i Sff, iiir lir''' il ill «' C(^'i^fi>i2AM(^ LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS BY 1^ ,y Er SHELTO^ MACKEl^ZIE, LL.D. L1TEKA14T EDITOR OF THE "PHILADELPHIA PRESS." WITH Personal Recollection a and Anecdotes;— Letters by 'Boz,' NEVEK before PUBLISHED ; — AND UNCOLLECTED Papers in Prose and Verse. ^ylTu roRTBAiT and PHILADELPHIA: B.PETERSON & BROTHERS No. S06 CHESTNUT STREET. ^ ^^ ^' Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1870, by T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, In the OfiBce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. Entered in Stationers' Hall, London, by R. SHELTON MACKENZIE. DEDICATION. TO HON. JOHN W. FORNEY. My Dear Forney, "7 "^ I beg leave to dedicate to you, wisTiing that it were worthier of your acceptance, this biographical sketch of Charles Dickens, knowing, during all the years of my relations with you, how warmly you have admired the genius of the great and good man whose loss the world mourns. In the fulness of his fame, Dickens has departed. Of late years, there have been several of these public misfortunes. Macaulay and Thackeray soon followed Hood and Jerrold ; John Leech left us in his prime, and still later, two more of Dickens's friends — Maclise, the great painter, and Mark Lemon, Editor of Punch — were smitten by the inevitable shaft. These men died not much beyond middle age ; but nearly all of them were suddenly stricken. Charles Dickens, in his fifty-ninth year, has followed, and the shock is great ; for of him, it might be said, as of (IT) 18 DEDICATION. the great Hebrew in the olden time, that when he died, "his eyes were not dim, nor his natural force abated." In the most aristocratic country in the world, Charles Dickens stood, not merely among but above all his contemporaries as a Man of the People. Scott, Bulwer, Macaulay, Thackeray, and others who taught great truths through the press, either were of high family descent or had received the best education that Universities could bestow. Their writings are crowded with references to the classic authors of their youth. Dickens, son of an obscure Government clerk, whose pedigree no one has cared to trace, received only such an education as, free of cost, every State in our Union bestows upon its children. It has been argued by great scholars, that Shakespeare was familiar not only with classical but modern European literature ; but Dickens was master of one language — that which is spoken, not alone in his island-home, but in Asia, in Australia, and most of all, in our United States. He knew, and was proud in the knowledge, that for every one reader he had at home, there were fifty here. In the following pages, I have attempted to give a sketch of his literary and personal history — stating plain facts, introducing some of his correspondence never before printed, adding such anecdotes and traits of character as illustrate his double position of Man of Letters and Man of the People, and stating such particulars as have reached me concerning the originals. DEDICATION. 19 from wliom he is known, or supposed, to have drawn many of the characters in his tales. In the body of this volume, I have expressed my admiration of the ability of the necessarily rapid tributes to the genius and worth of Mr. Dickens, which appeared in the American newspapers. I had intended to publish the best of these, kindly selected for me by Mr. W. W. Nevin, of Philadelphia, but they were so numerous that I had to abandon the idea. For assistance rendered, or offered, while I was writing this life, (with the temperature ranging at from 90° to 96° in the shade,) I am very grateful, and would particularly ofier my thanks to the Hon. Ellis Lewis and Mr. John E. McDonough, of Philadelphia ; Mr. Philp and Mr. Solomon, of Washington ; and Mr. Henry May Keim, of Reading. An old friend of Mr. Dickens, now resident in New York, has placed me under great obligations by giving me many of his personal reminiscences. August 1st, 1870. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. LESSON OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS. — CHARACTER OF HIS GENIUS. — ANCESTRY. — JOHN DICKENS, THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. — HIS FAMILY. — REMOVAL TO LONDON. — NEWSPAPER REPORTER. — MICAWBER AND MRS. NICKLEBY. — CHARLES DICKENS's EDUCATION. TRUTH IN FICTION. — ROCHESTER VISITED BY THE PICKWICKIANS. — WATTS'S HOSPITAL. — CLOISTER- HAM. — gad's hill. 29 »^CHAPTER II. ENGLISH LAWYERS. — ARTICLED CLERKS. — SHORT-HAND WRITING. — -jyyiKENS AS A REPORTER. — MIRROR OF PARLIAMENT. — TRUE SUN. — MORNING CHRONICLE. — FIRST AUTHORSHIP.. — WRITING THE " SKETCHES." — JOHN BLACK, OUR OLD-TIME EDITOR. — RECOLLECTIONS BY N. P. WILLIS. — PUBLISHER. - - - - 44 CHAPTER III. THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF " BOZ." — VARIETY OF THE "SKETCHES." — EPIGRAM. — THE DEMOSTHENES OF THE TAP. — OLD BAILEY CHARACTERS. — FAGIN AND THE ARTFUL DODGER SHADOWED FORTH. — BUMBLE AND MRS. GAMP. — CRUIKSHANK'S ILLUSTRATIONS. — THE COUNTESS AND THE PUBLISHER. - - - 55 (21) 22 CONTENTS. CHAPTER lY. FIKST LAURELS WOj!T. — HOW THE " PICKWICK PAPERS" WERE BEaUN. — THE SHILLING NUMBER SYSTEM. — • GREEN PAPER COVERS. — LEVER AND THACKERAY. — MR. SERGEANT TALFOURD. — COPYRIGHT. — PROPOSED NIMROD CLUB. — MR. PICKWICK FOUND AT RICHMOND. — RECEPTION OP PICKWICK. — INTRODUCTION OP SAM WELLER. — AUTHOR AND PUBLISHERS. BULWER. THE GREAT LITERARY REVIEWS. MISS MITFORD'S CRITICISM. — SCOTT AND DICKENS. — WHAT PICKWICK HAS DONE. — IN A PICKWICKIAN SENSE. — LADY jersey's SAM WELLER BALL. - - - - 62 ^CHAPTER V. THE wits' miscellany." — DJCKENS EDITS BENTLEY'S. DOUGLAS JERROLD. ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. DIC- KENS' CONTRIBUTIONS. — OLIVER TWIST. — PURPOSE AND MORAL. — AUTHOR'S LAW. — FAGIN's CONVICTION. — Jacob's island. — dramatic versions. - - 79 /^ CHAPTER YI. PUBLICATIONS UNAVOWED OR FORGOTTEN. — SUNDAY IN LONDON. — THE POOR MEN'S SUNDAY DINNER. — SKETCHES OF YOUNG LADIES AND OF YOUNG GENTLE- MEN. — MEMOIRS OP GRIMALDI. — THE PIC-NIC PAPERS. — THOMAS MOORE'S PROSE AND VERSE. — DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES : THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN, VILLAGE COQUETTES, IS SHE HIS WIFE ? — AMATEUR ACTING. — author's READINGS. 90 CONTENTS. 23 CHAPTER VII. MARRTAGE. — GEORGE HOGARTH. — A COMPLIMENT FROM LOCKHART. DICKENS A MAN OF METHOD. THE MISSES HOGARTH. FANNY HOGARTH's SUDDEN DEATH. PUBLICATION SUSPENDED. MR. DICKENS INTER- VIEWED. — " YOUNG BOZZES." ----- 100 Y' CHAPTER VIII. ^TIRES FROM BENTLEY's MISCELLANY. — RETROSPECT. — YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS. — PICKS UP JOHN BROWDIB AND WACKFORD SQUEERS. — NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. — • DOTHEBOYS HALL. THE CRUMMLES PARTY. — CHEERY- BLE BROTHERS. — CHANGE OF PLOT. — AUTHORSHIP AVOWED. PORTRAIT BY MACLISE. NICKLEBY ON THE PARISIAN STAGE. — MR. THACKERAY AND JULES JANIN. — CONTINUATION OF NICKLEBY. — TROOPS OF FRIENDS. 107 CHAPTER IX. MASTER Humphrey's clock. — its proposed object. — ILLUSTRATIONS. — THE WORKS. — AUTHOR's CONFES- SION. — MR. PICKWICK AND THE WELLERS REVIVED. — THE PRECOCIOUS GRANDSON. — OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. — LITTLE NELL. — THOMAS HOOD. — BARNABY RUDGE. — RIOTS OF LONDON. — THE RAVEN. — LORD JEFFREY. — DINNER AT EDINBURGH. — CHRISTOPHER NORTH. — PUBLIC SPEAKING. 117 24 CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. VISIT TO AMERICA. — AT BOSTON. — DICKENS'S DINNER. — GEOFFREY CRAYON AND BOZ. — DICKENS AT SUNNY- SIDE. — IN PHILADELPHIA. — WASHINGTON. — IN CON- GRESS. 133 ^ CHAPTER XI. AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. — PICK- WICK READINGS AT A WHITE-SMITH's. — RECEPTION OF THE NOTES IN ENGLAND. — OTHER TOURISTS. — CHANGE FOR THE NOTES. — LORD JEFFREY'S OPINION. MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. CRUSADE AGAINST SELFISH- NESS. — ENGLISH CRITICISMS. — CHRISTMAS CAROL AND ITS FOLLOWERS. — JOURNEY TO ITALY. - - 150 CHAPTER XII. relations with artists. — george cruikshank. — tom and jerry. — how oliver twist was brought to london. re-purchasing copyrights. — robert Seymour's sketches. — succeeded by " phiz." — THE author's last HISTORY OF PICKWICK. — THE PALAZZO PESCHIERE IN GENOA. KIND DEALINGS WITH AN ARTIST. — UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM CHARLES DICKENS. 161 ^CHAPTER XIII. VISIT TO ITALY AND SWITZERLAND. — EpiTQR SHIP OF DAILY NEWS. — LONDON NEWSPAPERgs.V- PICTURES FROM ITALY. — RETURN TO SWITZERLAND. — DOMBEY AND SON. — LORD JEFFREY ON THE DEATH OF LITTLE PAUL. 175 CONTENTS. 25 CHAPTER XIV. ORIGINALS OF FICTITIOUS CHARACTERS. — OLD WELLER AND MISS HUDDART. — MR. TRACY TUPMAN AND THE FAT BOY. — MRS. BARDELL. MR. JUSTICE STARE- LEIGH. — MR. SERGEANT BUZFUZ. — DODSON AND FOGG. — MR. PERKER. — POLICE MAGISTRATE FANG. — VIN- CENT CRUMMLES. — W. T. MONCRIEFP. — CHEERYBLE BROTHERS. — DANIEL GRANT'S DINNER-PEGS. — MRS. NICKLEBY. — SIR JOHN CHESTER. — ALDERMAN CUTE. — MR. DOMBEY. — PERCH. — SOL. GILLS. — CAPTAIN CUTTLE. WILKINS MICAWBER. ESTHER SUMMER- SON. MR. BOYTHORN AND LITTLE NELL. INSPECTOR BUCKET. — CARLAVERO'S ENGLISHMAN. — MR. JULIUS SLINKTON. 188 CHAPTER XY. LETTER-WRITING. — EPISTOLATORY MENDICANTS. — A NOTE FROM YORKSHIRE. — MR. EWART. A SLOW BINDER. MASTER HUMPHREY'S " WORKS." TAL- FOURD'S post-prandial reading. LETTERS TO TAL- FOURD, FRANK STONE, AND MACKENZIE. — MAMMOTH JOURNALS. — THE MOON HOAX. — LORD NUGENT. - 210 CHAPTER XVI. POETRY IN PROSE. — THACKERAY'S OPINION. — RYTHMI- CAL LANGUAGE. EXAMPLES FROM SOUTHEY, SHELLEY AND DICKENS. LITTLE NELL'S FUNERAL. LESSON OF DEATH TO LIFE. — SMIKe'S GRAVE-STONE. — NIAGARA. — HYMN OF THE WILTSHIRE LABORERS. — A WORD IN SEASON. 221 26 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVII. LITTLE DORRIT. — THE CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE. — HARD TIMES. — TALE OF TWO CITIES. — GREAT EXPEC- TATIONS. — ^NEW CHRISTMAS STORIES. — OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. AMENDE TO THE JEWS. SYSTEMATIC BUSINESS HABITS. — DEALINGS WITH AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. - - 229 CHAPTER XYIII. CHARLES DICKENS'S NAMES. — ODD NAMES. — FUTILITY OF PERSONAL ARGUxMENT. — RETORT ON LOCKHART. — MAKING FRIENDS. — MR. REE-ACK. — LORD CAMPBELL. — TEMPERATE HABITS. — UNDERVALUING SHAKES' PEARE WORDSWORTH AND DICKENS — PHILADEL- PHIA STREETS. — PERSONAL TASTES. PITY FOR THE FALLEN. TOWN AND COUNTRY. LONGING FOR SUD- DEN DEATH. JOHN DICKENS AND SHERIDAN. CHILDREN. — DOMESTIC TROUBLES. - - - - 238 CHAPTER XIX. FONDNESS FOR THEATRICALS. — AMATEUR ACTING. — LORD LYTTON'S PLAY. QUEEN VICTORIA. — WILKIE COLLINS'S PLAYS. — CAPTAIN BOBADIL. HANS CHRIS- TIAN ANDERSEN AT GAD's HILL. — JERROLD ME- MORIAL. PUBLIC READINGS. SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. 256 CHAPTER XX. SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. — RATIONALE OF HIS READ- INGS. — RECEPTION AT BOSTON. — EFFECTS OF THOUGHT CONTENTS. 2t AND TIME. — DRAMATIC POWER. — LONG WALKS. — LIST OP SELECTIONS. — CORRESPONDENCE. — LAST READINGS IN BOSTON AND NEW YORK. — PRESS BAN- QUET AT DELMONICO'S. — LAST WORDS ON THE AMERI- CAN NOTES. — AMENDE. — DEPARTURE. - - - 268 CHAPTER XXI. RETURN TO ENGLAND. — IN HARNESS. — A NEW READING. — DINNER AT LIVERPOOL. — DANGEROUS ILLNESS. — GRAVE-SIDE SPEECH-MAKING. — GAD'S HILL HOUSE. — MISS CLARKE AT TAVISTOCK HOUSE. — HANS CHRIS- TIAN ANDERSEN. — FRANKLIN PHILP. — HABITS OP WORK. — LONG WALKS. — M. PECHTER. — CLOSE OF 1869. 286 CHAPTER XXII. FAREWELL READINGS. — MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. — VISITS QUEEN VICTORIA. — HONORS DECLINED. — SPEECH AT ROYAL ACADEMY. — ILL HEALTH. — THE LAST WEEK. — CLOSING CORRESPONDENCE. — HIS CHRIS- TIAN BELIEF AND HOPE. — APOPLEXY. — DEATH. — GRIEF FROM THRONE TO COTTAGE. — BURIAL IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. — DEAN STANLEY'S SERMON ON CHARLES DICKENS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. - 307 CHAPTER XXIII. PURITY OF HIS WRITINGS. — VARIETY OF SUBJECTS AND CHARACTERS. — ABSENCE OF EGOTISM AND CYNICISM. — COMPARED WITH THACKERAY. — WILL HIS WRI- TINGS LIVE? — HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. — HIS BROAD I CONTENTS. christianity. — the caiaphas op plymouth church. — tributes from the pulpit. — charles Dickens's last words, and their great lesson. 333 ^.UNCOLLECTED PIECES. BY CHARLES DICKENS. THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. — (jANUS WEATHER- COCK,) THE POISONER. 341 ABOARD SHIP. 365 A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 377 A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 391 MR. BARLOW. 400 ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 407 A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. 416 A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. - _ _ . 421 FULL REPORT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OP EVERY- THING. - - 426 FULL REPORT OF THE SECOND MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERY- THING. 450 THACKERAY. — IN MEMORIAM. 475 WILL OF CHARLES DICKENS. LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF CHARLES DICKENS. - 479 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. CHAPTER I. LESSON OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS. — CHARACTER OP HIS GENIUS. — ANCESTRY. — JOHN DICKENS, THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. — HIS FAMILY. — REMOVAL TO LONDON. — NEWSPAPER REPORTER. — MICAWBER AND MRS. NICKLEBY. — CHARLES DICKENS'S EDUCATION. — TRUTH IN FICTION. — ROCHESTER VISITED BY THE PICKWICKIANS. — WATTS's HOSPITAL. — CLOISTERHAM,— gad's HILL. The greatest writer of his age is gone, and the sudden blow has smitten the great heart of huraanit}'. There is no part of the civilized world where the name of Charles Dickens is unknown, where his genial and elevating writings are not valued.- They have been translated into many languages, and the characters which he created and the adventures in which he placed them have passed into the current literature of the world. Every reader mourns for him — the lowliest as well as the highest participate in one common sorrow. Life has been better and brighter for what he has done. He was the champion of the oppressed, he was the censor of the selfish rich. In a single one of his tales was matter far more serious and convincing than could be found in a pyramid of lengthy homilies, in which Christian charity was distinguished by its absence. Even when he amused, he taught. No vile thoughts, no prurient suggestions, no foul words are to be found in the writings of Charles Dickens. Even when he 2 (29) 30 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. treated of crime and poverty his language was not base or low. The practical spirit he endeavored to inculcate was that of comprehensive Christianity. His personal character was in accordance with his teaching. Chai'itable, kind-hearted, affectionate, temperate in living, ever doing his work as if he felt it a pleasure rather than a labor, there was a daily beauty in his life, in its earnestness, in its simplicity, in its purity, which was an exemplar in itself. To him, even more appropriately than to the brilliant but erratic genius to whom they were addressed, might be applied the stanzas which spoke of one "Whose mind was an essence, compounded with art, From the finest and best of all other men's powers ; Who ruled, like a wizard, the world of the heart, And could call up its sunshine, or bring down its showers ;— " Whose humor, as gay as the firefly's light, Play'd round every subject, and shone as it played ; — Whose wit, in the combat, as gentle as bright Ne'er carried a heart stain away on its blade ; — *' Whose eloquence, — brightening whatever it tried, Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave, — Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide, As ever bore freedom aloft on its wave !" In ordinarj'- cases, a biography begins with some genco- logical narrative, intended to show that the person presented to the notice of the reader had particular ancestors. In England, it is considered something to boast of that the first-known of a man's family " came in with the Conqueror." In Scotland, it suffices for this founder of the line to have belonged, in his time, to some Celtic marauder or early Bor- der raider. In Ireland, it is the fashion to go back to some period — before the island lost her nationality, " when Malachi wore the collar of gold which he won from the proud inva- der." In our own Northern States the New Englanders count back some two hundred and fifty years, dating from ANCESTRY. 31 the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, while the chief boast of the South is that their lineage, more remote, dates from the colonization in the time of Elizabeth. As with families, so with individuals. Walter Scott was prouder of his dis- tant cousinship with the ducal house of Buccleugh than of his own great genius which cast a flood of living glory upon his native land. Byron never forgot, and would have all the world remember, that, long before Henry the Eighth forci- bly wrested Newstead Abbey from the monks, and bestowed it upon Sir John Bj^ron — he with the long beard, — sundry members of the family'' had fought in the Hol}'^ Land, during the Crusades. Even Washington Irving, who was nothing if not an American and a republican, could not resist the temptation, when writing the life of George Washing- ton, of showing that one of his English progenitors was " Washingatune," during the reign of Saxon Edgar, in the tenth century, a time when few could spell, and fewer write. It has been, in fact, an ordinary weakness, this ambition of showing that a distinguished personage was not wholly what, in our ordinary parlance, is called " self-made." The ma- jority of biographers exhibit it; though Thomas Moore, who devoted some space, in his Life of Byron, to the glori- fication of the family-tree, had the good sense to reject it for himself On one occasion, when he was the favored guest of the then Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Fourth, and was brightening the horizon of the board with wit and song, his Royal host observed, " By the way, Moore, your surname is the same as that of the Marquis of Drog- heda ? I shall ask him here, one of these days, to meet you. Of course, you belong to his family ?" There was a moment's pause, and then the Poet answered, "Our common descent is the same, I believe — from Adanu But I desire to in- form your Royal Highness, that I am not akin to the Peer- age. My father was son of a County Kerry farmer, and to this day keeps a grocer's shop in Dublin, where I was born and bred." The manliness and independence of this 32 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. response certainly did not injure Moore — who usually was somewhat of a tuft-hunter, — in the opinion of those who heard it. Lord Thurlow was less independent, because less accurate, in his reply to the gentleman from the Herald's Col- lege, who waited upon him, in June, 111S, when he was cre- ated a peer, for particulars of his descent, out of which to construct a family pedigree, and said, " I suppose I may safely set you down as of the same blood with another Nor- folk celebrity, John Thurloe, who was Secretary of State to the Commonwealth, under Oliver and Richard Cromwell ?" Thurlow, who was impetuous and rough, immediately blustered out, " You are wrong altogether, John Thurloe was an Essex man, and I am from Suffolk. He came of an old stock. There was one Thurlow, in my part of the county, who was a common carrier, and I think as he was an honest man, that you had better derive my lineage from 7m7i." Charles Dickens, like many other illustrious personages, whose names are not written in the Herald's books at Doc- tor's Commons, had no ancestry to boast of, went through life extremely well, without crest or scutcheon, and was content to draw his nobility direct from the Creator. His father, plain John Dickens, who died some time ago, full of years, after having seen his son's universal popularity, and profited by his continuous bounty, was a Government clerk, stationed at Portsmouth Dockyard, in Hampshire, when his eldest son was born. He was in the Paymaster's office, and, in that capacity, had to travel from place to place, to pay charges a^nd salaries, during the great war which closed at Waterloo. Sometimes he went as far to the southwest of the English coast as Falmouth and Plymouth — oftener to Gosport, Dover, Sheerness, Chatham and Gravesend. He was a trusted and trustworthy person, to whom much money was confided, the " wooden walls " being costly in those days, and men-of-war's-men apt to get angry if, on landing at a port, after a long cruise, their arrears of wages were not immediately paid up. How foolishly, how recklessly PARENTAGE AND KIN. 33 they lavished this money, can be judged from the naval romances " of the period " as written by Marryat, Chamier, Edward Howard, Johnson Neale, and others. Mr. John Dickens was married in the early part of the present century, and his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Dickens, has been described to me as having much resembled Mrs. Nickleby, of happy memory, in the charming inaccuracy of her memory and the curious insecutiveness of her conversa- tion. In later years she was tall and thin, with a wasp's waist, of which she was very vain, and was what is called "dressy." She was a good wife, ver}^ fond of her husband, devoted to her children, and extremely proud of her son Charles, who was kind and liberal to her from the time it was in his power to be so. Her family further consisted of the following children : 1. Fanny Dickens, who was a music-teacher for some time before her marriage with Mr. Bennett, a lawyer. She is dead. 2. Charles Dickens, "the world's heir of fame," born at Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, on the 7th of Pebruarj'-, 1812 ; died at Gad's Hill, near the old Cathedral, city of Rochester, in Kent, on Thursday, the 9th of June, 1870, and interred in Westminster Abbey, on Tuesday, the 14th of June, 1870. 3. Letitia Dickens, married to Mr. Austen, engineer and architect in London. She is the only surviving member of this household. 