About the year 1806 he was presented to the living of Foston le Clay in Yorkshire through Lord Holland’s interest. He had to build a parsonage “without experience or money,” and to make a journey with family and furniture “into the heart of Yorkshire—a process, in the year 1808, as difficult as a journey to the back settlements of America now.” He had, moreover, to turn farmer, since the living consisted of 300 acres of land and no tithe. The local Squire was shy of him as a Jacobin, but finally they became fast friends. He used to “bring the papers, that I might explain the difficult words to him; actually discovered that I had made a joke, laughed till I thought he would have died of convulsions, and ended by inviting me to see his dogs.”
He was advised to employ oxen on his farm, which, however, turned out a failure; but their names deserve remembrance, for they were christened Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl. He looked after his men through a telescope, and gave orders with a speaking-trumpet. He records “that a man-servant was too expensive” for him, so “I caught up a little garden-girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler.” She became “the best butler in the county.” Bunch is described as pacing up anddown before her master’s door, saying, “Oh, ma’am, I can’t get no peace of mind till I’ve got master shaved.” This meant “making ready for him with a large painter’s brush, a thick lather in a huge wooden bowl.” A visitor at Foston records:—“Mr Smith suddenly said to Bunch, who was passing, ‘Bunch, do you like roast duck or boiled chicken?’ Bunch had probably never tasted either the one or the other in her life, but answered, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Roast duck, please, sir,’ and disappeared. I laughed. ‘You may laugh,’ said he, ‘but you have no idea of the labour it has cost me to give her that decision of character.’”
Poor Bunch used to be told to repeat her crimes, and gravely recited, “Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle-fly-catching, and curtsey-bobbing.” The blue-bottle crime was standing with her mouth open and not attending. Curtsey-bobbing was “Curtseying to the centre of the earth, please, sir.”
One little fact is worth recording. In 1825 a meeting of clergy was held in Yorkshire to petition Parliament against the emancipation of the Catholics. Sydney’s was the only dissentient voice. No doubt in those days it was hard for a Liberal parson to get preferment, and George III. was right in his prophecy that Sydney would never be a bishop. But in January 1828 the Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, bestowed on Sydney a stall then vacant at Bristol. This was not of much importance from a pecuniary point of view, but it broke the “spell which hadhitherto kept him down in his profession.”[183]In the autumn of that year he preached toleration to the Mayor and Corporation of Bristol, the “most Protestant civic body in England.” About the same time he exchanged his living in Yorkshire for that of Combe Florey near Taunton.
In 1831 (i., p. 290) Lord Grey appointed him to a Prebendal Stall at St Paul’s in exchange for the inferior one at Bristol. With regard to ecclesiastical preferment, he wrote to Lady Holland (8th October 1808): You “may choose to make me a bishop, and if you do I . . . shall never do you discredit, for I believe it is out of the power of lawn and velvet, and the crisp hair of dead men fashioned into a wig, to make me a dishonest man; but if you do not, I am perfectly content, and shall be ever grateful to the last hour of my life to you and to Lord Holland.” And to Lady Mary Bennett, July 1820, p. 200: “Lord Liverpool’s messenger mistook the way, and instead of bringing the mitre to me, took it to my next-door neighbour, Dr Carey, who very fraudulently accepted it. Lord Liverpool is extremely angry, and I am to have the next!”
And to Murray: “I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment, if he stays in long enough; but the upper parsons live vindictively. The Bishop of --- has the rancour to recover after three paralytic strokes, and the Dean of --- to be vigorous ateighty-two. And yet these are men who are called Christians!”
In the following letter to Lord John Russell (3rd April 1837, p. 399) he is for once in a way egoistic:—
“I defy X to quote a single passage in my writing contrary to the doctrines of the Church of England; for I have always avoided speculative, and preached practical, religion. I defy him to mention a single action in my life which he can call immoral. . . . I am distinguished as a preacher, and sedulous as a parochial clergyman. His real charge is, that I am a high-spirited, honest, uncompromising man, whom all the bench of bishops could not turn, and who would set them all at defiance upon great and vital questions. . . . I am thoroughly sincere in saying I would not take any bishopric whatever, and to this I pledge my honour and character as a gentleman.”
