him in this world; and few, after a life of such activities, have left a
memory so unstained and pure. But other and sharper sorrows awaited
Dickens.

The chief occupation of the past and present year, _David Copperfield_,
will have a chapter to itself, and in this may be touched but lightly.
Once fairly in it, the story bore him irresistibly along; certainly with
less trouble to himself in the composition, beyond that ardent sympathy
with the creatures of the fancy which always made so absolutely real to
him their sufferings or sorrows; and he was probably never less harassed
by interruptions or breaks in his invention. His principal hesitation
occurred in connection with the child-wife Dora, who had become a great
favourite as he went on; and it was shortly after her fate had been
decided, in the early autumn of 1850,[162] but before she breathed her
last, that a third daughter was born to him, to whom he gave his dying
little heroine's name. On these and other points, without forestalling
what waits to be said of the composition of this fine story, a few
illustrative words from his letters will properly find a place here.
"_Copperfield_ half done," he wrote of the second number on the 6th of
June. "I feel, thank God, quite confident in the story. I have a move in
it ready for this month; another for next; and another for the next." "I
think it is necessary" (15th of November) "to decide against the special
pleader. Your reasons quite suffice. I am not sure but that the banking
house might do. I will consider it in a walk." "Banking business
impracticable" (17th of November) "on account of the confinement: which
would stop the story, I foresee. I have taken, for the present at all
events, the proctor. I am wonderfully in harness, and nothing galls or
frets." "_Copperfield_ done" (20th of November) "after two days' very
hard work indeed; and I think a smashing number. His first dissipation I
hope will be found worthy of attention, as a piece of grotesque truth."
"I feel a great hope" (23rd of January, 1850) "that I shall be
remembered by little Em'ly, a good many years to come." "I begin to have
my doubts of being able to join you" (20th of February), "for
_Copperfield_ runs high, and must be done to-morrow. But I'll do it if
possible, and strain every nerve. Some beautiful comic love, I hope, in
the number." "Still undecided about Dora" (7th of May), "but MUST decide
to-day."[163] "I have been" (Tuesday, 20th of August) "very hard at work
these three days, and have still Dora to kill. But with good luck, I may
do it to-morrow. Obliged to go to Shepherd's-bush to-day, and can
consequently do little this morning. Am eschewing all sorts of things
that present themselves to my fancy--coming in such crowds!" "Work in a
very decent state of advancement" (13th of August) "domesticity
notwithstanding. I hope I shall have a splendid number. I feel the story
to its minutest point." "Mrs. Micawber is still" (15th of August), "I
regret to say, in statu quo. Ever yours, WILKINS MICAWBER." The little
girl was born the next day, the 16th, and received the name of Dora
Annie. The most part of what remained of the year was passed away from
home.

The year following did not open with favourable omen, both the child and
its mother having severe illness. The former rallied however, and
"little Dora is getting on bravely, thank God!" was his bulletin of the
early part of February. Soon after, it was resolved to make trial of
Great Malvern for Mrs. Dickens; and lodgings were taken there in March,
Dickens and her sister accompanying her, and the children being left in
London. "It is a most beautiful place," he wrote to me (15th of March).
"O Heaven, to meet the Cold Waterers (as I did this morning when I went
out for a shower-bath) dashing down the hills, with severe expressions
on their countenances, like men doing matches and not exactly winning!
Then, a young lady in a grey polka going _up_ the hills, regardless of
legs; and meeting a young gentleman (a bad case, I should say) with a
light black silk cap on under his hat, and the pimples of I don't know
how many douches under that. Likewise an old man who ran over a
milk-child, rather than stop!--with no neckcloth, on principle; and with
his mouth wide open, to catch the morning air." This was the month, as
we have seen, when the performances for the Guild were in active
preparation, and it was also the date of the farewell dinner to our
friend Macready on his quitting the stage. Dickens and myself came up
for it from Malvern, to which he returned the next day; and from the
spirited speech in which he gave the health of the chairman at the
dinner, I will add a few words for the sake of the truth expressed in
them. "There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition, that
authors are not a particularly united body, and I am afraid that this
may contain half a grain or so of the veracious. But of our chairman I
have never in my life made public mention without adding what I can
never repress, that in the path we both tread I have uniformly found him
to be, from the first, the most generous of men; quick to encourage,
slow to disparage, and ever anxious to assert the order of which he is
so great an ornament. That we men of letters are, or have been,
invariably or inseparably attached to each other, it may not be possible
to say, formerly or now; but there cannot now be, and there cannot ever
have been, among the followers of literature, a man so entirely without
the grudging little jealousies that too often disparage its brightness,
as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton." That was as richly merited as it is
happily said.

Dickens had to return to London after the middle of March for business
connected with a charitable Home established at Shepherd's-bush by Miss
Coutts, in the benevolent hope of rescuing fallen women by testing their
fitness for emigration, of which future mention will be made, and which
largely and regularly occupied his time for several years. On this
occasion his stay was prolonged by the illness of his father. His
health had been failing latterly, and graver symptoms were now spoken
of. "I saw my poor father twice yesterday," he wrote to me on the 27th,
"the second time between ten and eleven at night. In the morning I
thought him not so well. At night, as well as any one in such a
situation could be." Next day he was so much better that his son went
back to Malvern, and even gave us grounds for hope that we might yet
have his presence in Hertfordshire to advise on some questions connected
with the comedy which Sir Edward Lytton had written for the Guild. But
the end came suddenly. I returned from Knebworth to London, supposing
that some accident had detained him at Malvern; and at my house this
letter waited me. "Devonshire-terrace, Monday, thirty-first of March
1851. . . . My poor father died this morning at five and twenty minutes to
six. They had sent for me to Malvern, but I passed John on the railway;
for I came up with the intention of hurrying down to Bulwer Lytton's
to-day before you should have left. I arrived at eleven last night, and
was in Keppel-street at a quarter past eleven. But he did not know me,
nor any one. He began to sink at about noon yesterday, and never rallied
afterwards. I remained there until he died--O so quietly. . . . I hardly
know what to do. I am going up to Highgate to get the ground. Perhaps
you may like to go, and I should like it if you do. I will not leave
here before two o'clock. I think I must go down to Malvern again, at
night, to know what is to be done about the children's mourning; and as
you are returning to Bulwer's I should like to have gone that way, if
_Bradshaw_ gave me any hope of doing it. I wish most particularly to
see you, I needn't say. I must not let myself be distracted by
anything--and God knows I have left a sad sight!--from the scheme on
which so much depends. Most part of the alterations proposed I think
good." Mr. John Dickens was laid in Highgate Cemetery on the 5th of
April; and the stone placed over him by the son who has made his name a
famous one in England, bore tribute to his "zealous, useful, cheerful
spirit." What more is to be said of him will be most becomingly said in
speaking of _David Copperfield_. While the book was in course of being
written, all that had been best in him came more and more vividly back
to its author's memory; as time wore on, nothing else was remembered;
and five years before his own death, after using in one of his letters
to me a phrase rather out of the common with him, this was added: "I
find this looks like my poor father, whom I regard as a better man the
longer I live."

He was at this time under promise to take the chair at the General
Theatrical Fund on the 14th of April. Great efforts were made to relieve
him from the promise; but such special importance was attached to his
being present, and the Fund so sorely then required help, that, no
change of day being found possible for the actors who desired to attend,
he yielded to the pressure put upon him; of which the result was to
throw upon me a sad responsibility. The reader will understand why, even
at this distance of time; my allusion to it is brief.

The train from Malvern brought him up only five minutes short of the
hour appointed for the dinner, and we first met that day at the London
Tavern. I never heard him to greater advantage than in the speech that
followed. His liking for this Fund was the fact of its not confining its
benefits to any special or exclusive body of actors, but opening them
generously to all; and he gave a description of the kind of actor, going
down to the infinitesimally small, not omitted from such kind help,
which had a half-pathetic humour in it that makes it charming still. "In
our Fund," he said, "the word exclusiveness is not known. We include
every actor, whether he be Hamlet or Benedict: the ghost, the bandit, or
the court physician; or, in his one person, the whole king's army. He
may do the light business, or the heavy, or the comic, or the eccentric.
He may be the captain who courts the young lady, whose uncle still
unaccountably persists in dressing himself in a costume one hundred
years older than his time. Or he may be the young lady's brother in the
white gloves and inexpressibles, whose duty in the family appears to be
to listen to the female members of it whenever they sing, and to shake
hands with everybody between all the verses. Or he may be the baron who
gives the fête, and who sits uneasily on the sofa under a canopy with
the baroness while the fête is going on. Or he may be the peasant at the
fête who comes on the stage to swell the drinking chorus, and who, it
may be observed, always turns his glass upside down before he begins to
drink out of it. Or he may be the clown who takes away the doorstep of
the house where the evening party is going on. Or he may be the
gentleman who issues out of the house on the false alarm, and is
precipitated into the area. Or, if an actress, she may be the fairy who
resides for ever in a revolving star with an occasional visit to a bower
or a palace. Or again, if an actor, he may be the armed head of the
witch's cauldron; or even that extraordinary witch, concerning whom I
have observed in country places, that he is much less like the notion
formed from the description of Hopkins than the Malcolm or Donalbain of
the previous scenes. This society, in short, says, 'Be you what you may,
be you actor or actress, be your path in your profession never so high
or never so low, never so haughty or never so humble, we offer you the
means of doing good to yourselves, and of doing good to your brethren.'"

Half an hour before he rose to speak I had been called out of the room.
It was the servant from Devonshire-terrace to tell me his child Dora was
suddenly dead. She had not been strong from her birth; but there was
just at this time no cause for special fear, when unexpected convulsions
came, and the frail little life passed away. My decision had to be
formed at once; and I satisfied myself that it would be best to permit
his part of the proceedings to close before the truth was told to him.
But as he went on, after the sentences I have quoted, to speak of actors
having to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering, aye, even of death
itself, to play their parts before us, my part was very difficult. "Yet
how often is it with all of us," he proceeded to say, and I remember to
this hour with what anguish I listened to words that had for myself
alone, in all the crowded room, their full significance: "how often is
it with all of us, that in our several spheres we have to do violence to
our feelings, and to hide our hearts in carrying on this fight of life,
if we would bravely discharge in it our duties and responsibilities." In
the disclosure that followed when he left the chair, Mr. Lemon, who was
present, assisted me; and I left this good friend with him next day,
when I went myself to Malvern and brought back Mrs. Dickens and her
sister. The little child lies in a grave at Highgate near that of Mr.
and Mrs. John Dickens; and on the stone which covers her is now written
also her father's name, and those of two of her brothers.

One more public discussion he took part in, before quitting London for
the rest of the summer; and what he said (it was a meeting, with Lord
Carlisle in the chair, in aid of Sanitary reform) very pregnantly
illustrates what was remarked by me on a former page. He declared his
belief that neither education nor religion could do anything really
useful in social improvement until the way had been paved for their
ministrations by cleanliness and decency. He spoke warmly of the
services of Lord Ashley in connection with ragged schools, but he put
the case of a miserable child tempted into one of those schools out of
the noisome places in which his life was passed, and he asked what a few
hours' teaching could effect against the ever-renewed lesson of a whole
existence. "But give him, and his, a glimpse of heaven through a little
of its light and air; give them water; help them to be clean; lighten
the heavy atmosphere in which their spirits flag, and which makes them
the callous things they are; take the body of the dead relative from the
room where the living live with it, and where such loathsome familiarity
deprives death itself of awe; and then, but not before, they will be
brought willingly to hear of Him whose thoughts were so much with the
wretched, and who had compassion for all human sorrow." He closed by
proposing Lord Ashley's health as having preferred the higher ambition
of labouring for the poor to that of pursuing the career open to him in
the service of the State; and as having also had "the courage on all
occasions to face the cant which is the worst and commonest of all, the
cant about the cant of philanthropy." Lord Shaftesbury first dined with
him in the following year at Tavistock-house.

