Charles Dickens: A Life (81 page)

27.
Kathleen Tillotson, Humphry House, J. Hillis Miller and Stephen Marcus are among these critics.

28.
D to GH, 9 Mar. 1847,
P
, V, p. 33.

29.
Dickens told Miss Coutts about the attack, 16 and 23 May 1857,
P
, V, pp. 67, 70. He reverted to it fourteen years later in a letter to his sister Letitia, 25 Nov 1861,
P
, IX, p. 521.

30.
D to M. Power, 2 July 1847,
P
, V, p. 111.

31.
D to T. J. Thompson, 19 June 1847,
P
, V, p. 95.

32.
D to Coutts, 27 Nov. 1847,
P
, V, p. 204; D to F, 2 Dec. 1847,
P
, V, p. 204.

33.
D to GH, 30 Dec. 1847,
P
, V, p. 217; D to Alfred Dickens, 1 Jan. 1848,
P
, V, p. 221.

34.
D to Thackeray, 9 Jan. 1848,
P
, V, p. 228. Dickens does not appear to have written to Thackeray about
Vanity Fair
, but he praised its ‘treasures of mirth, wit and wisdom’ when he spoke at a dinner for Thackeray in Oct. 1855, according to Forster’s
Life of Charles Dickens
, III (London, 1874),
Chapter 2
. Paul Féval, the French novelist who met Dickens in 1862 through Fechter, and later visited Gad’s Hill, wrote in June 1870 that ‘Dickens looked on
Vanity Fair
as an absolute masterpiece.’ Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens: Interviews and Recollections
, II (London, 1981), p. 293.

35.
Forster,
Life
, II,
Chapter 17
.

  
1.
Dickens’s preface to the Library Edition of 1858 makes the point about Nancy.

  
2.
D to John Overs, 27 Oct. 1840,
P
, II, pp. 140–41.

  
3.
Interestingly in a letter to Georgina, D to GH, 5 May 1856,
P
, VIII, p. 110, in which he describes an argument with Miss Coutts’s companion Mrs Brown about the morality of the French, which he defended so stoutly that she burst into tears – see
Chapter 19
below.

  
4.
P
, V, p. 276, fn. 10, reporting Emerson’s
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 1847–1848
, M. M. Sealts (ed.), X (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 550–51.

  
5.
Forster’s
The Life of Charles Dickens
, II (London, 1873),
Chapter 20
.

  
6.
D to Coutts, 3 Nov. 1847,
P
, V, pp. 182–3.

  
7.
Dickens’s Appeal, which he sent to Miss Coutts, 28 Oct. 1847, and which was printed as a leaflet, is given as Appendix D in
P
, V, p. 698.

  
8.
D to Coutts, 15 Nov. 1848,
P
, V, p. 440. The lighter reading suggested by a matron, and approved by him, was the poetry of Wordsworth and Crabbe.

  
9.
Jenny Hartley,
Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women
(London, 2008), a remarkable piece of research and writing. I have made use of some of her discoveries about the histories of the young women in this chapter.

10.
D to Lord Lyttelton, 16 Aug. 1855,
P
, VII, p. 691. He went on, ‘Something is gained when it is by itself, and is in a degree under the restraint of a sort of social opinion.’

11.
D to Coutts, 23 May 1854,
P
, VII, pp. 335–6.

12.
Ibid.

13.
D to Coutts, 15 Nov. 1856,
P
, VII, p. 223.

14.
D to Mrs Morson, 14 July 1850,
P
, XII, p. 625.

15.
D to Mrs Morson, 31 Oct. 1852,
P
, XII, p. 644.

  
1.
D to F, 14 and 22 Apr. 1848,
P
, V, pp. 279, 288–90.

  
2.
D to F, 7 May 1848, the anniversary of Mary Hogarth’s death,
P
, V, p. 299, and Forster’s
The
Life of Charles Dickens
, II (London, 1873),
Chapter 20
.

  
3.
Forster says in the first chapter of his
Life
, from which the quotations are taken, that this was in Jan. 1849. It seems a long gap between the spoken and written account. Forster does occasionally misdate events in his book, and he may be mistaken here.

