Charles Dickens: A Life

by Claire Tomalin

  35. The Pilgrim editors refer to an account by Georgina of a visit to the Winters by Dickens with Catherine and herself in the year of her marriage, written in 1906, which fits so ill with his saying in his letter that ‘four and twenty years vanished like a dream’ that it seems unlikely. In 1845 he was abroad for the first six months, then busy with large-scale theatricals, the birth of his son Alfred (which would have kept Catherine at home for several weeks), writing his Christmas book and preparing to edit the Daily News. It would make a nonsense of his letters to Maria ten years later, in one of which he specifically says that ‘the few opportunities that there have been of our seeing one another again, have died out’ because he avoided them.

  36. D to Mrs Winter, 10 Feb. 1855, P, VII, pp. 532–4.

  37. D to Mrs Winter, 15 Feb. 1855, P, VII, pp. 538–9.

  38. D to Mrs Winter, 22 Feb. 1855, P, VII, pp. 543–5.

  39. D to Ella Winter, 13 Mar. 1855, P, VII, pp. 563–4.

  40. D to Mrs Winter, 3 Apr. 1855, P, VII, p. 583.

  41. D to Mrs Winter, 15 June 1855, P, VII, pp. 648–9.

  42. D to Duke of Devonshire, 5 July 1856, P, VIII, p. 149.

  19 Wayward and Unsettled 1855–1857

  1. D to Wills, 21 Oct. 1855, P, VII, p. 724.

  2. D to William Haldimand, 27 Nov. 1846, P, IV, p. 665, ‘Paris is just what you know it – as bright, and as wicked, and as wanton, as ever.’ Again in 1863 he found it ‘immeasurably more wicked than ever’, this time to Wilkie Collins, 29 Jan. 1863, P, X, p. 200. ‘The time of the Regency seems restored, and Long live the Devil seems the social motto,’ which suggests openly displayed sexual licence, hard drinking, greed and gambling.

  3. D to GH, 16 Feb. 1855, P, VII, p. 540.

  4. D to Wills, 24 Oct 1855, P, VII, p. 726. This is Dickens’s (French translation: ‘Ah! The famous writer! Monsieur bears a distinguished name … I am honoured and interested to see Monsieur Dick-in’ and ‘That Madame Tojair (Todgers) … How funny she is, and exactly like a lady I know in Calais’). A translation of Chuzzlewit was serialized in the Moniteur from Jan. to Oct. 1855.

  5. D to F, 27 Jan. 1856, P, VIII, p. 37.

  6. D to F, 24 Feb. 1856, P, VIII, p. 63. Dickens must have known that Lamartine, now poor and living quietly, had been one of the leaders of the revolution that established the Second Republic in France in 1848, had expected to be elected President and seen instead the rise of Louis-Napoleon and his own extinction as a political voice. He had nevertheless pushed forward the causes of the abolition of slavery and the death penalty. Dickens admired and liked him, but his example confirmed the wisdom of his own refusal as a writer to engage directly in politics.

  7. D to F, 20 Jan. 1856, P, VIII, p. 33. But see below, D to F, 15 Aug. 1856.

  8. D to F. O. Ward, 14 Jan. 1852, P, VII, p. 575. In Dec. 1851 a bloody coup d’état established Louis-Napoleon as President with dictatorial powers. Mass arrests of his opponents followed, and many were exiled without trial. In Nov. 1852 he declared himself Emperor, calling himself Napoleon III. Dickens did not live to see the end of his reign in Sept. 1870, when the French were defeated by the Prussians.

  9. Dickens had met Louis-Napoleon at Miss Coutts’s as well as at D’Orsay’s in London in the 1840s, and always disliked him. But D’Orsay was the son of a Napoleonic general, and when he moved to France in 1849 he hoped to be given a position by Louis-Napoleon. Dickens saw D’Orsay in Paris in 1850 and 1851, and early in 1852 he was appointed Directeur Générale des Beaux Arts, only to die in July of the same year.