Shortly after the Sanitary meeting came the first Guild performances;
and then Dickens left Devonshire-terrace, never to return to it. What
occupied him in the interval before he took possession of his new abode,
has before been told; but two letters were overlooked in describing his
progress in the labour of the previous year, and brief extracts from
them will naturally lead me to the subject of my next chapter. "I have
been" (15th of September) "tremendously at work these two days; eight
hours at a stretch yesterday, and six hours and a half to-day, with the
Ham and Steerforth chapter, which has completely knocked me
over--utterly defeated me!" "I am" (21st of October) "within three pages
of the shore; and am strangely divided, as usual in such cases, between
sorrow and joy. Oh, my dear Forster, if I were to say half of what
_Copperfield_ makes me feel to-night, how strangely, even to you, I
should be turned inside out! I seem to be sending some part of myself
into the Shadowy World."

=END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.=

FOOTNOTES:

[158] I take the opportunity of saying that there was an omission of
three words in the epitaph quoted on a former page (vol. i. p. 120). The
headstone at the grave in Kensal-green bears this inscription: "Young,
beautiful, and good, God in His mercy numbered her among His angels at
the early age of seventeen."

[159] From letters of nearly the same date here is another
characteristic word: "Pen and ink before me! Am I not at work on
_Copperfield_! Nothing else would have kept me here until half-past two
on such a day. . . . Indian news bad indeed. Sad things come of bloody war.
If it were not for Elihu, I should be a peace and arbitration man."

[160] Here is really an only average specimen of the letters as
published: "I forgot to say, if you leave your chamber twenty times a
day, after using your basin, you would find it clean, and the pitcher
replenished on your return, and that you cannot take your clothes off,
but they are taken away, brushed, folded, pressed, and placed in the
bureau; and at the dressing-hour, before dinner, you find your candles
lighted, your clothes laid out, your shoes cleaned, and everything
arranged for use; . . . the dress-clothes brushed and folded in the nicest
manner, and cold water, and hot water, and clean napkins in the greatest
abundance. . . . Imagine an elegant chamber, fresh water in basins, in
goblets, in tubs, and sheets of the finest linen!"

[161] From this time to his death there was always friendly intercourse
with his old publisher Mr. Bentley.

[162] It may be proper to record the fact that he had made a short run
to Paris, with Maclise, at the end of June, of which sufficient farther
note will have been taken if I print the subjoined passages from a
letter to me dated 24th June, 1850, Hôtel Windsor, Rue de Rivoli. "There
being no room in the Hôtel Brighton, we are lodged (in a very good
apartment) here. The heat is absolutely frightful. I never felt anything
like it in Italy. Sleep is next to impossible, except in the day, when
the room is dark, and the patient exhausted. We purpose leaving here on
Saturday morning and going to Rouen, whence we shall proceed either to
Havre or Dieppe, and so arrange our proceedings as to be home, please
God, on Tuesday evening. We are going to some of the little theatres
to-night, and on Wednesday to the Français, for Rachel's last
performance before she goes to London. There does not seem to be
anything remarkable in progress, in the theatrical way. Nor do I observe
that out of doors the place is much changed, except in respect of the
carriages which are certainly less numerous. I also think the Sunday is
even much more a day of business than it used to be. As we are going
into the country with Regnier to-morrow, I write this after letter-time
and before going out to dine at the Trois Frères, that it may come to
you by to-morrow's post. The twelve hours' journey here is
astounding--marvellously done, except in respect of the means of
refreshment, which are absolutely none. Mac is very well (extremely
loose as to his waistcoat, and otherwise careless in regard of buttons)
and sends his love. De Fresne proposes a dinner with all the
notabilities of Paris present, but I WON'T stand it! I really have
undergone so much fatigue from work, that I am resolved not even to see
him, but to please myself. I find, my child (as Horace Walpole would
say), that I have written you nothing here, but you will take the will
for the deed."

[163] The rest of the letter may be allowed to fill the corner of a
note. The allusions to Rogers and Landor are by way of reply to an
invitation I had sent him. "I am extremely sorry to hear about Fox.
Shall call to enquire, as I come by to the Temple. And will call on you
(taking the chance of finding you) on my way to that Seat of Boredom. I
wrote my paper for _H. W._ yesterday, and have begun _Copperfield_ this
morning. Still undecided about Dora, but MUST decide to-day. La
difficulté d'écrire l'Anglais m'est extrêmement ennuyeuse. Ah, mon Dieu!
si l'on pourrait toujours écrire cette belle langue de France! Monsieur
Rogere! Ah! qu'il est homme d'esprit, homme de génie, homme des lettres!
Monsieur Landore! Ah qu'il parle Français--pas parfaitement comme un
ange--un peu (peut-être) comme un diable! Mais il est bon
garçon--sérieusement, il est un de la vraie noblesse de la nature. Votre
tout dévoué, CHARLES. À Monsieur Monsieur Fos-tere."

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Pages 47-48, word split over two pages was mistyped. Word "yester-
terday" changed to "yesterday" (Ditto yesterday; except)

Footnote 116, "inim table" changed to "inimitable" (facetiousness of the
inimitable)

Page 310, "Nove ber" changed to "November" (21st of November)

Page 311, "hem" changed to "them" (perfect joy in them)

Footnote 139, "Edi burgh" changed to "Edinburgh" (Lord Cockburn.
"EDINBURGH)

Footnote 143, "l ght" changed to "light" (Wellbred's light ease)

To retain the integrity of the original text, varied hyphenations,
capitalizations, and, at times, spellings were retained.

For example:

Varied hyphenation and capitalization of Devonshire Terrace was
retained. Also fac-simile and facsimile. Varied spelling of
A'Beckett/A'Becket was retained.

*****

Transcriber's Note:

For the reader: Italic text is surrounded by _underscores_, bold text is
surrounded by =equal signs= and underlined text is surrounded by
~tildes~. Two breves above the letter e are indicated by [)e] in the
text.

THE LIFE

OF

[Illustration: Signature: Charles Dickens]

THE LIFE

OF

CHARLES DICKENS

BY

JOHN FORSTER.

VOL. III.

1852-1870.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

                                                          PAGE
  Autograph of Charles Dickens                         _Fly-leaf_

  Charles Dickens, æt. 56. From the last photograph
    taken in America, in 1868. Engraved by J. C.
    Armytage                                        _Frontispiece_

  Devonshire Terrace. From a drawing by Daniel
    Maclise, R.A.                                          41

  Tavistock House                                          53

  Facsimile of plan prepared for first number of _David
    Copperfield_                                          157

  Facsimile of plan prepared for first number of _Little
    Dorrit_                                               158

  The Porch at Gadshill                                   204

  The Châlet                                              213

  House and conservatory, from the meadow                 216

  The study at Gadshill                                   222

  Facsimile from the last page of _Edwin Drood_, written
    on the 8th of June, 1870                              468

  Facsimile of a page of _Oliver Twist_, written in 1837  469

  The Grave. From an original water-colour drawing,
    executed for this Work, by S. L. Fildes. Engraved by
    J. Saddler                            _to face_ p.    544

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. 1850-1853.

Pages 21-50.

DAVID COPPERFIELD AND BLEAK HOUSE. ÆT. 38-41.

                                                           PAGE

        Interest of _Copperfield_                            21
        Real people in novels                                22
        Scott, Smollett, and Fielding                        22
        Complaint and atonement                              23
        Earlier and later methods                            24
        Boythorn and Skimpole                                26
        Yielding to temptation                               27
        Changes made in Skimpole                             28
        Relatives put into books                             29
        Scott and his father                                 29
        Dickens and his father                               30
        No harm done                                         32
        Micawber and Skimpole                                32
        Dickens and David                                    33
        Dangers of autobiography                             34
        Design of David's character                          35
        Why books continue                                   36
        The storm and shipwreck                              37
        Goethe on the insane                                 38
        The two heroines                                     39
        Risks not worth running                              40
        Devonshire Terrace                                   41
        _Bleak House_                                        43
        Defects of the novel                                 44
        Set-offs and successes                               45
        Value of critical judgments                          46
        The contact of extremes                              47
        Dean Ramsay on Jo                                    48
        Town graves                                          49
        One last friend                                      49
        Truth of Gridley's case                              50

CHAPTER II. 1853-1855.

Pages 51-75.

HOME INCIDENTS AND HARD TIMES. ÆT. 41-43.

        Titles proposed for _Bleak House_                    52
        Restlessness                                         52
        Tavistock House                                      53
        Last child born                                      54
        A young stage aspirant                               54
        Deaths of friends                                    55
        At Boulogne                                          55
        Publishing agreements                                56
        At Birmingham                                        56
        Self-changes                                         57
        Employments in Boulogne                              59
        First reading in public                              60
        Argument against paid readings                       61
        Children's theatricals                               62
        Mr. H. in _Tom Thumb_                                62
        Dickens in Fortunio                                  63
        Titles for a new story                               65
        Difficulties of weekly parts                         66
        Mr. Ruskin on _Hard Times_                           67
        Truths enforced                                      68
        Early experiences                                    69
        Strike at Preston                                    69
        Speaking at Drury Lane                               70
        Stanfield scenes                                     71
        Tavistock House theatricals                          71
        Peter Cunningham                                     73
        Incident of a November night                         74
        Degrees in misery                                    75

CHAPTER III. 1853.

Pages 76-95.

SWITZERLAND AND ITALY REVISITED. ÆT. 41.

        Swiss people                                         76
        Narrow escape                                        77
        Lausanne and Genoa                                   78
        The Peschiere and its owner                          79
        On the way to Naples                                 80
        A night on board ship                                81
        A Greek potentate                                    82
        Going out to dinner                                  83
        The old idle Frenchman                               84
        Changes and old friends                              85
        A "scattering" party                                 86
        The puppets at Rome                                  87
        Malaria and desolation                               88
        Plague-smitten places                                89
        Again in Venice                                      90
        A painter among paintings                            91
        Liking for the Sardinians                            92
        Neapolitans in exile                                 93
        Travelling police arrangements                       94
        Dickens and the Austrian                             95

CHAPTER IV. 1853, 1854, and 1856.

Pages 96-120.

THREE SUMMERS AT BOULOGNE. ÆT. 41, 42, 44.

        Visits to France                                     96
        First summer residence (1853)                        97
        Villa des Moulineaux                                 98
        Doll's house and offices                             99
        Bon garçon of a landlord                            100
        Making the most of it                               101
        Among Putney market-gardeners                       102
        Shakespearian performance                           103
        Pictures at the pig-market                          104
        English friends                                     105
        Change of villa (1854)                              105
        The Northern Camp                                   106
        Visit of Prince Albert                              107
        Emperor, Prince, and Dickens                        108
        "Like boxing"                                       109
        The Empress at a review                             110
        A French conjuror                                   110
        Conjuring by Dickens                                111
        Making demons of cards                              112
        Conjuror's compliment and vision                    114
        Old residence resumed (1856)                        115
        Last of the Camp                                    116
        A household war                                     117
        State of siege                                      118
        Death of Gilbert A'Becket                           119
        Leaving for England                                 119

CHAPTER V. 1855, 1856.

Pages 121-153.

RESIDENCE IN PARIS. ÆT. 43-44.

        Actors and dramas                                   122
        Frédéric Lemaitre                                   122
        Last scene in _Gambler's Life_                      123
        Apartment in Champs Elysées                         124
        French Translation of Dickens                       125
        Ary Scheffer and Daniel Manin                       126
        English friends                                     126
        Acting at the Français                              127
        Dumas' _Orestes_                                    129
        _Paradise Lost_ at the Ambigu                       130
        Profane nonsense                                    131
        French _As You Like It_                             132
        Story of a French drama                             133
        A delightful "Tag"                                  134
        Auber and Queen Victoria                            134
        Scribe and his wife                                 136
        At Regnier's                                        137
        Viardot in _Orphée_                                 138
        Meets Georges Sand                                  138
        Banquet at Girardin's                               139
        Second banquet                                      141
        Bourse and its victims                              142
        Entry of troops from Crimea                         143
        Zouaves and their dog                               144
        Streets on New Year's Day                           145
        English and French art                              146
        Emperor and Edwin Landseer                          147
        Sitting to Ary Scheffer                             148
        Scheffer as to the likeness                         149
        A duchess murdered                                  150
        Truth is stranger than fiction                      151
        Singular scenes described                           152
        What became of the actors                           153

CHAPTER VI. 1855-1857.