It came to Sydney’s turn to appoint to the valuable living of Edmonton: he was allowed to take it himself, but he gave it to the son of the late parson, Tate. Sydney said to Tate junior, that by an odd coincidence the new vicar was called Tate, and by a more singular chance Thomas Tate, “in short . . . you are vicar of Edmonton.” They all burst into tears, and “I wept and groaned for a long time. Then I rose, and said I thought it was very likely to end in their keeping a buggy, at which we all laughed as violently. . . . The charitable physician wept too” (i., p. 343). He wrote to:—
Mrs Grote, 3rd Jan.1844.—“You have seenmore than enough of my giving the living of Edmonton to a curate. The first thing the unscriptural curate does, is to turn out his fellow curate, the son of him who was vicar before his father. . . . The Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and I have in vain expostulated; he perseveres in his harshness and cruelty.”
Towards the end of 1843 he made his well-known attack on the scandal of the State of Pennsylvania not paying interest to English investors—he being one. He declares them to be “men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light” (i., p. 352).
Sydney Smith died 22nd February 1845 from disease of the heart. He was buried at Kensal Green “as privately as possible.”
Macaulay[185]wrote in 1847 to Mrs Sydney: “He is universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift.” Mrs Sydney adds in a note that there is not a line in his writing “unfit for the eye of a woman,” a great contrast to Swift.
In 1807–8 appeared anonymously Sydney Smith’sLetters on the Subject of the Catholics to my brother Abraham who lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley.
Abraham is said to be a “kind of holy vegetable” and to be a type of people who were exclaiming:—“For God’s sake, don’t think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland! . . . They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner to what we do!”
Sydney points out (in his character of Peter Plymley) that the “Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of his religion!”
He refers to Perceval in the following passage: “What remains to be done is obvious to every human being—but to the man who, instead of being a Methodist preacher, is, for the ruin of Troy, and the misery of good old Priam and his sons, become a legislator and a politician.” Sydney continues: “I say, I fear he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interests of his country: and then you tell me he is faithful to Mrs Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals!”
Finally Peter warns his brother:—“Mrs Abraham Plymley, my sister, will be led away captive by an amorous Gaul; and Joel Plymley, your first born, will be a French drummer.”
I regret that I have not space to quote more from these admirableLetters, which are full of good things. On 14th July 1807, he writes to Lady Holland[186]:—“Mr Allen has mentioned to me the letters of a MrPlymley, which I have obtained from the adjacent market-town, and read with some entertainment. My conjecture lies between three persons—Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir Arthur Pigott, or Mr Horner, for the name is evidently fictitious.” I presume that Pigott was an eminently serious person to match the other supposed authors.
Jeffrey, 20th Feb.1808.—“Your Catholic article of the last Review is, I perceive, printed separately. I am very glad of it: it is excellent, and universally allowed to be so. I envy you your sense, your style, and the good temper with which you attack prejudices that drive me almost to the limits of insanity.”
He writes to Lady Holland in an early but undated letter (ii., p. 39) that he has let his house at Thames Ditton very well, and sold to the tenant his wine and poultry!—“I attribute my success in these matters to having read half a volume of Adam Smith early in the summer, and to hints that have dropped from Horner, in his playful moods, upon the subject of sale and barter.”
Lord Holland, 1st Nov.1809.—Speaking of hisproject of publishing a pamphlet to be called Common Sense for 1810, he concludes: “But what use is there in all this, or in anything else? Omnes ibimus ad Diabolum et Buonoparte nos conquerabit, et dabit Hollandium Domum ad unum corporalium suorum, et ponet ad mortem Joannem Allenium.”
Lady Holland,June1810.—“You have done an excellent deed in securing a seat for poor Mackintosh, in whose praise I most cordially concur. He is a very great, and a very delightful man, and with a few bad qualities added to his character, would have acted a most conspicuous part in life.”
Lady Holland, 17th Jan.1813.—There had been meetings on the Catholic question, and he says:—“I shall certainly give my solitary voice in favour of religious liberty, and shall probably be tossed in a blanket for my pains.”
