Charles Dickens: A Life

by Claire Tomalin

  His decision to marry her was quickly made, and he never afterwards gave any account of what had led him to it, perhaps because he came to regard it as the worst mistake in his life. We can see that the Hogarth family admired him and approved of his suit, and that Catherine was a nicely brought-up and uncomplicated young woman. She wrote to a cousin soon after meeting him, ‘Mamma and I were at a Ball on Saturday last and where do you think at Mr Dicken’s [sic]. It was in honour of his birthday. It was a batchelors party at his own chambers. His Mother and sisters presided. one of them a very pretty girl who sings beautifully … Mr Dickens improves very much on acquaintance he is very gentlemanly and pleasant.’12 Soon she was evidently in thrall to him. He saw in her the offer of affection, compliance and physical pleasure, and he believed he was in love with her. That was enough for him to ask her to be his wife. There were many protestations of enduring love in his letters. She was not clever or accomplished like his sister Fanny and could never be his intellectual equal, which may have been part of her charm: foolish little women are more often presented as sexually desirable in his writing than clever, competent ones. He wanted to be married. He did not want a wife who would compel his imagination.

  For the three summer months of 1835 he took rooms close to the Hogarth house, in Selwood Terrace, to be near Catherine, and you can feel the pressure of his need for her: ‘dear Mouse’, ‘darling Tatie’, ‘my own dearest darling Pig’ he calls her, and urges her to come round and make a late breakfast for him, after he has been working at the House into the small hours: ‘It’s a childish wish my dear love; but I am anxious to hear and see you the moment I wake – Will you indulge me by making breakfast for me this Morning? … it will be excellent practice for you against next Christmas,’ when he hoped they would be married, although he had to wait a few months more.13

  Like all young men, he needed sexual excitement and comfort, and the London prostitutes so freely available were not what he wanted. He knew enough of them to pity them: the children put on the streets by their mothers, the girls driven by poverty to sell themselves, the young women who gave passionate loyalty to their criminal lovers, the theatrical ladies who stooped to frailty, the defiant young street sinners who refused to be ashamed of themselves. He admired some for their spirit, and if he was tempted and succumbed on occasion – something we don’t know – he was still against the system. He wanted to think well of women, and he wanted them to be good, not to be degraded, or to degrade their users. Marriage was the solution, for reasons of sexual hygiene, for domestic comfort, for companionship, and so within less than six months of meeting Catherine Hogarth he was engaged to her. One of his earliest letters tells her not to be capricious or trifle with him, warning her that although he is ‘warmly and deeply attached’ to her, he will give her up at once if her show of coldness means she has wearied of him.14 There is never any doubt who is running the relationship. He was putting his life in order, and he would always be the one responsible for keeping it in order.

  The year of 1835 was even busier than the one before. If he was not at the House, which sat until 1.30 a.m., he was away covering the provinces, by-elections, Liberal dinners, the Home Secretary Lord John Russell’s speech in Exeter in May, when he strained every nerve to get his report in ahead of The Times, bribing post boys and taking dictation in pelting rain. He arrived back in London with rheumatism, deaf, worn out, without his bag or a clean shirt, but Beard sent him round a shirt, and he found the competition exhilarating. Writing his sketches had to be squeezed into odd moments, and was more than once put off in order to give him time with Catherine. She had to be introduced to his people, now reunited in lodgings in Bloomsbury. When Black decided he should be reviewing plays as well as reporting, he was suddenly in the theatre in the evenings again, and he had to sit down to finish his own writing when he got home afterwards, or start early the next morning with an editor waiting impatiently. Sometimes the strain was too much. He described to Catherine being ‘taken so extremely unwell when we got to Knightsbridge last night, that I really thought I should have been unable to proceed; my head was so extremely bad, and the dizziness affected my sight so much that I could scarcely see at all, in addition to which cheerful symptoms my tottering legs gave me the appearance of being particularly drunk’. He treated himself with a large pill of calomel, a purgative made from mercury which acted on the liver and produced ‘such singular evolutions in my interior that I am unable to leave home’.15 But he threw off illness when he had to, and the next day he was keeping an appointment to visit Newgate Prison.

