Charles Dickens: A Life (76 page)

  
4.
John Forster,
The Life of Charles Dickens
, I (London, 1872),
Chapter 1
.

  
5.
He had the watch before her death, because he talks about having it in his pocket when he was at the blacking warehouse in his account of that time. Forster,
Life
, I,
Chapter 2
.

  
6.
For his godfather’s tip and for his getting lost, see ‘Gone Astray’,
HW
, 13 Aug. 1853.

  
7.
My italics, from Forster, quoting Dickens’s words, in his
Life
, I,
Chapter 1
.

  
8.
The house was demolished in the late nineteenth century. Maples was built on the site, to be succeeded by the new University College Hospital.

  
9.
Forster,
Life
, I,
Chapter 2
. Mr Micawber appears in
David Copperfield
, the novel Dickens wrote in the late forties, parts of which draw on his own experience; and Micawber is loosely based on John Dickens in that he cannot keep out of debt, that he moves quickly from despair to cheerfulness, and that he expresses himself in elaborate turns of phrase.

10.
Ibid.

11.
Ibid.

12.
Ibid.,
Chapter 3
.

13.
William Dickens inherited £500 from his mother, who had already given him £750. John Dickens got £450.

14.
Chandos Street is now called Chandos Place.

15.
Forster,
Life
, I, beginning of
Chapter 2
.

16.
Ibid.

17.
See Michael Allen’s arguments in the ‘The Dickens Family in London 1824–1827’,
Dickensian
(1983), p. 3, where Allen believes that Dickens went on working at Warren’s until Mar. or Apr. 1825, i.e., for over a year. In the
Dickensian
(2010), pp. 5–30, he suggests a quite different timetable: that Charles started working at the blacking factory in Sept. 1823, moved to Chandos Street in Jan. 1824 – the same month his father was arrested – and left work in Sept. 1824. His arguments are based on impressive research but not conclusive.

18.
Forster,
Life
, I,
Chapter 2
.

19.
Ibid.

20.
Ibid.

21.
Ibid.

22.
Dickens altered his intended finish to
Great Expectations
on a plea from Bulwer to let Pip and Estella be united in a happy ending, which seems a mistake, but even in the second version the tone of the narrative is not joyous or triumphant. See
Chapter 21
below.

  
1.
Richard Newnham, the retired tailor of Chatham who lent money to John Dickens, died in June and left £50 worth of shares to Letitia, in trust until her marriage.

  
2.
Skimpole, based on Leigh Hunt, appears in
Bleak House
as the prototype of the artistic man who professes unworldliness, never pays tradesmen and expects his friends to settle his debts and keep him supplied with money. His house at The Polygon is semi-derelict but he lives in a room furnished with beautiful objects, flowers, fruit, etc., as Esther sees when Mr Jarndyce takes her to visit him.

      The Polygon also appears in Chapter 52 of
The Pickwick Papers
, when Mr Pickwick’s solicitor’s clerk, arriving at Gray’s Inn just before ten o’clock, says he heard the clocks strike half past nine as he walked through Somers Town: ‘It went the half hour as I came through the Polygon.’

      The Polygon’s most famous inhabitants had been William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, who died there in 1797 giving birth to their daughter, Mary, who grew up to marry Shelley. In the 1830s, when the Dickenses were there, the theatrical painter Samuel De Wilde and the engraver Scriven also lived there. The Dickenses left just before the coming of the railways running to their great stations close by at Euston (opened in 1838), King’s Cross and St Pancras, when the air grew filthy and Somers Town descended into grim squalor. The Polygon was demolished in the 1890s and replaced by flats for railway workers, now also gone.

  
3.
In Chapter 30 of
The Pickwick Papers
he describes ‘office lads in their first surtouts, who feel a befitting contempt for boys at day-schools … and think there’s nothing like “life”’.

  
4.
In
The Pickwick Papers
he makes the ‘salaried clerk’ in the law office go ‘half price to the Adelphi Theatre at least three times a week’.