Pages 154-176.

LITTLE DORRIT, AND A LAZY TOUR. ÆT. 43-45.

        Watts's Rochester charity                           155
        Tablet to Dickens in Cathedral                      155
        _Nobody's Fault_                                    155
        How the _Dorrit_ story grew                         156
        Number-Plan of _Copperfield_                        157
        Number-Plan of _Dorrit_                             158
        Circumlocution Office                               159
        Flora and Mr. F----                                 160
        Weak and strong points                              161
        A scene of boy-trials                               162
        Reception of the novel                              163
        Christmas theatricals                               164
        Theatre-making                                      165
        Rush for places                                     166
        Douglas Jerrold's death                             168
        Exertions and result                                168
        Seeing the serpents fed                             169
        Lazy Tour projected                                 170
        Up Carrick Fell                                     170
        Accident to Mr. Wilkie Collins                      171
        At Wigton and Allonby                               172
        The Yorkshire landlady                              173
        Doncaster in race week                              174
        A performance of _Money_                            175

CHAPTER VII. 1857-1858.

Pages 177-201.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THIS TIME. ÆT. 45-46.

        Disappointments and distastes                       177
        What we seem and are                                178
        Compensations of Art                                179
        Misgivings                                          180
        A defect and a merit                                181
        Reply to a remonstrance                             182
        Dangerous comfort                                   183
        One happiness missed                                184
        Homily on life                                      185
        Confidences                                         186
        Rejoinder to a reply                                187
        What the world cannot give                          189
        An old project revived                              189
        Shakespeare on acting                               191
        Hospital for sick children                          192
        Charities of the very poor                          192
        Unsolved mysteries                                  194
        Appeal for sick children                            195
        Reading for Child's Hospital                        195
        Proposal for Paid readings                          196
        Question of the Plunge                              198
        Mr. Arthur Smith                                    199
        Separation from Mrs. Dickens                        200
        What alone concerned the public                     201

CHAPTER VIII. 1856-1870.

Pages 202-222.

GADSHILL PLACE. ÆT. 44-58.

        First description of it                             202
        The porch                                           204
        Negotiations for purchase                           204
        Becomes his home                                    205
        Gadshill a century ago                              206
        Past owners and tenants                             207
        Sinking a well                                      209
        Gradual additions                                   210
        Gift from Mr. Fechter                               211
        Dickens's writing-table                             211
        The châlet                                          213
        Much coveted acquisition                            214
        Last improvement                                    215
        Visits of friends                                   216
        Dickens's Dogs                                      218
        A Fenian mastiff                                    218
        Linda and Mrs. Bouncer                              219
        Favourite walks                                     220
        The study and chair                                 222

CHAPTER IX. 1858-1859.

Pages 223-238.

FIRST PAID READINGS. ÆT. 46-47.

        Various managements                                 223
        One day's work                                      224
        Impressions of Dublin                               225
        Irish audiences                                     226
        Young Ireland and Old England                       227
        Railway ride to Belfast                             229
        Brought near his Fame                               229
        A knowing audience                                  231
        Greeting in Manchester                              231
        Joined by his daughters                             232
        Strange life                                        233
        Scotch audiences                                    234
        When most successful in reading                     235
        At public meetings                                  236
        Miss Marie Wilton as _Pippo_                        237
        Ed. Landseer on Frith's portrait                    238

CHAPTER X. 1859-1861.

Pages 239-254.

ALL THE YEAR ROUND AND THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ÆT. 47-49.

        _Household Words_ discontinued                      240
        Earliest and latest publishers                      240
        Dickens and Mr. Bentley                             241
        In search of a title                                242
        A title found                                       243
        Success of new periodical                           244
        Difference from the old                             245
        At Knebworth                                        246
        Commercial Travellers' Schools                      247
        A Traveller for human interests                     248
        Personal references in writing                      249
        Birds and low company                               250
        Bethnal-green fowls                                 251
        An incident of Doughty Street                       252
        Offers from America                                 253

CHAPTER XI. 1861-1863.

Pages 255-274.

SECOND SERIES OF READINGS. ÆT. 49-51.

        Daughter Kate's marriage                            255
        Charles Alston Collins                              257
        Sale of Tavistock House                             257
        Brother Alfred's death                              258
        Metropolitan readings                               258
        Provincial circuit                                  259
        New subjects for readings                           260
        Death of Mr. Arthur Smith                           261
        Death of Mr. Henry Austin                           262
        Readings at Brighton                                263
        At Canterbury and Dover                             264
        Alarming scene                                      265
        Impromptu reading-hall                              266
        Scenes in Scotland                                  267
        At Torquay                                          268
        Death of C. C. Felton                               269
        Offers for Australia                                270
        Writing or Reading?                                 271
        Home arguments                                      272
        Religious Richardson's Show                         273
        Exiled ex-potentate                                 274

CHAPTER XII. 1855-1865.

Pages 275-297.

HINTS FOR BOOKS WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN. ÆT. 43-53.

        Book of MS. memoranda                               275
        Originals of characters                             277
        Fancies put into books                              277
        Notions for _Little Dorrit_                         278
        Suggestions for other books                         279
        Hints for last completed book                       280
        Fancies never used                                  281
        Ideas not worked out                                282
        A touching fancy                                    284
        Domestic subjects                                   284
        Characters of women                                 285
        Other female groups                                 286
        Uncle Sam                                           288
        Sketches of selfishness                             288
        Striking thoughts                                   290
        Subjects not accomplished                           290
        Characters laid aside                               291
        Available names                                     293
        Titles for books                                    293
        Names for girls and boys                            295
        An undistinguished crowd                            296
        Mr. Brobity's snuff-box                             297

CHAPTER XIII. 1864-1867.

Pages 298-324.

THIRD SERIES OF READINGS. ÆT. 52-55.

        Death of Thackeray                                  298
        Mother's death                                      300
        Death of second son                                 300
        Interest in Mr. Fechter                             301
        Notes on theatres                                   302
        Sorrowful new year                                  303
        C. W. Dilke's death                                 303
        Staplehurst accident                                305
        Illness and suffering                               305
        Enters on new readings                              306
        Last meeting with Mrs. Carlyle                      308
        Mrs. Carlyle's death                                309
        Offer for more readings                             309
        Grave warnings                                      311
        In Scotland                                         312
        Exertion and its result                             313
        Self-deception                                      314
        An old malady                                       314
        Scene at Tynemouth                                  316
        In Dublin with the Fenians                          317
        Yielding to temptation                              318
        Pressure from America                               319
        At bay at last                                      320
        Warning unheeded                                    321
        Discussion useless                                  322
        The case in a nutshell                              323
        Decision to go                                      324

CHAPTER XIV. 1836-1870.

Pages 325-386.

DICKENS AS A NOVELIST. ÆT. 24-58.

        See before you oversee                              326
        M. Taine's criticism                                326
        What is overlooked in it                            327
        A popularity explained                              328
        National excuses for Dickens                        330
        Comparison with Balzac                              330
        Anticipatory reply to M. Taine                      332
        A critic in the _Fortnightly Review_                333
        Blame and praise to be reconciled                   333
        A plea for objectors                                334
        "Hallucinative" imagination                         335
        Vain critical warnings                              336
        The critic and the criticised                       336
        An opinion on the Micawbers                         338
        Hallucinative phenomena                             338
        Scott writing _Bride of Lammermoor_                 339
        Claim to be fairly judged                           340
        Dickens's leading quality                           341
        Dangers of Humour                                   342
        His earlier books                                   343
        Mastery of dialogue                                 344
        Character-drawing                                   345
        Realities of fiction                                346
        Fielding and Dickens                                347
        Touching of extremes                                347
        Why the creations of fiction live                   349
        Enjoyment of his own humour                         350
        Unpublished note of Lord Lytton                     350
        Exaggerations of humour                             351
        Temptations of all great humourists                 352
        A word for fanciful descriptions                    353
        _Tale of Two Cities_                                355
        Difficulties and success                            355
        Specialty of treatment                              356
        Reply to objections                                 357
        Care with which Dickens worked                      358
        An American critic                                  359
        _Great Expectations_                                360
        Pip and Magwitch                                    361
        Another boy-child for hero                          362
        Unlikeness in likeness                              363
        Vivid descriptive writing                           364
        Masterly drawing of character                       365
        A day on the Thames                                 366
        Homely and shrewd satire                            367
        Incident changed for Lytton                         368
        As originally written                               369
        Christmas Sketches                                  370
        _Our Mutual Friend_                                 370
        Writing numbers in advance                          373
        Working slowly                                      374
        Death of John Leech                                 375
        A fatal anniversary                                 376
        Effects on himself and his novel                    376
        A tale by Edmond About                              378
        First and Last                                      378
        _Doctor Marigold_                                   379
        Minor stories                                       380
        "Something from Above"                              381
        Purity of Dickens's writings                        382
        Substitute for an alleged deficiency                382
        True province of humour                             383
        Horace Greeley and Longfellow                       384
        Letters from an American                            385
        Companions for solitude                             386

CHAPTER XV. 1867.

Pages 387-406.

AMERICA REVISITED. NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER, 1867. ÆT. 55.

        Warmth of the greeting                              388
        Same cause as in 1842                               388
        Old and new friends                                 389
        Changes since 1842                                  390
        First Boston reading                                391
        Scene at New York sales                             393
        First New York reading                              393
        An action against Dickens                           394
        A fire at his hotel                                 395
        Local and general politics                          397
        Railway arrangements                                398
        Police of New York                                  398
        Mistletoe from England                              399
        As to newspapers                                    400
        Nothing lasts long                                  401
        Cities chosen for readings                          401
        Scene of a murder visited                           402
        A dinner at the murderer's                          403
        Illness and abstinence                              404
        Miseries of American travel                         405
        Startling prospect                                  406

CHAPTER XVI. 1868.

Pages 407-443.

AMERICA REVISITED. JANUARY TO APRIL, 1868. ÆT. 56.

        Speculators and public                              408
        An Englishman's disadvantage                        408
        "Freedom and independence"                          408
        Mountain-sneezers and eye-openers                   409
        The work and the gain                               410
        A scene at Brooklyn                                 411
        At Philadelphia                                     412
        "Looking up the judge"                              413
        Improved social ways                                414
        Result of thirty-four readings                      415
        Shadow to the sunshine                              416
        Readings in a church                                417
        Change of plan                                      417
        Baltimore women                                     418
        Success in Philadelphia                             419
        Objections to coloured people                       420
        With Sumner at Washington                           421
        President Lincoln's dream                           423
        Interview with President Johnson                    423
        Washington audiences                                424
        A comical dog                                       425
        Incident before a reading                           426
        The child and the doll                              427
        North-west tour                                     428
        Political excitement                                429
        Struggle for tickets                                430
        American female beauty                              432
        Sherry to "slop round" with                         432
        Final impression of Niagara                         433
        Letter to Mr. Ouvry                                 434
        "Getting along" through water                       435
        Again attacked by lameness                          437
        Illness and exertion                                437
        Seeing prevents believing                           439
        All but used up                                     439
        Last Boston readings                                440
        New York farewells                                  441
        The receipts throughout                             441
        Promise at public dinner                            442
        The Adieu                                           443

CHAPTER XVII. 1868-1870.

Pages 444-460.

LAST READINGS. ÆT. 56-58.

