My aim is to give some account of Charles Dickens' personality, to think
of him as a man rather than a writer. For the facts of his life I have
to depend largely on Forster's biography, {199} which is doubtless
trustworthy, but the personality of the author does not tend to make it
attractive. In this way the little book by Miss M. Dickens is valuable:
it gives in simple and touching words an impression of the affection that
Dickens inspired.
She writes:--"No man was so inclined naturally to derive his happiness
from home affairs. He was full of the kind of interest in a house which
is commonly confined to women, and his care of and for us as wee children
did most certainly 'pass the love of women.' His was a tender and most
affectionate nature."
When he "was arranging and rehearsing his readings from _Dombey_, the
death of 'little Paul' caused him such real anguish, that he told us he
could only master his intense emotion by keeping the picture of Plorn,
{200a} well, strong, and hearty, steadily before his eyes." {200b}
He took the children every 24th December to a toy-shop in Holborn to
choose their own Christmas presents and any that they liked to give to
their friends.
"Although I believe we were often an hour or more in the shop before our
several tastes were satisfied, he never showed the least impatience, was
always interested, and as desirous as we, that we should choose exactly
what we liked best. . . ."
"My father insisted that my sister Katie and I should teach the polka
step to Mr Leech and himself, . . . often he would practise gravely in a
corner, without either partner or music." He once got out of bed having
waked with the fear he had forgotten it, and rehearsed to his own
whistling by the light of a rushlight.
Miss Dickens continues:--"There never existed, I think, in all the world,
a more thoroughly tidy or methodical creature than was my father. He was
tidy in every way--in his mind, in his handsome and graceful person, in
his work, in keeping his writing, table drawers, in his large
correspondence--in fact in his whole life.
"And then his punctuality! It was almost frightful to an unpunctual
mind. This again was another phase of his extreme tidiness; it was also
the outcome of his excessive thoughtfulness and consideration for
others."
Naturally enough Miss Dickens makes no reference to the unhappy
separation of Dickens and his wife, which took place in 1858. In the
article on Dickens in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, Carlyle is
quoted as saying:--"No crime and no misdemeanour specifiable on either
side; _unhappy_ together, these two, good many years past, and they at
length end it."
The father of Charles Dickens was not a successful personage. He was in
the Navy Pay Office; he was generally in financial trouble, and is indeed
supposed to be the original of Micawber. Like that personage he was
imprisoned for debt, and thus Charles Dickens learned early in life the
misery as well as the comedy of a debtor's prison, an experience of which
he made brilliant use in Little Dorrit and elsewhere.
Forster points out that David Copperfield, who was in many ways drawn
from his creator, had as a man a strong memory of his childhood; the most
durable of his early impressions were received at Chatham, and, as
Forster remarks, "the associations that were around him when he died were
those which at the outset of his life had affected him most strongly."
In an essay on travelling, Dickens {201} describes his meeting a "very
queer small boy" whom he takes in his carriage, and as they pass
Gads-hill Place (where Dickens afterwards lived and died) the boy begs
him to stop that they may look at the house. On being asked whether he
admired the house:--"Bless you, sir," said the very queer small boy,
"when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for
me to be brought to look at it--And . . . my father, seeing me so fond of
it, has often said to me, _If you were to be very persevering __and were
to work hard_, _you might some day come to live in it_. Though that's
impossible." Dickens was actually a queer small boy--very small, very
sickly, who was unable to join in the active games of his schoolfellows.
In 1855 we again meet with the house that was to be his home for the
remainder of his life. He wrote to Wills (Letters, i. 393):--"I saw, at
Gads Hill . . . a little freehold to be sold. The spot and the very
house are literally 'a dream of my childhood,' and I should like to look
at it before I go to Paris."
One of the many things in _David Copperfield_ which are autobiographical
is the account {202a} of his delight over his father's little collection
of books. "From that blessed little room, _Roderick Random_, _Peregrine
Pickle_, _Humphrey Clinker_, _Tom Jones_, _the Vicar of Wakefield_, _Don
Quixote_, _Gil Blas_, and _Robinson Crusoe_ {202b} came out, a glorious
host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of
something beyond that place and time--they, and the _Arabian Nights_, and
the _Tales of the Genii_--and did me no harm. . . . I have been Tom
Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. . . .
I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and travels . . . .
and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our
house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees: the
perfect realisation of Captain Somebody of the Royal British Navy."
After a time they moved to London, where they lived poorly in what was
then a wretched enough neighbourhood, Bayham St., Camden-town. There he
degenerated into a neglected domestic drudge, apparently quite without
education, a state of things he inwardly resented.