4. Frederic William Dickens, who, through the influence of Lord John Russel, an old and warm friend of Charles Dickens, obtained a clerkship in the Foreign Oflfice, London, but after some years, received a hint that from certain irregularities, his resignation would be accepted. On the 23d of October, 1868, he died of abscess on the lungs, at Darlington, where he had been stationed during the prece-. ding twelve months. He had suffered greatly during the last three weeks of his illness. The newspaper obituary 34 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. which mentions this, adds: "The geniality — it was some- thing more to those who could see below the surface — of Mr. Frederic Dickens's nature, and his ready fund of humor and anecdote, will not readily be forgotten by those who knew him best, and liked him best." Mr. Frederic Dickens may best be characterized, perhaps, as belonging to that numerous and careless class who enjoy life, on small means, without much regard for health. " No- body's enemy but his own," is the general conversational epitaph on a man of this sort. 5. Alfred Dickens, was an architect or engineer, perhaps a little of both, upon the Malton Railroad, and is dead. 6. Augustus Dickens, was brought up in the count- ing-house of John Chapman & Co., No. 2 Leadenhall street, London, and came to this country, some ten or twelve years ago. He became a clerk in the Illinois Railroad Company, and died in Chicago, five years ago. His second wife (Miss Bertha Phillips, daughter of the late Charles Phillips, the celebrated Irish orator,) whom he brought here and married, died on Christmas eve, 1868, at Chicago, leaving three beautiful children. She was alive when Charles Dickens last was in America, but, as none of the family had recog- nized her, and he thought it not impossible that she might be intruded upon him, being known to be his sister-in-law, he did not visit Chicago, It is stated that, on hearing of her distressed circumstances, he sent her a handsome pecuniary present. Augustus was the original " Boses." Charles Dickens may be considered less a townsman than a towns-baby of Landport, near Portsmouth. When he was only twelve months old, his father removed from Portsmouth Dockyard to Somerset House, London, where he was intrusted with some very important duties, that do not appear to have suited his taste any better than they did his peculiar abilities, for Mr. John Dickens was unde- niably a man of talent and energy, gifted with a lively and convivial spirit that made him, wherever he Aveut, "a hail YOUTH AT CHATHAM. 35 fellow well met," and a man so generally liked that his com- pany was much sought after, which his personal friends hint led liim to " launch out," like many other kindred spirits, a little more than his means would permit, and as a natural consequence, he was not altogether free from those peculiar anxities and troubles that follow such indulgences. Somer- set House, then, was not a congenial place for Mr. Dickens, and that worthy gentleman, with his wife and young Charles, one fine morning embarked in one of the hoys then plying between London and Chatham, taking his household effects with him, and after a day or so settled down as an official in Chatham Dockyard, selecting as his place of abode a plain-looking house, with a whitewashed plaster front, and a small garden, front and behind, in St. Marj^'s place, or the Brook, which belonged to a Mr. Smart, and was next to an original and humble-looking building, also of plastered ex- terior, long known as the Providence Chapel, belonging to a sect of Baptists, where Charles's schoolmaster, the Rev. Mr. Giles, officiated as pastor. Charles, like most children who have the good fortune to be first-born sons, was his mother's pet. Mr. Dickens, sen., here again was not permitted to settle down quietly, but was destined to follow a roving kind of commission between the dockyards of Chatham, Sheerness, and other Government places; and in course of time young Charles grew up to be a boy old enough to wear a broad white collar, blue jacket, buckled shoes, and a large peaked cap. Mr. John Dickens, the father, was superannuated in 1816, while yet in the prime of life, and allowed a pension, — accord- ing to the liberal practice in England. There was a general reduction of the naval and military establishments, at the close of the war, and therefore Mr. Dickens was dismissed. He wrote an unusually good hand, round and clear, (as I perceive by a note of his now before me, dated thirty years after this period,) and, removing his household goods to Lon- don, succeeded in obtaining an engagement as reporter upon 36 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. tlie Morning Chronicle. Active in mind and body, with a great deal of energy, and a remarkable aptitude for work, John Dicliens was a useful journalist. He continued on the Chronicle, I have heard, until the Daily News was es- tablished, in January, 1846, when Charles Dickens placed him and Mr. George Hogarth on the staff of that paper, and 1 believe he remained on it to the last. It was a con- stant joke, among newspaper-men, that Charles Dickens had drawn upon his father's actual character, when he was wri- ting David Copperfield, and put him into that story as Micawber ; but though there was a great deal of " waiting until something should turn up," in much tliat John Dickens did, (and did not,) a man who had kept himself in London, during a period of over forty years, upon the newspaper press, with only a single change, and that for the better, was considerably above the Micawber scale. Some traits of the living may have been transmitted, with the novelist's natural exaggeration, to the fictitious character. A journalist, with wife and six young children, must always find it difficult to keep his head above water in London, where, (the price of bread regulating all other prices of provisions,) the four pounds loaf then cost twenty-five cents. It is possible that a man may have found it rather difficult to " raise" a brood of six children, "my dam and all her little ones," upon four or five guineas a week, to say nothing of their schooling. Now and then, perhaps, the reporter may have had some " outside" chances, but it may be presumed that an avun- cular relation, sporting the three golden balls of Lorabardy over his place of business, may have been resorted to when money was scarce. Perhaps, too, on an emergency, money had to be raised by " a little bill." The Micawber mode of financiering, as developed in David Copperfield, a tale which avowedly gives many of its author's own experiences, may have been drawn less from imagination than memory, aud it may be noticed that while Micawber does and says many unwise things, he never goes into anything which he con- THE SCHOOLBOY. 37 sidered dishonest or dishonorable. For my own part, I see no reason why John Dickens should not have been the original of Wilkins Micawber. He considered himself rather com- plimented in thus being converted into literary " capital" by his son. How and where the Dickens children were educated, on the father's small salary, is to me unknown. We have to look after the eldest son only. Charles's education was plain enough. He received it, for the most part, in a school at Chatham. It included some little study of the Eton Latin Grammar, but no Greek. Perhaps, the experiences of poor David Copperfield may have been those of young Charles Dickens. It is known that, at an early age, the heroes of Fielding's and Smollett's novels, of Gold- smith's Dr. Primrose, of Le Sage's French-Spanish Gil Bias, of Cervantcs's immortal Knight of La Mancha, and De Foe's life-like Robinson Crusoe, were familiar friends of the lad — for he has told us that he fell into a habit of im- personating each of them, in turn, for periods of from a week to a month, and thus lived in the ideal world of romance. Then there were the Arabian Nights and the Tales of the Geuii, throwing a chastened Oriental glamour over all, while a balance of realism, one halfpenny worth of bread to a vast quantity of sack, was supplied by sundry volumes of voyages and travels. The miserable experiences at Salem House, with the cruel practices in which Mr. Creakle, its brute of a master, used delightedly to indulge, most probably were those of Dickens himself; — he could scarcely have invented them. The boy, notwithstanding, picked up a plain education, with as much Latin grammar as enabled him, by and by, to write English with propriety, and prepared him, after he had attained manhood and celebrity, to master the French language, so as to translate it with ease, and finally to speak it with fluency and a good accent. In his European tour, and by subsequent study, he picked up some knowledge of Italian. 38 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. Charles Dickens was intimately acquainted, from his boyish clays, with that pai't of Kent, containing the ancient episcopal city of Rochester, situated on the river Medway, which surrounds the naval yard and harbor of Chatham. In the preface to Nicholas Nickleby, this sentence is to be found : " I cannot call to mind, now, how I came to hear of Yorkshire schools, when I was not a very robust child, sitting in by-places, near Rochester Castle, with a head full of Partridge, Strap, Tom Pipes, and Sancho Panza." This neighborhood, early and late, had a great influence on Dickens. In 1836, when he began The Pickivick Papers, (the date of the story being 1827, a pre-railroad period,) he makes the hero start from the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, then a great coaching centre, with the resolution of making Rochester his fii'st halting-place. When the party, accompa- nied by Jingle, reach Rochester Bridge, (erected in the time of King John, six hundred and fifty years ago,) the magnifi- cent ruin of Rochester Castle, built by Bishop Gundulph, and the sj^lendid Cathedral, still well preserved, and erected by Bishop Odo, brother of "William the Conqueror, are sig- nally praised. Moreover the party are made to pull up at the Bull Inn, in the High street, next door to Wright's, which Jingle describes as " dear — very dear — half a crown in the bill if you look at the waiter, — charge you more if you dine at a friend's than the}^ would if you dined in the coffee- room — rum fellows — ver3\" None but one very well acquainted with the locality could have grouped together the four towns, Stroud, Rochester, Chatham, and Bromp- ton, which are thus described : The principal productions of these towns, (says Mr. Pick- wick,) appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dock-yard men. The commodities chiefly ex- posed for sale in the public streets, are marine stores, hard- bake, apples, flat-fish and oysters. The streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly b^^ the OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER. 39 conviviality of the military. It is truly delightful to a philanthropic mind, to see these gallant men, staggering along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent spirits ; more especially when we remember that the following them about, and jesting with them, afl'ords a cheap and innocent amusement for the boy population. Nothing (adds Mr. Pickwick) can exceed their good humor. It was but the day before my arrival, that one of them had been most grossly insulted in the house of a publican. The bar-maid had positively refused to draw him any more liquor ; in return for which, he had (merely in playfulness) drawn his bayonet, and Avounded the girl in the shoulder. And yet this fine fellow was the very first to go down to the house next morn- ing, and express his readiness to overlook the matter, and forget what had occurred ! The consumption of tobacco in these towns (continued Mr. Pickwick) must be very great : and the sinell which pervades the streets must be exceed- ingly delicious to those who are extremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller might object to the dirt which is their leading characteristic; but to those who view it as an in- dication of traflic and commercial prosperity, it is truly gratifying. No one, except he were to the manor born, could have described that place so sententiously. It was upon the Lines of Rochester that the grand military review took place, at which Pickwick, Winkle and Snodgrass " came to grief," but finally fell into good luck by becoming acquainted with Mr. Wardle, an improbable gentleman farmer of the Weald of Kent. Dickens did not often describe scenery, but here, opening the fifth chapter of Pickwick, is a charming sketch of this favorite locality : Bright and pleasant was the sky, balmy the air, and beau- tiful the appearance of every object around, as Mr. Pickwick leaned over the balustrades of llochester Bridge, contempla- ting nature, and waiting for breakfast. The scene was indeed one, which might well have charmed a far less reflective mind, than that to which it was presented. On the left of the spectator lay the ruined wall, broken in 40 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. many places, and in some, overhanging the narrow beach below in rude and heavy masses. Huge knots of sea-weed hung upon the jagged and pointed stones, trembling in every breath of wind ; and the green ivy clung mournfully round the dark and ruined battlements. Behind it rose the ancient castle, its towers roofless, and its massive walls crumbling away, but telling us proudly of its old might and strength, as when, seven hundred years ago, it rang with the clash of arms, or resounded with the noise of feasting and revelry. On either side, the banks of the Medway, covered with corn-fields and pastures, with here and there a wind- mill, or a distant church stretched away as far as the eye could see, presenting a rich and varied landscape, rendered more beautiful by the changing shadows which passed swiftly across it, as the thin and half-formed clouds skimmed away in the light of the morning sun. The river, reflecting the clear blue of the sky, glistened and sparliled as it flowed noiselessly on ; and the oars of the fishermen dipped into the water with a clear and liquid sound, as the heavy but picturesque boats glided slowly down the stream. This is, literally, a beautiful picture in words — a pen and ink view. Many years after Pickwick was written, its author again went back to Rochester, remembering that, ever since the year 1579, Watts's Hospital, for the nightly entertainment of Six Poor Travellers, had been a noted institution, and telling how the effigy of worthy Master Richard Watts was to be seen in the Cathedral, and how he had restricted his charity (lodging and entertainment gratis for one night, with fourpence each) for the Six, as aforesaid ; they "not being Rogues, or Proctors." He says : I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched door), choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with okl beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in THE VERY QUEER SMALL BOY. 41 Rochester, in the old da3'-s of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans ; and down to the times of King John, when the rugged castle — I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of j^ears old then — was abandoned to the centuries of weather which have so defaced the dark aper- tures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had picked its eyes out. What was done and said at Watts's, is it not to be read in that Christmas story by Dickens entitled " The Seven Poor Travellers," and doth it not show, if evidence were needed, what a place Rochester had in his memory ? The Uncommercial Traveller mentions it again and again. Yet more. In The Mystery of Edwin Drood — that story begun in so much hope and after a great deal of thought, which must remain a fragment, reminding us of "Mm who left untold The story of Cambuscan bold," . — Rochester was again brought up. Its resemblance to Cloisterham Cathedral, is obvious from the first. In its an- tiquity^, even the likeness prevails, for, next to Canterbury, the see of Rochester is the oldest in England ; — and the Cathedral was built in the year of grace 604. Thus in early manhood, in his prime, and in the sere and yellow leaf, Dickens wrote about the old place, which had been familiar to him in his bo3diood. When he was able to purchase a homestead, the old house at Gadshill, near Rochester and Chatham, became his. In one of his Uncommercial sketches, he "noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy." Here is what follows : "Halloa I" said I, to the very queer small boy, " where do you live?" "At Chatham," says he. " What do you do there ?" says I. "I goto school," says he. I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently the very queer small boy said, " This is Gadshill we are 42 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travelers, and ran away." " You know something about Falstaff, eh?" said I. "All about him," said the verj^ queer small boy. "I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please !" " You admire that house ?" said I. " 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 now, I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, 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 !" said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of the window with all his might. I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy ; for that house happens to be my house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true. It was even so. In the very queer small boy, nine years old, who read all sorts of books, admired Gadshill, knew its Shakespearian association, and was paternally told that if he worked hard, he might live in such a house, we find re- alized the famous Wordsworthian aphorism, " The Child is father of the Man," the idea of which, by the way, is to be found in two lines, "The childhood shows the man As mormug shews the day," which were written in Paradise Regained, by an almost inspired blind old man, named John Milton, who is more talked about than read, in our days. He repeatedly declared his desire to be buried without pomp, in the burial ground of St. Nicholas Parish near the Cathedral— marked 3 on the diagram on next page. Thirty years ago, when, in company with a friend, to whom I am indebted for much personal information about him, he INTENDED PLACE OF REST. 43 was looking clown, from the top of Rochester Castle, upon the quiet burial-ground, he said " There, my boy, I mean to go into dust and ashes." Here, fz-om memory, is a sketchof that part of Rochester. He desired to rest beneath the grand old castle, which stands "a noble wreck in ruinous perfection, " with the Medway flow- ing between grassy banks, within a hundred feet of its base. There is scarcely any spot in England more beautifully picturesque, and the last thirteen years of Charles Dickens's life was passed within four miles of this familiar and beauti- ful old cit}^ : — River Medway. River Medway. 1. Rocli ester Bridge. 2. The Castle. 3. St. Nicholas Church Yard. 4. The Cathedral. 5. Wright's Hotel. Wright's Hotel, of which Mr. Jingle spoke in sucb dis- paraging terms, and where the Pickwickians did not stop, was the scene of the Ball in which the rencontre between Jingle and Dr. Slammer of the 97th took place, though the consequent duel did not. 44 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. CHAPTER 11. ENGLISH LAWYERS. — ARTICLED CLERKS. — SHORT-HAND WRI- TING. — DICKENS AS A REPORTER. — MIRROR OF PARLIAMENT. — TRUE SUN. — MORNING CHRONICLE. — FIRST AUTHORSHIP. WRITING THE "SKETCHES." — JOHN BLACK, OUR OLD-TIME EDITOR. — RECOLLECTIONS BY N. P. WILLIS. — PUBLISHER. It has been stated that " Charles Dickens began life as a lawyer, got tired of the dull routine, and turned to litera- ture." This is erroneous, for he never had even a chance of becoming a lawyer, — either in the higher grade of outer barrister, or " counsel learned in the law," or in the lower, but often more lucrative, class of attorney. In England, before a young man can enter his name as " student," at one of the Inns of Court, to enable him to be " called" to the bar, after a lapse of three years, it is necessary for him to deposit about one hundred pounds, with the treasurer of the Inn of Court, as a sort of guarantee for his respecta- bility, which sum is returnable when "called," though it has to be paid out again for the stamp-duty upon the certifi- cate of his admission to the bar. In the case of an attorney, a properly qualified person could be admitted to practice, after a prescribed examination, as to his knowledge of the principle and practice of the law, provided he had been an apprentice, or "articled clerk," to some practising attorney for five 3'ears. But, upon the "articles" or indenture of apprenticeship, be the premium high or low, it was necessary to pay a stamp-duty of one hundred and twenty pounds. There could be no " articles" unless the documents were stamped, at the beginning of the five j^ears, at the said cost of £120. It is writ, in literary history, that Mr. Disraeli commenced as an attorney, like Dickens and Ainsworth. The IN A LAW OFFICE. 