Charles Dickens: A Life

by Claire Tomalin

  4. Passages from Queen Mab were held to be blasphemous, the jury found against Moxon and he had to expunge them. This was in 1841. Moxon also published Lytton, Browning and Tennyson.

  5. The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 56.

  6. J. S. Mill in a letter, given by Philip Collins (ed.), Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, I (London, 1981), p. 18.

  7. D to Bentley, 2 July 1837, P, I, pp. 282–3.

  8. D to F, 11 Feb. 1838, P, I, p. 370.

  9. Dickens wrote of this strongly worded warning from a Yorkshireman in his preface to the first cheap edition of 1848.

  10. I have drawn on John Bowen’s discussion of the economic theme in Nickleby in Chapter 4 of his excellent book Other Dickens: Pickwick to Chuzzlewit (Oxford, 2000).

  11. Dickens recalls this time to Forster in a letter of 3 Sept. 1857: see Chapter 19, p. 285.

  12. House and streets are long since gone.

  13. D to G. H. Lewes, [?9 June 1838], P, I, p. 403.

  14. D to F, 2 Oct. 1838, P, I, p. 439.

  15. D to Bentley, 3 Oct. 1838, P, I, p. 439.

  16. Edinburgh Review, 68 (Oct. 1838), pp. 75–97, anonymous but by Thomas Henry Lister, quoted in Philip Collins (ed.), Dickens: The Critical Heritage (London, 1971), p. 72.

  17. Oliver Twist, Chapters 40, 46.

  18. D to F, 2 Nov. 1838, P, I, p. 449.

  19. As she noted in her diary for 30 Dec. 1838 and 1 and 3 Jan. 1839, cited by Kathleen Tillotson in her edition of Oliver Twist (Oxford, 1966), p. 400.

  20. There was no dedication to Forster until 1858, when Dickens dedicated the complete Library Edition of his works to him.

  21. D to F, 4 Jan. 1839, P, I, p. 491.

  22. D to Bentley, text as given by F, 21 Jan. 1839, P, I, pp. 493–4.

  23. The diary is given in P, I, p. 640. In Mar. 1838 Dickens mentions Pepys’s Diary in an unpublished letter to the Miscellany, P, I, p. 382. He owned Braybrooke’s five-volume edition.

  24. D to F, 1 Mar. 1839, P, I, p. 515.

  25. D to Catherine D, 5 Mar. 1839, P, I, p. 517, also letters to Forster and Mitton.

  26. D to Catherine D, 5 Mar. 1839, P, I, p. 523.

  27. Later known as badminton, a game played with shuttlecocks.

  28. D to F, 11 July 1839, P, I, p. 560; D to Mitton, 26 July 1839, P, I, p. 570.

  29. D to Macready, 26 July 1839, P, I, p. 571.

  30. The diary is given in P, I, this entry p. 642.

  31. D’s diary for Sun., 22 Sept. 1839, P, I, p. 643.

  32. John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, I (London, 1872), Chapter 6.

  33. They were published on 10 Feb. 1840 and no one seems to have attributed them to Dickens at the time.

  34. These exchanges described in Robert L. Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978), pp. 95, 97, 110–11.

  35. He raised the idea of a visit to the US in a letter to the American publisher Putnam in Aug. 1838, P, I, p. 431, and on 14 July 1839 wrote to Forster from Petersham mentioning his idea that he might go there to write ‘a series of papers descriptive of the places and people’. P, I, p. 564.

  36. D to W. Upcott, a book collector, 28 Oct. 1839, P, I, p. 594.

  37. The house has long since been demolished, but there is a plaque commemorating Dickens’s residence on the south side of the Marylebone Road.

  38. D to Thomas Beard, 17 Dec. 1839, P, I, p. 619.

  39. D to W. Upcott, 28 Dec. 1839, P, I, p. 623.

  PART TWO

  8 Killing Nell 1840–1841

  1. D to Landor, 26 July 1840, P, II, p. 106.

  2. Carlyle to his brother John, 17 Mar. 1840, Charles Richard Sanders (ed.), The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, XII (Durham, NC, and London, 1985), pp. 80–81. Count D’Orsay was famous as a dandy, more Regency than Victorian in his style.