  
5.
See ‘The Streets – Morning’, first published in the
Evening Chronicle
, 21 July 1835, ‘Sketches of London No. 17’.

  
6.
The girls are from ‘The Prisoners’ Van’, first published in
Bell’s Life in London
, 29 Nov. 1835, now
Chapter 12
of the section ‘Characters’ in the Oxford Illustrated
Sketches by Boz
(Oxford, 1957; my edition 1987). The boy on trial is from ‘Criminal Courts’, first published as ‘The Old Bailey’ in the
Morning Chronicle
, 23 Oct. 1833. Dickens returned to the court in
Great Expectations
in 1860.

  
7.
George Lear left an account of Dickens at Ellis & Blackmore and suggests another clerk, Potter, certainly acted in the little theatre in Catherine Street, off the Strand, and possibly Dickens too.

  
8.
From ‘Private Theatres’, first published in the
Evening Chronicle
, 11 Aug. 1835.

  
9.
‘Gin Shops’ first published 19 Feb. 1835 in the
Evening Chronicle
; and ‘Miss Evans and the Eagle’ first published 4 Oct. 1835 in
Bell’s London Chronicle
, a weekly journal.

10.
‘A Christmas Dinner’ (originally called ‘Christmas Festivities’) appeared in
Bell’s Life in London
on 27 Dec. 1835. Jolly grandpapa goes to buy the turkey, grandmamma makes the pudding, all the accessible members of the family are invited, quarrels are made up, there is kissing under the mistletoe, blind man’s bluff, songs are sung, wine and ale drunk and everyone is happy.

11.
John Forster,
The Life of Charles Dickens
, III (London, 1874),
Chapter 14
, ‘Personal Characteristics’. He also took Forster to the markets ‘from Aldgate to Bow’ on Christmas Eve.

12.
Norfolk Street became Cleveland Street, as it is today.

13.
He gave his Buckingham Street rooms, where he lodged in 1834, to young David Copperfield, and the habit of plunging into the Roman bath.

14.
D to John Kolle, [?Aug. 1832],
P
, I, p. 9.

15.
See
David Copperfield
, Chapters 38 and 43. Dickens remembered his shorthand, which was Gurney’s, well enough to teach it to his son Henry forty years later.

16.
‘Doctors’ Commons’ in
Sketches by Boz
first appeared in the
Morning Chronicle
, 11 Oct. 1836, and drew on a case on which Dickens reported on 18 Nov. 1830. The courts were moved in 1857, the buildings demolished later.

17.
‘Shabby-genteel People’ first published 5 Nov. 1834 in the
Morning Chronicle
.

18.
Dickens’s later love, Nelly Ternan, was also a third and petted daughter. Alfred Beadnell died in India in Aug. 1839, and his father sent Dickens letters relating to the death, receiving in return a long and curious letter of condolence: ‘He spoke of returning to England where at best he could have been with you but for a time. He is now with you always. The air about us has been said to be thick with guardian angels, and I believe it, in my soul. The meeting with you to which he now looks forward is darkened by no thought of separation. The idea of death, which would seem to have been frequently present to him, is past – and he is happy.’ D to G. Beadnell, 19 Dec. 1839,
P
, I, p. 619.

19.
‘City of London Churches’,
AYR
, 5 May 1860, reprinted in
The Uncommercial Traveller
. Michael Slater suggests the church was St Michael Queenhithe, which stood on what is now Huggin Hill, not far from the Beadnells’ house in Lombard Street, and has since disappeared.

20.
Gerald Grubb gives a persuasive account of Dickens’s start as a parliamentary reporter in the
Dickensian
[1940], pp. 211–18, which relies partly on the information Dickens gave himself to a German scholar, Dr Kunzel, in 1838, and also on his statement to Wilkie Collins that he made his start in the gallery ‘at about eighteen’. Grubb also cites Samuel Carter Hall, who said Dickens at fourteen was bringing in ‘penny-a-line stuff’ to the
British Press
, where his father worked, in 1826.