45 latter really "was admitted as an attorney, after baying been a five 3'ears' articled clerk, but did not practice. Mr. Dis- raeli was a not articled clerk, but was in an attorney's office, for a few months and then took to literature. Thriftless John Dickens, with a small salary, and a large family, had not the means of placing his eldest son, Charles, as an " articled clerk" in an attorney's office. The boy was taken from school, at the age of sixteen and put, as writing clerk, into the office of an attorney, in Southampton Build- ings, Bedford Row, London, — like one of the young gentle- men who " chaffed" Mr. Pickwick on the memorable occasion when he paid a visit, without being sent for, to Messrs. Dodson & Fogg. The articled clerk looks to being in- business, on his own account, as soon as he has served his five years, but the writing clerk can have no such hope. He has to do all the rough work in the office, as well as out of doors, is perpetually copying documents when not run- ning about, in the courts and out of them, and, commencing upon a salary of about five dollars a week, may consider himself fortunate if he has thrice that amount, at the close of twenty or thirty yegjig^ service. Very frequently, in this poverty and the recklessness which it has a facile tendency to engender, the clerk declines into a careless ne'er-do-well, like Dick Swiveller, or an out-at-elbows hack, like Weevle, in Bleak House. Here the distinction lies. The " young man of the name of Guppy," clerk in the office of Kenge and Carboy, attorne3's for Mr. Jarndyce, comes out of his articles, (to use his own words,) at the end of five years, passes his examination, gets his certificate, is admitted on the roll of attorneys, and opens his office in Walcot Square, Lam- beth ; but his friend, and senior, Weevle, alias Jopling, who has not been articled, remains a mere clerk — his clerk, in fact, and never can rise above that dead level. The Eng- lish system differs so much from our own that, for the bene- fit of possible legal readers, I have thus explained it. After a sufficiently long trial of this sort of life, in the 3 46 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. course of which he probably had occasion to visit police- offices, courts of law, judges' chambers, and the taxing- master's room ; to serve subpoenas and copies of writs; to look after bail and execution ; to hunt out witnesses's facts ; to copy folio after folio of the length}^ documents facetiously called briefs, Charles Dickens picked up, not a knowledge of the law, for he has made some legal mistakes in his stories, but a familiar acquaintance with the routine prac- tice in an attorney's office, and after a sufficiently long trial, bade farewell to that hopeless ever-go-round, and resolved to set up for himself. His reliance was on the newspaper press, and, like his own David Copperfield, he had labored hard and successfully to obtain facility as a short-hand writer. He was nearly twenty when he got eraplo3^ment upon a pub- lication called The Mirror of Parliament, conducted by Mr. Barrow, a barrister, and established as a rival to Han- sard^s Parliamentary Debates. In England there is no offi- cial reporting of the proceedings in Parliament, but each London morning paper has a full staff of private reporters. Their reports are made, submitted for correction to the gen- tlemen who have taken part in the proceedings, and then re- printed in a separate publication, in convenient book-form. At present and for many years past, Hansard's has been the only work of this character, and is generally referred to as authority. On Barrow's rival publication, throughout the great Reform debates of 1832, Charles Dickens not only at- tended the debates, but also acted as a sort of sub-editor of the work. It was a great object to get it before the public in advance of its rival, and by means of the good system the new hand established, this was usually done. The connection thus established made him well known at many editorial rooms, and soon procured him an engage- ment as reporter upon the True Sun, a London evening paper, then lately established. There had been a misunder- standing between Mr. Grant, chief proprietor, and Mr. Murdo Young, sole editor of The Sun, which ended in the latter NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 47 gentleman obtaining legal possession of the paper, which he had forced into great notoriety, at vast expense, by- making it the vehicle for special and late parliamentary reports. This was before Railwayism had spread all over the country, before the electric telegraph had annihilated time and space. The mails for all parts of England then left the General Post Oflice about half-past seven o'clock each evening and received no newspapers after six. Except by rare efforts, the second editions of the evening papers gave no news after 6 p. m. In 1826, when Mr. Canning explained how he had sent an array and fleet to Lisbon, to prevent the invasion of Portugal; in 1829, when Catholic Emancipation was debated and conceded; in 1831-32, during the debates on the Reform Bill, and on other important occasions, The Sun, sending relays of its own stenographers into the Lords and Commons, gave long reports of these discussions, sometimes not ending until morning — and expressed large numbers of these late editions to all parts of the country, by means of post-chaises and four, at enormous cost, but with commensurate increase of prestige and circulation, be- cause the morning papers were thus anticipated. TJie True Sun, established in rivalry, had also to make great exer- tions. Mr. Dickens was soon found to be one of the most rapid, ready, and reliable of its reporters. As the great pressure on these gentlemen was far from frequent — say, twice or thrice in each session, their actual labor averaged only a few hours each evening. There was abundance of leisure, if not very magnificent remuneration, for these after- noon reporters. Among those who made profitable use of it was Charles Dickens, who then wrote several of his Sketches, and visited the nooks and corners of London, taking observations. In the parliamentary session of 1835, Mr. Dickens was engaged as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle, in the House of Commons, and immediately took rank in the van, for the accuracy and neatness of his reports, and the rapidity 48 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. with which he transcribed his notes. At one of the dinners of the Press Fund, in London, where he occupied the chair, he told his audience that the habits of his early life as a re- porter so clung to him, that he seldom listened to a clever speech without his fingers mechanically and unconsciousl}'- going through the pi'ocess of reporting it. All that is now remembered of him in "the Galler}^," is that he was reserved, but not shy, and that he took unusual pains with his work. Some time before this, he rented what are called " chambers," in Furnival's Inn, Holborn Bars, — one of the two Inns of Chancery attached to Lincoln's Inn, and mentioned not only in Pickwick, but also in the fourth part of Edwin Drood. Mr. James Grant, author of " Random Recollections of the Houses of Lords and Commons," and of numerous other matter-of-fact works which were very sharply ridiculed by Thackeray in Fraser's Magazine, has given the following de- tailed account of Mr. Dickens's entrance into authorship : It was about the year 1833-34, before Mr. Dickens's con- nection with the Morning Ghroyiicle, and before Mr. Black, the editor of that journal, had ever met with him, that he commenced his literary career as an amateur writer. He made his debut in the latter end of 1834 or beginning of 1835, in the Old Monthly Magazine, then conducted by Captain Holland, a friend of mine. He sent, in the first instance, his contributions to that periodical anonymously. These consisted of sketches, chiefly of a humorous character, and were simply signed " Boz." For a long time they did not attract an}^ special attention, but were generally spoken of in newspaper notices of the magazine as "clever," "graphic," etc. Early in 1836 the editorship of the MontMy Magazine — the adjective " Old " having been by this time dropped — came into mj^ hands ; and in making the necessary arrange- ments for its transfer from Captain Holland — then, I should have mentioned, i^roprietor as well as editoi' — I expressed my great admiration of the series of "Sketches hj Boz," which had appeared in the Monthly, and said I should like to make an arrangement with the writer for the continuance of them under my editorship. With that view I asked him FIRST AUTHORSHIP. 49 the name of the author. It will sound strange in most ears, when I state that a name which has for so many years filled the whole civilized world with its fame, was not remembered by Captain Holland. But, he added, after expressing his regret that he could not at the moment recollect the real name of " Boz," that he had received a letter from him a few days previously, and that if I would meet him, at the same time and place next day, he would bring me that letter, because it related to the "Sketches" of the writer, in the ilonthly Magazine. As Captain Holland knew I was at the time a Parliamentary reporter on the Horning Chronicle, then a journal of high literary reputation, and of great political influence — he supplemented his remarks by saying that "Boz " was a Parliamentary reporter; on which I ob- served that I must, in that case, know him, at least bj^ sight, as I was acquainted in that respect, more or less, with all the reporters in the gallery of the House of Commons. Cap- tain Holland and I met, according to appointment, on the following day, when he brought the letter to which he had referred. I then found that the name of the author of " Sketches by Boz," w'as Charles Dickens. The letter was written in the most modest terms. It was simply to the effect that as he (Mr. Dickens) had hitherto given all his contributions — those signed " Boz " — gratuitously, he would be glad if Captain Holland thought his " Sketches " worthy of an}' small remuneration, as otherwise he would be obliged to discontinue them, because he was going very soon to get married, and therefore would be subjected to more expenses than he was while living alone, which he was during the time, in FurnivaPs Inn. A writer in the Liverpool Albion (England) says for him- self, "it may not be an inadmissible souvenir of the all- mourned idol to state here, that the first lines ever Mr. Dickens composed were submitted unconditionally to the writer of these remarks, submitted as the merest matter of professional literar}' business, hap-hazard, without any intro- duction or intervention of any kind, and without critic or author having the faintest idea of each other's individuality. It is, perhaps, not a too extravagant hypothesis to surmise that, had the judgment been adverse, there might never have been another appeal elsewhere by the hand which has held 50 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. the whole reading world in captive admiration to its multi- tudinous spells ever since — a period of some thirty-five years." He confirms Mr. Grant's statement, with additions, thus : At that time the Old Monthly, as it was called, to distin- guish it from the New, about which latter, Colburn, with Campbell for editor, kept blowing such trumpets, was still a puissance, though it had lately parted with its principal contributor, Rev, Dr. Croly, whose Salathiel was yet in the flow of its original success ; and his " Notes of the Month " were always a piquant feature, even in an age of trenchant and polished penmanship. Under Croly the magazine was ardently tory ; but it had become the property of Captain Holland, formerly one of Bolivar's aides-de-camp — a high bred man of a type now passed away, most variedly accom- plished, and the centre of a congenial circle as gifted as himself, including many who afterwards made the fame of Fraser. Holland's Hispaiiolan liberalism, stimulated by the hot and turbid English reform agitation, still seething, and the Campbell and Colburn competition, led him to look for fresh blood to revive the drooping circulation. Hence one reason why Dickens, then buoyantly radical, was drawn thitherwards, although there was nothing whatever political in the slight initial paper, of less than half a dozen pages, he ventured upon. Nor was there in the three or four similar ones he afterwards furnished, and which attracted only the most cursory notice from his fellow-contributors. These articles sufficed, however, to induce Dr. Black, an old friend of his father's, to recommend the acceptance of others like them, but of a mere " social " character, in the after manner of the master, for BelVs Life — the proprietor of which was lavishing large means, in every form of publicity, upon his three journals, morning, evening, and weekly. Then the suc- cess of "her Majesty's Van" (Peel's newl3''-devised hearse- like vehicle for conveying prisoners to and from the police courts), and a few more of the like category, though printed in the smallest and densest newspaper type, some two-thirds of a column in length, obtained in all journals the extensive quotation which led to the Chapman and Hall alliance that resulted in " Pickwick," and in the unexampled celebrit3'^ thereupon supervening, and sustained crescendo to the last. Unique in all things, Dickens was pre-eminently singular in JOHN BLACK. 51 this, that, though " a gentleman of the press " to a degree undreamed of in the vocabulary of the right honorable per- sonage who affectedly disavows any other escutcheon, he had no assailants, no traducers, no enemies. And for this reason, that, without being in the least mawkish, tuft hunt- ing, or mealy-mouthed — on the contrary, being the most out-spoken extirpator of shams, imposture, and, in his own all-exhaustive phrase, of " PecksnifEsm," he nevertheless tra- duced, maligned, satirized nobody. Not even his censors. For he had many such. It would be like descending into tlie catacombs of criticism, so to speak, to unearth proofs of how leading journals, now blatant in his posthumous praise, once ridiculed his pretensions to delineate anything beyond the Marionettes at a peep-show ; what jubilant clap- ping of hands there was over Jupiter's pseudo-classic joke, Fy^ocumhit humi Boz, in reference to his first and last dra- matic fiasco, " The Village Coquettes," under Braham's management, at the St. James, a quarter of a century back; and what a titter of sardonic approval was evoked by the Superfine Reviewer's pedantic scoff'; that Mr, Dickens's read- ings appeared to be confined to a perusal of his own writings. His first steps were beset with Rigbys, whose " slashing articles" cried out, " This will never do!" pointing out how thorough a cockney he was, once his foot was off" the flag- waj^s of the bills of mortality, and anticipating the late vixenish verdict of a certain screaming sister of the sensa- tional school, that his works are stories of pothouse pleas- antries. He won his way into universal favor in virtue of an ill-assimilative geniality against which no predetermina- tion of resistance was proof, as in the case of Sydney Smith, who, with characteristic candor, avowed his intolerance of what he believed to be the cant of Dickens's popularity, and promptly ended in becoming an enthusiastic apostle of the propaganda himself. When Dickens was engaged on the Horning Chronicle, Mr. John Black, biographer of Torquato Tasso, and translator of the lectures of William Augustus and Frederick Schlegel, was its editor. Of great learning and remarkable memory, with very liberal political opinions, this gentleman had been in charge of the Chronicle long before the death of Mr. James Perry, who, if he did not found, established that paper as the mouthpiece of the Whigs, after he became its proprie- 52 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. tor and editor. It was Mr. Perry who initiated the employment of relays of reporters — the effect of which has been to make the closing part of a report, however extended, as full and vigorous as the commencement. Mr. Black was an editor, sui generis. A ten-line " leader " would have appalled him, by its brevity, for he resembled some of the Old World soldiers, in his predilection for charging in long "columns." He never could understand why Mr. Perry paid Thomas Moore very liberally for the satirical squibs which were finally collected under the title of " The Two- penny Post-bag," always contending that Poetry could say nothing which might not be much better expressed in Prose ! His plan in writing a leading article, was to meditate upon it from morning until night, and then write two or three heavy sticksful, closing with a quotation, a-t least a col- umn in length, Irom Bayle, Pascal, Thomas Aquinas, Dun Scotus, or some other light writer. It has always puzzled me to know why, not having the slightest sense of humor, he admitted Dickens's Sketches into the Chronicle. It is true, they were only published in a tri-weekly afternoon issue for the country. Mr. Gruneison, long connected with the London press, confirms the statement that some of the Sketches appeared in BelVs Life in London, the great sporting paper, which had a large circulation, and paid contiibutors liberally. It was then conducted by a very able man, Mr. Yincent Dowl- ing, known in the profession, from his great height, b^^ the sobriquet of " The Long Scribe." To this period (1835), when he may be said to have been " in a transition state," belongs a reminiscence of Charles Dickens, from the pen of K P. Willis. Filtering out of it a certain assumption of superiority, on the part of the " Pen- cillings by the Way " author, it ma}^ give some idea of what a professed and professional man of society felt on meeting such a gem as Dickens and not seeing the sparkle. Mr. Willis's letter, written from London to the National Litelligencer at Washington, reads thus : N. P. WILLIS ON DICKENS. 53- I was following a favorite amusement of mine one day in the Strand, London — strolling toward the more crowded thoroughfares, with cloak and umbrella, and looking at peo- ple and shop windows. I heard my name called out by a passenger in a street cab. From out the smoke of the wet straw peered the head of my publisher, Mr. Macrone, (a most liberal and noble-hearted fellow, since dead). i\fter a little catechism as to my damp destiny for that morning, he informed me that he was going to visit Newgate, and asked me to join him. I Vv-illingly agreed, never having seen this famous prison, and after I was seated in the cab he said he was to pick up on the way a young paragraphist for the Morning Chronicle, who wished to write a descrip- tion of it. In the most crowded part of Holborn, witliiu a door or two of the Bull and Mouth Inn (the great starting and stopping-place of the stage-coaches), we pulled up at the entrance of a large building used for lawyers' chambers. Not to leave me sitting in the rain, Macrone asked me to dismount with him. I followed by a long flight of stairs to an upper story, and was ushered into an uncarpetcd and bleak-looking room, with a deal table, two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and Mr. Dickens for the con- tents. I was or\\y struck at first with one thing (and I made a memorandum of it that evening, as the strongest instance I had seen of English obsequiousness to employers), the degree to which the poor author Avas overpowered with the honor of his publisher's visit ! I remember saying to m3'self, as I sat down on a ricketty chair, " My good fellow, if you were in America Avith that fine face and your ready quill, you would have no need to be condescended to by a publisher." Dickens was dressed very much as he has since described Dick Swiveller — minus the swell look. His hair was cropped close to his head, his clothes scant, though jauntily cut, and after changing a ragged office coat for a shabb}^ blue, he stood by the door, collarless and but- toned up, the very personification, I thought, of a close sailor to the wind. We went down and crowded into the cab (one passenger more than the law allowed, and Dickens partly in my lap and partl}'^ in Macrone's), and drove on to Newgate. In his works, if you remember, there is a descrip- tion of the prison, drawn from tliis day's observation. We were there an hour or two, and were shown some of the celebrated murderers confined for life, and one young soldier waiting for execution ; and iu one of the passages we chanced 54 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. to meet Mrs. Fry on her usual errand of benevolence. Though interested in Dickens's face, I forgot him, naturally enough, after we entered the prison, and I do not think I heard him speak during the two hours. I parted from him at the door of the prison, and continued my stroll into the city. Not long after this, Macroue sent me the sheets of " Sketches by Boz," with a note saying that they were by the gentleman who went with us to Newgate. I read the book with amazement at the genius displayed in it, and in my note of veply assured Maerone that I thought his for- tune was made as a publisher, if he could monopolize the author. Two or three years a'fterwards I was in London, and was present at the coraplimeutary dinner given to Macready. Samuel Lover, who sat next me, pointed out Dickens. I looked up and down the table, but was wholly unable to single him out without getting my friend to number the people who sat above him. He was no more like the same man I had seen than a tree in June is like the same tree in February. He sat leaning his head on his hand while Buiwer was speaking, and with his very long hair, his very flash waistcoat, his chains and rings, and with all a much paler face than of old, he was totally unrecognizable. The comparison was very interesting to me, and I looked at him a long time. He was then in his culmination of popularity, and seemed jaded to stupefaction. Remembering the glorious work he had written since I had seen him, I longed to pay him my homage, but had no opportunitj'-, and I did not see him again till he came over to reap his harvest, and upset his hajr-cart in America. When all the ephemera of his imprudences and improvidences shall have passed away — say twenty years hence — I should like to see him again, renowned as he will be for the most original and remarkable works of his time. Remembering what manner of man Mr. N. P. Willis was, fashioning himself on the model of Count D'Osray, that mere tailor's block for the exhibition of unpaid-for garments, the above description is to be taken, like his own notes of hand, at a considerable discount. The idea of taking, or mistaking Charles Dickens then, with a good engagement, for ." a young paragraphist for the Morning Chronicle,''^ and THE NAME OF "BOZ." 55 of fancying that he resembled Dick Swiveller, " minus the swell look" in his appearance, is too heavy a di'aught upon human credulity. It is only surprising, when he mentioned the " hair cropped close to his head," that this self-appointed " arbiter elegantiarum " did not suggest that probably it had not grown since Dickens had last taken his month's exercise upon the treadmill at the House of Correction in Brixton ! Yet the writer of such stuff would have been terribly offended if any one had told him it was impertinent and ungentlemanly, with a probable seasoning of spite and falsehood. CHArTER III. THE ORIGIN OP THE NAME OF " BOZ." — VARIETY OF THE "SKETCHES." — EPIGRAM. — THE DEMOSTHENES OP THE TAP. — OLD BAILEY CHARACTERS. — FAGIN AND THE ARTFUL DODGER SHADOWED FORTH. — BUMBLE AND MRS. GAMP. — CRUIKSHANK'S ILLUSTRATIONS. — THE COUNTESS AND THE PUBLISHER. When Mr. Macrone published two volumes of Sketches by "Boz," with illustrations by George Cruikshank, it was known only to a few newspaper folks that a young man named Charles Dickens, was the author. As we have seen, he had put " Boz," as his nom de plume, to sundry magazine and newspaper stories and sketches. In one of his later prefaces to Pickiuick, he explained the origin of this pseudonym, saying it "was the nickname of a pet child, a younger brother, whom I had dubbed Moses, in honor of the Vicar of Wakefield ; which being facetiously pronounced through the nose, became Boses, and being shortened, be- came Boz. * * Boz was a very familiar household word to me, long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it." Not having received this derivation at first, the human 56 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. race fell into the interminable mistake of mispronouncing the sobriquet. Every one sounds it like the first syllable of the word pos-itive ; whereas, according to its author's own version, it ought to be pronounced Boze. — Ilaving tlius dis- posed of this important philological episode, I return to the narrative. The Sketches contain the earliest productions of their author, "written," as he has stated, "from time to time to meet the exigencies of a newspaper or a magazine. They were originally published in two series : the first in two volumes, and the second one in one ;" this was in 1836. Fourteen j^ears later, when he supervised a collective edition of his writings, Mr. Dickens prefaced them with the state- ment: The whole of these Sketches were written and published, one by one, when I was a very young man. They were col- lected and re-published while 1 was still a very young man ; and sent into the world with all their imperfections (a good many) on their heads. They comprise my first attempts at authorship — with the exception of certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten, and represented with great applause to overflowing nurseries. I am conscious of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience ; particu- larly in that section of the present volume which is com- prised under the general head of Tales, But as this collection is not originated now, and was very leniently and fovorably received when it was first made, I have not felt it right either to remodel or expunge, beyond a few words and phrases here and there. The collection contains Sketches from our Parish, Scenes in London and its vicinity. Characters, and a dozen Tales. Most of these " Sketches of English Life and Character" had already attracted no small attention. Several provincial Journalists, of whom I was one, appreciating their spirit and fidelity, duly " conveyed" them to their own weekly journals — at that time there not being a daily paper in Great Britain, out of London, though there were several in FIRST AUTHORSHIP. 