  3. See Philip Collins (ed.), Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, I (London, 1981), p. 74 and fn. Also Arthur S. Hearn in the Dickensian (1926), pp. 25–9. I have collected more variants.

  4. Thomas Trollope in his memoirs, and Marcus Stone, on p. 50 of his MS memoir at the Charles Dickens Museum, adding that he saw him using a pince-nez. Percy Fitzgerald also describes ‘the strained eyes, peering through the gold-rimmed glasses, always of strong power; the face bent down to the manuscript which lay on the table’, quoted in Collins’s introduction to his Interviews and Recollections, from ‘Memories of Charles Dickens’ (1913), p. 77.

  5. F to D, 16 Jan. 1841, P, II, p. 187, fn. 4.

  6. D to F, 3 Nov. 1840, P, II, p. 144; D to F, 12 Nov. 1840, P, II, p. 149.

  7. D to Cattermole, 22 Dec. 1840, P, II, p. 172. George Cattermole (1800–1868) was an antiquarian painter, son of a Norfolk squire, friend of Forster. He married in 1839 a distant cousin of Dickens through his mother’s family, and spent his honeymoon at Richmond that Aug., when Dickens lent him many books and also his pony carriage.

  8. D to Macready, 6 Jan. 1841, P, II, p. 180; D to Maclise, 14 Jan. 1841, P, VII, p. 823.

  9. D to F, [?8 Jan. 1841], P, II, pp. 181–2. The italics are mine.

  10. D to Maclise, 27 Nov. 1840, P, II, pp. 158–9. He had the grace to ask Maclise to burn his cross letter, but it survived.

  11. Cattermole’s illustration shows her lying in a comfortable bed and looking surprisingly plump for a thirteen-year-old who is supposed to have wasted away.

  12. 26 Nov. 1840, William Toynbee (ed.), The Diaries of William Charles Macready, II (London, 1912), pp. 100–101.

  13. D to F, [?17 Jan. 1841], P, II, p. 188.

  14. D to Cattermole, 14 Jan. 1841, P, II, p. 184.

  15. Extracts from The Old Curiosity Shop are from Chapters 34, 34, 36.

  16. A remark given to Nell’s grandfather, written in the manuscript of The Old Curiosity Shop, but deleted in proof.

  17. The Marchioness saves Dick’s life by nursing him through illness, and her evidence against the Brasses foils their plot with Quilp. Dick sends the Marchioness to boarding school to be educated, after which they marry and settle in Hampstead. Macready’s education of his young working wife may be thought of here, and it points forward to Eugene and Lizzie in Our Mutual Friend.

  18. Eleanor Emma Picken, later Eleanor Christian, published ‘Reminiscences of Charles Dickens from a Young Lady’s Diary’ in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, 10 (1871), pp. 336–44, under the initials of her married name, E. E. C. Her second article, ‘Recollections of Charles Dickens, His Family and Friends’, appeared in Temple Bar, 82 (1888), pp. 481–506.

  19. Elizabeth M. Brennan suggests this timetable in her critical edition of The Old Curiosity Shop (Oxford, 1997), p. l, n. 127.

  20. Barnaby Rudge, Chapter 62.

  21. In the Tablet, 23 Oct. 1841.

  22. Lord Jeffrey to Cockburn, 4 May 1841, P, II, p. 260, fn. 3. Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1803 to 1829, was one of the most powerful and respected critics in the land, and an early and fervent admirer of Dickens. This was their first meeting.

  23. Lord Gardner’s chief interests were hunting and shooting, and his place in society was assured since he had been Lord of the Bedchamber to both William IV and Queen Victoria, who was fond of him. Although he promised to marry Julia when his wife died, there is no record of the marriage, but she claimed there was one, and the children were received into society. The sons could not inherit their father’s title, but the youngest, Herbert, entered parliament as a Liberal in 1885 and had a distinguished career, serving in Gladstone’s government. He was raised to the peerage as Lord Burghclere in 1895. Information from George Martelli, Julia Fortescue, afterwards Lady Gardner, and Her Circle (privately printed, 1959).