  In November he was looking at houses in Pentonville, finding them pretty but extremely dear at £55 a year. He was sent to Hatfield in December, where a fire had destroyed part of the great house and incinerated the Dowager Marchioness: ‘Here I am, waiting until the remains of the Marchioness of Salisbury are dug from the remains of her Ancestor’s Castle.’ A week later he was in Kettering, where ‘we had a slight flare here yesterday morning, just stopping short of murder and riot’ – this was a by-election. Catherine – often Kate or Katie now – was treated to an account of the Tories, ‘a ruthless set of bloody-minded villains … perfect savages … superlative blackguards … Would you believe that a large body of horsemen, mounted and armed, who galloped on a defenceless crowd yesterday, striking about them in all directions, and protecting a man who cocked a loaded pistol, were led by Clergymen, and Magistrates?’16 Two days later he described the dinner he had ordered for himself and four fellow journalists: ‘cod and oyster sauce, Roast beef, and a pair of ducks, plum pudding, and Mince Pies’. Having survived this he was cheerful about returning to London, even though he had to end his letter with a P.S., ‘Damn the Tories – They’ll win here I am afraid’ – and they did.17

  Before the year was out, he was writing the libretto for a comic opera on an English theme, The Village Coquettes, with music by Fanny’s friend from her student days, John Hullah. He was also overseeing the proofs of his first book. It had come about through another new friend, the novelist Harrison Ainsworth, who was growing rich from his historical and low-life fiction, Rookwood, about Dick Turpin, and Jack Sheppard, another criminal hero. He was seven years older than Dickens, good-looking, well dressed and sophisticated. He lived with a lady not his wife, the formidable Eliza Touchet, who made clever conversation; she was older than him, the widow of a cousin, and since he had separated from his wife she had taken charge of him, at Kensal Lodge, where they entertained in style. Ainsworth saw how good Boz’s work was, set out to discover his true identity, introduced himself and urged Dickens to publish a collection of his sketches. Nothing could be easier: here was his own publisher, John Macrone, and here was another friend, George Cruikshank, the most admired artist in the country, to provide the illustrations. Ainsworth knew how to do things.

  In October, Dickens was negotiating with Macrone, inviting him to Furnival’s for ‘Scotch Whiskey and Cigars’ and setting up a sensational new piece to crown the first collection of his sketches, an account of Newgate Prison. A day-long visit was arranged through Black, who persuaded a radical MP to take Dickens inside: this was the occasion for which he rose from his sick bed.18 In the prison school he saw young boys awaiting trial for picking pockets. They appeared pleased with their own importance and they shocked him: ‘fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld. – There was not one redeeming feature among them – not a glance of honesty – not a wink expressive of any thing but the gallows and the hulks …’ The resulting sketch, ‘A Visit to Newgate’, ended with the condemned cell, plainly described, where he allowed himself to imagine the dreams of a prisoner who is to be hanged in the morning.

  The name of Dickens was not to appear – he was to remain ‘Boz’, and the title he suggested was Sketches by ‘Boz’, Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People, chosen because ‘it is both unaffected and unassuming – two requisites which it is very desirable for a young author not to lose sight of.’ This is at any ra
te what he meant to write, although he slipped up and left out the ‘not’.19 It was to be published in two volumes on 8 February 1836, the day after his twenty-fourth birthday.

  5

  Four Publishers and a Wedding

  1836

  For Dickens, 1836 was to be an annus mirabilis, but it did not feel like it in January. ‘I am so ill this morning that I am unable to work,’ he wrote to Catherine. ‘I wrote till 3 oclock this morning (I had not done for the paper till 8) and passed the whole night … in a state of exquisite torture from the spasm in my side far exceeding anything I ever felt. It still continues exceedingly painful and my head is aching so from pain and want of rest, that I can hardly hold it up … I have not had so severe an attack since I was a child.’ Stoically he was up and working again after writing to her, and the following day he described how he had ‘dragged on as well as I could ’till a little after One in the morning, and got up at eight’.1 On most evenings he was either at the House, taking down debates into the small hours, or at the theatre, with a review to write afterwards. Deadlines loomed perpetually for stories or sketches promised to other papers, and he was under pressure to get on with his libretto for the planned opera, The Village Coquettes. At the office he was arguing about his terms of engagement. He gave time to teach Catherine’s younger brother shorthand, and worried about finding a job for his own brother Fred. No wonder he sometimes collapsed.