        Health improved                                     444
        What the readings did and undid                     445
        Expenses and gains in America                       446
        Noticeable changes in him                           447
        _Oliver Twist_ reading proposed                     448
        Objections to it                                    449
        Death of Frederick Dickens                          450
        Macready at _Oliver Twist_ reading                  451
        Another attack of illness                           452
        A doctors' difference                               454
        At Emerson Tennent's funeral                        454
        The illness at Preston                              455
        Brought to London                                   456
        Sir Thomas Watson consulted                         456
        His note of the case                                457
        Guarded sanction to other readings                  458
        Close of career as public reader                    460

CHAPTER XVIII. 1869-1870.

Pages 461-477.

LAST BOOK. ÆT. 57-58.

        The agreement for _Edwin Drood_                     461
        First fancy for it                                  462
        Story as planned in his mind                        463
        What to be its course and end                       463
        Merits of the fragment                              464
        Comparison of early and late MSS                    466
        Discovery of an unpublished scene                   467
        Last page of _Drood_ in fac-simile                  468
        Page of _Oliver Twist_ in fac-simile                469
        Delightful specimen of Dickens                      470
        Unpublished scene for _Drood_                   470-476

CHAPTER XIX. 1836-1870.

Pages 478-526.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. ÆT. 24-58.

        Dickens not a bookish man                           479
        Books and their critics                             479
        Design of present book stated                       480
        Dickens made to tell his own story                  480
        Charge of personal obtrusiveness                    481
        Lord Russell on Dickens's letters                   481
        Shallower judgments                                 481
        Absence of self-conceit in Dickens                  482
        Letter to youngest son                              483
        As to religion and prayer                           485
        Letter to a clergyman in 1856                       485
        Letter to a layman in 1870                          486
        Objection to posthumous honours                     487
        As to patronage of literature                       488
        Vanity of human wishes                              488
        As to writers and publishers                        489
        Editorship of his weekly serials                    490
        Work for his contributors                           491
        Editorial troubles and pleasures                    493
        Letter to an author                                 493
        Help to younger novelists                           495
        Adelaide Procter's poetry                           495
        Effect of periodical writing                        496
        Proposed satirical papers                           497
        Political opinions                                  498
        Not the man for Finsbury                            499
        The Liverpool dinner in 1869                        500
        Reply to Lord Houghton                              501
        Tribute to Lord Russell                             501
        People governing and governed                       502
        Alleged offers from her Majesty                     503
        Silly Rigmarole                                     504
        The Queen sees him act (1857)                       505
        Desires to hear him read (1858)                     506
        Interview at the Palace (1870)                      507
        What passed at the interview                        507
        Dickens's grateful impression                       508
        A hope at the close of life                         509
        Games in Gadshill meadow                            510
        Home enjoyments                                     512
        Habits of life everywhere                           513
        Family dependence on him                            514
        Carlyle's opinion of Dickens                        514
        Street walks and London haunts                      515
        Christmas Eve and Christmas Day                     517
        The first attack of lameness                        518
        Effect upon his dogs                                518
        Why right things to be done                         519
        Silent heroisms                                     519
        At social meetings                                  520
        Delight in "assumption"                             520
        Humouring a joke                                    522
        Unlucky hits                                        522
        Ghost stories                                       524
        Predominant feeling of his life                     525
        Sermon of the Master of Balliol                     525

CHAPTER XX. 1869-1870.

Pages 527-545.

THE END. ÆT. 57-58.

        Last summer and autumn                              527
        Showing London to a visitor                         528
        His son Henry's scholarship                         529
        Twelve more readings                                530
        Medical attendance at them                          531
        Excitement incident to them                         532
        The Farewell                                        533
        Last public appearances                             535
        At Royal Academy dinner                             535
        Eulogy of Daniel Maclise                            536
        Return of illness                                   537
        Our last meeting                                    538
        A noteworthy incident                               538
        Last letter received from him                       539
        Final days at Gadshill                              539
        Wednesday the 8th of June                           540
        Last piece of writing                               540
        The 8th and 9th of June                             541
        The general grief                                   542
        The burial                                          544
        Unbidden mourners                                   544
        The grave                                           544

APPENDIX.

    I. THE WRITINGS OF CHARLES DICKENS              547

   II. THE WILL OF CHARLES DICKENS                  561

  III. CORRECTIONS MADE IN THE LATER EDITIONS OF
         THE SECOND VOLUME OF THIS WORK             566

  INDEX                                             571

THE LIFE

OF

CHARLES DICKENS.

CHAPTER I.

DAVID COPPERFIELD AND BLEAK HOUSE.

1850-1853.

        Interest of _Copperfield_--Scott, Smollett, and
        Fielding--Too close to the Real--Earlier and
        Later Methods--Dickens at Hatton-garden
        (1837)--Originals of Boythorn and
        Skimpole--Last Glimpse of Leigh Hunt
        (1859)--Changes made in
        Skimpole--Self-defence--Scott and his
        Father--Dickens and his Father--Sayings of John
        Dickens--Skimpole and Micawber--Dickens and
        David--Self-portraiture not attempted--The
        Autobiographic Form--Consistent Drawing--Design
        of David's Character--Tone of the Novel--The
        Peggottys--Miss Dartle--Mrs. Steerforth--Betsey
        Trotwood--A Country Undertaker--The Two
        Heroines--Contrast of Esther and David--Plot of
        the Story--Incidents and Persons
        interwoven--Defects of _Bleak House_--Success
        in Character--Value of Critical
        Judgments--Pathetic Touches--Dean Ramsay on
        _Bleak House_ and Jo--Originals of Chancery
        Abuses.

DICKENS never stood so high in reputation as at the completion of
_Copperfield_. The popularity it obtained at the outset increased to a
degree not approached by any previous book excepting _Pickwick_. "You
gratify me more than I can tell you," he wrote to Bulwer Lytton (July
1850), "by what you say about _Copperfield_, because I hope myself that
some heretofore deficient qualities are there." If the power was not
greater than in _Chuzzlewit_, the subject had more attractiveness; there
was more variety of incident, with a freer play of character; and there
was withal a suspicion, which though general and vague had sharpened
interest not a little, that underneath the fiction lay something of the
author's life. How much, was not known by the world until he had passed
away.

To be acquainted with English literature is to know, that, into its most
famous prose fiction, autobiography has entered largely in disguise, and
that the characters most familiar to us in the English novel had
originals in actual life. Smollett never wrote a story that was not in
some degree a recollection of his own adventures; and Fielding, who put
something of his wife into all his heroines, had been as fortunate in
finding, not Trulliber only, but Parson Adams himself, among his living
experiences. To come later down, there was hardly any one ever known to
Scott of whom his memory had not treasured up something to give minuter
reality to the people of his fancy; and we know exactly whom to look for
in Dandie Dinmont and Jonathan Oldbuck, in the office of Alan Fairford
and the sick room of Crystal Croftangry. We are to observe also that it
is never anything complete that is thus taken from life by a genuine
writer, but only leading traits, or such as may give greater finish;
that the fine artist will embody in his portraiture of one person his
experiences of fifty; and that this would have been Fielding's answer to
Trulliber if he had objected to the pigstye, and to Adams if he had
sought to make a case of scandal out of the affair in Mrs. Slipslop's
bedroom. Such questioning befell Dickens repeatedly in the course of his
writings, where he freely followed, as we have seen, the method thus
common to the masters in his art; but there was an instance of alleged
wrong in the course of _Copperfield_ where he felt his vindication to be
hardly complete, and what he did thereupon was characteristic.

"I have had the queerest adventure this morning," he wrote (28th of
December 1849) on the eve of his tenth number, "the receipt of the
enclosed from Miss Moucher! It is serio-comic, but there is no doubt one
is wrong in being tempted to such a use of power." Thinking a grotesque
little oddity among his acquaintance to be safe from recognition, he had
done what Smollett did sometimes, but never Fielding, and given way, in
the first outburst of fun that had broken out around the fancy, to the
temptation of copying too closely peculiarities of figure and face
amounting in effect to deformity. He was shocked at discovering the pain
he had given, and a copy is before me of the assurances by way of reply
which he at once sent to the complainant. That he was grieved and
surprised beyond measure. That he had not intended her altogether. That
all his characters, being made up out of many people, were composite,
and never individual. That the chair (for table) and other matters were
undoubtedly from her, but that other traits were not hers at all; and
that in Miss Moucher's "Ain't I volatile" his friends had quite
correctly recognized the favourite utterance of a different person. That
he felt nevertheless he had done wrong, and would now do anything to
repair it. That he had intended to employ the character in an unpleasant
way, but he would, whatever the risk or inconvenience, change it all, so
that nothing but an agreeable impression should be left. The reader will
remember how this was managed, and that the thirty-second chapter went
far to undo what the twenty-second had done.

A much earlier instance is the only one known to me where a character in
one of his books intended to be odious was copied wholly from a living
original. The use of such material, never without danger, might have
been justifiable here if anywhere, and he had himself a satisfaction in
always admitting the identity of Mr. Fang in _Oliver Twist_ with Mr.
Laing of Hatton-garden. But the avowal of his purpose in that case, and
his mode of setting about it, mark strongly a difference of procedure
from that which, following great examples, he adopted in his later
books. An allusion to a common friend in one of his letters of the
present date--"A dreadful thought occurs to me! how brilliant in a
book!"--expresses both the continued strength of his temptations and the
dread he had brought himself to feel of immediately yielding to them;
but he had no such misgivings in the days of _Oliver Twist_. Wanting an
insolent and harsh police-magistrate, he bethought him of an original
ready to his hand in one of the London offices; and instead of pursuing
his later method of giving a personal appearance that should in some
sort render difficult the identification of mental peculiarities, he was
only eager to get in the whole man complete upon his page, figure and
face as well as manners and mind.

He wrote accordingly (from Doughty-street on the 3rd of June 1837) to
Mr. Haines,[164] a gentleman who then had general supervision over the
police reports for the daily papers. "In my next number of _Oliver
Twist_ I must have a magistrate; and, casting about for a magistrate
whose harshness and insolence would render him a fit subject to be
_shown up_, I have as a necessary consequence stumbled upon Mr. Laing of
Hatton-garden celebrity. I know the man's character perfectly well; but
as it would be necessary to describe his personal appearance also, I
ought to have seen him, which (fortunately or unfortunately as the case
may be) I have never done. In this dilemma it occurred to me that
perhaps I might under your auspices be smuggled into the Hatton-garden
office for a few moments some morning. If you can further my object I
shall be really very greatly obliged to you." The opportunity was found;
the magistrate was brought up before the novelist; and shortly after, on
some fresh outbreak of intolerable temper, the home-secretary found it
an easy and popular step to remove Mr. Laing from the bench.

This was a comfort to everybody, saving only the principal person; but
the instance was highly exceptional, and it rarely indeed happens that
to the individual objection natural in every such case some
consideration should not be paid. In the book that followed
_Copperfield_, two characters appeared having resemblances in manner and
speech to two distinguished writers too vivid to be mistaken by their
personal friends. To Lawrence Boythorn, under whom Landor figured, no
objection was made; but Harold Skimpole, recognizable for Leigh Hunt,
led to much remark; the difference being, that ludicrous traits were
employed in the first to enrich without impairing an attractive person
in the tale, whereas to the last was assigned a part in the plot which
no fascinating foibles or gaieties of speech could redeem from contempt.
Though a want of consideration was thus shown to the friend whom the
character would be likely to recall to many readers, it is nevertheless
very certain that the intention of Dickens was not at first, or at any
time, an unkind one. He erred from thoughtlessness only. What led him to
the subject at all, he has himself stated. Hunt's philosophy of moneyed
obligations, always, though loudly, half jocosely proclaimed, and his
ostentatious wilfulness in the humouring of that or any other theme on
which he cared for the time to expatiate,[165] had so often seemed to
Dickens to be whimsical and attractive that, wanting an "airy quality"
for the man he invented, this of Hunt occurred to him; and "partly for
that reason, and partly, he has since often grieved to think, for the
pleasure it afforded to find a delightful manner reproducing itself
under his hand, he yielded to the temptation of too often making the
character speak like his old friend." This apology was made[166] after
Hunt's death, and mentioned a revision of the first sketch, so as to
render it less like, at the suggestion of two other friends of Hunt. The
friends were Procter (Barry Cornwall) and myself; the feeling having
been mine from the first that the likeness was too like. Procter did not
immediately think so, but a little reflection brought him to that
opinion. "You will see from the enclosed," Dickens wrote (17th of March
1852), "that Procter is much of my mind. I will nevertheless go through
the character again in the course of the afternoon, and soften down
words here and there." But before the day closed Procter had again
written to him, and next morning this was the result. "I have again
gone over every part of it very carefully, and I think I have made it
much less like. I have also changed Leonard to Harold. I have no right
to give Hunt pain, and I am so bent upon not doing it that I wish you
would look at all the proof once more, and indicate any particular place
in which you feel it particularly like. Whereupon I will alter that
place."