      In 1892 Charley Dickens stated, in his introduction to the Macmillan edition of
David Copperfield
, that his mother had told him that Dickens had read the account to her, telling her he intended to publish it as part of a planned autobiography, and that she had tried to persuade him not to, on the grounds that he had spoken harshly of his father and mother; and that he had accepted her advice and decided to make it into
David Copperfield.
Although this does not fit very well with Forster’s dates and the writing of
David Copperfield
, there is no particular reason to doubt Charley’s account.

  
4.
The Haunted Man
was the last of the five Christmas stories published as separate volumes. It is a slight improvement on its two immediate predecessors, but still not a successful piece of writing. The most interesting character in it is a terrifying and credible feral child.

  
5.
D to F, 29 Feb. 1848,
P
, V, pp. 256–7. ‘Long live the Republic! Long live the people! No more kings! Let’s give our blood for liberty, for justice, for the cause of the people!’

  
6.
D to Coutts, 24 May 1848,
P
, V, p. 317. This is the only source for his being offered the seat.

  
7.
‘Judicial Special Pleading’ appeared in the
Examiner
, 23 Dec. 1848, reprinted in Michael Slater (ed.),
The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens’s Journalism
, II (London, 1996), pp. 137–42. Dickens expanded his views on the Revolution of 1789 in
A Tale of Two Cities.

  
8.
See
P
, V, p. 481, fn. 4, giving Forster’s letter to Leigh Hunt saying Dickens had gone to Bath to celebrate Landor’s seventy-fourth birthday and the bicentenary of the execution of Charles I.

  
9.
D to Fanny Burnett, 3 May 1848,
P
, VII, pp. 886–7, and 9 May 1848,
P
, V, pp. 301–2.

10.
D to Mitton, 1 July 1848,
P
, V, p. 358.

11.
D to Macready, 4 Aug. 1848,
P
, V, p. 384.

12.
Henry Burnett died, aged eight, in Jan. 1849.

13.
D to Frank Stone, 5 Dec. 1848,
P
, V, p. 453. Augustus married Harriet Lovell, daughter of a deceased East India Company official.

14.
Harriet Lovell was the daughter of Francis Lovell of Sloane Street, formerly Madras.

15.
D to F, 31 Dec. 1848,
P
, V, p. 464.

16.
D to Catherine D, 8 Jan. 1849,
P
, V, p. 471; D to F, 12 Jan. 1849,
P
, V, p. 474.

17.
Forster’s
Life
, II,
Chapter 20
.

18.
D to F, late Jan. 1849,
P
, V, p. 483.

19.
David Copperfield
,
Chapter 4
.

20.
Forster,
Life
, II,
Chapter 20
. Mrs Leavis assumed that Dickens had read
Jane Eyre
in her chapter on
David Copperfield
in
Dickens the Novelist
, but U. C. Knoepflmacher, in ‘From Outrage to Rage: Dickens’s Bruised Femininity’, states, without giving a source, that ‘Dickens denied having read
Jane Eyre
before he embarked on the story of David Copperfield’, Joanne Shattock (ed.),
Dickens and Other Victorians: Essays in Honour of Philip Collins
(Basingstoke, 1988), p. 76. Philip Collins’s
Dickens: Interviews and Recollections
, II (London, 1981), p. 289, gives a note by an unknown hand on Gad’s Hill paper and thought to date from about 1860, which reads ‘Dickens had not read
Jane Eyre
and said he never would as he disapproved of the whole school. [This apropos of Miss Hogarth saying it was an unhealthy book.]’

21.
Charlotte Brontë read and liked
David Copperfield
, telling W. S. Williams, 13 Sept. 1849, ‘I have read “DC”; it seems to me very good – admirable in some parts. You said it had affinity to “JE”. It has, now and then – only what advantage has Dickens in his varied knowledge of men and things!’ This was Brontë being modest, and surely the best parts of
David Copperfield
are the childhood, family and domestic scenes. T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (eds.),
The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence
, III (originally pub. 1932; Oxford, 1980), p. 20.