  24. D to Maclise, 16 Aug. 1841, P, VII, p. 831. An extract and facsimile of this letter appeared in a Sotheby catalogue in July 1987 but the present whereabouts of the original is not known.

  25. Robert L. Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978), p. 127.

  26. An anal fistula is usually caused by an abscess. Wh
at happens is that a hole in the rectum produces a new path for the contents of the bowel, opening somewhere near the anus. Symptoms are likely to be throbbing and constant pain, irritation of the skin round the anus, fever and pus or blood when passing stools and a general feeling of being unwell. The treatment is for the surgeon to cut open the fistula and scrape or flush it out. It is then laid open and flattened. The surgeon must take care not to damage the anal sphincter. It is likely to take one or two months to heal. Mercifully, it rarely recurs.

  27. D to Jeffrey, [?8 Dec. 1841], P, II, p. 442.

  28. D to D’Orsay, 13 Dec. 1841, P, II, p. 497.

  9 Conquering America 1842

  1. Robert L. Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978), p. 128. Dickens wrote saying he would visit them, and did so, meeting Henry Carey, now retired. They gave Dickens copies of their editions of his books and other presents, and he bought more books from them, but in July 1842, after his return to England, he declared publicly that he would have no more dealings with American publishers. P, III, p. 259, fn. 3, and see below in this chapter.

  2. As he told Macready later, 22 Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 156.

  3. For example, he was toasted as such at the celebratory dinner at Hartford on 7 Feb. 1842, K. J. Fielding (ed.), The Speeches of Charles Dickens: A Complete Edition (Brighton, 1988), p. 24.

  4. Given in preface to P, III, p. xii.

  5. D to Fred Dickens, 3 Jan. 1842, P, III, p. 7.

  6. Pierre Morand, a commercial traveller, was a fellow passenger from whose account of the voyage this is taken, P, III, p. 9, fn. 1.

  7. Catherine D to Fanny Burnett, 30 Jan. 1842, P, III, p. 629.

  8. Richard Dana’s journal records initial hostility and later concedes that Dickens was impressive, P, III, pp. 38–9, fn. 1. W. W. Story mentioned the rowdyism, P, III, p. 51, fn. 2.

  9. Among their members were James Russell Lowell and James T. Fields, both of whom became good friends of Dickens later.

  10. Fielding, The Speeches of Charles Dickens, pp. 19–21.

  11. D to F, [?4 Feb. 1842], P, III, p. 50.

  12. D to Mitton, 31 Jan. 1842, P, III, p. 43.

  13. William Wetmore Story, lawyer, sculptor, essayist and friend of Henry James, to his father Joseph Story, Judge of the US Supreme Court, 3 Feb. 1842, P, III, p. 51, fn. 2.

  14. D to F, 17 Feb. 1842, P, III, pp. 71, 72; D to Maclise, 27 Feb. 1842, P, III, p. 94, fn. 9.

  15. See D to F, 6 Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 101.

  16. Poe had praised The Old Curiosity Shop for its ‘chaste, vigorous, and glorious imagination’. Dickens later corresponded with Moxon about Poe, and may have spoken to other English publishers, but failed to find any for him. D to Poe, 27 Nov. 1842, P, III, pp. 384–5.

  17. D to the Mayor of Boston, J. Chapman, 22 Feb. 1842, P, III, p. 76.

  18. D to Mitton, 26 Apr. 1842, P, III, p. 212; D to F, 24 to 26 Apr. 1842, P, III, pp. 204–5.

  19. Catherine D to Fred Dickens, 4 Apr. 1842, P, III, p. 189, fn. 4.

  20. He is chiefly remembered for having fifteen children, the largest number of any President. He was a slave-owner on his tobacco plantation, and went on to support the secession of the Southern states in 1861, the year of his death.