In reading George Colman's _Broad Grins_ he came upon a description of
Covent Garden, and "stole to the market by himself to compare it with the
book." He remembered Covent Garden in writing _Pickwick_. In chap.
xlvii., Job Trotter is sent in the evening to tell Perker that Dodson and
Fogg have taken Mrs Bardell in execution for her costs. Perker goes back
to his dinner guests, and poor Job has to spend the night in a vegetable
basket in Covent Garden.
Dickens the elder was arrested for debt and imprisoned in the Marshalsea,
and the description of borrowing Captain Porter's knife and fork, and his
thinking that he should not like to borrow that gentleman's comb, were
written before he ever thought of David Copperfield. {203} There is, of
course, much that is autobiographical in _David Copperfield_. "For, the
poor little lad, with good ability and a most sensitive nature, turned at
the age of ten into a 'labouring hind' in the service of Murdstone and
Grinby" . . . was indeed himself. Dickens described in an
autobiographical fragment the details of the mechanical work of covering
the pots of paste-blacking. It is interesting to find Dickens making use
in _Oliver Twist_ of the name Fagin, who was one of his fellow pasters.
Another boy was Poll Green, part of whose name appears in that of the
celebrated Mr Sweelepipe in _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Another of his
characters is connected with this period, for during his father's
imprisonment the boy lodged with an old lady subsequently immortalised as
Mrs Pipchin. Afterwards he remonstrated with his father with many tears,
and a lodging was found for him in Lant Street in the Borough as being
nearer to the prison, and here it was that Bob Sawyer lodged. The little
maid who waited on his father and mother in the Marshalsea was the model
for the Marchioness in the _Old Curiosity Shop_ (Forster, i., p. 39).
After a time his father came out of prison, and Charles the younger got
some schooling at Wellington House Academy, which supplied "some of the
lighter traits of Salem-house" in _David Copperfield_.
Dickens began life as a lawyer's clerk of a humble sort, and thus gained
the knowledge of which he made such admirable use in _Pickwick_ and
elsewhere.
But his energy in learning shorthand and becoming a professional reporter
at the age of nineteen was a much more important step. Forster quotes
Beard, "the friend he first made in that line when he entered the
gallery," as saying that "there never was such a reporter."
Dickens saw the last of the old coaching days, and he describes his
experience as a reporter--work which largely contributed to his literary
success:--
"I have had to charge for half a dozen breakdowns in half a dozen times
as many miles. Also for the damage of a great-coat from the drippings of
a blazing wax-candle, in writing through the smallest hours of the night
in a swiftly flying carriage and pair."
"I have been . . . belated on miry by-roads, towards the small hours,
forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheel-less carriage with exhausted
horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for publication,
to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr Black . . .
in the broadest of Scotch."
We see plainly enough whence came the description {205} of the chase
after Jingle and Miss Wardle. "'I see his head,' exclaimed the choleric
old man, 'Damme, I see his head. . . ' The countenance of Mr Jingle,
completely coated with mud thrown up by the wheels, was plainly
discernible at the window of his chaise, and the motion of his arm, which
he was waving violently towards the postillions, denoted that he was
encouraging them to increased exertion."
"I never did feel such a jolting in my life," said poor Mr Pickwick; but
it was under such conditions that Dickens worked through the nights
transcribing his shorthand notes.
While he was still a reporter his career as an author began.
In a letter to Wilkie Collins, 6th June 1856, Dickens relates that he
began "to write fugitive pieces for the old _Monthly Magazine_" when he
was in "the gallery" for the _Mirror of Parliament_. His _op. 1_ was
_Mrs Joseph Porter over the Way_; and when it appeared in the glory of
print "I walked down," he wrote, "to Westminster Hall and turned into it
for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that
they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen."
This was followed by several other articles in the _Monthly Magazine_,
the last in February 1835 was the first to bear the immortal signature of
Boz, {206} and in 1836 the series of _Sketches by Boz_ was published.
In the same year, 1836, a notice appeared in the _Times_ of 26th March
"that on the 31st would be published the first shilling number of the
_Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_." The original plan had been to
make Pickwick an essentially sporting book, but to this Dickens demurred
on account of his ignorance of such matters, and poor Mr Winkle remains
as a sacrifice to the idea.
It is curious how important the illustrations of his books seemed to
Dickens; there are constant references to the subject in his _Letters_,
nor does he seem to have been generally satisfied.
Illustrations in fiction are in my judgment only tolerable when a book is
read for the first time in an illustrated edition, _e.g._ Du Maurier's
_Trilby_. But when a reader has formed his own idea of a character,
those of the artist jar on preconceived impressions. Seymour was
selected to illustrate _Pickwick_, but he committed suicide between the
appearance of the first and second numbers; then a single number was
illustrated by Mr Buss; and finally Hablot Browne was selected, and he
was, in Forster's words, "not unworthily associated with the masterpieces
of Dickens' genius."