  With Sketches by Boz about to appear on 8 February, he had to send out review copies to people who might have an influence on its reception: Lord Stanley, who knew him as a reporter, Charles Dilke, now editor of the Athenaeum (who had noticed him at the blacking factory), and John Easthope, his imperious boss. Dickens and Macrone prepared for publication together harmoniously and were on increasingly close and friendly terms: Macrone was ‘My dear Sir’ until publication day, thereafter ‘My Dear Macrone’. Dickens wrote a consoling letter when Macrone’s baby son died, and invited him to be best man at his wedding. Macrone supplied Dickens with a copy of Hints on Etiquette, which he had asked for, no doubt in preparation for married life; and obligingly took Fred Dickens into his accounts department in the summer. Macrone was ambitious and enterprising. He had arrived in London from unknown parts – possibly the Isle of Man – cut a few corners by borrowing money from an older woman, enough to set himself up in an office in St James’s Square, and ditched her to marry another woman, an American.2 He was full of ideas: he commissioned busts of famous men to set up around his office, made by an eccentric Scottish sculptor, Angus Fletcher, who became a friend of Dickens and made the first bust of him in 1839.3 He got Turner to illustrate Paradise Lost, and he ran over to Paris to try to sign up Victor Hugo. He and Dickens worked hard together to get the Sketches noticed and puffed in advance, with triumphant results. It was well reviewed: George Hogarth praised Dickens in the Chronicle as ‘a close and acute observer of character and manners’, and for showing ‘the vices and wretchedness’ of London life, and there was praise everywhere for its wit, truth and descriptive powers. It sold well and went into a second edition in the summer. Both Macrone and Dickens had every reason to be pleased with their collaboration.

  Dickens smoking in the office of his publisher Macrone: Thackeray’s sketch, showing himself and another writer, Mahoney, standing.

  While this was going on, a second publisher appeared at Dickens’s door one evening in February with a proposal. This was William Hall, who had set up in business with his friend Edward Chapman in the Strand, at No. 186, in 1830. Hall asked Dickens if he would write sketches to go with drawings by a young artist, Robert Seymour, who specialized in sporting scenes, and was keen to make a series of plates showing the adventures of a fishing club. Dickens recognized Hall as the man who, in December 1833, had sold him a copy of his own first story, just published in his Monthly magazine, and both felt that this was a good omen.4 Dickens said he was interested, but hoped for a slightly wider brief. Hall was a good businessman and agreed to this at once, offered £14 for each monthly episode and added that the fee might rise if the series did well. With this Dickens was happy. There was no formal agreement, just a letter. In such an easy-going way began a relationship that made Chapman & Hall rich and helped to establish Dickens’s supremacy among the novelists of the nineteenth century.

  Dickens saw that the money offered would allow him to keep a wife and live comfortably. He already had an idea for a comic character, Mr Pickwick, a rich, retired businessman with a taste for good food and a tendency to drink too much, an innocent, playful and benevolent – he would be well described by W. H. Auden as ‘a pagan god wandering through the world imperviously’ – and with a group of younger friends with whom he sets off on modest travels through southern England. He also thought he would vary the narrative of his adventures by inserting separate, unconnected short stories at intervals. He began to write at once. While he was about it, he offered Chapman & Hall The Strange Gentleman, a farce he had adapted from one of his stories, which would be put on later in the year, and they agreed to publish that too.

  The wedding date was now fixed for 2 April. Before it arrived a third publisher appeared on the scene, introduced to Dickens by his future father-in-law. This was the gentlemanly Richard Bentley, also remembered as the man who brought out the first reprints of Jane Austen in 1833, with fine illustrations, and persuaded her brother Henry to write an introductory note. Bentley had begun his career as a high-quality printer, turned to publishing and produced handsome editions of standard novels, and now he was keen to sign up new writers. Dickens was interested, but for the moment too preoccupied to attend to any proposals Bentley had in mind. He was busy ordering furniture – rosewood for the drawing room, mahogany for the dining room – and shopping, for a sideboard, decanters, jugs, china jars; also having a workbox inscribed ‘from Chas. Dickens to Kate’ as a wedding present to his bride. His sister Letitia fell ill, so ill that their father thought she was dying and needed support. Happily she recovered, but Dickens was busier than ever, embarked on his new project. ‘“Pickwick” must be attended to,’ he told Catherine.5 On 20 March he apologized for not seeing her: ‘I am tired and worn out today, mind and body; and have that to do, which will certainly occupy me till 1 or 2 o’Clock. I did not get to bed till 3 oClock this morning; and consequently could not begin to write until nearly one … forced to deny myself the least recreation, and to sit chained to my table.’6