John Allen, 24th Jan.1813.—“My fancy is my own: I may see as many crosiers in the clouds as I please; but when I sit down seriously to consider what I shall do upon important occasions, I must presume myself rector of Foston for life.”
John Murray[of Edinburgh], 12th July1813.—“My situation is as follows:—I am engaged in agriculture without the slightest knowledge of the art; I am building a house without an architect, and educating a son without patience. . . . My new mansion springs up apace, and then I shall really have a pretty place to receive you in, and a pleasant country to show you.”
Lady Holland, 17th Sept.1813.—“Few events are of so little consequence as the fecundity of aclergyman’s wife; still your kind dispositions justify me in letting you know that Mrs Sydney and her new-born son are both extremely well.”
John Allen, 13th Jan.1814.—Of Lord Holland, Sydney writes:—“I wish he would leave off wine entirely, after the manner of the Sharpe and Rogers school. He is never guilty of excess; but there is a certain respectable and dangerous plenitude, not quite conducive to that state of health which all his friends most wish to Lord Holland.”
Jeffrey,Mar.1814.—“Pray remember me, dear Jeffrey, and say a good word for me if I die first. I shall say many for you in the contrary event.”
Lady Holland, 25th June1814.—“I liked London better than ever I liked it before, and simply, I believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London is stupefaction and inflammation. It is not the love of wine, but thoughtlessness and unconscious imitation.”
Jeffrey, 1814.—“I like my new house very much; . . . but the expense of it will keep me a very poor man, a close prisoner here for my life, and render the education of my children a difficult exertion for me. My situation is one of great solitude, but I preserve myself in a state of cheerfulness and tolerable content, and have a propensity to amuse myself with trifles.”
F. Horner, 1816.—Referring to Dugald Stewart’sPreliminary Dissertations, Sydney says:—“I was amazingly pleased with his comparison of the Universities to enormous hulks confined with mooring-chains, everything flowing and progressing around them. Nothing can be more happy.”
Lady Holland, 31st July1817.—“It is verycurious to consider in what manner Horner gained, in so extraordinary a degree, the affections of such a number of persons of both sexes—all ages, parties, and ranks in society; for he was not remarkably good-tempered nor particularly lively and agreeable; and an inflexible politician on the unpopular side. The causes are, his high character for probity, honour, and talents; his fine countenance; the benevolent interest he took in the concerns of all his friends; his simple and gentlemanlike manners; his untimely death.”
Lady Mary Bennett(n.d., but late in 1817).—“The few words I said of Mrs Fry . . . were these:—‘To see that holy woman in the midst of wretched prisoners,—to see them calling earnestly upon God, soothed by her voice, animated by her look, clinging to the hem of her garment, and worshipping her as the only human being who has ever loved them . . . or spoken to them of God!—this is the sight which breaks down the pageantry of the world,—which tells us that the short hour of life is passing away, and that we must prepare by some good deeds to meet God; that it is time to give, to pray, to comfort—to go, like this blessed woman, and do the work of our heavenly Saviour, Jesus, among the guilty, among the broken-hearted, and the sick; and to labour in the deepest and darkest wretchedness of life!’”
Lady Davy,n.d.—“Luttrell, before I taught him better, imagined muffins grew!”
Jeffrey, 7th Aug.1819.—There was universal complaint of the dullness of theEdinburgh Review,and Sydney writes: “Too much, I admit, would not do of my style; but the proportion in which it exists enlivens the Review, if you appeal to the whole public, and not to the eight or ten grave Scotchmen with whom you live.”
Lord Holland, 11th June1820.—“You gave me great pleasure by what you said to the Chancellor of my honesty and independence. I sincerely believe I shall deserve the character at your hands as long as I live.”
Mrs Meynell, 1820.—“The usual establishment for an eldest landed baby is, two wet nurses, two ditto dry, two aunts, two physicians, two apothecaries; three female friends of the family, unmarried, advanced in life; and often in the nursery, one clergyman, six flatterers, and a grandpapa! Less than this would not be decent.”