Personally I feel nothing but astonishment that the illustrations should
have been liked by anybody. Dickens was, however, saved from a worse
fate--that of being illustrated by Thackeray, who, in speaking of Dickens
at a Royal Academy dinner, said, "I recollect walking up to his chambers
in Furnival's Inn with two or three drawings in my hand, which strange to
say, he did not find suitable."
Forster's chapter on the writing of _Pickwick_ contains some personal
recollections of the author which may find a place here. "Very different
was his face in those days, _circa_ 1837, from that which photography has
made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness first
attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression which made
you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He had a
capital forehead . . . eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and
running over with humour and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth
strongly marked with sensibility." He speaks, too, of the beardless face
and rich brown hair in "most luxuriant abundance." What remained to the
last was the expression of "keenness and practical power," and the
"eager, restless, energetic outlook" which suggested a man of action
rather than a writer of books. Leigh Hunt said of it, "What a face . . .
to meet in a drawing-room! . . . It had the life and soul in it of fifty
human beings."
A touching proof of Dickens' sensibility is given by the fact that the
writing of _Pickwick_ was interrupted for two months by the death of his
wife's younger sister Mary.
The _Quarterly Review_, Oct. 1837, referring to the fact that _Pickwick_
and _Oliver Twist_ were appearing at the same time, said, "Indications
are not wanting that the particular vein of humour which has hitherto
yielded so much attractive metal, is worked out. . . . The fact is, Mr
Dickens writes too often and too fast. . . . If he persists much longer
in this course it requires no gift of prophecy to foretell his fate--he
has risen like a rocket, and he will come down like the stick"--a
singularly incorrect prediction.
The success of _Pickwick_ {208} was enormous, but the profits reaped by
the author can hardly share in that adjective. There was no agreement
about its publication, except a verbal one. For each number Dickens was
to receive fifteen guineas, and the publishers paid him at once for the
first two numbers "as he required the money to go and get married with."
Besides these payments he seems at the time to have received only 2500
pounds. In 1839 Dickens wrote to Forster of "the immense profits which
_Oliver_ has realised to its publisher, and is still realising," and "the
paltry, wretched sum it brought to me." . . .
His friends made an important part of Dickens' life. One of the earliest
was Macready, {209} the actor, to whom he first wrote apparently in 1837,
inviting him to a Pickwick dinner. He here addresses him as "My dear
Sir," but in 1838 he becomes "My dear Macready."
In that year Dickens wrote a farce for Macready, which, however, had to
be withdrawn, and its author wrote characteristically, "Believe me that I
have no other feeling of disappointment . . . but that arising from the
not having been able to be of use to you." Macready remained a close
friend as long as he lived, and Dickens does not seem to have suffered
from the churlishness referred to in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_.
In 1851 Macready appeared on the stage for the last time in public.
Dickens wrote (27th Feb. 1851):--"No light portion of my life arose
before me when the quiet vision to which I am beholden, in I don't know
how great a degree, or for how much--who does?--faded so nobly from my
bodily eyes last night."
There must have been a certain innocence in Macready or the following
letter (May 24, 1851) would not have been appropriate: "Always go into
some respectable shop or apply to a policeman. You will know him by his
being dressed in blue, with very dull silver buttons, and by the top of
his hat being made of sticking plaster. . . . I would recommend you to
see X at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Anybody will show it to you. It
is near the Strand, and you may know it by seeing no company whatever at
any of the doors. Cab fares are eighteen-pence a mile. A mile London
measure is half a Dorsetshire mile, recollect. Porter is two pence per
pint. . . . The Zoological Gardens are in the Regent's Park and the
price of admission is one shilling."
Another artist who became a close friend of Dickens was Stanfield, of
whom we first hear as making one of a trip to Cornwall in 1842. His
friendship with Cattermole, the painter, began in 1839 and suffered no
diminution. His early letters to this correspondent are on the
illustrations for the _Old Curiosity Shop_, where we find minute
instruction about the drawing of Mrs Jarley's Wax Work cart and other
detailed points.
Dickens speaks of being nearly dead with grief at the loss of little
Nell. He says he looks at Cattermole's beautiful illustrations with a
pleasure he cannot describe in words.
He seems, too, to have been in 1840 on familiar terms with Daniel
Maclise. Only two letters to this friend exist, whom Miss Dickens
describes as a "much-loved friend and most intimate companion" of her
father.
In January 1842 Dickens started for America, and on 31st January he
writes--"I can give you no conception of my welcome here. There never
was a king or emperor upon the earth so cheered and followed by crowds."
Reference to Miss Martineau meets with showers of abuse. "She told us of
some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults."