  21. D to David Colden, 10 Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 111.

  22. D to Fonblanque, 12 [and ?21] Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 119.

  23. D to Sumner, 13 Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 127.

  24. D to F, 22 Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 135.

  25. D to F, 28 Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 172; D to F, 22–3 Mar. 1842, P, III, p. 165.

  26. D to F, 26 Apr. 1842, P, III, p. 211.

  27. D to Macready, 1 Apr. 1842, P, III, pp. 173–6; D to F, 2 Apr. 1842, P, III, p. 180.

  28. D to F, 15 Apr. 1842, P, III, pp. 193, 194.

  29. Ibid., p. 193.

  30. D to F, 24 Apr. 1842, P, III, p. 206.

  31. Ibid., pp. 207–8.

  32. D to F, 26 Apr. 1842, P, III, pp. 208–9.

  33. Ibid., pp. 210, 211.

  34. D to J. Chapman, 2 June 1842, P, III, p. 249.

  35. D to F, 12 May 1842, P, III, p. 236; and Chapter 15 of American Notes.

  36. D to F, 26 May 1842, P, III, p. 247.

  37. See D to Felton, 31 July 1842, P, III, p. 293.

  38. Landseer’s letter to Maclise, 5 July 1842, given P, III, p. 264, fn. 3.

  39. D’s printed circular dated 7 July 1842, P, III, pp. 256–9, fn. 2, p. 258.

  40. D to Lady Holland, 8 and 11 July 1842, P, III, pp. 262–3, 265–6.

  41. D, signing his letter ‘B’ [for Boz?], to ed. of the Morning Chronicle, P, III, pp. 278–85.

  42. D to Mitton, 21 Sept. 1841, P, III, p. 328.

  43. Longfellow to Sumner, 16 Oct. 1842, P, III, p. 335, fn. 1.

  44. Macaulay to Napier, 19 Oct. 1842, P, III, p. 289, fn. 2.

  45. Figures given by Patten, Dickens and His Publishers, p. 131.

  46. See P, III, p. 348, fn. 2.

  47. Dana’s journal cited P, III, p. 348, fn. 1. Poe in the Southern Literary Messenger, 9, 60 (Jan. 1843), P, III, p. 348, fn. 2.

  48. On 11 August 1842 the New York Evening Tattler published a letter purporting to be from Dickens, addressed to the Morning Chronicle and dated 15 July 1842. Dickens was accused of ingratitude towards his hosts and ‘unpardonable insolence’ in criticizing the American people for their devotion to money-making. Appendix B, P, III, pp. 625–7.

  49. D to Macready, 3 Jan. 1844, P, IV, p. 11.

  10 Setbacks 1843–1844

  1. Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter 9.

  2. Ibid.

  3. D to F, 2 Nov. 1843, P, III, p. 590.

  4. D to F, 28 June 1843, P, III, p. 516.

  5. D to F, 1 Nov. 1843, P, III, p. 587.

  6. John Dickens’s letter to Chapman & Hall, 9 July 1843, P, III, p. 575, fn. 2.

  7. D to Mitton, 28 Sept. 1843, P, III, pp. 575–6.

  8. D to Esther Nash, 5 Mar. 1861, P, IX, pp. 388–90, and see fn. 2 on p. 390.

  9. Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906) was the youngest child of Sir Francis Burdett and Sophia Coutts, and inherited a fortune from her mother. She was always Miss Coutts to Dickens, since she did not become a baroness until after his death.

  10. D to Coutts, 16 Sept. 1843, P, III, pp. 562–4.

  11. D to F, 24 Sept. 1843, P, III, pp. 572–3.

  12. D to F, 2 Nov. 1843, P, III, p. 590.

  13. Jeffrey to D, 26 Dec. 1843, given in Philip Collins, (ed.) Dickens: The Critical Heritage (London, 1971), p. 148, which also prints Forster’s very favourable review, pp. 184–6 (which said what Dickens himself believed, that it was his best book yet).