Mrs Meynell, 11th Nov.1821.—“My pretensions to do well with the world are three-fold:—First, I am fond of talking nonsense; secondly, I am civil; thirdly, I am brief. I may be flattering myself; but if I am not, it is not easy to get very wrong with these habits.”
John Murray[of Edinburgh], 29th Nov.1821.—“How little you understand young Wedgwood! If he appears to love waltzing, it is only to catch fresh figures for cream-jugs. Depend upon it, he will have Jeffrey and you upon some of his vessels, and you will enjoy an argillaceous immortality.”
This probably refers to Josiah, the grandson of the great potter.
Lady Mary Bennett, 1st Nov.1822.—“Writeto me immediately: I feel it necessary to my constitution.”
Lady Holland, 1st Oct.1823.—“I think you mistake Bond’s character in supposing he could be influenced by partridges. He is a man of a very independent mind, with whom pheasants at least, or perhaps turkeys, are necessary.”
Lady Holland, 19th Oct.1823.—“All duchesses seem agreeable to clergymen; but she would really be a very clever, agreeable woman, if she were married to a neighbouring vicar; and I should often call upon her.” (Apparently the Duchess of Bedford.)
Mrs Sydney, 7th May1826.—“My two reviews are very much read, and praised here for their fun; I read them the other night, and they made me laugh a good deal.”
Mrs Sydney,n.d.—In a French diligence was “a sensible man, with that propensity which the French have for explaining things which do not require explanation. He explained to me, for instance, what he did when he found coffee too strong; he put water in it!”
Lady Holland, 6th Nov.1827.—“Jeffrey has been here with his adjectives, who always travel with him. His throat is giving way; so much wine goes down it, so many million words leap over it, how can it rest? Pray make him a judge; he is a truly great man, and is very heedless of his own interests.”
Lord Holland,July1828.—“I hear with great concern of your protracted illness. I would bear the pain for you for a fortnight if I were allowed to roar, for I cannot bear pain in silence and dignity. . . .God bless you, dear Lord Holland! There is nobody in the world has a greater affection for you than I have, or who hears with greater pain of your illness.”
Lady Holland,Dec.1828.—“I not only was never better, but never half so well: indeed I find I have been very ill all my life, without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a ploughboy. . . . If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. . . . My understanding is improved, and I comprehend Political Economy. I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it: I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore and depress me.”
Lady Holland,July1831.—“I thank God heartily for my comfortable situation in my old age,—above my deserts, and beyond my former hopes.”
Mrs Meynell,Sept.1831.—“I am just stepping into the carriage to be installed by the Bishop. . . . It is, I believe, a very good thing, and puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing—never did anything shabby to procure preferment. These are pleasing recollections.”
(It was a Prebendal Stall at St Paul’s, given to him by Lord Grey.)
Countess of Morley, 1831.—“I went to court, and, horrible to relate! with strings to my shoes instead of buckles—not from Jacobinism, butignorance. I saw two or three Tory Lords look at me with dismay.”
The Clerk of the Closet spoke to Sydney, who had to gather his sacerdotal petticoats about him “like a lady conscious of thick ankles.”
R. Sharpe, 1835.—“You have met, I hear, with an agreeable clergyman: the existence of such a being has been hitherto denied by the naturalists; measure him, and put down on paper what he eats.”
Sir Wilmot Horton, 1835.—“No book has appeared for a long time more agreeable than the Life of Mackintosh; it is full of important judgments on important men, books, and things.” Elsewhere he speaks of travelling one hundred and fifty miles in his carriage, with a green parrot and theLife of Mackintosh.
Mrs---, 7th Sept.1835.—“I send you a list of all the papers written by me in theEdinburgh Review. Catch me, if you can, in any one illiberal sentiment, or in any opinion which I have need to recant; and that after twenty years scribbling upon all subjects.”
Countess Grey, 20th Oct.1835 (Paris).—“I shall not easily forget amateloteat the Rochers de Cancale, an almond tart at Montreuil, or apoulet à la Tartareat Grignon’s. These are impressions which no changes in future life can obliterate.”
Miss G. Harcourt, 1838.—“I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.”
Sir George Philips, aboutSept.1838.—“Nickleby is very good. I stood out against Mr Dickens as long as I could, but he has conquered me.”