"In respect of not being left alone, and of being horribly disgusted by
tobacco-chewing and tobacco spittle, I have suffered considerably" (i.,
p. 67).
"In every town where we stay, though it be only for a day, we hold a
regular levee or drawing-room, where I shake hands on an average with
five or six hundred people. . . Think of two hours of this every day,
and the people coming by hundreds, all fresh, and piping hot, and full of
questions, when we are literally exhausted and can hardly stand."
One of the few entirely satisfactory occurrences was the gift of a dog
called Boz, who was re-named Mr Snittle Timbery after a character in
_Nicholas Nickleby_. He lived to be very old and went everywhere with
his master (i., p. 70, _note_).
At Niagara he got some peace, which was much needed because of "the
incessant persecutions of the people, by land and water, on stage-coach,
railway car, and steamer, which exceeds anything you can picture to
yourself by the utmost stretch of your imagination" (i., p. 71).
And on the copyright scandal he writes in the same letter: "Is it not a
horrible thing that scoundrel book-sellers should grow rich here from
publishing books, the authors of which do not reap one farthing from
their issue by scores of thousands; and that every vile blackguard, and
detestable newspaper, so filthy and bestial that no honest man would
admit one into his house for a scullery door-mat, should be able to
publish these same writings, side by side, cheek by jowl, with the
coarsest and most obscene companions?" Not that he had much hope of
reform, but he could not help crying, "_Stop_, _thief_!"
On his return he wrote to Longman: "I have fought the fight across the
Atlantic with the utmost energy I could command; have never been turned
aside by any consideration for an instant; am fresher for the fray than
ever; will battle it to death, and die game to the last." He was soon
entangled in dinners; of his trials at a hospital dinner he wrote of
listening to speeches and sentiments such "as any moderately intelligent
dustman" would have blushed to have thought of. "Sleek, slobbering,
bow-paunched, over-fed, apoplectic, snorting cattle, and the auditory
leaping up in their delight."
In November 1843, he speaks of an opera he did in "damnable good nature
for Hullah," who wrote "some very pretty music to it." He also did a
farce "as a sort of practical joke." "It was funny--adapted from one of
the published sketches called the 'Great Winglebury Duel,' and was
published by Chapman and Hall." He devoutly wished these productions
forgotten.
In a letter to Macready of 3rd January 1844, he speaks of sending him a
little book which had been published 17th December 1843, and describes it
as the greatest success, "I think, I have ever achieved." It seems to be
the _Christmas Carol_, as on 4th January 1844 he wrote to Leman Blanchard
in regard to a review of the _Carol_. "I _must_ thank you because you
have filled my heart up to the brim, and it is running over." In the
summer of 1844 he started for a holiday abroad, but in November he
travelled back to London to see _The Chimes_ through the press, of which
he wrote, 5th November 1844:--
"I believe I have . . . knocked the _Carol_ out of the field. It will
make a great uproar, I have no doubt." He adds (i., p. 145): "If you had
seen Macready, last night, undisguisedly sobbing and crying on the sofa
as I read _The Chimes_, you would have felt, as I did, what a thing it is
to have power."
In 1845 we hear of private theatricals for the first time, when Dickens
writes to Cattermole about taking a part in _Every Man in his Humour_.
On a similar occasion in 1850 a master carpenter from one of the theatres
said, "Ah, sir, it's a universal observation in the profession, sir, that
it was a great loss to the public when you took to writing books."
In 1847 we hear of more acting, _Every Man in his Humour_ being given
again for the benefit of Leigh Hunt, with the help of George Cruickshank,
George Henry Lewes, and Augustus Egg, as new members of the Company (i.,
p. 177).
In 1846 he gave up all connection with the _Daily News_, which he had
rashly agreed to edit. He went to Switzerland, taking a villa
(Rosemount) there, from May till November. Here he wrote _The Battle of
Life_ and began _Dombey_. It was here that he made friends of M. de
Cerjat, Mr Haldimand, and of Hon. Richard and Mrs Watson of Rockingham
Castle, to whom he afterwards dedicated his favourite book, _David
Copperfield_.
It was at this time, too, that was founded his friendship with W. H.
Wills, who became an assistant in editing _All the Year Round_, and in
other ways.
In March 1846 he wrote to Wills:--"Tell Powell . . . that he needn't
'deal with' the American notices of the _Cricket_. I never read one word
of their abuse, and I should think it base to read their praises."
He wrote, 27th November 1846, to Mr Watson (from Paris):--"We are lodged
at last in the most preposterous house in the world. . . . The bedrooms
are like opera-boxes. The dining-rooms, stair-cases, and passages, quite
inexplicable. . . . There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room. But
it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints of a
telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery."