5Y Publin. I, for one, was very glad to reprint these lively sketches, the authorship of which was unknown, then and imtil the success of the Pickwick Papers revealed it. At first, it was believed, that " Dickens" was as fictitious a name as " Boz." An indifferent but much quoted epigram published about this time, in the Carihusian, ran thus : " Who the Dickens ' Boz ' could be Puzzled many a learned elf; But time unveiled the mystery, And 'Boz ' appeared as Dickens' self." The Sketches had the great merit of being faithful as well as humorous and spirited, and were infinitely snpei'ior to Mr. Wight's "Morning in Bow street," from the Morning Herald, which had been collected into two volumes, a few years earlier — also with the great advantage of being illus- trated by George Cruikshank. No doubt " Boz " and Cruikshank, with pen and pencil, were exaggerated as well as sprightly — but it was an exaggeration whose racy humor scarcely misrepresented the truth. It has been charged that the Sketches, however graphic and varied, chiefly de- picted vice, vulgarity, and misery: the drunken clerk making a night of it ; the degraded and desperate female convict ; the abandoned drnnkai'd hurrying on his own fearful end ; the retired shopkeepei'. making a fool of him- self by falling in love ; the contemptible squabbles and intrigues of a city boarding house ; the overtasked youth expiring in the arms of a widowed mother. But the writer was neither vicious nor vulgar. He had to show the shadows as well as the lights of society which had come under his observation, and after all, fun and frolic pre- dominate. The author's own taste was apparent in several sketches of private theatricals. A description of a balloon- ascent from Yauxhall Gardens is full of life, and some of the character-sketches are wonderfully good. For example, the Parlor Orator — Demosthenes of the tap — who allows no 58 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. one to speak but himself, and has obtained, and keeps, his position, by objecting to whatever other people say, by calling on them to prove the most as well as the least abstract propositions. We stand, (he says,) in these times, upon a calm eleva- tion of intellectual attainment, and not in the dark recess of mental deprivation. Proof is what I require — proof, and not assertions, in these stirring times. Every gen'lm'n that knows me, knows what was the nature and effect of my observations, when it was in the contemplation of the Old-street Suburban Representative Discovery Society, to recommend a candidate for that place in Cornwall there — I forget the naine of it. " Mr. Snobee," said Mr. Wilson, " is a fit and proper person to represent the borough in Parlia- ment." " Prove it," says I. " He is a friend "to Reform," says Mr. Wilson. " Pi'ove it," says I. "The abolitionist of the national debt, the unflhiching opponent of pensions, the uncompromising advocate of the negro, the reducer of sinecures and the duration of Parliament ; the extender of nothing but the suffi-ages of the people," says Mr. Wilson. " Prove it," says I. " His acts prove it," says he. " Prove them," says I. "And he could not prove them," said the red-faced man looking round triumphantly; "and the borough didn't have him ; and if you carried this principle to the full extent, j'ou have no debt, no pensions, no sinecures, no negroes, no nothing. And then, standing upon an elevation of intellectual attainment, and having reached the summit of popular prosperitj'-, j'^ou might bid defiance to the nations of the earth, and erect yourselves in the proud confidence of wisdom and superiority. This is my argument — this alwa37S has been my argument — and if I was a Member of the House of Commons to-morrow I'd make 'em shake in their shoes with it." And the red- faced man having struck the table very hard with his clenched fist, by wa.y of adding weight to the declaration, smoked away like a brewery. He is opposed, this Mr. Rogers, by a common-sense green-grocer who holds to the optimist principle, and denies that he is a slave : "What is man? (continued the red-faced specimen of the ODD CHARACTERS. 59 species, jerking his hat indignantly, from its peg on the wall.) What is an Englishman ? Is he to be trampled upon by every oppressor ? Is he to be knocked down at everybody's bidding ? What's freedom ? Not a standing army. What's a standing army ? Not freedom. What's general happi- ness ? Not universal misery. Liberty ain't the window- tax, is it ? The Lords ain't the Commons, are they." And the red-faced man, gradually bursting into a radiating sen- tence, in which such adjectives as "dastardly," " oppressive," "violent," and "sanguinary," formed the most conspicuous words, knocked his hat indignantly over his eyes, left the room, and slammed the door after him. In a sketch of the Old Bailey, we have the germs of two well known characters, in Oliver Twist. The first will re- mind the reader of the trial of Fagin : Turn your eyes to the dock ; watch the prisoner atten- tively for a few moments, and the fact is before you, in all its painful reality. Mark how restlessly he has been engaged for the last ten minutes, in forming all sorts of fantastic figures with the herbs which are strewed upon the ledge be- fore him ; observer the ashy paleness of his face when a pai'- ticular witness appears, and how he changes his position and wipes his clammy forehead, and feverish hands, when the case for the prosecution is closed, as if it were a relief to him to feel that the jury knew the worst. The defence is concluded; the judge proceeds to sum up the evidence, and the prisoner watches the countenances of the jury, as a dying man, clinging to life to the very last, vainly looks in the face of his phj^sician for one slight ray of hope. They turn round to consult ; you can almost hear the man's heart beat, as he bites the stalk of rosemary, with a desperate effort to appear composed. They resume their places — a dead silence prevails as the foreman delivers in the verdict — "Guilty I" A shriek bursts from a female in the gallerj''; the prisoner casts one look at the quarter from whence the noise proceeded, and is immediately hurried from the dock by the jailer. In the same sketch, is a young pickpocket, who in reply to the question, " Have you any witnesses to your char- acter ?" answers " Yes, ray Lord ; fifteen gen'Im'n is a vaten CO LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. outside, and vos a vaten all day yesterday, vich thej^ told me the night afore my trial vos a comin' on." When the witnesses fail to appear, because they never existed, and the jailer states that the urchin has been under his care twice before, he resolutely denies it, in some such terms as — " S'elp me God, gen'lm'n, I never vos in trouble afore — in- deed, my Lord, I never vos. It's all a howen to my having a twin brother, vich has wrongfully taken to prigging, and vich is so exactly like me, that no vun ever knows the differ- ence at ween us." If this youth was not own cousin to the Artful Dodger, there is no truth in family resemblances I Further, when the boy is sentenced to seven j'^ears' transportation, we are told that " finding it impossible to excite compassion, he gives vent to his feelinp;s in an imprecation bearing reference to the ej'-es of ' old big vig !' and as he declines to take the trouble of walking from the dock, he is forthwith carried out by two men, congratulating himself on having succeeded in giving everybody as much trouble as possible." Surely, in speech and action the Artful here stands confessed ? In Oliver Twist, he jocosely chaffs the police officers at Bow street ; asks the jailer to communicate " the names of them two files as was on the bench ;" turns on the magistrate with an air of abstraction, and " Did you redress yourself to me, my man ?" vehementl}^ declares that his attorney is a " break- fasting with the Wice-President of the House of Commons ;" when committed, threatens the Bench with his vengeance ; and, finally retires " grinning in the officer's face, with great glee and self-approval." The Parish Beadle, who appears in several of these sketches, was reproduced, ere long, as Mr. Bumble, and when an interesting event occurs in the house of Mr. Robinson, who married one of the four Misses Willis, and the street is " very much alarmed at hearing a hackneyed coach stop at Mrs. Robinson's door, at half-past two o'clock in the morning, out of which emerged a fat old woman, in a cloak and nightcap, with a bundle in one hand. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 61 and a pair of pattens in the other, who looked as if she had been suddenly knocked up out of bed for some very special purpose," who can doubt, for a moment, that he stands, thus early, in the august presence of Mrs. Sarah Gamp, friend of that Mrs. Harris, and subsequently painted at full length in the remarkable adventures of the Chuzzlewit family. It is not unusual for authors to develop at length characters of which they had originally given glimpses. Scott, in this manner, drew, for some of his novels, upon anecdotes which he had previously related in the notes to his Scottish min- strelsy and other poems. Cruikshank's admirable illustrations considerably aided the popularity of the Sketches. Before Dickens was born, Cruikshank had made himself familiar with the by-waj^s of Loudon, and with the various classes to be found in them. Perhaps he even presented such " happy hunting grounds" in these large but not very respectable districts to the clever young writer, who also had a taste for examining various phases of society. Some of Cruikshank's happiest " bits " are among these illustrations. The rotund personage who, in "The Parish Engine," assails the street-door, is the very incarnation of Beadledom. The crowd of children, in an- other plate, who rush forth hatless and bonnetless, to call a hackney coach, is chef cf oeitvre in its quiet effect, and the numerous interiors, with tenier-like wealth of detail, are won- derful little pictures. As for the two plates of " The Steam Excursion," they are the Before and After of pleasure an- ticipated and destroyed. Artist and author are seen in thorough unison throughout these remarkable Sketches. They worked together, as Captain Cuttle would say, " with a will." Following up the success of the two volumes of " Sketches," illustrated by Cruikshank, and published by Mr. J. Macrone, a third volume soon appeared. In a few weeks the demand for them was so great, that the supply fell short of the demand. It is a tradition in "the trade," that a lady of title called at Macrone's, in St. James's Square, 4 fi2 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. for a copy of the work. He had sold the last, but promised that she should be supplied by noon, next day, fresh from the binder. Could he lend her his own two volumes ? Un- fortunately he had sold them. She said she would look in the shop for herself, and he handed her out of her carriage. She rummaged for a copy, but ineffectually, and at last, having lost time and temper, drove off in a pet, without having the civility even to bow to the handsome young publisher. As the book cost a guinea, it was almost un- known to the people. Pickwick, in shilling numbers, was within the reach of all, and hit the taste of all. The lady who figures in this tale of tales, was the Countess Cowper, subsequently married to Lord Palmerston. CHAPTER lY. FIRST LAURELS WON. — HOW THE " PICKWICK PAPERS " WERE BEGUN THE SHILLING NUMBER SYSTEM. — GREEN PAPER COVERS. — LEVER AND THACKERAY. — MR. SERGEANT TAL- FOURD. — COPYRIGHT. — PROPOSED NIMROD CLUB. — MR. PICK- WICK FOUND AT DULWICH. — RECEPTION OF PICKWICK. — INTRODUCTION OF SAM WELLER. — AUTHOR AND PUB- LISHERS. — BULWER. — THE GREAT LITERARY REVIEWS. — MISS MITFORD's CRITICISM. — SCOTT AND DICKENS. — AVH.AT PICKWICK HAS DONE. — IN A PICKWICKIAN SENSE. — LADY jersey's SAM WELLER' BALL. Tn 183G, then in his twenty-fifth year, Charles Dickens reached the culminating point in his career. Many a man who has had the consciousness of power has panted for the opportunity of exercising it. " Give me a fulcrum," Archimedes is reported to have said, " and I will move the earth. " The one thing wanted in human life is opportunity. Without this, aspiration and even ability may be said, in the ORIGIN OF "PICKWICK." C3 words of one who was himself a powerful man of genius, to resemble, " silent thunder." It was in no vain boasting mood that Manfred, as his baffied career was nearing its close, said, " Ay father ! I have had those earthly visions, And noble aspirations in my youth, To make my mind the mind of other men, The enlightener of the nations." So, more or less, genius has ever felt. Rarely does it realize its early ambition. Here, in 1836, Dickens had con- quered one great difficulty. Youthful and unknown, with- out patrons or friends, he had succeeded in getting his Sketclies placed before the world, in the substantive form of a book, and a publisher saw sufficient in them to warrant the expense of having them illustrated by George Cruikshank, then very famous for the spirit, truth, and humor of his designs. The Sketches had been favorably, kindly noticed in the public journals, and their author was laboring in preparing a third volume, when an incident occurred which is best told in his own words. I was a young man of two or three-and twenty, when Messrs. Chapman & Hall, attracted by some pieces I was at that time writing in the Morning Chronicle newspaper, or had just written in the old ilonthly Magazine (of which one series had been lately collected and publislied in two vol- umes, illustrated by Mr. George Cruikshank), Avaited upon me to propose a something tliat should be published In shilling numbers — then only known to me, or, I believe, to any body else, by a dim recollection of certain interminable novels in that form, which used to be carried about the country by peddlers, and over some of which I remember to have shed innumerable tears before I had served my apprenticeship to Life. When I opened my door in Furnival's Inn to the partner Tv'ho represented the firm, I recognized in him the person from whose hands I had bought, two or three years pre- viousl}^ and whom I had never seen before or since, a pajjer — in the " Sketches" called JMr. Minns and his Cousin — . 64 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet street — appeared in all the glory of print ; on which occasion I walked down 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 there. I told my visitor of the coincidence, which we both hailed as a good omen ; and so fell to business. The idea propounded to me was, that the monthly some- thing should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr. Seymour ; and there was a notion, either on the part of that admirable humorous artist, or of my visitor (I forget which), that a " Nimrod Club," the members of which were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity, would be the best means of introducing these. I objected, on consideration, that although born and partly bred in the country, I was no great sportsman, except in regard of all kinds of locomotion ; that the idea was not novel, and had been already much used ; that it would be infinitely better for the plates to arise naturallj^ out of the text ; and that I should like to take m}^ own way, with a freer range of English scenes and people, and was afraid I should ulti- mately do so in any case, whatever course I might prescribe to myself at starting. My views being deferred to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number ; from the proof-sheets of which, Mr. Seymour made his drawing of the Club, and that happy portrait of its founder, by which he is always recognized, and which may be said to have made him a reality. I connected Mr. Pickwick with a club, because of the original suggestion, and I put in Mr. Winkle expresslj^ for the use of Mr. Seymour. We started with a number of twenty-four pages instead of thirty-two, and four illustrations in lieu of a couple. Mr. Seymour's sudden and lamented death before the second number was published, brought about a q uick decision upon a point already in agitation ; the number became one of thirty-two pages with two illustrations, and remained so to the end. My friends told me it was a low, cheap form of publication, b}^ which I should ruin all my rising hopes ; and how right my friends turned out to be, everybody now knows. He added, in a foot-note, "this book [Pickwick] would TUE GREEN COVERS. . 65 Lave cost, at the then established price of novels, ahout four guineas and a half" It was sold, when completed, neatly half-bound, for one guinea, which, to use a sporting phrase, gave an advantage of nine to two in favor of the purchaser, without taking into account the addition of forty-three engravings from original designs. In a subsequent chapter, Dickens's artists will be separately treated of The issue in shilling numbers, which Dickens's friends objected to, as a low, cheap form of publication, was by no means a new idea. Two publishing houses, at the head of which were Mr. Henry Fisher and Mr. Kelly, respectively, were then doing an immense business through- out England, by the sale of various works in shilling num- bers, distributed by peripatetic agents, and Chapman & Hall, the new firm with whose fortunes those of Charles Dickens were long to be associated, having considerable knowledge of "the trade," shrewdly believed that an attractive novel, published in monthl}' parts, at a low price, might safely venture to compete with the thrilling issues of the " History of the War," sent out by Mr. Kelly, or even such novelties as "The Pilgrim's Progress," "Pamela," " Clarissa Harlowe," and " Sir Charles Grandison," printed from worn-out stereotype plates. The first number of the Pickwick Papers had a green paper cover, on which many emblematic designs were given, was published on the last day of March, 1836, and the final issue, containing title-page, index, dedication, and brief preface, and consisting of Parts 19 and 20, was in October, 183t. The covers of every other serial monthly by Dickens was of green paper, like the first, and he often referred to it. Some years later, when Charles Lever adopted, the serial form of publication, " Harry Lorrequer " and its fol- lowers invariably had red, while Thackeray's " Yanity Fair" appeared in yellow covers. These differences of hue were severally retained to the end by all three authors. Dickens more than once mentioned his " green leaves." G6 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. The dedication to Mr. Sergeant Talfourd was at once a memorial of private friendsliip, and, the words ran, " as a slight and most inadequate acknowledgment of the inestima- ble services you are rendering to the literature of 3'our country, and of the lasting benefits you will confer upon the authors of this and succeeding generations, by securing to them and their descendants a permanent interest in the copyright of their works." Talfourd, who then sat in the House of Commons, as member for Reading, his native town, had introduced a new copja-ight act, in the session of 1837, which, still bearing the title of " Talfourd's Act," was passed, with some modifications, in 1842, and extended the term of author's copyright from twenty-eight to forty-two years. This, the existing copyright law of Great Britain and Ireland, made Talfourd very popular among authors. In its operation, however, it has been less advantageous to authors than to publishers, who do not pa}^ more for a forty- two than for a twenty-eight years' copjaight. With some other enthusiasts, Dickens believed that this extension of copyright would greatly benefit " those who devote them- selves to the most precarious of all pursuits," (literature,) and, still addressing his friend, said, " Many a fevered head and palsied hand will gather new vigor in the hour of sick- ness and distress, from your excellent