21.
From ‘A Parliamentary Sketch’, published in finished form in Dec. 1836 in
Sketches by Boz:
Second Series
and based on two earlier pieces published in 1835. A portrait of a foolish MP, Cornelius Brook Dingwall, appears in a story called ‘Sentiment’ published in
Bell’s Weekly Magazine
in 1834: ‘He had a great idea of his own abilities, which must have been a great comfort to him, as nobody else had.’

22.
D to F, [?15 Sept. 1844],
P
, IV, p. 194.

23.
D to Lord Stanley, 8 Feb. 1836,
P
, I, pp. 126–7. Dickens told his American friends, the Fieldses, about this incident, and it is also mentioned by Forster in
Life
, I,
Chapter 4
.

24.
According to Charles Kent,
Charles Dickens as a Reader
(London, 1872; reprinted with an introduction by Philip Collins, Farnborough, 1971).

25.
D to Thomas Beard, 2 Feb. 1833,
P
, I, p. 15. Fn. gives Mrs Dickens’s invitation, mentioning ‘Quadrilles/8 o’clock’.

26.
D to Maria Beadnell, 18 Mar. 1833,
P
, I, p. 17.

27.
D to Maria Beadnell, 16 May 1833,
P
, I, p. 25.

28.
D to Mrs Winter, 22 Feb. 1855,
P
, VII, p. 545.

29.
D to Maria Beadnell, 19 May 1833,
P
, I, p. 29.

30.
D to Mrs Winter, 22 Feb. 1855,
P
, VII, p. 543.

31.
D to F, letter of 1845, cited in Forster’s
Life
, II,
Chapter 9
.

32.
D to F, 30–31 Dec. 1844,
P
, IV, p. 245.

33.
Macready’s diary for 5 Dec. 1838, given in Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens: Interviews and Recollections
, I (London, 1981), p. 29.

34.
Charles Kent,
Charles Dickens as a Reader
, p. 263.

35.
Henry Rowley Bishop (1786–1855) was the composer, the American John Payne (1791–1852) the librettist. The story of a Sicilian peasant girl and a duke was immensely popular, and ‘Home, Sweet Home’ became one of the best known of all English songs.

36.
Amateurs and Actors
was a musical farce by Richard Brinsley Peake, who wrote much of Charles Mathews’s material. The best character in it – and the most original – is the Charity Boy, always hungry, ill-used, Geoffry Muffincap; he does not know who his parents are and calls himself a Norphan. He is hired as a servant for 18
d
. a week, his earnings all being taken by the master of the workhouse.

37.
His own account in the 1847 preface to the cheap edition of
The Pickwick Papers
.

38.
D to Henry Kolle, 3 Dec. 1833,
P
, I, p. 32. He described delivering the piece, ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’, to Johnson’s Court in his introduction to the cheap edition of
Pickwick
in 1847.

39.
Ibid.

40.
It was usual for publishers to sell books from their premises.

41.
The title of the story was changed when it was collected in
Sketches by Boz
(First Series) to ‘Mr Minns and His Cousin’. One of the guests at the dinner is given an obsessive desire to tell stories about Sheridan, ‘that truly great and illustrious man’, but is prevented.

42.
The novel could have been
Oliver Twist
.

  
1.
It was George Stephenson’s project and began to be built in the summer of 1836, a passenger railway running from Blackwall on the north bank of the Thames through the East End, with stations at Poplar, West India Dock, Limehouse, Stepney and Shadwell, terminating at the Minories. Part of it was built on a brick viaduct, part through a cutting, and it used cable haulage. It opened in July 1840. It is hard not to think that Dickens would have gone to look at it, especially since Austin became his brother-in-law in 1837. What Austin saw of the housing of the poor during the construction of the railway gave him his great interest in improving housing, and especially sanitation, which he shared with Dickens.

      Dickens did travel on it in 1848, describing it in ‘The Chinese Junk’ in the
Examiner
, 24 June 1848: ‘You may take a ticket, through and back, for a matter of eighteen pence … The flying dream of tiles and chimney pots, backs of squalid houses, frowzy pieces of waste ground, narrow courts and streets, swamps, ditches, masts of ships, gardens of dock-weed, and unwholesome little bowers of scarlet beans, whirls away in half a score of minutes.’