Upon the whole the alterations were considerable, but the radical wrong
remained. The pleasant sparkling airy talk, which could not be mistaken,
identified with odious qualities a friend only known to the writer by
attractive ones; and for this there was no excuse. Perhaps the only
person acquainted with the original who failed to recognize the copy,
was the original himself (a common case); but good-natured friends in
time told Hunt everything, and painful explanations followed, where
nothing was possible to Dickens but what amounted to a friendly evasion
of the points really at issue. The time for redress had gone. I yet well
remember with what eager earnestness, on one of these occasions, he
strove to set Hunt up again in his own esteem. "Separate in your own
mind," he said to him, "what you see of yourself from what other people
tell you that they see. As it has given you so much pain, I take it at
its worst, and say I am deeply sorry, and that I feel I did wrong in
doing it. I should otherwise have taken it at its best, and ridden off
upon what I strongly feel to be the truth, that there is nothing in it
that _should_ have given you pain. Every one in writing must speak from
points of his experience, and so I of mine with you: but when I have
felt it was going too close I stopped myself, and the most blotted
parts of my MS. are those in which I have been striving hard to make the
impression I was writing from, _un_like you. The diary-writing I took
from Haydon, not from you. I now first learn from yourself that you ever
set anything to music, and I could not have copied _that_ from you. The
character is not you, for there are traits in it common to fifty
thousand people besides, and I did not fancy you would ever recognize
it. Under similar disguises my own father and mother are in my books,
and you might as well see your likeness in Micawber." The distinction is
that the foibles of Mr. Micawber and of Mrs. Nickleby, however
laughable, make neither of them in speech or character less loveable;
and that this is not to be said of Skimpole's. The kindly or unkindly
impression makes all the difference where liberties are taken with a
friend; and even this entirely favourable condition will not excuse the
practice to many, where near relatives are concerned.

For what formerly was said of the Micawber resemblances, Dickens has
been sharply criticized; and in like manner it was thought objectionable
in Scott that for the closing scenes of Crystal Croftangry he should
have found the original of his fretful patient at the death-bed of his
own father. Lockhart, who tells us this, adds with a sad significance
that he himself lived to see the curtain fall at Abbotsford upon even
such another scene. But to no purpose will such objections still be
made. All great novelists will continue to use their experiences of
nature and fact, whencesoever derivable; and a remark made to Lockhart
by Scott himself suggests their vindication. "If a man will paint from
nature, he will be most likely to interest and amuse those who are daily
looking at it."

The Micawber offence otherwise was not grave. We have seen in what way
Dickens was moved or inspired by the rough lessons of his boyhood, and
the groundwork of the character was then undoubtedly laid; but the
rhetorical exuberance impressed itself upon him later, and from this, as
it expanded and developed in a thousand amusing ways, the full-length
figure took its great charm. Better illustration of it could not perhaps
be given than by passages from letters of Dickens, written long before
Micawber was thought of, in which this peculiarity of his father found
frequent and always agreeable expression. Several such have been given
in this work from time to time, and one or two more may here be added.
It is proper to preface them by saying that no one could know the elder
Dickens without secretly liking him the better for these flourishes of
speech, which adapted themselves so readily to his gloom as well as to
his cheerfulness, that it was difficult not to fancy they had helped him
considerably in both, and had rendered more tolerable to him, if also
more possible, the shade and sunshine of his chequered life. "If you
should have an opportunity _pendente lite_, as my father would
observe--indeed did on some memorable ancient occasions when he informed
me that the ban-dogs would shortly have him at bay"--Dickens wrote in
December 1847. "I have a letter from my father" (May 1841) "lamenting
the fine weather, invoking congenial tempests, and informing me that it
will not be possible for him to stay more than another year in
Devonshire, as he must then proceed to Paris to consolidate Augustus's
French." "There has arrived," he writes from the Peschiere in September
1844, "a characteristic letter for Kate from my father. He dates it
Manchester, and says he has reason to believe that he will be in town
with the pheasants, on or about the first of October. He has been with
Fanny in the Isle of Man for nearly two months: finding there, as he
goes on to observe, troops of friends, and every description of
continental luxury at a cheap rate." Describing in the same year the
departure from Genoa of an English physician and acquaintance, he adds:
"We are very sorry to lose the benefit of his advice--or, as my father
would say, to be deprived, to a certain extent, of the concomitant
advantages, whatever they may be, resulting from his medical skill, such
as it is, and his professional attendance, in so far as it may be so
considered." Thus also it delighted Dickens to remember that it was of
one of his connections his father wrote a celebrated sentence; "And I
must express my tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the
least of it) extremely problematical:" and that it was to another, who
had been insisting somewhat obtrusively on dissenting and nonconformist
superiorities, he addressed words which deserve to be no less
celebrated; "The Supreme Being must be an entirely different individual
from what I have every reason to believe him to be, if He would care in
the least for the society of your relations." There was a laugh in the
enjoyment of all this, no doubt, but with it much personal fondness; and
the feeling of the creator of Micawber as he thus humoured and
remembered the foibles of his original, found its counterpart in that
of his readers for the creation itself, as its part was played out in
the story. Nobody likes Micawber less for his follies; and Dickens liked
his father more, the more he recalled his whimsical qualities. "The
longer I live, the better man I think him," he exclaimed afterwards. The
fact and the fancy had united whatever was most grateful to him in both.

It is a tribute to the generally healthful and manly tone of the story
of _Copperfield_ that such should be the outcome of the eccentricities
of this leading personage in it; and the superiority in this respect of
Micawber over Skimpole is one of many indications of the inferiority of
_Bleak House_ to its predecessor. With leading resemblances that make it
difficult to say which character best represents the principle or no
principle of impecuniosity, there cannot be any doubt which has the
advantage in moral and intellectual development. It is genuine humour
against personal satire. Between the worldly circumstances of the two,
there is nothing to choose; but as to everything else it is the
difference between shabbiness and greatness. Skimpole's sunny talk might
be expected to please as much as Micawber's gorgeous speech, the design
of both being to take the edge off poverty. But in the one we have no
relief from attendant meanness or distress, and we drop down from the
airiest fancies into sordidness and pain; whereas in the other nothing
pitiful or merely selfish ever touches us. At its lowest depth of what
is worst, we never doubt that something better must turn up; and of a
man who sells his bedstead that he may entertain his friend, we
altogether refuse to think nothing but badly. This is throughout the
free and cheery style of _Copperfield_. The masterpieces of Dickens's
humour are not in it; but he has nowhere given such variety of play to
his invention, and the book is unapproached among his writings for its
completeness of effect and uniform pleasantness of tone.

What has to be said hereafter of those writings generally, will properly
restrict what is said here, as in previous instances, mainly to personal
illustration. The _Copperfield_ disclosures formerly made will for ever
connect the book with the author's individual story; but too much has
been assumed, from those revelations, of a full identity of Dickens with
his hero, and of a supposed intention that his own character as well as
parts of his career should be expressed in the narrative. It is right to
warn the reader as to this. He can judge for himself how far the
childish experiences are likely to have given the turn to Dickens's
genius; whether their bitterness had so burnt into his nature, as, in
the hatred of oppression, the revolt against abuse of power, and the war
with injustice under every form displayed in his earliest books, to have
reproduced itself only; and to what extent mere compassion for his own
childhood may account for the strange fascination always exerted over
him by child-suffering and sorrow. But, many as are the resemblances in
Copperfield's adventures to portions of those of Dickens, and often as
reflections occur to David which no one intimate with Dickens could fail
to recognize as but the reproduction of his, it would be the greatest
mistake to imagine anything like a complete identity of the fictitious
novelist with the real one, beyond the Hungerford scenes; or to suppose
that the youth, who then received his first harsh schooling in life,
came out of it as little harmed or hardened as David did. The language
of the fiction reflects only faintly the narrative of the actual fact;
and the man whose character it helped to form was expressed not less
faintly in the impulsive impressionable youth, incapable of resisting
the leading of others, and only disciplined into self-control by the
later griefs of his entrance into manhood. Here was but another proof
how thoroughly Dickens understood his calling, and that to weave fact
with fiction unskilfully would be only to make truth less true.

The character of the hero of the novel finds indeed his right place in
the story he is supposed to tell, rather by unlikeness than by likeness
to Dickens, even where intentional resemblance might seem to be
prominent. Take autobiography as a design to show that any man's life
may be as a mirror of existence to all men, and the individual career
becomes altogether secondary to the variety of experiences received and
rendered back in it. This particular form in imaginative literature has
too often led to the indulgence of mental analysis, metaphysics, and
sentiment, all in excess: but Dickens was carried safely over these
allurements by a healthy judgment and sleepless creative fancy; and even
the method of his narrative is more simple here than it generally is in
his books. His imaginative growths have less luxuriance of underwood,
and the crowds of external images always rising so vividly before him
are more within control.

Consider Copperfield thus in his proper place in the story, and sequence
as well as connection will be given to the varieties of its childish
adventure. The first warm nest of love in which his vain fond mother,
and her quaint kind servant, cherish him; the quick-following contrast
of hard dependence and servile treatment; the escape from that premature
and dwarfed maturity by natural relapse into a more perfect childhood;
the then leisurely growth of emotions and faculties into manhood; these
are component parts of a character consistently drawn. The sum of its
achievement is to be a successful cultivation of letters; and often as
such imaginary discipline has been the theme of fiction, there are not
many happier conceptions of it. The ideal and real parts of the boy's
nature receive development in the proportions which contribute best to
the end desired; the readiness for impulsive attachments that had put
him into the leading of others, has underneath it a base of truthfulness
on which at last he rests in safety; the practical man is the outcome of
the fanciful youth; and a more than equivalent for the graces of his
visionary days, is found in the active sympathies that life has opened
to him. Many experiences have come within its range, and his heart has
had room for all. Our interest in him cannot but be increased by knowing
how much he expresses of what the author had himself gone through; but
David includes far less than this, and infinitely more.

That the incidents arise easily, and to the very end connect themselves
naturally and unobtrusively with the characters of which they are a
part, is to be said perhaps more truly of this than of any other of
Dickens's novels. There is a profusion of distinct and distinguishable
people, and a prodigal wealth of detail; but unity of drift or purpose
is apparent always, and the tone is uniformly right. By the course of
the events we learn the value of self-denial and patience, quiet
endurance of unavoidable ills, strenuous effort against ills remediable;
and everything in the fortunes of the actors warns us, to strengthen our
generous emotions and to guard the purities of home. It is easy thus to
account for the supreme popularity of _Copperfield_, without the
addition that it can hardly have had a reader, man or lad, who did not
discover that he was something of a Copperfield himself. Childhood and
youth live again for all of us in its marvellous boy-experiences. Mr.
Micawber's presence must not prevent my saying that it does not take the
lead of the other novels in humorous creation; but in the use of humour
to bring out prominently the ludicrous in any object or incident without
excluding or weakening its most enchanting sentiment, it stands
decidedly first. It is the perfection of English mirth. We are apt to
resent the exhibition of too much goodness, but it is here so qualified
by oddity as to become not merely palatable but attractive; and even
pathos is heightened by what in other hands would only make it comical.
That there are also faults in the book is certain, but none that are
incompatible with the most masterly qualities; and a book becomes
everlasting by the fact, not that faults are not in it, but that genius
nevertheless is there.