22.
The extracts from
David Copperfield
are from
Chapters 2
,
2
,
2
,
4
,
10
.

23.
David Copperfield
,
Chapter 9
.

24.
Ibid.,
Chapter 12
.

25.
Ibid.,
Chapter 20
. Later Dickens makes Rosa behave with coarse cruelty towards Em’ly, which seems to me to jar with the person shown in
Chapter 20
.

26.
Ibid.,
Chapter 6
.

27.
Ibid., Chapter 46.

28.
John Gross,
The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters
(London, 1969), p. 31.

29.
D to Richard Watson, 21 July 1849,
P
, V, p. 579.

30.
Thackeray to Mrs Brookfield, 23 July 1849, Gordon N. Ray (ed.),
The
Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray
, II (Oxford, 1945), p. 569.

31.
See Appendix G to
P
, V, p. 706.

32.
D to F, 30 Nov. 1849,
P
, V, p. 663.

33.
Dickens’s relations with the Garrick Club are hard to follow. He first joined in 1837, resigned in 1838, rejoined in Feb. 1844, resigned again in Dec. 1849, was a member again in 1854, resigned in the summer of 1858 over the Yates–Thackeray dispute, and resigned again in 1865 when Wills was blackballed.

  
1.
Jeffrey’s letter dated 6 Jan. 1850 is given in
P
, V, p. 461, fn. 3.

  
2.
In his essay of 1836, ‘Sunday under Three Heads’, reprinted in the Oxford Illustrated
The Uncommercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces
(Oxford, 1958; my edition 1987), pp. 635–63.

  
3.
D to F, 23 Jan. 1850,
P
, VI, p. 14.

  
4.
D to Mrs Gaskell, 31 Jan. 1850,
P
, VI, pp. 21–2.
Mary Barton
was published in 1848 and was attacked in the Tory press.

  
5.
D to Mrs Gaskell, 25 Nov. 1851,
P
, VI, p. 545; D to Mrs Gaskell, 13 Apr. 1853,
P
, VII, p. 62; D to Mrs Gaskell, 25 Feb. 1852,
P
, VI, p. 609; D to Wills, 11 Sept. 1855,
P
, VII, p. 700.

  
6.
For the gypsy life, see D to Spencer Lyttelton, 20 May 1851,
P
, VI, p. 393.

  
7.
‘A Detective Police Party’ appeared in
HW
on 27 July 1850. Field was the inspiration for Inspector Bucket in
Bleak House
, and Dickens employed him to keep an eye on Bulwer’s estranged wife Rosina when she threatened to cause trouble at one of their theatrical events. See Philip Collins,
Dickens and Crime
(London, 1962), for a good account of Dickens’s relations with the police.

  
8.
‘Old Lamps for New Ones’ appeared in
HW
, 15 June 1850, and is reprinted in Michael Slater (ed.),
The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens’s Journalism
, II (London, 1996), pp. 242–8.

  
9.
D to F, 21 Oct. 1850,
P
, VI, p. 195.

10.
D to D’Orsay, 1 Oct. 1850,
P
, VI, p. 184: ‘this desolate Isle of Thanet. But I like it because it is peaceful and I can think and dream here, like a giant’ – Dickens’s striking vision of himself and his imaginative power.

11.
Quoted by Robert L. Patten,
Charles Dickens and His Publishers
(Oxford, 1978), p. 236, from the
Economist
of 3 Apr. 1852.

12.
This was in July 1863 and proved unavailing. In 1865 Russell, again Prime Minister, offered him a place for a son, and Dickens replied he had none needing one.

13.
Mary Boyle, born in 1810, was the daughter of a vice-admiral and granddaughter of an earl, and her elder sister was a maid of honour to Queen Adelaide. She had published two novels in the 1830s and a volume of poems in 1849. Dickens found her amusing, enjoyed acting with her and was fond of her, and probably impressed by her background, but he did not allow her to impose on him professionally. He took one piece she offered for
HW
and rewrote it substantially, and although he was gentle about it he seems to have made it plain that he wanted no more. She remained devoted to him to the end of his life, for example arranging deliveries of fresh flowers to him during his American tour of 1867–8.