Later impressions of Paris (1855-56) may find a place here. "A man who
brought some little vases home last night said, 'On connait bien en
France, que Monsieur Dick-in prend sa position sur la dignite de la
litterature. Ah! c'est grande chose! Et ces caracteres sont si
spirituellement tournees! Cette Madame Tojare (Todgers), ah! qu'elle est
drole et precisement comme une dame que je connais a Calais.'"
In the winter of 1856 he wrote:--"I met Madame Georges Sands the other
day at a dinner got up by Madame Viardot. . . . The human mind cannot
conceive anyone more astonishing opposed to all my preconceptions. If I
had been shown her in a state of repose, and asked what I thought her to
be, I should have said: 'The Queen's monthly nurse.' _Au reste_, she has
nothing of the _bas bleu_ about her, and is very quiet and agreeable."
On 20th May 1855, he wrote to Stanfield about the scenery of a play by
Wilkie Collins which was in preparation.
"There is only one scene in the piece, and that, my tarry lad, is the
inside of a light-house. Will you come and paint it for us one night,
and we'll all turn to and help." And again to the same friend (22nd May
1855): "The great ambition of my life will be achieved at last, in the
wearing of a pair of very coarse petticoat trousers."
He wrote to Stanfield about the performance--"Lemon and I did every
conceivable absurdity, I think, in the farce; and they never left off
laughing. . . . Then Scotch reels till 5 A.M."
Dickens could appreciate other actors, and he writes in 1862 of Fechter's
Hamlet as a "performance of extraordinary merit; by far the most
coherent, consistent, and intelligible Hamlet I ever saw."
On the same subject he wrote to Macready: "Fechter doing wonders over the
way here, with a picturesque French drama. Miss Kate Terry, in a small
part in it, perfectly charming. . . . She has a tender love-scene in
this piece, which is a really beautiful and artistic thing. . . . I told
Fechter: 'That this is the very best piece of womanly tenderness I have
ever seen on the stage, and you'll find that no audience can miss it.'"
{216}
_Dombey_ was published early in 1848, and during the whole of 1849 and
the summer and autumn of 1850 he was writing _David Copperfield_. In Sir
Walter Raleigh's _Shakespeare_, 1907, p. 31, it is suggested that "if the
father of Charles Dickens lent his likeness to Mr Micawber, it is at
least possible that some not unkindly memories of the paternal advice of
John Shakespeare have been preserved for us in the sage maxims of
Polonius."
In March 1852 the first number of _Bleak House_ appeared, and he wrote to
Mary Boyle, 22nd July 1852:--"I am not quite sure that I ever did like,
or ever shall like, anything quite so well as _Copperfield_. But I
foresee, I think, some very good things in _Bleak House_." In November
he records that the sale is half as large again as _Copperfield_. In the
winter of 1850 he showed his appreciation of Mrs Gaskell by writing to
her (31st January 1850): "I do honestly know that there is no living
English writer whose aid I would desire to enlist in preference to the
authoress of _Mary Barton_ (a book that most profoundly affected and
impressed me)." . . . .
In September 1857, he writes to Miss Hogarth from Allonby, telling her of
the homage he receives in the North--station-masters help him to alight,
deputations await him at hotels, crowds see him off. The landlady at
Allonby was immensely fat, and her husband said that once on a time he
could tuck his arm round her waist. "'And can't you do it now,' I said,
'you insensible dog? Look at me! Here's a picture!' Accordingly, I got
round as much of her as I could; and this gallant action was the most
successful I have ever performed, on the whole."
In 1853 he took the Chateau des Moulineaux at Boulogne, whence he wrote
asking a friend to visit him. He described his chateau:--"Excellent
light wines on the premises, French cookery, millions of roses, two cows
(for milk punch), vegetables cut for the pot, and handed in at the
kitchen window; five summer-houses, fifteen fountains (with no water in
'em), and thirty-seven clocks (keeping, as I conceive, Australian time)."
In September of the same year (1853) he writes to Walter Savage
Landor:--"I may now write to thank you for the happiness you have given
me by honouring my name with such generous mention on (? in) such a noble
place, in your great book. . . . Believe me, I receive the dedication
like a great dignity, the worth of which I hope I thoroughly know."
In this year, too, he gave his first public readings, which took place at
Birmingham, and well would it have been for him had he never embarked on
this exhausting occupation. He describes his reading:--"A vast
intelligent assemblage, and the success was most wonderful and
prodigious--perfectly overwhelming and astounding altogether." No wonder
that he was tempted to continue such a triumph! A passage in a letter to
Cerjat shows how celebrated he already was:--"He embarked at Calais for
Dover, and the 'Fact of distinguished Author's being abroad, was
telegraphed to Dover; thereupon authorities of Dover Railway detained
train to London for distinguished author's arrival, rather to the
exasperation of British public.'"