Of its method, and its author's generally, in the delineation of
character, something will have to be said on a later page. The author's
own favourite people in it, I think, were the Peggotty group; and
perhaps he was not far wrong. It has been their fate, as with all the
leading figures of his invention, to pass their names into the
language, and become types; and he has nowhere given happier embodiment
to that purity of homely goodness, which, by the kindly and
all-reconciling influences of humour, may exalt into comeliness and even
grandeur the clumsiest forms of humanity. What has been indicated in the
style of the book as its greatest charm is here felt most strongly. The
ludicrous so helps the pathos, and the humour so uplifts and refines the
sentiment, that mere rude affection and simple manliness in these
Yarmouth boatmen, passed through the fires of unmerited suffering and
heroic endurance, take forms half-chivalrous half-sublime. It is one of
the cants of critical superiority to make supercilious mention of the
serious passages in this great writer; but the storm and shipwreck at
the close of _Copperfield_, when the body of the seducer is flung dead
upon the shore amid the ruins of the home he has wasted and by the side
of the man whose heart he has broken, the one as unconscious of what he
had failed to reach as the other of what he has perished to save, is a
description that may compare with the most impressive in the language.
There are other people drawn into this catastrophe who are among the
failures of natural delineation in the book. But though Miss Dartle is
curiously unpleasant, there are some natural traits in her (which
Dickens's least life-like people are never without); and it was from one
of his lady friends, very familiar to him indeed, he copied her
peculiarity of never saying anything outright, but hinting it merely,
and making more of it that way. Of Mrs. Steerforth it may also be worth
remembering that Thackeray had something of a fondness for her. "I knew
how it would be when I began," says a pleasant letter all about himself
written immediately after she appeared in the story. "My letters to my
mother are like this, but then she likes 'em--like Mrs. Steerforth:
don't you like Mrs. Steerforth?"

Turning to another group there is another elderly lady to be liked
without a shadow of misgiving; abrupt, angular, extravagant, but the
very soul of magnanimity and rectitude; a character thoroughly made out
in all its parts; a gnarled and knotted piece of female timber, sound to
the core; a woman Captain Shandy would have loved for her startling
oddities, and who is linked to the gentlest of her sex by perfect
womanhood. Dickens has done nothing better, for solidness and truth all
round, than Betsey Trotwood. It is one of her oddities to have a fool
for a companion; but this is one of them that has also most pertinence
and wisdom. By a line thrown out in _Wilhelm Meister_, that the true way
of treating the insane was, in all respects possible, to act to them as
if they were sane, Goethe anticipated what it took a century to apply to
the most terrible disorder of humanity; and what Mrs. Trotwood does for
Mr. Dick goes a step farther, by showing how often asylums might be
dispensed with, and how large might be the number of deficient
intellects manageable with patience in their own homes. Characters
hardly less distinguishable for truth as well as oddity are the kind old
nurse and her husband the carrier, whose vicissitudes alike of love and
of mortality are condensed into the three words since become part of
universal speech, _Barkis is willin'_. There is wholesome satire of much
utility in the conversion of the brutal schoolmaster of the earlier
scenes into the tender Middlesex magistrate at the close. Nor is the
humour anywhere more subtle than in the country undertaker, who makes up
in fullness of heart for scantness of breath, and has so little of the
vampire propensity of the town undertaker in _Chuzzlewit_, that he dares
not even inquire after friends who are ill for fear of unkindly
misconstruction. The test of a master in creative fiction, according to
Hazlitt, is less in contrasting characters that are unlike than in
distinguishing those that are like; and to many examples of the art in
Dickens, such as the Shepherd and Chadband, Creakle and Squeers, Charley
Bates and the Dodger, the Guppys and the Wemmicks, Mr. Jaggers and Mr.
Vholes, Sampson Brass and Conversation Kenge, Jack Bunsby, Captain
Cuttle, and Bill Barley, the Perkers and Pells, the Dodsons and Fogs,
Sarah Gamp and Betsy Prig, and a host of others, is to be added the
nicety of distinction between those eminent furnishers of funerals, Mr.
Mould and Messrs. Omer and Joram. All the mixed mirth and sadness of the
story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and,
amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for
baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer on the coffin is
heard.

Of the heroines who divide so equally between them the impulsive, easily
swayed, not disloyal but sorely distracted affections of the hero, the
spoilt foolishness and tenderness of the loving little child-wife, Dora,
is more attractive than the too unfailing wisdom and self-sacrificing
goodness of the angel-wife, Agnes. The scenes of the courtship and
housekeeping are matchless; and the glimpses of Doctors' Commons,
opening those views, by Mr. Spenlow, of man's vanity of expectation and
inconsistency of conduct in neglecting the sacred duty of making a will,
on which he largely moralizes the day before he dies intestate, form a
background highly appropriate to David's domesticities. This was among
the reproductions of personal experience in the book; but it was a
sadder knowledge that came with the conviction some years later, that
David's contrasts in his earliest married life between his happiness
enjoyed and his happiness once anticipated, the "vague unhappy loss or
want of something" of which he so frequently complains, reflected also a
personal experience which had not been supplied in fact so successfully
as in fiction. (A closing word may perhaps be allowed, to connect with
Devonshire-terrace the last book written there. On the page opposite is
engraved a drawing by Maclise of the house where so many of Dickens's
masterpieces were composed, done on the first anniversary of the day
when his daughter Kate was born.)

_Bleak House_ followed _Copperfield_, which in some respects it copied
in the autobiographical form by means of extracts from the personal
relation of its heroine. But the distinction between the narrative of
David and the diary of Esther, like that between Micawber and Skimpole,
marks the superiority of the first to its successor. To represent a
storyteller as giving the most surprising vividness to manners, motives,
and characters of which we are to believe her, all the time, as
artlessly unconscious, as she is also entirely ignorant of the good
qualities in herself she is naïvely revealing in the story, was a
difficult enterprise, full of hazard in any case, not worth success,
and certainly not successful. Ingenuity is more apparent than freshness,
the invention is neither easy nor unstrained, and though the old
marvellous power over the real is again abundantly manifest, there is
some alloy of the artificial. Nor can this be said of Esther's relation
without some general application to the book of which it forms so large
a part. The novel is nevertheless, in the very important particular of
construction, perhaps the best thing done by Dickens.

[Illustration: DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.]

In his later writings he had been assiduously cultivating this essential
of his art, and here he brought it very nearly to perfection. Of the
tendency of composing a story piecemeal to induce greater concern for
the part than for the whole, he had been always conscious; but I
remember a remark also made by him to the effect that to read a story in
parts had no less a tendency to prevent the reader's noticing how
thoroughly a work so presented might be calculated for perusal as a
whole. Look back from the last to the first page of the present novel,
and not even in the highest examples of this kind of elaborate care will
it be found, that event leads more closely to event, or that the
separate incidents have been planned with a more studied consideration
of the bearing they are severally to have on the general result. Nothing
is introduced at random, everything tends to the catastrophe, the
various lines of the plot converge and fit to its centre, and to the
larger interest all the rest is irresistibly drawn. The heart of the
story is a Chancery suit. On this the plot hinges, and on incidents
connected with it, trivial or important, the passion and suffering turn
exclusively. Chance words, or the deeds of chance people, to appearance
irrelevant, are found everywhere influencing the course taken by a train
of incidents of which the issue is life or death, happiness or misery,
to men and women perfectly unknown to them, and to whom they are
unknown. Attorneys of all possible grades, law clerks of every
conceivable kind, the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts
of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery
court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of
the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, but very
certainly, to the issues that await them. Even the fits of the little
law-stationer's servant help directly in the chain of small things that
lead indirectly to Lady Dedlock's death. One strong chain of interest
holds together Chesney Wold and its inmates, Bleak House and the
Jarndyce group, Chancery with its sorry and sordid neighbourhood. The
characters multiply as the tale advances, but in each the drift is the
same. "There's no great odds betwixt my noble and learned brother and
myself," says the grotesque proprietor of the rag and bottle shop under
the wall of Lincoln's-inn, "they call me Lord Chancellor and my shop
Chancery, and we both of us grub on in a muddle." _Edax rerum_ the motto
of both, but with a difference. Out of the lumber of the shop emerge
slowly some fragments of evidence by which the chief actors in the story
are sensibly affected, and to which Chancery itself might have succumbed
if its devouring capacities had been less complete. But by the time
there is found among the lumber the will which puts all to rights in the
Jarndyce suit, it is found to be too late to put anything to rights. The
costs have swallowed up the estate, and there is an end of the matter.

What in one sense is a merit however may in others be a defect, and this
book has suffered by the very completeness with which its Chancery moral
is worked out. The didactic in Dickens's earlier novels derived its
strength from being merely incidental to interest of a higher and more
permanent kind, and not in a small degree from the playful sportiveness
and fancy that lighted up its graver illustrations. Here it is of
sterner stuff, too little relieved, and all-pervading. The fog so
marvellously painted in the opening chapter has hardly cleared away when
there arises, in _Jarndyce_ v. _Jarndyce_, as bad an atmosphere to
breathe in; and thenceforward to the end, clinging round the people of
the story as they come or go, in dreary mist or in heavy cloud, it is
rarely absent. Dickens has himself described his purpose to have been to
dwell on the romantic side of familiar things. But it is the romance of
discontent and misery, with a very restless dissatisfied moral, and is
too much brought about by agencies disagreeable and sordid. The Guppys,
Weevles, Snagsbys, Chadbands, Krooks, and Smallweeds, even the Kenges,
Vholeses, and Tulkinghorns, are much too real to be pleasant; and the
necessity becomes urgent for the reliefs and contrasts of a finer
humanity. These last are not wanting; yet it must be said that we hardly
escape, even with them, into the old freedom and freshness of the
author's imaginative worlds, and that the too conscious unconsciousness
of Esther flings something of a shade on the radiant goodness of John
Jarndyce himself. Nevertheless there are very fine delineations in the
story. The crazed little Chancery lunatic, Miss Flite; the loud-voiced
tender-souled Chancery victim, Gridley; the poor good-hearted youth
Richard, broken up in life and character by the suspense of the Chancery
suit on whose success he is to "begin the world," believing himself to
be saving money when he is stopped from squandering it, and thinking
that having saved it he is entitled to fling it away; trooper George,
with the Bagnets and their household, where the most ludicrous points
are more forcible for the pathetic touches underlying them; the Jellyby
interior, and its philanthropic strong-minded mistress, placid and
smiling amid a household muddle outmuddling Chancery itself; the model
of deportment, Turveydrop the elder, whose relations to the young
people, whom he so superbly patronizes by being dependent on them for
everything, touch delightfully some subtle points of truth; the
inscrutable Tulkinghorn, and the immortal Bucket; all these, and
especially the last, have been added by this book to the list of people
more intimately and permanently known to us than the scores of actual
familiar acquaintance whom we see around us living and dying.