exertions ; many a widowed mother and orphan child, who would otherwise reap nothing from the fame of departed genius but its too frequent legacy of poverty and suffering, will bear, in their altered condition, higher testimony to the value of your labors than the most lavish encomiums from lip or pen could ever aflTord." In the Preface, of 183Y, Dickens said that his original purpose "was to place before the reader a constant succession of characters and incidents ; to paint them in as vivid colors as he could command ; and to render them, at the same time, life-like and amusing. " He added that " deferring to the judg- ment of others in the outset of the undertaking, he adopted MOSES PICKWICK & CO. G7 the macliinery of the club, which was suggested as that best adapted to his purpose ; but, findiug that it tended rather to his embarrassment than otherwise, he gradually aban- doned it, considering it a matter of very little importance to the work whether strictly epic justice were awarded to the club or not." He claimed, also, as well he might, that throughout the book no incident or expression occurs which could call a blush into the most delicate cheek, or wound the feelings of the most sensitive person, and his closing words are, " If any of his imperfect descriptions, while they aiford amusement to the perusal, should induce only one reader to think better of his fellow-men, and to look upon the brighter and more kindly light of human nature, he would indeed be proud and happy to have led to such a result." The title of the book was almost fortuitously created. Nimrod, as above stated, was first proposed, but, we are told, a better name was soon found. Mr. Dickens rushed into the publisher's office one day exclaiming with evident delight, " I've got it — Moses Pickwick, Bath, coach-master." He had just seen painted on the door of a stage coach that was passing along the street the name and address " Moses Pickwick & Co., Bath," that wortliy firm being the pro- prietors of a line of stages running from the great me- tropolis to the well-known seat of fashion in the West of England. Moses was changed into Samuel, and so the hero got his name. After the trial, when Mr. Pickwick resolved to visit Bath, and proceeded to the White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, a noted coaching and booking hotel in those days, Sam Weller drew his attention to the fact that Pickwick was inscribed on the stage-coach, in gilt lettei's of goodiy size, and adds " that ain't all : not content vith writin' up Pickwick, they puts ' Moses ' afore it, vich I call addin' in- sult to injury, as the parrot said ven they not only took him from his native land, but made him talk the English lan- gwidge arterwards." His indignation and sorrow when ho 68 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. found that " nobody is to be whopped for taking this here liberty," are duly recorded and cannot be forgotten. Mr. Chapman, one of the publishers, is said to have described an elderly gentleman, with spectacles and gaiters, whom he met looking over the Thames at Richmond, and Sejanour is believed to have embodied this idea, in his full-length of Mr. Pickwick, which millions have smiled at. The success of Pickwick was by no means so rapid and decided as has been generally supposed. The publishers did not advertise it extensively, and, though the mode of publication (monthly shilling numbers) certainly helped it on, the sale was comparatively small. Mr. James Grant says in the article already mentioned : " for the first five months of its existence, Mr. Dickens's first serial, the Pickwick Papers, was a signal failure, notwithstanding the fact, that Mr. Charles Tilt, at that time a publisher of consider- able eminence, made extraordinary exertions, out of friend- ship for Messrs. Chapman & Hall, to insure its success. He sent out, on what is called sale or return, to all parts of the provinces, no fewer than fifteen hundred copies of each of the first five parts. This gave the Pickwick Papers a very extensive publicity, yQi Mr. Tilt's only result was an aver- age sale of fifty copies of each of the five parts. A certain number of copies sold, of course, through other channels, but commercially, the publication was a decided failure. The question was debated by the publishers whether they ought net to discontinue the publication of the serial. But just while the matter was under their consideration, Sam Weller, who had been introduced in the previous number, began to attract great attention and to call forth much ad- miration. The Press was all but unanimous in praising ' Samivel ' as an entirely original character, whom none but a great genius could have created ; and all of a sudden, in consequence of ' Samivel's ' popularity, the Pickwick Papers rose to an unheard of popularity. The back numbers of the work were ordered to a large extent, and of course all idea PUBLISHERS' PROFITS. 69 of discontinuing it was abandoned. By the time the Pick- ivick Papers had reached their twelfth number — that being half of the numbers of which it was originally intended the work should consist — Messrs. Chapman & Hall were so gratified with the signal success to which it had now at- tained, that they sent Mr. Dickens a cheque for £500, as a practical expression of their satisfaction with the sale. The work continued to increase in circulation until its comple- tion, when the sale had all but reached 40,000 copies. In the interval between the twelfth and concluding number, Messrs. Chapman & Hall sent Mr. Dickens several cheques, amounting in all to £3,000, in addition to the fifteen guineas per number which they had engaged at the beginning to give him. It was understood at the time, that Messrs. Chapman & Hall made a clear profit amounting to nearly £20,000 by the sale of the Pickicick Papers, after paying Mr. Dickens, in round numbers, £3,500. " It may be remembered that Samuel Weller was not intro- duced until after the four gentlemen of the Pickwick Club had visited the Wardle family at Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, and Jingle's elopement with the too sensitive middle- aged young lady, Miss Rachel Wardle. Mr. Jerdan, who had been over thirty years editor of the Literary Gazette, a great power in London when the Athenaeum was not much read, takes credit, in his Autobiography, for having induced Dickens to make a great deal of Sam Weller. He says : " I was so charmed with the creation that I could not resist the impulse to write to the author, express my admiration, and counsel him to develop the novel character largely — to the utmost." Afterward, when "Pickwick" was finished, and a semi-business Pickwickian sort of dinner ensued, Jer- dan was invited to be of the party, with this compliment : " I depend upon you above everybody ; Faithfully yours, always, Charles Dickens." The author occupied the chair, with Mr. Serjeant Talfourd as Vice President, and Jerdan adds : " Then the pleasant and uncommon fact was stated, 10 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. (all the individuals being present and toasted,) that there never had been a line of written agreement, hut that author, printer, artist and publisher had all proceeded on simply verbal assurances, and that there never had arisen a word to interrupt or lorevent the complete satisfaction of every one." This is at variance with Mi'. Grant's statement that the terms upon which Mr. Dickens concluded an arrangement with Messrs. Chapman & Hall for the publication of the Pickwick Papers, were " fifteen guineas for each number, the number consisting of two sheets, or thirty-two pages. That was a rather smaller sum than he offered to me, just at the same time, to contribute to the Monthly Ilagazine, then un- der my editorship." In fact, the first number contained twenty-four, and each subsequent number thirty-two octavo pages. Bulwer, writing in 1840, fifteen years after the beginning of his successful authorship, said, " Long after my name was not quite unknown in every other country where English literature is received, the great quarterly journals of my own disdained to recognize my existence." Dickens was far more fortu- nate. In October, 1837, when Pickwick was just completed, it was reviewed at length in the Quarterly Review, which frankly admitted " That a fresh vein of humor had been opened ; that a new and decidedly original genius had sprung up ; and the most cursory reference to preceding English writers of the comic order will show that, in his own peculiar walk, Mr. Dickens is not simply the most distinguished, but the first." Twelve months after this the Edinburgh Review had an article upon him, eulogizing his humanity and humor, his tenderness and truth. There is no knowledge of the actual profits of Pickwick at this time. The impression, even while the story was in course of publication, was that they were immense. Miss Mitford, herself a deservedly popular author, writing to a friend in Ire- laud, in June, 1837, when Pickwick was in course of comple- MISS MITFORD'S OPINION. 11 tiou, said, " So you never lieard of the Pichwick Papers ! Well, the}^ publish a number once a month, and print 25,000. The bookseller has made about £10,000 by the speculation. It is fun — London life — but without anything unpleasant ; a lady might read it aloud; and this so grapliic, so individual, and so true that you could courtesy to all the people as you see them in the streets. I did think there had not been a place where English is spoken to which ' Boz * had not penetrated. All the boys and girls talk his fun — the boys in the streets ; and yet those who are of the highest taste like it the most. Sir Benjamin Brodie takes it to read in his carriage, between patient and patient ; and Lord Denman studies Pickwick on the bench while the jury are deliberating. Do take some means to borrow the Pickwick Papers. It seems like not having heard of Hogarth, whom he resembles greatly, except that he takes a far more cheerful view, a Shakespeal'ian view, of humanity. It is rather fragmentary, except the trial (No. 11 or 12), which is as complete and perfect as any bit of comic writing in the English language. You must read the Pickwick Papers." In the same letter, criticizing Talfourd's Life of Cliarles Lamb, Miss Mitford says, " It consists almost wholly of his letters, which are entertaining, although not elegant enough to give one much pleasure. It is very odd that I should not mind the perfectly low-life of the Pickwick Papers, because the closest copies of things that are, and yet dislike the want of elegance in Charles Lamb's letters, which are merely his own fancies ; but I think you will understand the feeling." That Brodie, head of the medical profession in England, should have read Pickwick in his carriage, as he paid his usual round of visits, showed, no doubt, a great interest in the work. Another member of the same craft, nearly one huudred and fifty years earlier, had done more than read, for he actually wrote a popular poem in his chaise. This was Sir Samuel Garth, a famous London doctor, who, in t2 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 1G99, published "The Dispensatory," a poem, which ran through seven editions in a few years, and was warmly com- mended by Pope, a difficult critic as well as a great poet. As for Lord Deuman, then Chief Justice of England, read- ing Pickwick on the bench, while a jury was deliberating on the verdict, literary history supplies a singular parallel, for Lockhart relates, in his " Life of Sir Walter Scott," that, one of the judges, in Edinburgh, felt so much interested in one of the Waverley Novels, just published, that he took it into court with him, and finding or fancying that the subject matter in one of its chapters somewhat bore upon a trial then proceeding, pulled out the volume, and read it, with infinite humor and gusto, as part of his charge to the jury I Before " Pickwick" was completed, the sale rose to 40,000 a month, and the demand for back numbers to make up sets, was considerable. It has been said, without much considera- tion, that Pickwick rushed into more enormous popularity in a few months, than had ever been obtained by any first work of fiction except " Waverley." In 1814, when that romance appeared, Miss Edgeworth was the only living novelist who had any real hold on the public mind. In 1837, yjYiQn Pickwick was being published, James, Ainsworth, Bulwer, Gait, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Trollope, Disraeli, Grattan, Lover, Banim, Griffin, Warren, Theodore Hook, Miss Mitford, Miss Landon, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Horace Smith, Lister, Ward, Marryat, Lady Blessington, Croly, Hood, W. H. Maxwell, Lady Morgan, and many others, literally had the ear of the public. Therefore, the new and anonymous competitor for fame had to hold his own, like Ivanhoe at the tournament, against all comers. Scott had found an uncultivated waste, as it were, which soon bloomed in fragrance and beauty under his wand, truly that of an enchanter. Dickens, on the other hand, had an army of rivals to oppose, and only succeeded by proving himself equal, at least, to the greatest. Thackeray was then (1837) merely writing for bread, in Fraser^s Ilagazine. Charles Lever had not then appeared. MR. PICKWICK'S PORTRAIT. 73 Of all tlie rest, Bulwer best has kept his place, and it is a question whether, half a century hence, the Lord of Kneb- worth may occupy a place, on the roll of fame, as high as "Boz" himself; for if Dickens has sketched life in the middle and lower ranks of England, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Bulwer's Caxton novels have shown the political and fashionable phases of English society, with a spirit and fidelity which no one had exhibited before. When " Waverley" was published (in July, 1814), it did not create any remarkable sensation. The first edition, of 1,000 copies, moved slowly off in five weeks. Then, on a report that none but Scott could have written the book, 3,000 copies more were sold before November. Author and pub- lisher, on a fair division of the profits, each made £612 in these four months. Once established, however, and followed up, with all the abounding fertility of creative genius, by other novels and romances, in rapid succession, " Waverley" has held its own well, as "father of a line of kings," but without the early popularity of Pickioick. No- doubt, the admirers of the Sketches by " Boz,^^ which may be said to contain the germs of many of the characters which he subsequently elaborated, were glad to meet the author in a new work. They had found him shrewd and clever, truthful even when he ran into caricature, and unu- sually amusing. Attention was first drawn to Pickwick by the engravings. There was something very ludicrous in taking, as the hero of a novel, such an odd-looking little old gentleman as Mr. Samuel Pickwick, and, as he repeatedly came up in the whole twenty numbers, readers recognized him, as if he were a familiar acquaintance. Beginning merely to amuse, and in the secondary position of illustrating an artist's comic designs, it can readily be seen how soon and how completely this young author, then only twenty-four years old, rose above his original position. He would be nn unusually acute reader who could clearly state what the plot of Pickwick really is. Had it been published, at first, U LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. as an entire book, without the illustrations, it would proba- bly have been a failure. It contained as much letter-press as any three of the ordinary Waverley Novels, and might haA^e been voted tedious. But, appearing in monthly parts, each (to use the words of Miss Edgeworth's postillion), clo- sing with a sensational "gallop for the avdnue," it did not too much or too long engage the attention, and there was left in the reader's mind a to-be-continued expectation of the next number. Dickens, in his later preface, which explained how he was engaged to write the story, said : It has been observed of Mr. Pickwick, that there is a de- cided change in his character, as these pages proceed, and that he becomes more good and more sensible. I do not think this change will appear forced or unnatural to my readers, if they will reflect that in real life the peculiarities and oddities of a man who has anything whimsical about him, generally impress us first, and that it is not until we are better acquainted with him that we usually begin to look below these superficial traits, and to know the better part of him. Glancing fourteen years back, Mr. Dickens said : I have found it curious and interesting, looking over the sheets of this reprint, to mark what important social im- provements have taken place about us, almost imperceptibly, even since they were originally written. The license of Counsel, and the degree to which Juries are ingeniousl}^ be- wildered, are yet susceptible of moderation; while an im- provement in the mode of conducting Parliamentary Elec- tions (especially for counties) is still within the bounds of possibility. But, legal reforms have pared the claws of Messrs. Dodson & Fogg ; a spirit of self-respect, mutual forbearance, education, and co-operation, for such good ends, has diffused itself among their clerks ; places far apart are brought together, to the present convenience and ad- vantage of the Public, and to the certain destruction, in time, of a host of petty jealousies, blindnesses, and prejudices, by which the Public alone have always been the sufferers ; the laws relating to imprisonment for debt are altered ; and the Fleet Prisou is pulled down I IN A PICKWICKIAN SENSE. 15 He added, (this was twenty years ago, when little more than cue-third of his literarj'' career had been run) : With such a retrospect comprised within so short a period, who knows, but it may be discovered, within this Century, that there are even magistrates in town and country, who should be taught to shake hands every day with Common Sense and Justice ; that even Poor Laws may have mercy on the weak, the aged, and unfortunate ; that Scliools, on the broad principles of Christianity, are the best adornment for the length and breadth of this civilized land ; that Prison-doors should be barred on the outside, no less heavily and carefully than they are barred within ; that the universal diffusion of common means of decency and health is as much the right of the poorest of the poor, as it is indispensable to the safet}^ of the rich, and of the State ; that a few petty boards and bodies — less than drops in the great ocean of humanitj^ which roars around them — are not to let loose Fever and Consumption on God's creatures at their will, or always to keep their little fiddles going, for a Dance of Death 1 The object of the work, at first, was simply to amuse; — in the author's own words, " to place before the reader a constant succession of characters and incidents; to paint them in as vivid colors as he could command ; and to render them, at the same time, life-like and amusing." The cum- brous machinery of the Pickwick Club, which opened the work, was soon dispensed with. All, except its tediousness, that now rests in the mind, is the quaint humor of Messrs. Pickwick and Blotton abusing each other, in the heartiest manner, like vestrymen at a parish meeting, and eventually ending the dispute by exchanging compliments, and de- claring that the}^ had respectively used harsh language " only in a Pickwickian sense." Just about that time a somewhat similar scene had taken place, in a great legisla- tive body at Westminster, and the parties got out of it by mutuail}' conceding that they had abused each other only " in a Parliamentary sense." This was the first hit in Pickwick that told. The idea was too good to be lightly •76 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. parted with, so at Mr. Bob Sawyer's party, in his lodgings in the Borough, Lant-street, — the particular localit}^ in which Mrs. Raddle was a house-keeper, has lately been swept away, I hear, to make room for the extension of a railroad station — it was worked up again. The great quarrel be- tween Messrs. Noddy and Gunter, which had a "pistols for two and coffee for one " aspect, at one time, ends in both young gentlemen quietly eating their own words, and ex- pressing their mutual admiration in the warmest terms. Having to supply thirty-two octavo pages of letter-press each month, Mr. Dickens, starting with no settled purpose, 'except that of amusing his readers, now and then eked out his narrative by dipping into his portfolio for sketches and tales already written, and working these into his text. For the most part, he did this in a clumsy manner. Upon Pickwick were thus engrafted " the Stroller's Tale," related by the Dismal Man, at Rochester; "the Convict's Return," told by the Clergyman at Wardle's farm ; " A Madman's Manuscript,'' purporting to have been written by the same ; "the Bagman's Story," told in the Commercial room at Eatanswill; "the Story of the Queer Client," related by Jack Bamber of Gray's Inn ; Wardle's " Story of the Goblins who stole a Sexton ;" "the True Legend of Prince Bladud;" and "the Story of the Bagman's Uncle;" all of these had probably been written as portions of a new volume of "Sketches." They merely filled up space in Pickwick to save Dickens the trouble of composition, and very much clogged the story. Except in " Nicholas Nickleby," where, on the Yorkshire journey, a couple of gentlemen tell stories against each other, and in " Master Humphrey's Clock," where they legitimately came in as portions of the regular " works," Mr. Dickens never again tried to produce stories within a story. The adventures of the Pickwickians in the country are fresh and lively, but the finding of the stone with the inscription and the subsequent proceedings thereon, are THE SAM WELLER BALL, TY abundantly absurd. It was nothing new to burlesque the proceedings of an Antiquarian Society, and the idea of converting " Bil Stumps, his mark," into something which was taken or mistaken for an antique inscription, was evidently suggested by the A. D. L. L. which Jonathan Oldbuck, in " the Antiquary" fancied must signify Agricola Dicavit Lihens Lubens, while Edie Ochiltree proved that it only indicated Archie Drum's Lang Ladle. It is no secret that Scott got his idea from an amusing incident recoi'ded in the apocryphal Autobiography of Madame du Barry. The adventures at Mr. Leo Hunter's, the quarrel with Mr. Peter Magnus about the