  The wedding plans had to be changed when Mrs Macrone insisted that the best man must be a bachelor, and Dickens was obliged to ask Tom Beard instead of Macrone. Shortly before the day he wrote to his uncle Thomas Barrow, wishing he could invite him, and explaining that Barrow’s refusal to have John Dickens under his roof made it impossible; he recalled his own visits to him as a child, and thanked him for his interest and affection.7 It is clear that the Barrow side of the family was the one he was proud of, and yet he remained loyal to his father, feeling the strain, and unhappy about the division in the family.

  His mother arranged the honeymoon lodgings for him, in a cottage belonging to a Mrs Nash in Chalk, a small pretty village on the marshes of north Kent, between Rochester and Gravesend. They would not have much more than a week there, and he would be working on Pickwick during that time. On 2 April a simple ceremony at St Luke’s Church in Chelsea married Charles and Catherine in the presence of their immediate families, the only other guests being Tom Beard as best man and John Macrone. After a wedding breakfast at the Hogarths’, the bride and groom set off for Kent, a journey of about two hours by public coach. Dickens wanted to show Catherine the country of his childhood and no doubt hoped to walk with her to favourite spots – Cobham Woods, Gad’s Hill, Rochester – in the April sunshine. Catherine was never a great walker, while his idea of enjoyment was to stride far and fast across country, and here perhaps the pattern of their life was set, since he was also obliged to work at Pickwick during their few days away. Writing was necessarily his primary occupation, and hers must be to
please him as best she could within the limitations of her energy: writing desk and walking boots for him, sofa and domesticity for her.8

  In Dickens’s novels young women meant to be lovable tend to be small, pretty, timid, fluttering and often suffering at the hands of their official protectors, like Little Nell and Florence Dombey. Ruth Pinch (in Martin Chuzzlewit) is a good housekeeper and cook, has been a governess, and sings delightfully for her brother and his friend, but the symptoms of her reciprocated love are blushes, tears and a ‘foolish, panting, frightened little heart’. Rose Maylie (in Oliver Twist) has no character at all beyond being virtuous and self-sacrificing. Little Em’ly, bold as a child on the beach, becomes another blank victim. Dora has more life, because Dickens can’t resist exaggerating her silliness so that she becomes a figure of high comedy before the pathos sets in. There are more capable young women. Louisa Gradgrind (in Hard Times) is no fool, but still a victim, while Sissy Jupe keeps enough of her professional training in the circus to show more strength of character than anyone around her, a working child who sets the middle class to rights. The Marchioness (in The Old Curiosity Shop) is another of her type, servant, child of the workhouse, abused and starved, who arises from her basement kitchen, shows strength of character and floors her wicked employers; but Dickens pretty well abandoned her halfway through her history, perhaps because Little Nell had to hold centre stage or because he did not know how to develop the Marchioness. Polly Toodle, Paul Dombey’s wet nurse, is also a young working woman whose instincts are surer than those of her employers. Where does Catherine Hogarth stand among these figures? Clearly, among the blank and blushing innocents, as a virtuous middle-class girl. She had no experience of anything but family life when he met her, and showed little evidence of being interested in anything outside the domestic world. Before their marriage he wrote to her to say how much he looked forward to exchanging solitude for fireside evenings in which her ‘kind looks and gentle manner’ would give him happiness, and assured her that her ‘future advancement and happiness’ was the mainspring of his labours.9 Kind looks and gentle manner she doubtless had, and a wish to please – what she lacked was the strength of character needed to hold her own against her husband’s powerful will. She was incapable of establishing and defending any values of her own, of making her own safe situation from which she should rule within the home, let alone taking up any other interest. So little of her personality appears in any eyewitness account of the Dickens household that it seems fair to say there was not much more there to describe, and that whatever she brought to the marriage as a twenty-year-old hardly had a chance to develop and mature in the regime set up and ruled over by a husband who seemed omnipresent and always knew himself to be right.10