In November 1854 he speaks of being "used up" after writing _Hard Times_.
He had intended to take a long rest, "when the idea [of that book] laid
hold of me by the throat, in a very violent manner, and because the
compression and close condensation necessary for that disjointed form of
publication gave me perpetual trouble. But I really was tired, which is
a result so very incomprehensible that I can't forget it."
Dickens took pains with his style even in his letters, and it gives one a
shock to find him writing that Adelaide Proctor "_don't_ live at the
place to which her letters are addressed," where I should write
"doesn't."
In 1855 he began _Little Dorrit_ in Paris, a book he originally
christened _Nobody's Fault_, and the change was certainly a wise one.
In this year we find him assisting at the birth of an admirable
book:--"Sydney Smith's daughter {219} has privately printed the life of
her father with selections from his letters, which has great merit and
often presents him exactly as he used to be. I have strongly urged her
to publish it" (i., p. 390).
In planning his public readings about this time, he writes (29th January
1855, in regard to _David Copperfield_):--"I never can approach the book
with perfect composure (it had such perfect possession of me when I wrote
it)."
One of the many instances of his scrupulous honesty is his refusal of an
invitation to a Lord Mayor's dinner. "I do not think it consistent with
my respect for myself, or for the art I profess, to blow hot and cold in
the same breath; and to laugh at an institution in print, and accept the
hospitality of its representative while the ink is staring us all in the
face."
In returning from reading at Sheffield, "a tremendous success," he
describes his experiences: "At two or three o'clock in the morning I
stopped at Peterboro' again, and thought of you all disconsolately. The
lady in the refreshment-room was very hard upon me, harder even than
those fair enslavers usually are. She gave me a cup of tea, as if I were
a hyena and she my cruel keeper with a strong dislike to me. I mingled
my tears with it, and had a petrified bun of enormous antiquity in
miserable meekness."
The Court of Chancery finds a place in more than one of his books. His
strong feeling in regard to it is shown in the following extract from a
letter to Wills: "It has become (through the vile dealing with those
courts and the vermin they have called into existence) a positive precept
of experience, that a man had better endure a great wrong than go, or
suffer himself to be taken, into Chancery, with the dream of setting it
right" (7th August 1856).
He wrote to Mrs Winter: "A necessity is upon me . . . of wandering about
in my old wild way, to think. I could no more resist this on Sunday or
yesterday than a man can dispense with food. . . . Whoever is devoted to
an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and find his
recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see
you, but I can't help it; I must go my way whether or no" (3rd April
1855).
In September 1855 he was at Folkestone, whence he wrote to Mrs Watson
about _Little Dorrit_, to which he at the time intended to give the name
_Nobody's Fault_: "The new story is everywhere--heaving in the sea,
flying with the clouds, blowing in the wind. . . . I settle to nothing,
and wonder (in the old way) at my own incomprehensibility" (16th
September 1855).
In 1857 he came into possession of Gad's Hill, and thus fulfilled the
dream of his childhood.
There are many instances of his kindness to would-be authors. In a
letter to a lady he says that he cannot tell her with what reluctance he
gives an opinion against her story, in spite of much that is good in it.
And about an article by another lady he writes to F. Stone (who
approached Dickens on her behalf). He says: "These Notes are destroyed
by too much smartness. For the love of God don't condescend! Don't
assume the attitude of saying, 'See how clever I am, and what fun
everybody else is.'"
In a letter to Miss Hogarth from Dublin he wrote: "The success at Belfast
has been equal to the success here. Enormous! . . . and the personal
affection there was something overwhelming. . . . I have never seen men
go in to cry undisguisedly as they did at that reading yesterday
afternoon. They made no attempt whatever to hide it, and certainly cried
more than the women. As to the 'Boots' [at the Holly Tree Inn] at night,
and 'Mrs Gamp' too, it was just one roar with me and them, for they made
me laugh so that sometimes _I could not_ compose my face to go on."
With regard to the crowds at his readings he wrote to Miss Dickens:
"Arthur {221} told you, I suppose, that he had his shirt-front and
waistcoat torn off last night. He was perfectly enraptured in
consequence. Our men got so knocked about that he gave them five
shillings apiece on the spot. John passed several minutes upside against
a wall, with his head among the people's boots."
We hear of his readings in a letter to John Forster: "I cannot tell you
what the demonstrations of personal regard and respect are; how the
densest and most uncomfortably packed crowd will be hushed in an instant
when I show my face."
And again to the same friend:--"At Aberdeen we were crammed to the street
twice every day. . . And at the end of _Dombey_ yesterday afternoon at
Perth, in the cold light of day, they all got up . . . and thundered and
waved their hats with that astonishing heartiness and fondness for me . . .
that they took me completely off my legs."