  10. D to Macready, 4 Oct. 1855, P, VII, pp. 715, 716. Dickens wrote more freely to Macready than to anyone else about his political despair.

  11. D to GH, 5 May 1856, P, VIII, p. 110.

  12. D to F, 15 Aug. 1856, P, VIII, p. 178. Forster prints it, and the Pilgrim editors reproduce it, with the word ‘natural’ in line 4 (‘the hero of an English book is always uninteresting – too good – too natural, &c.’) – but ‘unnatural’ makes better sense of the passage.

  13. Things did not change until Hardy challenged ‘the doll of English fiction’ in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) – both bowdlerized by editors who serialized the novels – and showed Jude the Obscure’s sexual and marital problems (in 1894). Disapproving English critics accused Hardy of writing like Flaubert, whose Madame Bovary was published in 1857.

  14. Dr Brown died in Pau, in south-west France, in Oct., and his body had to be embalmed and taken back to England for the funeral in Nov. D to Wills, 28 Oct. 1855, P, VII, p. 728.

  15. D to Wills, 10 Nov. 1855, P, VIII, p. 741.

  16. D to Wills, 30 Dec. 1855, P, VII, p. 774.

  17. See Robert L. Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978), p. 251.

  18. D to F, 13 Apr. 1856, P, VIII, p. 89.

  19. D to Wilkie Collins, 22 Apr. 1856, P, VIII, p. 95.

  20. D to Wills, 27 Apr. 1856, P, VIII, p. 99.

  21. In Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854). D to GH, 22 July 1854, P, VII, p. 377.

  22. D to Fred Dickens, 12 Dec. 1856, P, VIII, p. 236.

  23. Patten, Dickens and His Publishers, p. 240.

  24. When the wedding was planned Dickens would have expected to be still in Boulogne, and was in London only because of the diphtheria epidemic there. On the other hand, crossing the Channel would not have kept him away from any occasion at which he wished to be present, so there must have been some problem or disinclination, whether Forster’s or his; or more likely the bride may have wanted a very quiet wedding, since she had a severe speech defect (mocked by Dickens to Georgina in a letter, 14 Nov. 1860, P, IX, p. 399). Eliza Crosbie (1819–94) was the daughter of a naval officer, her first husband, Henry Colburn, a publisher for whom Forster had edited Evelyn’s diaries.

  25. Dickens wrote two long articles in HW attacking the evidence given by Inuit hunters to Dr John Rae and ridiculing the idea that British explorers could have sunk to cannibalism. In 1997 the Inuit account seems to have been vindicated when the bodies of some of the men were found, and clear evidence of cannibalism discovered; but the matter is still disputed.

  26. D to Coutts, 3 Oct. 1856, P, VIII, p. 199.

  27. See the photograph of the acting group taken in Albert Smith’s garden on 12 July 1857 (see third inset).

  28. See D to Coutts, 10 July 1857, saying the boys were ‘just home from Boulogne after a year’s absence’. P, VIII, p. 372.

  29. D to F, [?3–4 Jan. 1857], P, VIII, p. 251.

  30. D’s orders to his manservant John Thompson, given in P, VIII, p. 254, fn. 3.

  31. D to Sir James Tennent, 9 Jan. 1857, P, VIII, p. 256.

  32. D to Mary Boyle, 7 Feb. 1857, P, VIII, pp. 276–7.

  33. See P, VIII, p. 261, fn. 4, quoting letter of William Howitt, 15 Jan. 1857.

  34. D to Cerjat, 19 Jan. 1857, P, VIII, p. 265.

  35. Fred’s letter of 7 Feb. 1857, given in P, VIII, p. 277, fn. 3.

  36. D to Henry Austin, 15 Feb. 1857, P, VIII, pp. 283–4.

  37. D to Macready, 15 Mar. 1857, P, VIII, p. 302.

  38. D to F, [?mid-Apr. 1857], P, VIII, p. 317. There is a mention of Pickwick in ‘Amos Barton’ which must have particularly pleased Dickens, where the gloomy evangelical clergyman ‘thinks the immense sale of the “Pickwick Papers”, recently completed, one of the strongest proofs of original sin’.

