon the picture is admirable. Again, the dialogue in the
dramatic parts is natural, well-conducted, characteristic, and so used
as to help, not impede, the narrative. The speech, for instance, of
Mr. Bung, the broker's man, is a piece of very good Dickens. Of course
there is humour, and very excellent fooling some of it is; and
equally, of course, there is pathos, and some of that is not bad. Do I
mean at all that this earlier work stands on the same level of
excellence as the masterpieces of the writer? Clearly not. It were
absurd to expect the stripling, half-furtively coming forward, first
without a name at all, and then under the pseudonym of Boz,[6] to
write with the superb practised ease and mastery of the Charles
Dickens who penned "David Copperfield." By dint of doing blacksmith's
work, says the French proverb, one becomes a blacksmith. The artist,
like the handicraftsman, must learn his art. Much in the "Sketches"
betrays inexperience; or, perhaps, it would be more just to say,
comparative clumsiness of hand. The descriptions, graphic as they
undoubtedly are, lack for the most part the final imaginative touch;
the kind of inbreathing of life which afterwards gave such individual
charm to Dickens' word-painting. The humour is more obvious, less
delicate, turns too readily on the claim of the elderly spinster to be
considered young, and the desire of all spinsters to get married. The
pathos is often spoilt by over-emphasis and declamation. It lacks
simplicity.
For the "Sketches" published in _The Old Monthly Magazine_, Dickens
got nothing, beyond the pleasure of seeing himself in print. The
_Chronicle_ treated him somewhat more liberally, and, on his
application, increased his salary, giving him, in view of his original
contributions, seven guineas a week, instead of the five guineas which
he had been drawing as a reporter. Not a particularly brilliant
augmentation, perhaps, and one at which he must often have smiled in
after years, when his pen was dropping gold as well as ink. Still, the
addition to his income was substantial, and the son of John Dickens
must always, I imagine, have been in special need of money. Moreover
the circumstances of the next few months would render any increased
earnings doubly pleasant. For Dickens was shortly after this engaged
to be married to Miss Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of one of his
fellow-workers on the _Chronicle_. There had been, so Forster tells
us, a previous very shadowy love affair in his career,--an affair so
visionary indeed, and boyish, as scarcely to be worthy of mention in
this history, save for three facts: first, that his devotion,
dreamlike as it was, seems to have had love's highest practical effect
in inducing him to throw his whole strength into the study of
shorthand; secondly, that the lady of his love appears to have had
some resemblance to Dora, the child-wife of David Copperfield; and
thirdly, that he met her again long years afterwards, when time had
worked its changes, and the glamour of love had left his eyes, and
that to that meeting we owe the passages in "Little Dorrit" relating
to poor Flora. This, however, is a parenthesis. The engagement to Miss
Hogarth was neither shadowy nor unreal--an engagement only in
dreamland. Better for both, perhaps--who knows?--if it had been. Ah
me, if one could peer into the future, how many weddings there are at
which tears would be more appropriate than smiles and laughter! Would
Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth have foreborne to plight their
troth, one wonders, if they could have foreseen how slowly and surely
the coming years were to sunder their hearts and lives?--They were
married on the 2nd of April, 1836.
This date again leads me to a time subsequent to the publication of
the first number of "Pickwick," which had appeared a day or two
before;--and again I refrain from dealing with that great book. For
before I do so, I wish to pause a brief space to consider what manner
of man Charles Dickens was when he suddenly broke on the world in his
full popularity; and also what were the influences, for good and evil,
which his early career had exercised upon his character and intellect.
What manner of man he was? In outward aspect all accounts agree that
he was singularly, noticeably prepossessing--bright, animated, eager,
with energy and talent written in every line of his face. Such he was
when Forster saw him, on the occasion of their first meeting, when
Dickens was acting as spokesman for the insurgent reporters engaged on
the _Mirror_. So Carlyle, who met him at dinner shortly after this,
and was no flatterer, sketches him for us with a pen of unwonted
kindliness. "He is a fine little fellow--Boz, I think. Clear, blue,
intelligent eyes, eyebrows that he arches amazingly, large protrusive
rather loose mouth, a face of most extreme _mobility_, which he
shuttles about--eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all--in a very singular
manner while speaking. Surmount this with a loose coil of
common-coloured hair, and set it on a small compact figure, very
small, and dressed _à la_ D'Orsay rather than well--this is Pickwick.
For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems to
guess pretty well what he is and what others are."[7] Is not this a
graphic little picture, and characteristic even to the touch about
D'Orsay, the dandy French Count? For Dickens, like the young men of
the time--Disraeli, Bulwer, and the rest--was a great fop. We, of
these degenerate days, shall never see again that antique magnificence
in coloured velvet waistcoats.