Elsewhere he speaks of being overwhelmed with proposals to read in
America, and adds, "Will never go, unless a small fortune be first paid
down in money on this side of the Atlantic."
In the autumn he writes to Regnier, enclosing proofs of _A Tale of Two
Cities_: "I want you to read it for two reasons. Firstly, because I hope
it is the best story I have written. Secondly, because it treats of a
very remarkable time in France; and I should very much like to know what
you think of its being dramatised for a French theatre. . . . The story
is an extraordinary success here" (15th Oct. 1859).
He felt strongly about public executions. Forster describes how Dickens
saw the hanging of the Mannings, and says that "with the letter which
Dickens wrote next day to the _Times_ descriptive of what we had
witnessed on that memorable morning, there began an active agitation
against public executions," which was finally successful. But in 1860
the evil still existed; he wrote, 4th September 1860, to W. H. Wills:
"Coming here from the station this morning, I met, coming from the
execution of the Wentworth murderer, such a tide of ruffians as never
could have flowed from any point but the gallows. Without any figure of
speech it turned one white and sick to behold them" (4th Sept. 1860).
In December he wrote:--"Pray read _Great Expectations_. I think it is
very droll. It is a very great success, and seems universally liked--I
suppose because it opens funnily, and with an interest too."
In July 1861 he writes to Forster, telling him that he has altered the
end of _Great Expectations_. This was done at the suggestion of Bulwer
Lytton, who objected to Pip being left "a solitary man." The curious may
read the original ending in Forster's _Life_, vol. iv., p. 336.
We meet many instances of Dickens' sensitiveness to the character of his
audience. Thus he writes:--"I could have done perfectly if the audience
had been bright, but they were an intent and staring audience."
"An excellent house to-night, and an audience positively perfect . . . an
intelligent and delightful response in them, like the touch of a
beautiful instrument."
He showed presence of mind, too, on an occasion. "The gas batten came
down and it looked as if the room were falling. A lady in front row of
stalls screamed and ran out wildly. He addressed her laughing, and
saying 'no danger,' and she sat down to a thunder of applause."
I like his references to his children. He writes: "Why a boy of that age
should seem to have on at all times a hundred and fifty pair of
double-soled boots, and be always jumping a bottom stair with the whole
hundred and fifty, I don't know."
"Will you give my small Admiral, on his personal application, one
sovereign? I have told him to come to you for that recognition of his
meritorious services."
And to Miss Boyle: "The little Admiral has gone to visit America in the
_Orlando_ . . . he went away much gamer than any giant, attented by a
chest in which he could easily have stowed himself and a wife and family
of his own proportions" (28th Dec. 1861).
Dogs were to Dickens almost as dear as children. In 1863 he writes to
Percy Fitzgerald like a flattered parent: "I have been most heartily
gratified by the perusal of your article on my dogs. It has given me an
amount and a kind of pleasure very unusual, and for which I thank you
earnestly. . . . I should be delighted to see you here. . . . I and my
two latest dogs, a St Bernard and a bloodhound, would be charmed with
your company."
At Boulogne, in 1856, he received a present of "the nicest of little
dogs," which its master, a cobbler, could not afford to pay tax for. The
dog escaped and got killed, and "I must lie to him--the cobbler--for
life, and say that the dog is fat and happy" (ii., p. 58).
In the winter of 1862 he was reading at Cheltenham. Macready was in the
audience, and Dickens writes: "I found him quite unable to speak, and
able to do nothing but square his dear old jaw all on one side, and roll
his eyes (half closed), like Jackson's picture of him." Macready said:
"I swear to heaven that, as a piece of passion and
playfulness--er--indescribably mixed up together, it does--er--no,
really, Dickens! amaze me as profoundly as it moves me. . . . How is it
got at--er--how is it done--er--how one man can--well? It lays me on
my--er--back, and it is of no use talking about it!" (ii., p. 196).
Dickens seems to have been thought to have done a wrong to Jews in
general by his character Fagin in _Oliver Twist_. He wrote, 10th July
1863, to a Jewish lady that it "unfortunately was true of the time to
which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was
a Jew." The real reply to her letter was Riah in _Our Mutual Friend_.
Of that book he says: "It is a combination of drollery with romance,
which requires a great deal of pains and a perfect throwing away of
points that might be amplified, but I hope it is _very good_" (ii., p.
225).
In speaking of his public readings he refers to wearing a flower given
him. This doubtless explains why, when he read at Cambridge, he wore
first a red rose and then a white one in his buttonhole, which to my
undergraduate mind seemed "dandiacal." Of this occasion he wrote: "The
reception at Cambridge last night was something to be proud of in such a
place. The colleges mustered in full force from the biggest guns to the
smallest, and went far beyond even Manchester in the roars of welcome and
the rounds of cheers. . . . The place was crammed, and the success the
most brilliant I have ever seen" (ii., p. 284).