Lady in Yellow Curl Papers, and a few such incidents, are feeble enough. But, the mo- ment that Dickens brought us to Sara Weller, in the court- yard of the old Inn in the Borough, it was evident that he got upon terrajfi7'ma. The way in which Sam, as " Boots" in that hostlerie, counts up the company there is inimitable : — " There's a wooden leg in number six ; there's a pair of Hessians in thirteen ; there's two pair of halves in the commercial ; there's these here painted tops in the snuggery inside the bar ; and five more tops in the coffee-room." From that auspicious hour Sam Weller is master of the situation, and flavors the whole story. It has been stated, in a Quarterly Review, that while " The Pickwick Papers" were yet unfinished, a fashionable lady of high rank, — the Countess of Jersey, I think, — sent out invitations to a ball, the condition of acceptance pencilled upon each card being " Provided you will admit that Sam Weller is a gentle- man." Among the more striking incidents in Pickivick, are the duel which did not take place between Dr. Slammer of the 9'7th and Mr. Winkle ; the sayings and doings of Mr. Alfred Jingle at Dingley Dell ; the Election at Eatanswill ; the Return Game between Sam Weller and Mr. Job Trotter ; the Christmas in the country ; the Bachelors' Party at Mr. Bob Sawyers ; the Trial of Bardell v. Pickwick ; the Foot- 5 "78 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. men's Soiree at Bath ; the scenes, alternately comic and touch' ing, in the Fleet Prison ; the final exit of Jingle and Trotter; the scenes where Mr. Soloman Pell figures as a legal gen- tleman of great powers ; and the conclusion, in which Sam elects not to leave his master, and finally, like several others in the tale, settles down into matrimony. The defect of the story, chiefly arising out of the aimless manner in which it had been begun, is the inconsistency of its princij)al characters. All its events take place within a single year, so that the mellowing of the leading personages cannot be the eflJect of age. Mr. Pickwick, when first en- countered, is a mere butt, neither doing nor saying very wisely, and his immediate friends were made to match. These are Tupman, an obese ci devant jeune homme, ridicu- lous from his tendenc}'' to lose his head when he is in com- pany with one of the softer sex; Mr. Winkle, a sporting character, who can neither ride, shoot, nor skate; and Mr. Snodgrass, "to this day reputed a great poet among his friends and acquaintances, although we do not find that he has ever written anything to encourage the belief." They start with all sorts of blunders and follies of speech and action, but as the story advances, severally exhibit common sense, instinctive good feeling, high principle, and a fine sense of propriety and honor. Mr. Pickwick in the Fleet, a voluntary prisoner, rather than satisfy the heavy exactions of some nefarious limbs of the law, but magnani- mously paying Mrs. Bardell's law-costs, as well as his own, rather than that she should also be a prisoner in such a place, is not the ridiculous old gentleman who is presented in the opening chapter, standing upon a Windsor chair, in an extravagant position, making a speech to the assembled Pickwickians in the Club. It was a sagacious critic who wrote, "The fact is, that Phiz is consistent in his concep- tion of Mr. Pickwick : throughout he is the same idiotic lump of bland blockheadism, unrelieved by thought or feel- ing, from beginning to end. In the hands of Boz, he com- mences a butt and ends as a hero." MAGAZINE EDITOR. •jg CHAPTER V. "the wits' miscellany." — DICKENS EDITS BENTLEY'S. — DOUGLAS JERROLD. — ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. — DICKENS' CON- TRIBUTIONS. — OLIVER TWIST. — PURPOSE AND MORAL. — author's LAW. — FAGIN'S CONVICTION. — JACOB'S ISLAND. — DRAMATIC VERSIONS. The Sketches by Boz, which so favorably drew the then new publishing firm of Chapman & Hall towards the then scarcely known young author, and the popularity which the Pickwick Papers had obtained among all classes of readers, also attracted the notice of Mr. Richard Bentley, of New Burlington-street, Loudon, a publisher, educated at St. Paul's School, London, where two of his class-mates were Sir Frederick Pollock, Ex-Chief Baron of the Exche- quer, and the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, to be remem- bered as author of " The lugoldsby Legends." It had been Mr. Bentley's determination, for some time, to establish a periodical, — probabl^^ as a set-off to the Neio llonthly Maga- zine, long the property of his late partner, Mr. Henry Col- burn. It had been announced under the title of The Wits^ Miscellany, but an editor had not been found, though Theo- dore Hook had been spoken to, with a natural distrust, how- ever, of his erratic and irregular habits. Just then, as if to give a spur to Bentley, The Humorist was advertised, which literally, before it was published, was incorporated with Colburn's New Monthly, of which Hook was made editor. At last, thinking that "Boz," who was then well-advanced with his Pickwick Papers, would be the right man in the right place, Mr. Bentley made him sucli an oflfer with a large editorial stipend, that he accepted it. On the first of January, 183T, appeared Benlley^s Miscellany, 80 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. No. I., edited by " Boz." On the change of name, Douglas Jerrold, who was nothing if not satirical, said, " I can under- stand, Bentley, why you should give up the first title of the Wils^ Miscellany, but am puzzled in thinking what could have induced you to run into the opposite extreme and call it ' Bentley^ s.' ^' A strong and well-conducted periodical it was, during the two years Mr, Dickens was over it. He installed George Cruikshank as its artist in ordinary, R. W. Buss and H. K. Browne also contributing, as well as Samuel Lover, who etched the clever illustrations to his own " Handy Andy," the opening chapters of which appeared in Bentley. There also were portraits on steel of sundry cel- ebrities — which had already done yeoman's sei'vice in others of Mr. Bentley's publications. The first number was opened with a Song of the Month, by Father Prout, and there were similar introductions in succeeding numbers, by Dr. Ma- ginn, W. H. Ainsworth, Samuel Lover, and others. Dickens gathered around him, as his staff, many cele- brated writers of the time. Besides those already named, were Theodore Hook, T. L. Peacock, W. H. Maxwell, T. Haynes Bayly, J. Fenimore Cooper, Edward Howard, Charles Oilier, James Morier, J. Hamilton Reynolds, Charles White- head, Sir George Rose, William Jerdan, R. H. Barham, George Hogarth, Richard Johns, Captain Medwin, Prince Puckler Muskau, George Dance, and J. Sheridan Knowles. Here were the leading writers in Bentley's first volume, and Dickens, to use a term from the road, " had them well in hand." His own articles can soon be counted up : — " The Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble, Mayor of Mudfog," and " The Pantomime of Life," not included in Dickens' own collection of his writings, but republished in Petersons' editions of the Sketches. There also were two " Re- ports of the Proceedings of the Mudfog Association," bur- lesquing the proceedings of the then recently established "British Association for the Advancement of Science." These reports, which are characterized by humor rather FATHER PROUT AND BOZ. 81 broad than subtle, I republish in the present volume, with other inedited productions of "Boz." The editorial address, dated November 30th, 1831, at the close of the first year, prefixed to the second volume of Bentley^s Miscellany, was very brief, merely "hoping to make many changes for the better, and none for the worse ; and to show that, while we have one grateful eye to past patron- age, we have another wary one to future favors ; in that, thus, like the heroine of the sweet poem, descriptive of the faithlessness and perjury of Mr. John Oakham, of the Royal Navy, we look two ways at once." This was not very bril- liant, neither was the closing sentence — " These, and a hundred other great designs, preparations, and surprises are in contemplation, for the fulfilment of which we are already bound in two volumes cloth, and have no objection, if it be any additional security to the public, to stand bound in twenty more." It may be stated here that a fac-simile reprint of Benfley''s Sliacellany was begun, with the illustrations, by Williaui Lewer, publisher. New York. It commenced with the num- ber for January, 1838,— so that Vol. III. of the English was Vol. I. of the American edition. Perhaps this is the most suitable place for a poetical ad- dress to " Boz," which was published in Bentley, for January, 1838, and even was not reprinted in the author's own edition of the "Keliques of Father Prout." At this distance of time, it is a literary curiosity : POETICAL EPISTLE FPvOM FATHER PROUT TO BOZ. I. A rhyme ! a rhyme ! from a distant clime, — from the ffiilph of the Genoese, O'er the ru2:,£icd sc-tilps of the Jvilian Alps, dear Boz ! 1 send you these, To liuht the TT'm* your candlestick holds up, or, should you list. To usher in the yarn you spin concerning Oliver Twist. II. Immense applause you've gained, oh, Boz ! through continental Europe ; You'll make Pickwick oecumeuick ;* of fame you have a sure hope: For here your books are found, gadzooks ! in greater hixe than any That have issued yet, hotpress'd or wet, from the types of Galignani. LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. But neither when you sport yonr pen, oh, potent mirth-compeller ! Winning our hearts " in monthly parts," can Pidcwiels or Sam Weller Cause us to weep with pathos deep, or siialce with laugh spasmodical As when you draiu your copious vein for Bentley's periodical. Folks all enjoy your Parish Boy— so truly you depict him : But I alack ! while thus you track your stinted poor-law's victim, Must think of some poor nearer home, — poor who, unheeded perish, By squires despoiled, by "patriots" gulled,— I mean the starving Irish. Yet there's no dearth of Irish mirth, which, to a mind of feeling, Seemeth to be the Helot's glee before the Spartan reeling ; 8uch gloomy thought o'ercometh not the glow of England's humor, Thrice happy isle ! long may the smile of genuine joy illume her ! Write on, young sage ! still o'er the page pour forth the flood of fancy ; Wax still more droll, wave o'er the soul Wit's wand of necromancy. Behold ! e'en now around your brow th' immortal laurel thickens ; Yea, Swift or Sterne might gladly learn a thing or two from Dickens. A rhyme ! a rhyme ! from a distant clime, — a song from the sunny south ! A goodly theme, so Boz but deem the measure not uncouth. Would, for thy sake, that " Phout " could make his bow in fashion finer, "Fnrtant" (from thee) "pour la Syrie," for Greece and Asia Minor. Genoa, 14<7i December, 1837. The leading attraction of Bentley^s 3Iiscellany was a story called Oliver Tiuist, or the Parish Boy^s Progress, written by Charles Dickens, and illustrated by George Cruikshank. It was begun in the second number, (February, 1837.) Oliver Twist, evidently written with great care, is one of Dickens's most artistical productions, but the story is not in accordance with the sub-title : that is, the hero is only a par- ish boy for a very short time. In the chapter which treats of Dickens's relations with artists, this difference and its cause will be explained. In his original preface to Oliver Twist, Mr. Dickens states that the greater part of that story was originally published in a magazine. Read as a whole, it^bears little appearance of having been written from month to month, a great por- OLIVER TWIST. 83 tion of it while Pickwick was also in hand, and published. The story, as a story, is well told, the characters are well grouped and strikingl}' contrasted ; there is marked individu- ality in what they say and do, and poetical justice is awarded, at the close, by the punishment of Fagin, Sikes, and Monks — to say nothing of inferior personages. The parish boy gets into a den of thieves, from which he twice escapes, with the singular good fortune, each time, of falling into the hands of relations or friends. The comic humor of the author is largely exhibited in this tale. Mr. Bumble is amusing, from first to last, and his tea-table wooing of Mrs. Corney, matron of the workhouse, is one of the richest scenes in fiction. Master Charles Bates and the light-fiugered but facetious "Artful Dodger," afi'ord entertainment whenever they ap- pear. There is a rough humor, too, in Mr. Noah Claypole, and his government of Charlotte, over whom he exercises a very rigid rule, is consistent throughout. Giles and " the Boy " Brittle are rather sketches than portraits. Mrs. Maj- lie, Rose and her lover, Mr. Losberue and Mr. Brownlow, to say nothing of Mr. Grimwig, whose talent chiefly con- sists in offering to eat his own head if such and such things did not occur, are rather commonplace characters, and, even thus early, Dickens showed and exhibited as much in- capacity for writing love scenes as Cruikshank for sketching pretty women. It is in the thieves' den that Dickens put forth his great power, exhibiting Rembrandt-like skill in the arrangement, by contrast of his lights and shadows. We are interested, despite of ourselves. We perceive that it is among a low and villainous gang that he has placed us: that, as he says himself, " Sikes is a thief, and Fagin a receiver of stolen goods, that the boy's a pickpocket, and the girl is a pros- titute." He adds : I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil, I have always 84 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. believed this to be a recognized and establislied trutli, laid down by the greatest men the "vvorld has ever seen, constantly acted upon by the best and wisest natures, and confirmed by the reason and experience of every thinking mind. I saw no reason, when 1 wrote this book, why the very dregs of life, so long as their speech did not offend the ear, should not serve the purpose of a moral, at least as well as its froth and cream. Nor did I doubt that there lay festering in Saint Giles's as good materials towards the Truth as any flaunt- ing in Saint James's. In this spirit, when I wished to show, in little Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through every adverse circum- stance, and triumphing at last ; and when I considered among what companions I could try him best, having re- gard to that kind of men into whose hands he would most naturally fall ; I bethought m^'self of those who figure in these volumes. When 1 came to discuss the subject more maturely with myself I saw many strong reasons for pur- suing the course to which I was inclined. I had read of thieves by scores — seductive fellows (amiable for the most part), faultless in dress, plump in po(;ket, choice in horse- flesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gallantry, great at a song, a bottle, pack of cards, or dice-box, and ht companions for the bravest. But I had never met (except in Hogarth) with the miserable reality. It appeared to me that to draw a knot of such associates in crime as really do exist; to paint them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid poverty of their lives ; to show them as they really are, for ever skulking uneasily through the dirti- est paths of life, with the great, black, ghastly gallows clo- sing up their prospect, turn them where they may ; it ap- peared to me that to do this, would be to attempt a some- thing which was greatly needed, and which would be a service to society. And therefore I did it, as I best could. There is great power, with some inconsistency, in the later development of Nancy Sykes : — she first appears as a drab, a loose liver, a drunkard, and a thief, but closes as a heroine. At the beginning, she talks the ordinary slang of London, but in her interview with Rose Ma^die, near Lon- don Bridge, her language is pure, impressive, and dignified. In Oliver Twist, as in Pickwick, Nicklehy, and other HIS LAW-SCENES. 85 tales, Mr. Dickens brings liis legal experience to accomit. But this is not so much knowledge of the law, as a recol- lection of the quirks of attorney's' clerks, and the practice of the courts. The trial-scene in Pickwick, which its author used to read with great dramatic effect, is one of his most successful productions, but it must have been a remarkable jury which could have given £150 damages in the case of Bardell v. Pickwick, on such slight evidence as was heard in court, and little Mr. Pei'ker, defendant's attorney, must have been very careless, stupid, or ignorant, inasmuch as counsel, instructed by him, did not move the court, on the first day of next terra, for a rule nisi to show cause why there should not be a new trial, on the ground that the ver- dict had been obtained on insufficient evidence. How Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, who read and revised most of Dickens's earlier novels, did not hit the legal " blot" in this case, must alwa3's be wondered at. So, in Nicholas Nicklehy, we find Uncle Ralph, the Usurer, terribly frightened at the possible result of his dealings with Arthur Guide — such dealing con- sisting of the private execution of a bond, without witness or stamp, securing a sura of raoney to one rogue, on the celebration of marriage between another in the agree- ment, with a rich young lady. That was not illegal. So, finally, in Oliver Twist, Fagin is tried and convicted as an accessor}'- before the fact in the murder of Nancy, whereas he had only made Noah Claypole, the spy, describe Nancj-'s private interview with Rose Maylie, at the bridge, which Sikes impatiently listened to and then burst out : " Hell's fire !" cried Sikes, breaking fiercely from the Jew. "Let me go !" Flinging the old man from him, he rusluMi from the room, and darted wildly and furiously up the stairs. " Bill, Bill !" cried the Jew, following him hastily. " A word — only a word." The word would not have been exchanged, but that the housebreaker was unable to open the door, on which he was expending fruitless oaths and violence when the Jew came panting out. 86 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. "Let me out," said Sikes. " Don't speak to me — it's not safe. Let me out, I sa}' !" " Hear me speak a word," rejoined the Jew, laying his hand upon the lock. " You won't be " " Well," replied the other. " You won't he — too — violent. Bill ?" whined the Jew. The day was brealving, and there was light enough for the men to see each other's faces. They exchanged one brief glance ; there was a fire in the eyes of both which could not be mistaken. " I mean," said Fagin, showing that he felt all disguise was now useless — "not too violent for safety. Be crafty, Bill, and not too bold." Sikes made no reply, but pulling open the door of which the Jew had turned the lock, dashed into the silent streets. Here Fagin, having taken means to work up Sikes into a passion, merely recommends him not to be too violent, — to be crafty, and not too bold. But Fagin is tried, as accessory — most powerful is that scene — and is really con- victed only of having "exchanged one brief glance," there then being " a fire in the eyes of both which could not be mistaken." A Tombs' lawj^er, with Fagin as his client, would have saved his life, I suspect, on the ground of want of i^ositive, however strong might have been the presump- tive, evidence against him. At the same time, every reader rejoices in the bad man's fate. The anomaly in the book is that under such training as he had received from the "porochial authorities," — Mrs. Mann and Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, Mr. Sowerberry the coffin-maker — and Fagin the fence, Oliver Twist should figure as a model of honesty, frankness, and refinement. Children who emei-ge from the meagre misery of work- house slavery, do not usually turn out so well as this. Oliver Twist had the honor of being thrice introduced to the public. First, in the preface to the edition of 1839; next, in April, 1841, when the next edition was published; and finally in the edition of March, 1850. The third preface has not latterly been reprinted. It was a defence of the THE CITY ALDERMAN. 87 author against Sir Peter Laurie, a tbickheaclecl alderman of London. In one of the closing chapters, which narrated, in a most effective manner, the well-merited fate of Sikes, that tragedy was located in a place called Jacob's Island, near that part of the Thames on which the church of Ilotherhithe abuts, beyond Dockhead, in the Borough of Southwark, and Dickens described it as the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are trodden in London, wholly unknown by name to the great mass of its inhabitants. The view of this foul den, he thus presented : To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow, and mudd}^ streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of water-side people, and devoted to the traflic they may be supposed to occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in .the shops, the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman's door, and stream from the house parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed laborers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-wiiippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the ver}^ raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed hy olt'ensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponder- ous wagons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving at length in streets remoter and less frequented than those through which he had passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys, half crushed, half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron bars, that time and dust have almost eaten away, and every im- aginable sign of desolation and neglect. In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead, in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob's Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep, and fifteen or twenty wide, when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in these da3^s as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled up at high water by opening the sluices at the head mills, from which it took its 83 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. old name. At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and windows buckets, jars, domestic uten- sils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up ; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses them- selves, his utmost astonishment will be excited b}^ the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries, common to the backs of half-a-dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the sluice beneath ; windows broken and patched, with j^oles thrust out on which to dry linen that is never there ; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squallor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it— as some have done ; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations ; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indi- cation of filth, rot, and garbage — all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch. In Jacob's Island the warehouses are roofless and empty, the walls are crumbling down, the windows are windows no more, the doors are falling into the street, the chimneys are blackened, but they jaeld no smoke. Thirty or forty 3^ears ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place ; but now it is a desolate island indeed. The houses have no owners ; they are broken open and entered upon by those who have the courage, and there the}' live and there they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob's Island. This was written in the autumn of 1838. The late Bishop of London, (Dr. Charles James Blomfield,) who was active in promoting Social Reforms, presided, in February, 1850, at a public meeting in favor of Sanitary Reforms in London, and particularly stated that the houses in Jacob's Island could receive such sanitary improvements at a cost of about a penny three farthings per week per house. The Bishop mentioned that Mr. Dickens had described Jacob's Island, and Mr. Dickens, who also spoke, " confessed that soft impeachment." A few days after this meeting Sir JACOB'S ISLAND. 