Mrs Meynell,Oct.1839.—“I feel for --- about her son at Oxford; knowing as I do, that the only consequences of a University education are, the growth of vice and the waste of money.”
Lady Holland, 28th Dec.1839.—“I have written against --- one of the cleverest pamphlets I ever read, which I think would cover --- and him with ridicule. At least it made me laugh very much in reading it; and there I stood, with the printer’s devil and the real devil close to me; and then I said, ‘After all, this is very funny, and very well written, but it will give great pain to people who have been very kind and good to me through life.’” Finally Sydney threw it into the fire.
Mrs Meynell,June1840.—“A Canon at the opera! Where have you lived? In what habitations of the heathen? I thank you, shuddering; and am ever your unseducible friend.”
Countess Grey, 29thNov.1840.—“You never say a word of yourself, dear Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism. When I am ill, I mention it to all my friends and relations, to the lord lieutenant of the county, the justices, the bishop, the churchwardens, the booksellers and editors of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.”
Lady Ashburton, 1841.—“Still I can preach a little; and I wish you had witnessed, the other day at St Paul’s, my incredible boldness in attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade.”
R. Murchison, 26th Dec.1841.—“Immediately before my window there are twelve large oranges on one tree.” He adds that they are not Linnæan orange-trees but bay-trees with oranges tied on.
Lady Davy, 11th Sept.1842.—“I have not yet discovered of what I am to die, but I rather believe I shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites.”
Lady Grey, 19th Sept.1842.—“I tire of Combe Florey after two months, and sigh for a change, even for the worse. This disposition in me is hereditary; my father lived, within my recollection, in nineteen different places.”
Lady Holland, 6th Nov.1842.—Asked by her to go to opera, he replies: “It would be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St Paul’s to go to an opera; and where etiquette prevents me from doing things disagreeable to myself, I am a perfect martinet.”
Countess Grey, 21st Dec.1842.—“I am quite delighted with the railroad. I came down in the public carriages without any fatigue. . . . Distance is abolished—scratch that out of the catalogue of human evils.”
C. Dickens, 6th Jan.1843.—“You have been so used to these sort of impertinences that I believe you will excuse me for saying how very much I am pleased with the first numbers of your new work. Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable—quite first-rate painting, such as no one but yourself can execute.”
“P.S.—Chuffey is admirable. I never read a finer piece of writing; it is deeply pathetic and affecting.”
MissG. Harcourt, 29th March1843.—“My dear G---
The pain in my kneeWould not suffer meTo drink your bohea.I can laugh and talkBut I cannot walk;And I thought His Grace would stare,If I put my leg on a chair.And to give the knee its former power,It must be fomented for half an hour;And in this very disagreeable stateIf I had come at all, I should have been too late.”
John Murray, 4th June1843.—“My youngest brother died suddenly, leaving behind him £100,000 and no will. A third of this therefore fell to my share, and puts me at my ease for my few remaining years.”
Mrs Grote, 17th July1843.—“I met Brunel at the Archbishop’s and found him a very lively and intelligent man. He said that when he coughed up the piece of gold, the two surgeons, the apothecary, and physician all joined hands, and danced round the room for ten minutes, without taking the least notice of his convulsed and half-strangled state. I admire this very much.”
“I much doubt if I have ever gained £1500 by my literary labours in the course of my life” (31st Aug.1843).
C. Dickens, 21st Feb.1844,—“Many thanks for the ‘Christmas Carol,’ which I shall immediately proceed upon, in preference to six American pamphlets . . . all promising immediate payment!”
Countess Grey, 11th Oct.1844.—“See what rural life is:—
“Combe Florey Gazette.“Mr Smith’s large red cow is expected to calve this week.“Mr Gibbs has bought Mr Smith’s lame mare.“It rained yesterday, and, a correspondent observes is not unlikely to rain to-day.“Mr Smith is better.“Mrs Smith is indisposed.“A nest of black magpies was found near the village yesterday.”
“Combe Florey Gazette.
“Mr Smith’s large red cow is expected to calve this week.