  39. D to F, [?5 Apr. 1857], P, VIII, p. 309.

  40. D to Stanfield, 20 May 1857, P, VIII, p. 328.

  41. D to Mrs Brown, 28 Aug. 1857, P, VIII, p. 422.

  42. Edna Healey, Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts (London, 1978), pp. 135–6.

  43. C. B. Phipps to D, 5 July 1857, P, VIII, p. 366, fn. 1.

  44. D to Coutts, 20 July 1857, P, VIII, p. 381.

  45. D to Coutts, 10 July 1857, P, VIII, p. 372.

  46. ‘The Licence of Modern Novelists’ was published in the Edinburgh Review, 104 (July 1857), pp. 124–56, anonymously, but known to be the
work of Fitzjames Stephen. Dickens published his reply, ‘Curious Misprint in the Edinburgh Review’ in HW, 16 (1 Aug. 1857), pp. 97–100. As Philip Collins points out in his Critical Heritage (London, 1971), p. 366, Stephen’s brother Leslie commented that Fitzjames himself later expressed views about the English system of government and the need for reform that were not so different from those of Dickens. What Fitzjames Stephen found objectionable was the rough caricaturing of civil servants, which is what makes the comedy and the strength of the satire in Little Dorrit. Other critics complained of its being duller and darker than his earlier novels.

  47. Emmeline Montague had acted with Dickens in his theatricals, and recalled his energy, his lavish way with gin punch, his irritability and restlessness. She found Mrs Dickens a delightful hostess.

  48. So Katey told Gladys Storey, Dickens and Daughter (London, 1939), p. 127.

  49. So Dickens told Mrs Watson later, 7 Dec. 1857, P, VIII, p. 488.

  50. Francesco Berger described this in his Reminiscences, Impressions, Anecdotes (London, 1913).

  51. D’s description to Coutts, 5 Sept. 1857, P, VIII, pp. 432–4.

  52. D to Mrs Brown, 28 Aug. 1857, P, VIII, p. 422.

  53. D to Wilkie Collins, 29 Aug. 1857, P, VIII, p. 423.

  54. D to Coutts, 5 Sept. 1857, P, VIII, pp. 432–3.

  55. D to F, [?3 Sept. 1857], P, VIII, p. 430.

  56. D to F, 5 Sept. 1857, P, VIII, p. 434.

  PART THREE

  20 Stormy Weather 1857–1859

  1. D told Henry Austin, who was putting the house in order for him, ‘It is a life business (I hope)’. 26 Sept. 1851, P, VI, p. 494.

  2. D to Wilkie Collins, 21 Mar. 1858, P, VIII, p. 536.

  3. Philip Collins’s Dickens: The Public Readings (Oxford, 1975) gives the texts. The reading from Dombey and Son, ‘Little Dombey’, is so condensed as to shock anyone who appreciates the original, and much the same is true of the reading from David Copperfield. They give one some sympathy with Forster’s fear that this was a lower form of art.

  4. Phrase from D to Macready, 31 Mar. 1863, P, X, p. 227.

  5. In Chapter 6 of Our Mutual Friend. Dickens’s first experience of the river also came from his childhood, when his father took him on the Navy yacht to Sheerness.

  6. Everything about the nature of these attacks – their timing, their acute painfulness, the swelling that made it impossible for him to wear a shoe or boot, their moving from one foot to the other and later to a hand – indicates gout. Dickens strongly resisted and denied this diagnosis, perhaps because gout was associated with high consumption of alcohol. He always insisted it was caused by walking in the snow. When a summary of his symptoms over the last five years was submitted to a group of doctors recently they were unanimous in seeing gout as the reason for the pain in his feet and hand.