89 Peter Laurie addressed the Yestry of Marylebone, a parish some miles from Jacob's Island and in another county, ridiculed the idea of tlieir being 1,300 houses on forty acres of ground, and added, " The Bishop of London, poor soul, in his simplicity thought there really was such a place, whereas it turned out that it existed only in a work of fiction, written by Mi-. Charles Dickens ten years ago. The fact was admitted by Mr. Charles Dickens himself at the meeting, and he (Sir P. Laurie) had extracted his words from the same newspaper. Mr. Dickens had said, ' Now, the first of these classes proceeded generally on the supposition that the compulsory improvement of these dwellings, when exceedingly defective, would be very expensive. But that was a great mistake, for nothing was cheaper than good sanitary improvement, as they knew in this case of Jacob's Island, which he had de- scribed in a work of fiction some ten or eleven years ago.' " The comments which Mr. Dickens made on this blunder of the stolid Alderman, who believed that truth, when described in fiction, ceases to be truth, are too good to be any longer suppressed — as they were, after the death of the civic Knight, who had figured, in his life-time, as Alderman Cute, in the Christmas story of the The Chimes. Here is the reply — badinage charged with satire : When I came to read this, I was so much struck by the honesty, by the truth, and by the wisdom of this logic, as well as by the fact of the sagacious vestrj^, including mem- bers of parliament, magistrates, officers, chemists, and I know not who else listening to it meekly (as became them), that I resolved to record the fact here, as a certain means of making it known to, and causing it to be reverenced by, many thousands of people. Reflecting upon this logic, and its universal application ; remembering that when Fielding described Newgate, the prison immediately ceased to exist; that when Smollett took Roderick Randolph to Bath, that city instantly sank into the earth ; that when Scott exercised his genius on Whitefriars, it incontinently glided into the Thames ; that an ancient place called Windsor was entirely 90 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. destroyed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth by two Merry Wives of that town, acting under the direction of a person of the name of Shakespeare ; and that Mr, Pope, after having, at a great expense, completed his grotto at Twicken- ham, incautiously reduced it to ashes by writing a poem upon it ; — I say, when I came to consider these things, I was inclined to make this preface the vehicle of my humble tribute of admiration to Sir Peter Laurie. But, I am restrained by very painful consideration — by no less a consideration than the impossibility of his existence. For Sir Peter Laurie having been himself described in a book (as I understand he was, one Christmas time, for his conduct on the seat of Justice), it is but too clear that there can be no such man ! The popularity of Oliver Twist was great from its first month, and the work has been repeatedly dramatized. Some of these adaptations still keep the stage, wherever the English language is spoken. CHAPTER VL PUBLICATIONS UNAVOWED OR FORGOTTEN. — SUNDAY IN LON- DON. — THE POOR men's SUNDAY DINNER. — SKETCHES OP YOUNG LADIES AND OP YOUNG GENTLEMEN. — MEMOIRS OP GRIMALDI. — THE PIC-NIC PAPERS. — THOMAS MOORE'S PROSE AND VERSE. — DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES : THE STRANGE GEN- TLEMAN, VILLAGE COQUETTES, IS SHE HIS WIPE ? — AMATEUR ACTING. — author's READINGS. Only that I have a great objection to what are called "hard words," I might properly present what I have to place here, between the conclusion of Oliver Twist and the beginning of Nicholas Nickleby, as an intercalary chapter. It will treat of some of Dickens's productions, unacknowl- edged or almost forgotten. In 1835, when the late Sir Andrew Agnew, M. P., a Scot- AN UNACKNOWLEDGED WORK. 91 tisli baronet, was making considerable stir in and out of Parliament, by vehement agitation in favor of rigid laws for the better observance of the Sabbath, and bringing no small ability, energy, and perseverence to this self-imposed duty, one class, among which Charles Dickens was to be found, objected to the course he was taking, on the ground that the execution of such laws would press lightly upon the rich and heavily upon the poor. He was unwilling to see a man of station — say Sir Andrew himself — riding to church in his own or a hired carriage, and afterwards partaking of a dinner, dressed by a French cook, while the omnibus within reach of the working man's limited means, was not to run on the Sabbath, and the public bakeries were to be closed on the same day, so as to prevent his children from having the accustomed baked joint and potatoes — per- haps their only regular dinner during the week. There appeared, therefore, a brochure of some eighty pages, written by Dickens, about the time the first number of Ficlcwick was published. It was entitled Sunday Under Three Heads : as it is ; as sabbath bills would make it : as it might be made. BY Timothy Sparks. It was illustrated by Hablot K. Browne, whose pseudo- nyrae was "Phiz." It was prefaced by a sarcastic dedica- tion to the Right Ileverend Father in God, Charles James, Lord Bishop of London. It was a strong plea for the poor. The description of a lot of children watching their father bringing the baked shoulder of mutton, with "taters" under it, from the public bakery, is capital. This book was a bold prophecy of Pickwick and subsequent works in which the side of the poor was taken. It has long been out of print, but a copy of it is preserved in the great library of the British Museum, London. 92 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. It was during the progress of " Pickwick,'^^ I think, that two small volumes, also illustrated by " Phiz," made their appearance. These, lively and graphic, were " Sketches of Young Gentlemen," and "Sketches of Young Ladies." They were so much in Dickens's style, that they were attributed to him for a time. They were republished in London a few years ago. " Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi," edited by " Boz," was a performance b}'^ Mr. Dickens when he was conducting Bentlei/s Miscellany. The introductory chapter is dated February, 1838. The subject of this biography was the most remarkable theatrical Clown that ever performed in any country. His father, Italian by descent and place of birth, arrived in London in 1158, during the reign of David Garrick at Drury Lane Theatre, and soon was appointed ballet-master and buffo-dancer. It was this ingenious gentleman, who, during the Riots of 1180, (afterwards so graphically described in " Barnaby Rudge,") when some of his terrified neighbors chalked " No Popery " upon their doors, to conciliate the furious anti-Catholic mob, wrote " No religion at all " upon Ms, in the expectation, which was realized, that all parties would leave him alone ! In IT 19, his son, Joseph Grimaldi, was born, and appeared iu public, as a miniature Clown, before he was two years old. At the age of four he became a regular salaried member of the Sadler's Wells Company, and remained in that ca- pacity, with the exception of one season, until he closed his pi'ofessional career, forty-nine years afterwards. He took his farewell benefit in June, 1826. He devoted his leisure to the composition of his memoirs, and died on the last day of May, 1831, — five mouths after he had completed his last chapter. There was an immense quantity of manuscript, which was purchased by Mr. Bentley, who placed it in the hands of Mr. Dickens. In the introductory Chapter, after a characteristic dissertation on Pantomimes and Clowns, Mr. Dickens says of the memoirs : JOSEPH GRIMALDI. 93 His own share in them is stated in a few words. Being much struck by several incidents in the manuscript — such as the description of Grrimahli's infauc3^ ^^® burglary, the brother's return from sea under the extraordinary circum- stances detailed, the adventure of the man with the two fingers on his left hand, the account of Mackintosh and his friends, and many other passages — and tliinking that they might be related in a more attractive manner (they were at that time told in the first person, as if by Grimaldi himself, although they had necessarily lost any original manner which his re- cital might have imparted to them), he accepted a proposal from the publisher to edit the book, and has edited it to the best of his ability, altering its form throughout, and ma- king such other alterations as he conceived would improve the narration of the facts, without any departure from the facts themselves. There was no book-making in the case. Grimaldi was allowed to tell his own story, — to relate the adventures of the most eminent Clown the stage ever possessed, and only where he had run into garrulity, was the pruning knife ju- diciously used, Mr. Dickens said " the account of Grim- aldi's first courtship may appear lengthy in its present form : but it has undergone a double and most comprehensive process of abridgment. The old man was garrulous upon a subject on which the youth had felt so keenly; and as the feeling did him honor in both stages of life, the Editor has not had the heart to reduce it further." The book, which is pleasant reading, like most theatrical biographies, had a portrait of Grimaldi, engraved on steel, for its frontispiece, and was further enriched with eight original illustrations by George Cruikshank.* Mr. John Macrone, publisher of Dickens's Sketches, had endeavored to establish himself in business in London, with more experience in " the trade " than capital. He befriended Charles Dickens on his start into authorship, at a time * The memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi are not included in any editions of Dickens, English or American, except those published' by Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia. G f)4 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. when a young writer most requires encouragement, and, though the result proved the correctness of his judgment, risked what was a considerable sum, for a young publisher, in the production of the Sketches, with illustrations by Cruilcshank. Mr. Macrone died when the success of "The Pickwick Papers " was an assured fact. For the benefit of his family, Mr. Dickens suggested and undertook to edit "The Pic-nic Papers," so called because the two volumes were made up from voluntary contributions. He opened with a lively sketch, called " The Lamplighter's Story." Thomas Moore presented a prose sketch, " The Student of Bagdad ; from an unpublished Romance written in 1809-10:" Talfourd gave a sonnet; Geo. W. Lovell, au- thor of "The Provost of Bruges," a poetic tale; Agnes Strickland, a couple of novelettes ; Horace Smith, a mo- diseval Spanish story ; Allan Cunningham, a Scotch sketch ; W. H. Maxwell, an Irish adventure ; W. H. Ainsworth, a fragment entitled, " The Old London Merchant; " Mr. John Forster, a clever paper on " John Drj^den and Jacob Ton son." The acting editor of this collection, when his orig- inal materials ran short, helped himself out of " Charcoal Sketches," by the late Joseph C. Neal, of Philadelphia, to the extent of one hundred pages. The end was that Mr. Neal, whose name was not even mentioned in the English book, claimed his own, and, I believe, received some com- pensation. When " The Pic-nic Papers " were republished in America,* this portion was omitted. The work was illus- trated by George Cruikshank and "Phiz," and realized a considerable sum for Mr. Macrone's family. As a literary curiosity, I quote a single sentence from Thomas Moore's little fragment : The sun had just set, and the modest Arabian jasmines, which had kept the secret of their fragrance to themselves all day, were now beginning to let the sweet mj^stery out, and make every passing breeze their confidant. * By Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, of Philadelphia. DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES. 95 The author stated in a note, that this passage was thus versified afterwards in " Lalla Rookh: " " From plants that wake when others sleep ; From timid jasmine buds that keep Their fragrance to themselves all day, But, when the sun-lii;ht dies away, Let the delicious secret out To every breeze that roams about." Like the majority of newspaper men, Charles Dickens was fond of the stage. On Michaelmas day, 1836, just when he had introduced Sam Weller to the public, through the Pickwick Papers, commenced six months before, a farce, written by him, and entitled " The Strange Gentleman," was produced at the St. James's Theatre, on the opening of the season. Mr. John Pritt Harley, (now dead,) famous in what are called character-parts, was the hero of this piece, which was well received and had a fair run. It could not have been a failure, as sometimes stated, for, at the same theatre, on the evening of Tuesday, December 6th, 1836, was produced " The Village Coquettes," an opera from his pen, the music of which was composed by Mr. John Hullah, also very young at the time, (he was born in 1812,) whose reputation may be said to have been established on this occasion. The Era Almanac, a London publication, which is authority upon dramatic and musical history, says: " The quaint humor, unaffected pathos, and graceful lyrics of this production found prompt recognition, and the piece enjoyed a prosperous run. ' The Village Coquettes' took its title from two village girls, Lucy and Rose, led away by vanity, coquetting with men above them in station, and dis- carding their humble though worthy lovers. Before, how- ever, it is too late, they see their error, and the piece termi- nates happily. Miss Rainforth and Miss Julia Smith, were the heroines, and Mr. Bennett and Mr. Gardner were their betrothed lovers. Braham was the Lord of the Manor, who would have led astray the fair Lucy. There was a capital scene where he was detected by Lucy's father, played by 96 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. Strickland, urging an elopement. Harley had a trifling part in the piece, rendered highly amasing by his admirable acting." Mr. Hullah, (who has made a great name as teacher of Music for the Million, and is now Professor of "Vocal Music in King's College and Queen's College, London,) has repeat- edly declared that the songs in " The Village Coquettes," had a good deal of Sheridan's sprightliness combined with the tenderness of Moore's Ija'ics. On March 6th, 1837, a third piece by Dickens, called "Is She His Wife ; or. Something Singular," was played, also at the St. James's Theatre. It was a farce, in which Harley played the principal character, Felix Tapkins, a flirting bachelor, and sang a song in the character of Pickwick, " Written expressly for him by Boz." The name of the author was not given in the playbill. This was Mr. Dick- ens's last dramatic production. It has not been claimed for Charles Dickens that he was a very successful dramatist. His skill in construction, his facility in contriving startling situations — and, above all, his wondrous power of making his characters speak and act, like living creatures, and not according to the traditions of the stage, had scarcely been developed, certainly had not been matured, when he wrote two farces and an opera. Per- haps, had these been the production of any person but hiin, who was being recognized at the time, as a meteoric light on the horizon of letters, their success would have been more assured : for the dramatic element abounds in all his works, and no other writer has so thoroughly individualized the char- acters he created. They were not mere Marionettes, puppets moved by an unseen but not unsuspected hand behind the scene, but real people. Two or three of his novels were dramatized under his own inspection and with his own as- sistance, but nearly all of the other adaptations for the stage were got up in a hurry and in the most flimsy manner, — a collection of scenes, clipped out of the books, wholesale, for THE VILLAGE COQUETTES. 97 the sake of the dialogue. Some wit, unable to resist the temptation of putting a quotation from Virgil into an epi- gram, and not unwilling perhaps, to have a sly hit at his late colleague in " the gallery," wrote as follows : Oh, Dickens, dear, I sadly fear That great will be our loss When we shall say — Alas, the day ! — ^^Procum bit humi Boz." Mr. Dickens, who was not a man to be content with a mod- erate success, especially at the very turn of the tide, when Pickwick was making him surprisingly popular, lost no reputation by his dramatic attempts, — which enterprising managers might now revive, with great prospect of success. For one person who knows anything about Sheridan's School for Scandal, five thousand are familiar with the Pickwick Pa- pers and other works by Charles Dickens. His mission was to write humanizing tales rather than to waste his genius in writing funny plays for comedy-people to make reputation and fortune out of — for, at a theatre, we think not of the plajr-wright but the actors. If he were troubled, because his novels were more liked than his plays, being better, he might have consoled himself with the recollection that Thomas Moore, wit and poet, had also written for the stage, and had made a great failure, " M. P. ; or. The Blue Stocking," a comic opera in three acts, which was produced at the Lyceum Theatre in October, 1811, just three months before Dickens was born. Moore devoted a long time to the composition of this opera, and assisted Horn, the composer, in arranging music for the songs. The cast included most of the best singers and dramatic performers, but nothing could save a piece, which was " comic" only in name. When published it did not sell, and was never included in Moore's collected works. It is preserved only in Galignani's very scarce edi- tion, published in Paris in 1823. Compared with this, Dickens's "Village Coquettes" was triumphant indeed. SS LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENG. "The Yillage Coquettes" was published in 1836, and it Avould be difficult to obtain a copy now. Hei'e, however, is the distribution of characters — technically the Dramatis PERSoNiE. Squire Norton, ___---_ Mr. Braliam, Tiie Hon. Spakins Flam (his friend, ) - - - Mr. Forrester. Old Benson (a small farmer,) - - Mr. Robert Strickland. Mr. Martin Stokes (a very small farmer with a very- large circle of particular friends, ) - - - - Mr. Harley. George Edmunds (betrothed to Lucy, ) - - Mr. Bennett. Young Benson, -_-_._. Mi-. J. Parry. John Maddox (attached to Rose,) _ _ . Mr. Gardner. Lucy Benson, ___-_._ Miss Rainforth. Rose (her cousin,) ...--- Miss J. Smith. There was a notice, that the time occupied in representa- tion was two hours and a half, that the period was the autumn of 1729, and that the scene was an English village. There was a Dedication, as follows : To J. P. Harley, Esq. — My Dear Sir — My dramatic bantlings are no sooner born than you father them. You have my Strange Gentleman exclusivel_y your own ; you have adopted Martin Stokes with equal readiness ; and you still profess your willingness to do the same kind office for all future scions of the same stock. I dedicate, to you the first play I CA'^er published ; and you made for me the first play I ever produced : — the balance is in your favor, and I am afraid it will remain so. That you may long contribute to the amusement of the public, and long be spared to shed a lustre, by the honor and integrity of your private life, on the profession which for many years you have done so much to uphold, is the sincere and earnest wish of, my dear sir, yours most faithfully, December Ibth, 1836. Charles Dickens. In addition, the author tendered his acknowledgment to the performers, in this semi-apologetic Preface : Either the honorable gentleman is in the right, or he is not, is a phrase in very common use within the walls of Parliament. This drama may have a plot, or it may not : and the songs may be poetry, or they may not ; and the whole affair from beginning to end may be great nonsense, WRITING FOR THE STAGE. 