In 1867 we again come across a reference to the exhaustion caused by his
public readings. "On Friday night I quite astonished myself; but I was
taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa at the hall for
half an hour."
In spite of protestations he went to America, and in regard to his visit
he wrote in 1867: "I do not expect as much money as the calculators
estimate, but I cannot set the hope of a large sum of money aside."
And from Boston he wrote to his daughter: "At the New York barriers,
where the tickets are on sale, . . . speculators went up and down
offering twenty dollars for anybody's place. The money was in no case
accepted" (ii., p. 310).
And again: "At nine o'clock this morning there were two thousand people
in waiting, and they had begun to assemble in the bitter cold as early as
two o'clock" (ii., p. 311).
And to Miss Hogarth, 16th December 1867, N.Y.:--"Dolby continues to be
the most unpopular man in America (mainly because he can't get four
thousand people into a room that holds two thousand), and is reviled in
print daily."
Dickens returned from America in April 1868, but soon made another visit.
He wrote to Wilkie Collins from Boston:--"Being in Boston . . . I took it
into my head to go over the medical school, and survey the holes and
corners in which that extraordinary murder was done by Webster" (12th
Jan. 1868).
This must be the man who (as I was told in the U.S.) said to his
daughters, "What should you say if I were the murderer?" They were
looking at the notice of a reward for the detection of the murderer. I
think the body was burnt by Webster in his laboratory.
In regard to his readings, he wrote: "It was but this last year that I
set to and learned every word of my readings; and from ten years ago to
last night, I have never read to an audience but I have watched for an
opportunity of striking out something better somewhere" (11th Feb. 1868).
He was evidently overstrained and was only kept going by stimulants. He
wrote to Miss Dickens (29th March 1868): "I have coughed from two or
three in the morning until five or six, and have been absolutely
sleepless. I have had no appetite besides, and no taste."
And again, to the same correspondent, he writes that he has established
this system:--"At seven in the morning (in bed) a tumbler of new cream
and two tablespoonfuls of rum. At twelve, a sherry cobbler and a
biscuit. At three (dinner-time) a pint of champagne. At five minutes to
eight, an egg beaten up in a glass of sherry. Between the parts, the
strongest beef-tea that can be made, drunk hot. At quarter past ten,
soup, and anything to drink that I can fancy. . . . Dolby is as tender
as a woman and as watchful as a doctor" (2nd April 1868).
On the return voyage he was asked to read, and "I respectfully replied
that sooner than do it, I would assault the captain, and be put in
irons."
When he arrived at home the two Newfoundland dogs behaved exactly as
usual: this may remind us of another C.D. My father used to tell us how,
after his five years' voyage in the _Beagle_, he went into the yard at
his Shrewsbury home and whistled in a particular way, and the dog came
for a walk as if he had done the same thing the day before. Two of
Dickens' dogs were, however, greatly excited: the faithful Mrs Bouncer
being one of them.
A letter to Cerjat (1868) gives an echo from the great railway accident
in which Dickens had so lucky an escape:--
"My escape in the Staplehurst accident of three years ago is not to be
obliterated from my nervous system. To this hour I have sudden vague
rushes of terror, even when riding {228} in a hansom cab, which are
perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable. I used to make nothing
of driving a pair of horses habitually through the most crowded parts of
London. I cannot now drive, with comfort myself, on the country roads
here; and I doubt if I could ride at all in the saddle."
In 1866 he consulted Dr Beard about symptoms of grave significance. And
in 1869 Beard went down to Preston and put a stop to a projected reading,
and ruled, with the approval of Sir Thomas Watson, that anything like a
reading tour must be finally stopped.
In January and March 1870, he was working at _Edwin Drood_, his
unfinished book. He gave some farewell readings, and his last public
appearance was at the Royal Academy dinner, where he spoke of Maclise.
His daughter has given a touching account of his death. He was at Gad's
Hill on 30th May 1870 at work over _Edwin Drood_, but there was "an
appearance of fatigue and weariness about him very unlike his usual air
of fresh activity."
On 8th June 1870 he owned to being very ill. He became incoherent, and
being advised to lie down, he said indistinctly, "Yes, on the ground,"
and these were his last words. In the evening of 9th June, he shuddered,
gave one sigh, a tear rolled down his face, and he died.
Dickens had wished to be buried in the little churchyard of Shorne in
Kent; but the authorities of Rochester Cathedral asked that he might be
buried there. Finally, Dean Stanley intervened and he was buried on 14th
June in Westminster Abbey. His daughter says that every year on the
ninth of June flowers are strewn by "unknown hands on that spot so sacred
to us, and to all who knew and loved him."