“Mr Gibbs has bought Mr Smith’s lame mare.
“It rained yesterday, and, a correspondent observes is not unlikely to rain to-day.
“Mr Smith is better.
“Mrs Smith is indisposed.
“A nest of black magpies was found near the village yesterday.”
Sydney Smith died 22nd February 1845.
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 fromDombey, 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 ofPlorn,[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 theDictionary of National Biography, Carlyle is quoted as saying:—“No crime and no misdemeanour specifiable on either side;unhappytogether, 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 perseveringand 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 inDavid Copperfieldwhich 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, andRobinson 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 theArabian Nights, and theTales of the Genii—and did me no harm. . . . I have been TomJones (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’sBroad Grinshe 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 writingPickwick. 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 inDavid Copperfield. “For, the poor little lad, with good ability and a mostsensitive 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 inOliver Twistof 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 inMartin 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 theOld 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” inDavid 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 inPickwickand 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 heentered 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 oldMonthly Magazine” when he was in “the gallery” for theMirror of Parliament. Hisop. 1wasMrs 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 theMonthly Magazine, the last in February 1835 was the first to bear the immortal signature of Boz,[206]and in 1836 the series ofSketches by Bozwas published.
In the same year, 1836, a notice appeared in theTimesof 26th March “that on the 31st would be published the first shilling number of thePosthumous 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 hisLetters, 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 inan illustrated edition,e.g.Du Maurier’sTrilby. But when a reader has formed his own idea of a character, those of the artist jar on preconceived impressions. Seymour was selected to illustratePickwick, 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 ofPickwickcontains some personal recollections of the author which may find a place here. “Very different was his face in those days,circa1837, 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 tothe 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 ofPickwickwas interrupted for two months by the death of his wife’s younger sister Mary.
TheQuarterly Review, Oct. 1837, referring to the fact thatPickwickandOliver Twistwere 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 ofPickwick[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.” Besidesthese payments he seems at the time to have received only £2500. In 1839 Dickens wrote to Forster of “the immense profits whichOliverhas 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 theDictionary 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 ofDickens 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 theOld 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 levée or drawing-room, where I shake hands on an average with five or six hundred people. . . Think of two hours of thisevery 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 inNicholas 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, anddie 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 theChristmas Carol, as on 4th January 1844 he wrote to Leman Blanchard in regard to a review of theCarol. “Imustthank 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 seeThe Chimesthrough the press, of which he wrote, 5th November 1844:—
“I believe I have . . . knocked theCarolout 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 readThe Chimes, you wouldhave 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 inEvery 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 Humourbeing 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 theDaily News, which he had rashly agreed to edit. He went to Switzerland, taking a villa (Rosemount) there, from May till November. Here he wroteThe Battle of Lifeand beganDombey. 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 editingAll 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 theCricket. 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 mostpreposterous 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 dignité de la littérature. Ah! c’est grande chose! Et ces caractères sont si spirituellement tournées! Cette Madame Tojare (Todgers), ah! qu’elle est drôle et précisément comme une dame que je connais à 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 thebas bleuabout 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 lifewill 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]
Dombeywas published early in 1848, and during the whole of 1849 and the summer and autumn of 1850 he was writingDavid Copperfield. In Sir Walter Raleigh’sShakespeare, 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 ofBleak Houseappeared, 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 asCopperfield. But I foresee, I think, some very good things inBleak House.” In November he records that the sale is half as large again asCopperfield. 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 ofMary 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 Château des Moulineaux at Boulogne, whence he wrote asking a friend to visit him. He described his château:—“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 writingHard 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’tlive at the place to which her letters are addressed,” where I should write “doesn’t.”
In 1855 he beganLittle Dorritin Paris, a book he originally christenedNobody’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 toDavid 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 aboutLittle Dorrit, to which he at the time intended to give the nameNobody’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 sometimesI could notcompose 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 personalregard 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 ofDombeyyesterday 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 ofA 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 theTimesdescriptive 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 theexecution 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 readGreat 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 ofGreat 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’sLife, 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 onat 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 theOrlando. . . 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 allon 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 inOliver 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 inOur 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 isvery good” (ii., p. 225).