But to return. Dickens, it need scarcely be said, had by this
[time][8] long out-lived the sickliness of his earlier years. The
hardships and trials of his childhood and boyhood had served but to
brace his young manhood, knitting the frame and strengthening the
nerves. Light and small, as Carlyle describes him, he was wiry and
very active, and could bear without injury an amount of intellectual
work and bodily fatigue that would have killed many men of seemingly
stronger build. And as what might have seemed unfortunate in his youth
had helped perchance to develop his physical powers, so had it
assisted to strengthen his character and foster his genius. I go back
here to the point from which I started. No doubt a weaker man would
have been crushed by such a youth. He would have been indolently
content to remain a warehouse drudge, would have listlessly fallen
into his father's ways about money, would have had no ambition beyond
his desk and salary as a lawyer's clerk, would have never cared to
piece together and supplement the scattered scraps of his education,
would have rested on his oars when he had once shot into the waters of
ordinary journalism. With Dickens it was not so. The alchemy of a fine
nature had transmuted his disadvantages into gold. To him the lessons
of such a childhood and boyhood as he had had, were energy,
self-reliance, a determination to overcome all obstacles, to fight the
battles of life, in all honour and rectitude, so as to win. From the
muddle of his father's affairs he had taken away a lesson of method,
order, and punctuality in business and other arrangements. "What is
worth doing at all is worth doing well," was not only one of his
favourite maxims--it was the rule of his life.
And for what was to be his life work, what better preparation could
there have been than that which he received? I am far from
recommending warehouses, squalid solitary lodgings, pawnshops,
debtors' prisons,--if such could now be found,--ill-conducted private
schools,--which probably could be found,--attorneys' offices, and the
hand-to-mouth of journalism, as constituting generally the highest
ideal of a liberal education. I am equally far from asserting that the
majority of men do not require more training of a purely scholastic
kind than fell to Dickens' lot. But Dickens was not a bookish man. His
genius did not lie in that direction. To have forced him unduly into
the world of books would have made him, doubtless, an average scholar,
but might have weakened his hold on life. Such a risk was certainly
not worth the running. Fate arranged it otherwise. What he was above
all was a student of the world of men, a passionately keen observer of
the ways of humanity. Men were to be his books, his special branch of
knowledge; and in order to graduate and take high honours in that
school, I repeat, he could have had no better training. Not only had
he passed through a range of most unwonted experiences, experiences
calculated to quicken to the uttermost his superb faculties of
observation and insight; but he had been placed in sympathetic
communication with a strange assortment of characters, lying quite out
of the usual ken of the literary classes. Knowledge and sympathy, the
seeing eye and the feeling heart--were these nothing to have
acquired?
That so abnormal an education can have been entirely without
drawbacks, it is no part of my purpose to affirm. Tossed, as one may
say, to sink or swim amid the waves of life, where those waves ran
turbid and brackish, Dickens had emerged strengthened, triumphant. But
that some little signs should not remain of the straining and effort
with which he had won the land, was scarcely to be expected. He
himself, in his more confidential communications with Forster, seems
to avow a consciousness that this was so; and Forster, though he
speaks guardedly, lovingly, appears to be of opinion that a certain
self-assertiveness and fierce intolerance of advice or control[9]
occasionally discernible in his friend, might justly be attributed to
the harsh influence of early struggles and privations. But what then?
That system of education has yet to be devised which shall mould this
poor human clay of ours into flawless shapes of use and beauty. A man
may be considered fortunate indeed, when his training has left in him
only what the French call the "defects of his virtues," that is, the
exaggeration of his good qualities till they turn into faults. Without
his immense strength of purpose and iron will, Dickens might never
have emerged from obscurity, and the world would have been very
distinctly the poorer. One cannot be very sorry that he possessed
these gifts in excess.
And now, at last, having slightly sketched the history of his earlier
years, and endeavoured to show, however perfectly, what influences had
gone to the formation of his character, I proceed to consider the book
that lifted him to fame and fortune. The years of apprenticeship are
over, and the master-workman brings forth his finished work in its
flower of perfection. Let us study "Pickwick."
FOOTNOTES:
[5] _Macmillan's Magazine_, July, 1870.
[6] It was the pet name of one of his brothers; that was why he took
it.
[7] Froude's "Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London."
[8] Transcriber's Note: The word "time" appears to be missing from the
original text.
[9] "I have heard Dickens described by those who knew him," says Mr.
Edmund Yates, in his "Recollections," "as aggressive, imperious, and
intolerant, and I can comprehend the accusation.... He was imperious
in the sense that his life was conducted on the _sic volo sic jubeo_
principle, and that everything gave way before him. The society in
which he mixed, the hours which he kept, the opinions which he held,
his likes and dislikes, his ideas of what should or should not be,
were all settled by himself, not merely for himself, but for all those
brought into connection with him, and it was never imagined they could
be called in question.... He had immense powers of will."