But how do we know them? There are plenty to tell us that it is by
vividness of external observation rather than by depth of imaginative
insight, by tricks of manner and phrase rather than by truth of
character, by manifestation outwardly rather than by what lies behind.
Another opportunity will present itself for some remark on this kind of
criticism, which has always had a special pride in the subtlety of its
differences from what the world may have shown itself prone to admire.
"In my father's library," wrote Landor to Southey's daughter Edith,
"was the _Critical Review_ from its commencement; and it would have
taught me, if I could not even at a very early age teach myself better,
that Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith were really worth nothing." It is a
style that will never be without cultivators, and its frequent
application to Dickens will be shown hereafter. But in speaking of a
book in which some want of all the freshness of his genius first became
apparent, it would be wrong to omit to add that his method of handling a
character is as strongly impressed on the better portions of it as on
the best of his writings. It is difficult to say when a peculiarity
becomes too grotesque, or an extravagance too farcical, to be within the
limits of art, for it is the truth of these as of graver things that
they exist in the world in just the proportions and degree in which
genius can discover them. But no man had ever so surprising a faculty as
Dickens of becoming himself what he was representing; and of entering
into mental phases and processes so absolutely, in conditions of life
the most varied, as to reproduce them completely in dialogue without
need of an explanatory word. (He only departed from this method once,
with a result which will then be pointed out.) In speaking on a former
page of the impression of reality thus to a singular degree conveyed by
him, it was remarked that where characters so revealed themselves the
author's part in them was done; and in the book under notice there is
none, not excepting those least attractive which apparently present only
prominent or salient qualities, in which it will not be found that the
characteristic feature embodied, or the main idea personified, contains
as certainly also some human truth universally applicable. To expound
or discuss his creations, to lay them psychologically bare, to analyse
their organisms, to subject to minute demonstration their fibrous and
other tissues, was not at all Dickens's way. His genius was his fellow
feeling with his race; his mere personality was never the bound or limit
to his perceptions, however strongly sometimes it might colour them; he
never stopped to dissect or anatomize his own work; but no man could
better adjust the outward and visible oddities in a delineation to its
inner and unchangeable veracities. The rough estimates we form of
character, if we have any truth of perception, are on the whole correct:
but men touch and interfere with one another by the contact of their
extremes, and it may very often become necessarily the main business of
a novelist to display the salient points, the sharp angles, or the
prominences merely.

The pathetic parts of _Bleak House_ do not live largely in remembrance,
but the deaths of Richard and of Gridley, the wandering fancies of Miss
Flite, and the extremely touching way in which the gentleman-nature of
the pompous old baronet, Dedlock, asserts itself under suffering, belong
to a high order of writing. There is another most affecting example,
taking the lead of the rest, in the poor street-sweeper Jo; which has
made perhaps as deep an impression as anything in Dickens. "We have been
reading _Bleak House_ aloud," the good Dean Ramsay wrote to me very
shortly before his death. "Surely it is one of his most powerful and
successful! What a triumph is Jo! Uncultured nature is _there_ indeed;
the intimations of true heart-feeling, the glimmerings of higher
feeling, all are there; but everything still consistent and in harmony.
Wonderful is the genius that can show all this, yet keep it only and
really part of the character itself, low or common as it may be, and use
no morbid or fictitious colouring. To my mind, nothing in the field of
fiction is to be found in English literature surpassing the death of
Jo!" What occurs at and after the inquest is as worth remembering. Jo's
evidence is rejected because he cannot exactly say what will be done to
him after he is dead if he should tell a lie;[167] but he manages to say
afterwards very exactly what the deceased while he lived did to him.
That one cold winter night, when he was shivering in a doorway near his
crossing, a man turned to look at him, and came back, and, having
questioned him and found he had not a friend in the world, said,
"Neither have I. Not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a
night's lodging. That the man had often spoken to him since, and asked
him if he slept of a night, and how he bore cold and hunger, or if he
ever wished to die; and would say in passing "I am as poor as you
to-day, Jo" when he had no money, but when he had any would always give
some. "He wos wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his
wretched sleeve. "Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I
wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos werry good to me, he
wos!" The inquest over, the body is flung into a pestiferous churchyard
in the next street, houses overlooking it on every side, and a reeking
little tunnel of a court giving access to its iron gate. "With the
night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the outside
of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in within
the bars; stands looking in, for a little while. It then, with an old
broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean.
It does so, very busily, and trimly; looks in again, a little while; and
so departs." These are among the things in Dickens that cannot be
forgotten; and if _Bleak House_ had many more faults than have been
found in it, such salt and savour as this might freshen it for some
generations.

The first intention was to have made Jo more prominent in the story, and
its earliest title was taken from the tumbling tenements in Chancery,
"Tom-all-Alone's," where he finds his wretched habitation; but this was
abandoned. On the other hand, Dickens was encouraged and strengthened in
his design of assailing Chancery abuses and delays by receiving, a few
days after the appearance of his first number, a striking pamphlet on
the subject containing details so apposite that he took from them,
without change in any material point, the memorable case related in his
fifteenth chapter. Any one who examines the tract[168] will see how
exactly true is the reference to it made by Dickens in his preface. "The
case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual
occurrence, made public by a disinterested person who was professionally
acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end."
The suit, of which all particulars are given, affected a single farm, in
value not more than £1200, but all that its owner possessed in the
world, against which a bill had been filed for a £300 legacy left in the
will bequeathing the farm. In reality there was only one defendant, but
in the bill, by the rule of the Court, there were seventeen; and, after
two years had been occupied over the seventeen answers, everything had
to begin over again because an eighteenth had been accidentally omitted.
"What a mockery of justice this is," says Mr. Challinor, "the facts
speak for themselves, and I can personally vouch for their accuracy. The
costs already incurred in reference to this £300 legacy are not less
than from £800 to £900, and the parties are no forwarder. Already near
five years have passed by, and the plaintiff would be glad to give up
his chance of the legacy if he could escape from his liability to costs,
while the defendants who own the little farm left by the testator, have
scarce any other prospect before them than ruin."

FOOTNOTES:

[164] This letter is now in the possession of S. R. Goodman Esq. of
Brighton.

[165] Here are two passages taken from Hunt's writing in the _Tatler_ (a
charming little paper which it was one of the first ventures of the
young firm of Chapman and Hall to attempt to establish for Hunt in
1830), to which accident had unluckily attracted Dickens's
notice:--"Supposing us to be in want of patronage, and in possession of
talent enough to make it an honour to notice us, we would much rather
have some great and comparatively private friend, rich enough to assist
us, and amiable enough to render obligation delightful, than become the
public property of any man, or of any government. . . . If a divinity had
given us our choice we should have said--make us La Fontaine, who goes
and lives twenty years with some rich friend, as innocent of any harm in
it as a child, and who writes what he thinks charming verses, sitting
all day under a tree." Such sayings will not bear to be deliberately
read and thought over, but any kind of extravagance or oddity came from
Hunt's lips with a curious fascination. There was surely never a man of
so sunny a nature, who could draw so much pleasure from common things,
or to whom books were a world so real, so exhaustless, so delightful. I
was only seventeen when I derived from him the tastes which have been
the solace of all subsequent years, and I well remember the last time I
saw him at Hammersmith, not long before his death in 1859, when, with
his delicate, worn, but keenly intellectual face, his large luminous
eyes, his thick shock of wiry grey hair, and a little cape of faded
black silk over his shoulders, he looked like an old French abbé. He was
buoyant and pleasant as ever; and was busy upon a vindication of Chaucer
and Spenser from Cardinal Wiseman, who had attacked them for alleged
sensuous and voluptuous qualities.

[166] In a paper in _All the Year Round_.

[167] "O! Here's the boy, gentlemen! Here he is, very muddy, very
hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy!--But stop a minute. Caution. This boy
must be put through a few preliminary paces. Name, Jo. Nothing else that
he knows on. Don't know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of
sich a think. Don't know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it
long enough for _him. He_ don't find no fault with it. Spell it? No.
_He_ can't spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to
school. What's home? Knows a broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to
tell a lie. Don't recollect who told him about the broom, or about the
lie, but knows both. Can't exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's
dead if he tells a lie to the gentleman here, but believes it'll be
something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right--and so he'll tell
the truth. 'This won't do, gentlemen,' says the coroner, with a
melancholy shake of the head. . . . '_Can't exactly say_ won't do, you
know. . . . It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside.' Boy put aside; to
the great edification of the audience;--especially of Little Swills, the
Comic Vocalist."

[168] By W. Challinor Esq. of Leek in Staffordshire, by whom it has been
obligingly sent to me, with a copy of Dickens's letter acknowledging the
receipt of it from the author on the 11th of March 1852. On the first of
that month the first number of _Bleak House_ had appeared, but two
numbers of it were then already written.

CHAPTER II.

HOME INCIDENTS AND HARD TIMES.

1853-1854-1855.

        _Bleak House_ Sale--Proposed
        Titles--Restless--Tavistock House--Last Child
        born--Death of Friends--Liking for
        Boulogne--Banquet at
        Birmingham--Self-changes--Overdoing
        it--Projected Trip to Italy--First Public
        Readings--Argument against Paid
        Readings--Children's Theatricals--Small
        Actors--Henry Fielding Dickens--Dickens and the
        Czar--Titles for a New Story--"Hard Times"
        chosen--Difficulties of Weekly Publication--Mr.
        Ruskin on _Hard Times_--Exaggerated Rebuke of
        Exaggeration--Manufacturing Town on
        Strike--Dinner to Thackeray--Peter
        Cunningham--Incident of a November Night.

_DAVID COPPERFIELD_ had been written, in Devonshire-terrace for the most
part, between the opening of 1849 and October 1850, its publication
covering that time; and its sale, which has since taken the lead of all
his books but _Pickwick_, never then exceeding twenty-five thousand. But
though it remained thus steady for the time, the popularity of the book
added largely to the sale of its successor. _Bleak House_ was begun in
his new abode of Tavistock House at the end of November 1851; was
carried on, amid the excitements of the Guild performances, through the
following year; was finished at Boulogne in the August of 1853; and was
dedicated to "his friends and companions in the Guild of Literature and
Art."

[Illustration: TAVISTOCK HOUSE.]

In March 1852 the first number appeared,[169] and its sale was
mentioned in the same letter from Tavistock House (7th of March)
which told of his troubles in the story at its outset, and of other
anxieties incident to the common lot and inseparable equally from its
joys and sorrows, through which his life was passing at the time. "My
Highgate journey yesterday was a sad one. Sad to think how all journeys
tend that way. I went up to the cemetery to look for a piece of ground.
In no hope of a Government bill,[170] and in a foolish dislike to leaving
the little child shut up in a vault there, I think of pitching a tent
under  the sky. . . . Nothing has taken place here: but I believe, every
hour,  that it must next hour. Wild ideas are upon me of going to
Paris--Rouen--Switzerland--somewhere--and writing the remaining two-thirds
of the next No. aloft in some queer inn room. I have been hanging over
it, and have got restless. Want a change I think. Stupid. We were at
30,000 when I last heard. . . . I am sorry to say that after all kinds
of evasions, I am obliged to dine at Lansdowne House to-morrow. But
maybe the affair will come off to-night and give me an excuse! I enclose
proofs of No. 2. Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him
singularly unlike the great original. Look it over, and say what occurs
to you. . . . Don't you think Mrs. Gaskell charming? With one
ill-considered thing that looks like a want of natural perception, I
think it masterly." His last allusion is to the story by a delightful
writer then appearing in _Household Words_; and of the others it only
needs to say that the family affair which might have excused his absence
at the Lansdowne dinner did not come off until four days later. On the
13th of March his last child was born; and the boy, his seventh son,
bears his godfather's distinguished name, Edward Bulwer Lytton.

The inability to "grind sparks out of his dull blade," as he
characterized his present labour at _Bleak House_, still fretting him,
he struck out a scheme for Paris. "I could not get to Switzerland very
well at this time of year. The Jura would be covered with snow. And if I
went to Geneva I don't know where I might _not_ go to." It ended at last
in a flight to Dover; but he found time before he left, amid many
occupations and some anxieties, for a good-natured journey to Walworth
to see a youth rehearse who was supposed to have talents for the stage,
and he was able to gladden Mr. Toole's friends by thinking favourably of
his chances of success. "I remember what I once myself wanted in that
way," he said, "and I should like to serve him."