  7. D to Wills, 19 Sept. 1857, P, VIII, p. 449.

  8. D to Wills, 20 Sept. 1857, P, VIII, pp. 450–51.

  9. D to Macready, ‘a piece of news I have, that I think you will be pleased to hear. Lord Gardner has married Julia Fortescue, and they are living quietly and very happily.’ 13 Dec. 1856, P, VIII, p. 238. It is not certain that any legal marriage took place.

  10. D to Buckstone, 13 Oct. 1857, P, VIII, p. 466.

  11. D to De La Rue, 23 Oct. 1857, P, VIII, pp. 471–2.

  12. Una Pope-Hennessy, Charles Dickens (London, 1945), p. 176, no source given.

  13. See Chapter 27 below for Katey’s account of this to Gladys Storey, told in Dickens and Daughter (London, 1939), p. 96.

  14. D to Lady Duff Gordon, 23 Jan. 1858, P, VIII, p. 508; D to Mrs Watson, 7 Dec. 1857, P, VIII, p. 488.

  15. D to Wilkie Collins, 21 Mar. 1858, P, VIII, p. 536.

  16. D to F, 27 Mar. 1858, P, VIII, p. 537, and 30 Mar. 1858, P, VIII, p. 539.

  17. Account by Yates, given in K. J. Fielding (ed.), The Speeches of Charles Dickens: A Complete Edition (Brighton, 1988), p. 263.

  18. D to Coutts, 9 May 1858, P, VIII, pp. 558–60. In Aug., Catherine’s aunt Helen Thomson wrote to Mrs Stark, a family connection, telling her that Dickens had tried to get a doctor to say Catherine was of unsound mind, and that the doctor had refused, saying he considered her perfectly sound in mind. P, VIII, Appendix F, p. 746.

  19. Lucinda Hawksley’s Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens’s Artist Daughter (London, 2006) suggests that Georgina underwent a virginity test and that the certificate of virginity was among the family papers, although no one knows its present location. See p. 134 and fn.

  20. Catherine’s letter to Miss Coutts is given in P, VIII, p. 565, fn. 2. Catherine might have been better advised to stay at Tavistock House and force Dickens to move out. It would also have made it more difficult for him to keep the children.

  21. D to Coutts, 19 May 1858, P, VIII, p. 565.

  22. Dickens met Ouvry, a partner in Farrer’s, in 1856, and began to use him in preference to Mitton for much of his business. The final settlement on Catherine gave her a house of her own and a respectable £600 a year.

  23. D to Ouvry, 26 May 1858, P, VIII, p. 569.

  24. Annie Thackeray to Amy Crowe, [n.d.], Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray, II (Oxford, 1958), p. 478, n. 46.

  25. Bradbury & Evans, in a statement put out in May 1859, described Dickens’s desire that they should publish his statement in Punch, a comic magazine, as expecting them ‘to gratify an eccentric wish by a preposterous action’. See Appendix C in P, IX, [p. 565].

  26. D to Charley, [?10–12 July 1858], P, VIII, p. 602.

  27. D to Yates, 8 June 1858, P, VIII, p. 581.

  28. See P, VIII, pp. 740–41.

  29. Cited in P, VIII, p. 648, fn. 4.

  30. Catherine D’s letter quoted by Helen Thomson, Aug. 1858, P, VIII, p. 559, fn. 1. Henry and Alfred both spoke later of regular affectionate visits.

  31. D to GH, 25 Aug. 1858, P, VIII, p. 637, and fn. 4.

  32. D to Coutts, 23 Aug. 1858, P, VIII, p. 632.

  33. D to Mary Boyle, 10 Sept. 1858, P, VIII, p. 656, and 9 Dec. 1858, P, VIII, p. 717.

  34. Gladys Storey’s notes of her conversations with Katey held between 1923 and her death in 1929, now lodged at Charles Dickens Museum. See Chapter 27 below.