99 or it may not, just as the honorable gentleman oi* lady who reads it may happen to think. So retaining his own private and particular opinion upon the subject (an opinion Avhich he formed upwards of a year ago, when he wrote the piece), the author leaves every such gentleman or lady to form his or hers, as he or she may think proper, without saying one word to influence or conciliate them. All he wishes to say is this — that he hopes Mr. Braham and all the performers who assisted in the representation of this opera will accept his warmest thanks for the interest they evinced in it, from its first rehearsal, and for their zealous efforts in his behalf — efforts which have crowned it with a degree of success far exceeding his most sanguine anticipations ; and of which no form of words could speak his acknowledgment. It is needless to add that the libretto of an opera must be, to a certain extent, a mere vehicle for the music; and that it is scarcely fair or reasonable to judge it by those strict rules of criticism which would be justly applicable to a five-act tragedy or a finished comedy. Independent of other circumstances, including the drama- tist's constantterror of not being donejustice to, by actors and singers, there were several good reasons why Charles Dick- ens should no longer have written for the stage. First, the compensation, even for great success, would be compara- tively small ; and, next, his time was engrossingly occupied b}^ his literary engagements, for he was midway in the Pick- wick Papers, and had recently assumed the editorship of Bentley^s Miscellany, in which he had commenced the story of Oliver Twist. To run a couple of serial novels, besides conducting a monthly magazine, was work enough, — even for Charles Dickens. Several years after this, when he was not so much pressed by hard work, his predilection for the drama brought him upon the stage, as the best amateur actor of the time, and, still later, led him to gratifj^ the public, iu both hemispheres, by giving effective dramatic Readings from his own works. 100 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. CHAPTER yil. MARRIAGE. — GEORGE HOGARTH. — A COMPLIMENT FROM- LOCK- HART. — DICKENS A MAN OP METHOD. — THE MISSES HOGARTH. — PANNY HOGARTH'S SUDDEN DEATH. — PUBLICATION SUS- PENDED, — MR. DICKENS INTERVIEWED. — "YOUNG BOZZES." "When he was still editor of Bentley^s Miscellany, and enjoying fruitage of fame, with a liberal share of the substantial results which, in his case, so quickly fell into his lap, Cliarles Dickens was " Benedick the mar- ried man." The lady of his choice was a daughter of Mr. George Hogarth, a Scottish lawyer v/ho had the rare good for- tune of having been the friend and adviser of the two greatest writers of prose fiction his native and his adopted land had produced — Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. He was born in Scotland, in the far-off time, when the " Great Un- known " was a puny child ; was a writer of the Signet, be- fore the present century began ; acted as Scott's confidential adviser, lawyer and friend, in the terrible 3^ear, 1826, when the compound failure of his Edinburgh and London publish- ers caused the ruin of the Lord of Abbotsford ; afterwards became Charles Dickens's father-in-law ; and died, at a very advanced age, only a few months ago. His sister was mar- ried to Mr. James Ballantj^ne, the printer, Scott's life-long friend, and on their death, feeling that the ties which con- nected him with Scotland were weakened, almost severed, he went to London, where, his practical and theoretical knowledge of music being great, he wrote several excellent woi'ks upon the subject. Lockhart, who never went out of his way to compliment any author, mentions Mr. Hogarth's History of Music as a work " of which all who understand PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 101 that science speak highly." He had not been long in Lon- don befoi'e he became musical and dramatic critic upon the Morning Chronicle, upon which paper John Dickens and his gifted son were once employed together. When the Daily Neivs was established, in the year 1846, Mr. Hogarth was placed on its staff as musical critic, and long retained that position, his labors ceasing only when he became far too old to attend concerts and operas. Charles Dickens was quite a young man when he espoused Miss Catherina Hogarth, who, according to Shakespeai-e's sensible counsel, was still younger than her mate. Almost up to this time Mr. Dickens had continued to reside "in chambers," at Furnival's Inn. At the beginning of 1838, he had taken a step into Respectability, by becoming " a housekeeper," renting the house, 48 Doughty street, from which is dated Nicholas Nicklehy, his next literary work. It was a good house, in a respectable aiid quiet old street, east of Russell Square, and near the Foundling Hospital, chiefly inhabited by professional men, in law and medicine. His residence there was not of long continuance, for he was residing in Devonshire Place, in Jul}'-, 1840, when Mr. C Lester Edwards saw him. A note to Mr. Serjeant Talfoui'd, written after Nicklehy was completed and while Slaster Hum- phrey's Clock was in course of publication, (which note sliall appear in a subsequent chapter, with other unpublished letters in my possession,) is dated " 1 Devonshire Tei'race, Tuesday, February sixteen, 1841." A later letter to myself, issued, with more geographical particularity, from " 1 De- vonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent's Park, London ; First September, 1812." Charles Dickens was a thorough man of method, as well as a man of genius, — a notable illustration of the aphorism that Genius is only the perfection of Common Sense. Every document in his possession, from the commencement of his literary careei', was duly docketed, dated, and deposited. " A place for every thing, and every thing in its place" was 102 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. the ruling maxim of his life. I dare say that, among hun- dreds, even thousands of letters which he wrote, during his five-and-thirty years of literary correspondence, not so many as twenty letters were undated. I possess one, addressed to Talfourd, in which, though the day of the week and of the month are given in full, the year is not set down, but, as will be perceived, hy and by, in the Chapter of his Correspondence, the text of this letter gave a clue to the year in which it was written. Mrs. Charles Dickens had two sisters, younger than herself These were Fanny and Georgina Hogarth, of whom only the latter, of whom all who know her speak well, alone survives. She is now over forty years old, and has. literally dedicated her life to her brother-in-law's family — acting as friend, guide, and guardian ever since the unhappy disagreement, in 1858, which deprived them of the personal tenderness and care of a mother. A more exemplary woman than Miss Hogarth can rarely be found, and, believing this, I feel it my duty to say so, in this biographical sketch. The original Preface to the PicHaick Papers, contained this paragraph : " The following pages have been written from time to time, almost as the periodical occasion arose. Having been written for the most part in the society of a very dear young friend who is now no more, they are con- nected in the author's mind at once with the happiest period of his life, and with its saddest and most severe affliction." This refers to a melancholy event. Mr. Dickens was sitting after dinner, with his wife, her two sisters, Mr. John Forster, and Daniel Maclise, the artist. Miss Fanny Hogarth, who was older than her sister Georgina, was engaged to Maclise. The whole party were on the point of going to the theatre, to see Macready perform. Sud- denly, Miss Fanny Hogarth fell back in her chair, and died, almost instantly, of heart disease. This heavy and INTERVIEWING BOZ. 103 unexpected blow had sucli an effect upon Dickens, that the publication of the serial which he was then writing was suspended for a month, public notice being given that this was caused by a severe domestic affliction, which had totally prostrated the author for a time. Having already shown how even before he had appeared as author of a substantive work, Charles Dickens had been " interviewed" by Mr. N. P. Willis, it may not be out of place, here, to exhibit him, through another American medium, while yet the bloom of young success — its 2^i<'^- purea juventus — was his. Mr. Charles Edwards Lester, subsequently U. S. Consul in Genoa, saw Mr. Dickens, in London, in Julj^, 1840, and an account of his visit, in two volumes, of his experiences in England, was published, after his return home. Mr. Lester went to Devonshire Place, where Dickens then resided ; pencilled a request, on his card, that he would see an Ameri- can ; was admitted into his library, and found him with a sheet of "Master Humphrej^'s Clock" before him. The great author, though disturbed by a curious stranger, was gentle and courteous, and expressed his gratitude for the favorable opinion of him entertained by American readers and critics. Mr. Lester then proceeds : I inquired if, in portraying his charactei'S, he had not, in every instance, his eye upon some particular person he had known, since I could not conceive it possible for an author to present such graphic and natural pictures except from real life. "Allow me to ask, sir," I said, "if the one-eyed Squeers,. coarse but good John Browdie, tfcie beautiful Sally Brass, clever Dick tSwiveller, the demoniac and intriguing Quilp, the good Clieeryble Brothers, the avaricious Fagin, and dear little Nelly, are mere fancies ?" "No, sir, the}^ are not," he replied; "they are copies. You will not understand me to say, of course, that they are true histories in all respects, but they are real likenesses ; nor have I in any of my works attempted anything more than to arrange my story as well as I could, and give a true picture of scenes I have witnessed. My past history and 104 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. pursuits have led me to a familiar acquaintance with numer- ous instances of extreme wretchedness and of deep-laid villany. In the haunts of squalid poverty I have found Biany a broken heart too good for this world. Many such persons, now in the most abject condition, have seen better days. Once they moved in circles of friendship and afflu- ence, from which they have been hurled by misfortune to the lowest depth of want and sorrow. This class of persons is very large. " Then there are thousands in our parish workhouses and in the lanes of London, born into the world without a friend except God and a dying mother. Many, too, who in circum- stances of trial have yielded to impulses of passion, and by one fatal step fallen beyond recovery. London is crowded, and, indeed, so is all England, with the pooi-, the unfortu- nate, and the guilty. This description of persons has been generally overlooked by authors. They have had none to care for them, and have fled from the public gaze to some dark habitation of this great city, to curse the cold charities of a selfish world, and die. There are more broken hearts in London than in any other place in the world. The amount of crime, starvation, nakedness, and misery of every sort in the metropolis surpasses all calculation. I thought I could render some service to humanitj^ by bringing these scenes before the minds of those who, from never having witnessed them, suppose they cannot exist. In this eifort I have not been wholly unsuccessful ; and there is nothing makes me happier than to think that, by some of my representations, I have increased the stock of human cheerfulness, and, by others, the stock of human sympathy I think it makes the heart better to seek out the suffer .ng and relieve them. I have spent many days and nights in the most wretched districts of the metropolis, studying the history of the human heart. There we must go to find it. In high circles we see everything but the heart, and learn everything but the real character. We must go to the hovels of the poor and the unfortunate, where trial brings out the character. I have in these rambles seen many exhibitions of generous aff"ection and heroic endurance, which would do honor to anj^ sphere. Often have I discovered minds that only wanted a little of the sunshine of prosperit}^ to develop the choicest endowments of Heaven. I think I never returned to my home after these adventui'es without being made a sadder and a better man. In describing these characters I aim no higher than to feel in YOUNG BOZZES. 105 writing as they seem to feel themselves. I am persuaded that I have succeeded just in proportion as I have cultivated a familiarity with the trials and sorrows of the poor, and told their story as they would have related it themselves." I spoke of the immense popularity of his worlis, aud re- marked that I believed he had ten readers in America where he had on5 in England. " Wh}^, sir, the popularity of my works has surprised me. For some reason or other, I believe the}'' are somewhat ex- tensively read ; nor is it the least gratifying circumstance to me, that they have been so favorably received in your country. I am trying to enjoy my fame while it lasts, for I believe I am not so vain as to suppose that my books will be read by any but the men of my own times." I remarked that he might consider himself alone in that opinion, and, it would probably be no easy matter to make the world coincide with him. He answered with a smile, " I shall probably not make any very serious efforts to do it 1" Looking through the library windows into a garden, Mr. L. saw " several rosy-cheeked children playing by a water fountain," and adds, " as the little creatures cast occasional glances up to us while we were watching their sports from the window, I thought I saw in their large, clear, blue eyes, golden hair, and bewitching smiles, the image of Chai'les Dickens. They were, in fact, young Bozzes." As it hap- pened, they were not — seeing that in July, 1840, Dickens had not been three j^ears married Mr. Lester wound up with the following rose-colored pen- portrait of his hero : I think Dickens incomparably the finest-looking man I ever saw. The portrait of him in the Philadelphia edition of his works is a good one ; but no picture can do justice to his expression when he is engaged in an interesting conver- sation. There is something about his eyes at such times which cannot be copied. In person he is perhaps a little above the standard height ; but his bearing is noble, and he ap[)ears taller than he really is. His figure is very graceful, neither too slight nor too stout. The face is handsome. His complexion is delicate — rather pale generally ; but when his feelings are kindled his countenance is overspread 106 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. with a rich glow. I presume he is somewhat vain of his hair, and he can he pardoned for it too. It reminded me of words in Sidney's Arcadia : " His fair auburn hair, which he wore in great length, gave him at that time a most de- lightful show." His forehead, a phrenologist would say .(especially if he knew his character beforehand), indicates a clear and beautiful intellect, in which the orgifns of per- ception, mirthfulness, ideality, and comparison, predominate. I should think his nose had once been almost determined to be Roman, but hesitated just long enough to settle into the classic Grecian outline. But the charm of his person is in his full, soft, beaming eyes, which catch an expression from every passing object ; and you can alwa3's see wit, half sleeping in ambush around them, when it is not shooting its wonted fires. Dickens has almost made us feel that " Wit is the pupil of the soul's clear eye, And in man's world, the only shining star." And 3^et I think his conversation, except in perfect abandon among his friends, presents but few striking exhibitions of wit. Still there is a rich vein of humor and good feeling in all he saj^s. I passed two hours at his house, and when I left was more impressed than ever with the goodness of his heart. I should mention that during my visit I handed him Camp- bell's letter: it produced not the slightest change in his manner. I expressed, on leaving, the hope that little Nelly (in whose fate I confessed I felt a deeper interest than in that of most real characters) might, after all her wanderings, find a quiet and happy home. " The same hope," he replied, "has been expressed to me by others; and I hardlj^ know what to do. But if you ever hear of her death in a future number of the Clock, you shall say that she died as she lived." The portrait above referred to, was that engraved from the picture by Daniel Maclise, and will be remembered as the first authentic likeness of the young novelist then pub- lished. Mr. Lester, fairly excited, at last winds up with " Mr. Dickens is certainly one of the most lovely men lever saw." — But that was thirty years ago, and was scarcely consid- ■PREPARING FOR NICKLEBY. lOt ered as saying too much, at the time, when little was known about the literary phenomenon, whose writings, popular as they were in his own country, were far more extensively read and prized in this Western empire. Mr. Lester's ac- count of Dickens was very largely circulated, and prepared the American mind for the visit which he ]3aid his trans- atlantic friends, a little later. CHAPTER yilL RETIRES FROM BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. — RETROSPECT. — YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS. — PICKS UP JOHN BROWDIE AND WACKFORD SQUEERS. — NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. — DOTHEBOYS HALL.— THE CRUMMLES PARTY. — CHEERYBLE BROTHERS. — qHANGE OF PLOT. — AUTHORSHIP AVOWED. — PORTRAIT BY MACLISE. — NICKLEBY ON THE PARISIAN STAGE. — MR. THACKERAY AND JULES JANIN. — CONTINUATION OP NICKLEBY. — TROOPS OP FRIENDS. We have now to go back a little. Fairly liberated from the great la^or, however well paid, of editing, for he had retired from Bentley^s Miscellany, at the close of 1838, with a genial valedictory about the old coachman introducing his successor, Mr. William Har- rison Ainsworth, to its readers, Charles Dickens had leisure, at last, to devote his whole time and ability to the composition of a regularly constructed story. The Sketches, as their title implied, were odds and ends, forming a work of "shreds and patches." Pickwick, which had assailed imprisonment for debt as well as exposed the license of legal practitioners in English Courts of law, was begun without a plan, and had no plot ; Oliver Twist, be- gun with the avowed object of exposing the mismanagement and inhumanity of the parish work-house system, soon 108 LIFE OP CHARLES DICKENS. abandoned that purpose, and took the boy to London, among the thieves. The new authoi* bad been exceedingly well received. Passages from his writings were upon men's lips, and Sam Weller had become a member of the great family of fiction. We knew everybody, in Pickwick and in Oliver Twist, as well as if we had constantly me' them, in or out of society. It was almost universally ad:nitted that a genius of uncommon brilliancy had arisen, and his next work was looked for with great expectation, particularly by a few who hinted that " the young man, a farceur at best, had written himself out." He was not a farceur, and so far from being exhausted, had over thirty years of great and successful work before him. He took pains to prepare himself for another work, and the result was an onslaught upon the cheap Yorkshire schools, which were a crjnng shame and a detestable nuisance at that time. Mr. Wackford Squeers's advertise- ment of Dotheboys Hall, in the third chapter of Nicholas Nicklehy, was scarcely a caricature thirty years ago. I have read scores of similar announcements in the Liverpool, Leeds, and Manchester papers, at Christmas and mid- summer. Mr. Dickens knew very little of Yorl^hire schools, when he made up his mind to write about them. His own account is that, when himself a school-boy, he had " heard" of them. " My first impressions of them," he said, " were picked up at that time, and that they were, somehow or other, con- nected with a suppurated abscess that some boy had come home with, in consequence of his Yorkshire guide, philoso- pher, and friend, having ripped it open with an inky pen- knife. The impression made upon me, however made, never left me. I was always curious about them — fell, long after- wai'ds, and at sundry times, into the way of hearing more about them — at last, having an audience, I resolved to write about them." Whenever Loi'd Macaulay, writing history or criticism. YOKKSHIRE SCHOOLS. 109 encountered a fact whicla he did not understand, or a date whicli he susjDected, he would travel a hundred miles to verify or reject either. Scott had a good deal of the same tendency even in novel- writing. When he was writing Quentin Dur- warcl, with ihe scene in a part of France which he had never visited, he availed himself of the lively and accurate journal of a friend, who had lately traversed the district, and being as much artist as author, had executed a vast variety of clever drawings, representing landscapes and ancient buildings. But Scott wanted to describe the place where Louis XI. lived — and his letters to Constable, his publisher, are characteristic, " It is a vile place," he wrote, " this village of Plessis les Tours, that can baflle both you and me. It is a place famous in histor}' ; and moreover, as your Gazetteer assures us, is a village of a thousand inhabi- tants, yet I have not found it on any map, provincial or general, which I have consulted," and half in despair, he went on to suggest, that something about it must be found in Malte Brun's Geographical Works, or that Wraxall's History of France, or his Travels, might mention it. Finall}^ he discovered that the place was on the banks of the Cher, a tributary of the Loire, and the readers of the romance, the first of the Waverley Novels which had its scene in France, may remember how well acquainted with the place, about which he despaired of learning anything, he has made them. Mr. Dickens was as conscientious and as painstaking as Macaulay and Scott. He could have drav/n upon his imagination for a description of the Yorkshire cheap school S3stem, the cruelties of which, from vague reports, had long grieved and vexed him, but he preferred to write about what he knew. Therefore, at the beginning of 1839, he went down to Yorkshire, to judge for himself how much truth there was in the rumors which had reached him. In the extended preface, to the People's edition of his Works, he related what he had done ; prefacing it with the remark 110 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. that when the story was begun, there were a good many- cheap Yorkshire schools in existence, and significantly adding " there are very few now." Ilis object was to write about them, if he found that he ought to