  14. D to F, 2 Nov. 1843, P, III, pp. 590–91.

  15. John Leech, London born (1817), Charterhouse and medical school at Barts, father bankrupted, became a professional artist and cartoonist for Punch. He shared radical views with Dickens, and his drawings of street children, published in 1840 with the satirical title ‘Children of the Mobility’, i.e., mob, or poor, are outstanding, and were admired by Dickens. The boy Ignorance and the girl Want, done for A Christmas Carol, are of their kind. Leech became a close friend, walking and holiday companion of Dickens, and he and his wife also shared holidays with the Dickens family.

  16. D to Felton, 2 Jan. 1844, P, IV, p. 2.

  17. Engels’s great study of what he observed in Manchester, The Condition of the Working Class in England, was published in 1845.

  18. Robert L. Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978), p. 332.

  19. Jane Carlyle to Jeannie Welsh [n.d. but after 26 Dec. 1843], given in P, III, pp. 613–14, fn. 4.

  20. D to Mitton, 4 Jan. 1844, P, IV, p. 14.

  21. D to Felton, 2 Jan. 1844, P, IV, p. 3.

  22. D to T. J. Thompson, 15 Feb. 1844, P, IV, p. 46. T. J. Thompson was the wealthy brother-in-law of Dickens’s solicitor Charles Smithson, partner of Mitton.

  23. D to T. E. Weller, 1 Mar. 1844, P, IV, p. 58.

  24. D to Fanny Burnett,
1 Mar. 1844, P, IV, p. 56.

  25. D to T. J. Thompson, 28 Feb. 1844, P, IV, p. 55.

  26. Christiana did not die young, but bore two famous daughters, both brought up in Genoa, Elizabeth born in 1846, who became a highly successful painter (as Elizabeth Butler), and Alice in 1847, who became the poet, Alice Meynell.

  27. He would return to them again in 1859, for A Tale of Two Cities.

  11 Travels, Dreams and Visions 1844–1845

  1. The headmaster was Dr Joseph King, a friend of Macready, a remarkable teacher who started his boys on Homer and Virgil without rote grammar, and was assisted by his daughter Louisa. The school was at No. 9 Northwick Terrace, a fairly easy walk from Devonshire Terrace.

  2. D to D’Orsay, 7 Aug. 1844, P, IV, pp. 166–7.

  3. Ibid., p. 169.

  4. Ibid., p. 170.

  5. D to F, 6 Oct. 1844, P, IV, p. 199.

  6. He was clean-shaven in Nov., as shown in Maclise’s sketch.

  7. D to Maclise, 22 July 1844, P, IV, p. 162.

  8. D to F, [?30 Sept. 1844], P, IV, pp. 196–7.

  9. F to Napier, 16 Nov. 1844, in the form of an addition to letter as a ‘P.S. Very private’, V & A Forster Collection, f. 686; Edinburgh Review, 81 (1845), pp. 181–9.

  10. Forster’s The Life of Charles Dickens, II (London, 1873), Chapter 6.

  11. D to F, [?21 Oct. 1844], P, IV, p. 206.

  12. Dickens told Miss Coutts he had only a very few days in town and was seeing no one, in a letter in which he asked her to help the children of his protégé John Overs, who had died leaving six young ones. He sent greetings to her companion, Miss Meredith, who was about to be married to Dr William Brown, and would be remaining as her close companion, friend and neighbour.

  13. Dickens had known Jerrold slightly since the Shakespeare Club, and had asked him to contribute to Bentley’s Miscellany in 1836. He was a friend of Stanfield, with whom he had served at sea as a boy, the son of an actor, apprenticed to a printer, and had educated himself, becoming a successful playwright in the 1830s, when Black-Eyed Susan ran for 300 nights. He turned to weekly journalism, ran his own papers and was a contributor to Punch from its start in 1841. Dickens admired him greatly, felt comfortable with him, and free to share his radical and anti-establishment ideas with him. Jerrold responded and by the 1840s had joined the inner circle of his friends.