  35. D to Wills, 25 Oct. 1858, P, VIII, pp. 686–7.

  36. Robert L. Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978), p. 262.

  37. F’s letter given in P, IX, p. 10, fn. 2.

  38. F to D, 14 Jan. 1859, P, IX, p. 11, fn. 5.

  21 Secrets, Mysteries and Lies 1859–1861

  1. Forster gives this comment in his Life of Charles Dickens, III (London, 1874), Chapter 9.

  2. D to his tour manager Arthur Smith, 26 Jan. 1859, P, IX, p. 17.

  3. William Richard Hughes, A Week’s Tramp in Dickens-Land (London, 1891), p. 87.

  4. John Hollingshead, My Lifetime, I (London, 1895), p. 97.

  5. Fred was released from prison after three months, but from now on he sank into poverty, unrelieved by his elder brother, who had almost no more contact with him.

  6. See P, IX, p. 11, fn. 1.

  7. We do know, however, that her sister Maria took over her part.

  8. Dickens put it out in monthly parts, with illustrations by Hablot Browne (‘Phiz’), to appeal to his old public.

  9. HW was closed in May.

  10. D to F, 16 June 1859, P, IX, p. 78. Wills had naturally moved with Dickens and continued to be his chief assistant, and with a share in the profits. Chapman & Hall, which would publish the monthly parts, took some of the 100,000 copies, and some went to America, but it was still an impressive figure.

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

  12. D to Wilkie Collins, 6 Oct. 1859, P, IX, p. 128.

  13. John Sutherland’s essay on A Tale of Two Cities adds considerably to the pleasure of reading the novel, and is found in his Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? (Oxford, 1999).

  14. Patten, Dickens and His Publishers, p. 304.

  1
5. Great Expectations, Chapter 20.

  16. Ibid., Chapter 7.

  17. Ibid., Chapter 15.

  18. Ibid., Chapter 57.

  19. Ibid., Chapter 29.

  20. D to Wilkie Collins, 12 June 1859, P, IX, p. 76.

  21. D to Frank Beard, 25 June 1859, P, IX, p. 84.

  22. D to Frank Beard, 1 July – ‘the new medicines have prevailed, and nearly thrown the enemy’, and 6 Aug. 1859, P, IX, pp. 88, 103.

  23. D to Wilkie Collins, 16 Aug. 1859, P, IX, p. 106.

  24. That Dickens, who worked to save young women from becoming prostitutes, may have used prostitutes himself may be hard but not impossible to believe.

  25. D to Frank Beard, 29 Jan. 1861, P, IX, p. 377.

  26. According to Forster in his Life, III, Chapter 14.

  27. D to Macready, 11 June 1861, P, IX, p. 424.

  28. D to Wills, 11 Mar. 1861, P, IX, p. 391.

  29. See D to Coutts, 8 Apr. 1860, P, IX, p. 233, in which he writes, ‘I do not suppose myself blameless.’ D to Coutts, 12 Feb. 1864, P, X, p. 356.

  30. Mrs Puckle was the daughter of Macready’s youngest son, Sir Neville Macready. Her remarks are printed in an article by Philip Collins, ‘W. C. Macready and Dickens: Some Family Recollections’ in Dickens Studies, 2, 2 (May 1966), p. 53.

  31. D to Wills, 30 June 1859, P, IX, p. 87. The ‘woman I trust’ for an opinion on his proofs, mentioned by D to Bulwer, 15 May 1861, P, IX, p. 415, is surely Nelly.

  32. Berger was supposedly reported by Andrew de Ternant in Notes and Queries in 1933, the year of Berger’s death, aged ninety-nine. I have lately found that de Ternant was a notorious fabricator of stories, about Debussy among others, and regularly planted his inventions in Notes and Queries, which suggests this is another of his hoaxes.

  33. Quoted in fn. 3 to D to Fields, 20 May 1860, P, IX, p. 256.

  34. Katey is the source here, talking to Gladys Storey, Dickens and Daughter (London, 1939), p. 106.

  35. D to Frances Dickinson, 19 Aug. 1860, P, IX, p. 287.

  36. Katey was not present, as is sometimes said, but abroad on her honeymoon.