At one of the last dinners in Tavistock House before his departure, Mr.
Watson of Rockingham was present; and he was hardly settled in
Camden-crescent, Dover, when he had news of the death of that excellent
friend. "Poor dear Watson! It was this day two weeks when you rode with
us and he dined with us. We all remarked after he had gone how happy he
seemed to have got over his election troubles, and how cheerful he was.
He was full of Christmas plans for Rockingham, and was very anxious that
we should get up a little French piece I had been telling him the plot
of. He went abroad next day to join Mrs. Watson and the children at
Homburg, and then go to Lausanne, where they had taken a house for a
month. He was seized at Homburg with violent internal inflammation, and
died--without much pain--in four days. . . . I was so fond of him that I am
sorry you didn't know him better. I believe he was as thoroughly good
and true a man as ever lived; and I am sure I can have felt no greater
affection for him than he felt for me. When I think of that bright
house, and his fine simple honest heart, both so open to me, the blank
and loss are like a dream." Other deaths followed. "Poor d'Orsay!" he
wrote after only seven days (8th of August). "It is a tremendous
consideration that friends should fall around us in such awful numbers
as we attain middle life. What a field of battle it is!" Nor had another
month quite passed before he lost, in Mrs. Macready, a very dear family
friend. "Ah me! ah me!" he wrote. "This tremendous sickle certainly does
cut deep into the surrounding corn, when one's own small blade has
ripened. But _this_ is all a Dream, may be, and death will wake us."

Able at last to settle to his work, he stayed in Dover three months; and
early in October, sending home his family caravan, crossed to Boulogne
to try it as a resort for seaside holiday. "I never saw a better
instance of our countrymen than this place. Because it is accessible it
is genteel to say it is of no character, quite English, nothing
continental about it, and so forth. It is as quaint, picturesque, good a
place as I know; the boatmen and fishing-people quite a race apart, and
some of their villages as good as the fishing-villages on the
Mediterranean. The Haute Ville, with a walk all round it on the
ramparts, charming. The country walks, delightful. It is the best
mixture of town and country (with sea air into the bargain) I ever saw;
everything cheap, everything good; and please God I shall be writing on
those said ramparts next July!"

Before the year closed, the time to which his publishing arrangements
with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans were limited had expired, but at his
suggestion the fourth share in such books as he might write, which they
had now received for eight years, was continued to them on the
understanding that the publishers' percentage should no longer be
charged in the partnership accounts, and with a power reserved to
himself to withdraw when he pleased. In the new year his first adventure
was an ovation in Birmingham, where a silver-gilt salver and a diamond
ring were presented to him, as well for eloquent service specially
rendered to the Institution, as in general testimony of "varied literary
acquirements, genial philosophy, and high moral teaching." A great
banquet followed on Twelfth Night, made memorable by an offer[171] to
give a couple of readings from his books at the following Christmas, in
aid of the new Midland Institute. It might seem to have been drawn from
him as a grateful return for the enthusiastic greeting of his
entertainers, but it was in his mind before he left London. It was his
first formal undertaking to read in public.

His eldest son had now left Eton, and, the boy's wishes pointing at the
time to a mercantile career, he was sent to Leipzig for completion of
his education.[172] At this date it seemed to me that the overstrain of
attempting too much, brought upon him by the necessities of his weekly
periodical, became first apparent in Dickens. Not unfrequently a
complaint strange upon his lips fell from him. "Hypochondriacal
whisperings tell me that I am rather overworked. The spring does not
seem to fly back again directly, as it always did when I put my own work
aside, and had nothing else to do. Yet I have everything to keep me
going with a brave heart, Heaven knows!" Courage and hopefulness he
might well derive from the increasing sale of _Bleak House_, which had
risen to nearly forty thousand; but he could no longer bear easily what
he carried so lightly of old, and enjoyments with work were too much for
him. "What with _Bleak House_, and _Household Words_, and _Child's
History_" (he dictated from week to week the papers which formed that
little book, and cannot be said to have quite hit the mark with it),
"and Miss Coutts's Home, and the invitations to feasts and festivals, I
really feel as if my head would split like a fired shell if I remained
here." He tried Brighton first, but did not find it answer, and
returned.[173] A few days of unalloyed enjoyment were afterwards given
to the visit of his excellent American friend Felton; and on the 13th of
June he was again in Boulogne, thanking heaven for escape from a
breakdown. "If I had substituted anybody's knowledge of myself for my
own, and lingered in London, I never could have got through."

What befell him in Boulogne will be given, with the incidents of his
second and third summer visits to the place, on a later page. He
completed, by the third week of August, his novel of _Bleak House_; and
it was resolved to celebrate the event by a two months' trip to Italy,
in company with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg. The start was
to be made from Boulogne in the middle of October, when he would send
his family home; and he described the intervening weeks as a fearful
"reaction and prostration of laziness" only broken by the _Child's
History_. At the end of September he wrote: "I finished the little
_History_ yesterday, and am trying to think of something for the
Christmas number. After which I shall knock off; having had quite enough
to do, small as it would have seemed to me at any other time, since I
finished _Bleak House_." He added, a week before his departure: "I get
letters from Genoa and Lausanne as if I were going to stay in each place
at least a month. If I were to measure my deserts by people's
remembrance of me, I should be a prodigy of intolerability. Have
recovered my Italian, which I had all but forgotten, and am one entire
and perfect chrysolite of idleness."

From this trip, of which the incidents have an interest independent of
my ordinary narrative, Dickens was home again in the middle of December
1853, and kept his promise to his Birmingham friends by reading in their
Town Hall his _Christmas Carol_ on the 27th,[174] and his _Cricket on
the Hearth_ on the 29th. The enthusiasm was great, and he consented to
read his _Carol_ a second time, on Friday the 30th, if seats were
reserved for working men at prices within their means. The result was an
addition of between four and five hundred pounds to the funds for
establishment of the new Institute; and a prettily worked flower-basket
in silver, presented to Mrs. Dickens, commemorated these first public
readings "to nearly six thousand people," and the design they had
generously helped. Other applications then followed to such extent that
limits to compliance had to be put; and a letter of the 16th of May 1854
is one of many that express both the difficulty in which he found
himself, and his much desired expedient for solving it. "The objection
you suggest to paid public lecturing does not strike me at all. It is
worth consideration, but I do not think there is anything in it. On the
contrary, if the lecturing would have any motive power at all (like my
poor father this, in the sound!) I believe it would tend the other way.
In the Colchester matter I had already received a letter from a
Colchester magnate; to whom I had honestly replied that I stood pledged
to Christmas readings at Bradford[175] and at Reading, and could in no
kind of reason do more in the public way." The promise to the people of
Reading was for Talfourd's sake; the other was given after the
Birmingham nights, when an institute in Bradford asked similar help, and
offered a fee of fifty pounds. At first this was entertained; but was
abandoned, with some reluctance, upon the argument that to become
publicly a reader must alter without improving his position publicly as
a writer, and that it was a change to be justified only when the higher
calling should have failed of the old success. Thus yielding for the
time, he nevertheless soon found the question rising again with the same
importunity; his own position to it being always that of a man assenting
against his will that it should rest in abeyance. But nothing farther
was resolved on yet. The readings mentioned came off as promised, in aid
of public objects;[176] and besides others two years later for the
family of a friend, he had given the like liberal help to institutes in
Folkestone, Chatham, and again in Birmingham, Peterborough, Sheffield,
Coventry, and Edinburgh, before the question settled itself finally in
the announcement for paid public readings issued by him in 1858.

Carrying memory back to his home in the first half of 1854, there are
few things that rise more pleasantly in connection with it than the
children's theatricals. These began with the first Twelfth Night at
Tavistock House, and were renewed until the principal actors ceased to
be children. The best of the performances were _Tom Thumb_ and
_Fortunio_, in '54 and '55; Dickens now joining first in the revel, and
Mr. Mark Lemon bringing into it his own clever children and a very
mountain of child-pleasing fun in himself. Dickens had become very
intimate with him, and his merry genial ways had given him unbounded
popularity with the "young 'uns," who had no such favourite as "Uncle
Mark." In Fielding's burlesque he was the giantess Glumdalca, and
Dickens was the ghost of Gaffer Thumb; the names by which they
respectively appeared being the Infant Phenomenon and the Modern
Garrick. But the younger actors carried off the palm. There was a Lord
Grizzle, at whose ballad of Miss Villikins, introduced by desire,
Thackeray rolled off his seat in a burst of laughter that became
absurdly contagious. Yet even this, with hardly less fun from the
Noodles, Doodles, and King Arthurs, was not so good as the pretty,
fantastic, comic grace of Dollalolla, Huncamunca, and Tom. The girls
wore steadily the grave airs irresistible when put on by little
children; and an actor not out of his fourth year, who went through the
comic songs and the tragic exploits without a wrong note or a victim
unslain, represented the small helmeted hero. He was in the bills as Mr.
H----, but bore in fact the name of the illustrious author whose
conception he embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for
Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could
have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it
afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal
Hole."[177] The encores were frequent, and for the most part the little
fellow responded to them; but the misplaced enthusiasm that took similar
form at the heroic intensity with which he stabbed Dollalolla, he
rebuked by going gravely on to the close. His Fortunio, the next Twelfth
Night, was not so great; yet when, as a prelude to getting the better of
the Dragon, he adulterated his drink (Mr. Lemon played the Dragon) with
sherry, the sly relish with which he watched the demoralization, by this
means, of his formidable adversary into a helpless imbecility, was
perfect. Here Dickens played the testy old Baron, and took advantage of
the excitement against the Czar raging in 1855 to denounce him (in a
song) as no other than own cousin to the very Bear that Fortunio had
gone forth to subdue. He depicted him, in his desolation of autocracy,
as the Robinson Crusoe of absolute state, who had at his court many a
show-day and many a high-day, but hadn't in all his dominions a
Friday.[178] The bill, which attributed these interpolations to "the
Dramatic Poet of the Establishment," deserves also mention for the fun
of the six large-lettered announcements which stood at the head of it,
and could not have been bettered by Mr. Crummles himself. "Re-engagement
of that irresistible comedian" (the performer of Lord Grizzle) "Mr.
Ainger!" "Reappearance of Mr. H. who created so powerful an impression
last year!" "Return of Mr. Charles Dickens Junior from his German
engagements!" "Engagement of Miss Kate, who declined the munificent
offers of the Management last season!" "Mr. Passé, Mr. Mudperiod, Mr.
Measly Servile, and Mr. Wilkini Collini!" "First appearance on any stage
of Mr. Plornishmaroontigoonter (who has been kept out of bed at a vast
expense)." The last performer mentioned[179] was yet at some distance
from the third year of his age. Dickens was Mr. Passé.

Gravities were mixed with these gaieties. "I wish you would look" (20th
of January 1854) "at the enclosed titles for the _H. W._ story, between
this and two o'clock or so, when I will call. It is my usual day, you
observe, on which I have jotted them down--Friday! It seems to me that
there are three very good ones among them. I should like to know whether
you hit upon the same." On the paper enclosed was written: 1. According
to Cocker. 2. Prove it. 3. Stubborn Things. 4. Mr. Gradgrind's Facts. 5.
The Grindstone. 6. Hard Times. 7. Two and Two are Four. 8. Something
Tangible. 9. Our Hard-headed Friend. 10. Rust and Dust. 11. Simple
Arithmetic. 12. A Matter of Calculation. 13. A Mere Question of Figures.
14. The Gradgrind Philosophy.[180] The three selected by me were 2, 6,
and 11; the three that were his own favourites were 6, 13, and 14; and
as 6 had been chosen by both, that title was taken.

It was the first story written by him for _Household Words_; and in the
course of it the old troubles of the _Clock_ came back, with the
difference that the greater brevity of the weekly portions made it
easier to write them up to time, but much more difficult to get
sufficient interest into each. "The difficulty of the space," he wrote
after a few weeks' trial, "is CRUSHING. Nobody can have an idea of it