Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2250 page)

Upon his return he had to lament a domestic calamity, which, for its connection with that famous personage in
Barnaby
, must be mentioned here. The raven had for some days been ailing, and Topping had reported of him, as Shakspeare of Hamlet, that he had lost his mirth and foregone all customary exercises; but Dickens paid no great heed, remembering his recovery from an illness of the previous summer when he swallowed some white paint; so that the graver report which led him to send for the doctor came upon him unexpectedly, and nothing but his own language can worthily describe the result. Unable from the state of his feelings to write two letters, he sent the narrative to Maclise, under an enormous black seal, for transmission to me; and thus it befell that this fortunate bird receives a double passport to fame, so great a humorist having celebrated his farewell to the present world, and so great a painter his welcome to another.

“You will be greatly shocked” (the letter is dated Friday evening, March 12, 1841) “and grieved to hear that the Raven is no more. He expired to-day at a few minutes after twelve o’clock at noon. He had been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result, conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer might be lingering about his vitals without having any serious effect upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was taken so much worse that I sent an express for the medical gentleman (Mr. Herring), who promptly attended, and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under the influence of this medicine, he recovered so far as to be able at eight o’clock p.m. to bite Topping. His night was peaceful. This morning at daybreak he appeared better; received (agreeably to the doctor’s directions) another dose of castor oil; and partook plentifully of some warm gruel, the flavour of which he appeared to relish. Towards eleven o’clock he was so much worse that it was found necessary to muffle the stable-knocker. At half-past, or thereabouts, he was heard talking to himself about the horse and Topping’s family, and to add some incoherent expressions which are supposed to have been either a foreboding of his approaching dissolution, or some wishes relative to the disposal of his little property: consisting chiefly of half-pence which he had buried in different parts of the garden. On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach-house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed
Halloa old girl!
(his favorite expression), and died.

“He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity, and self-possession, which cannot be too much admired. I deeply regret that being in ignorance of his danger I did not attend to receive his last instructions. Something remarkable about his eyes occasioned Topping to run for the doctor at twelve. When they returned together our friend was gone. It was the medical gentleman who informed me of his decease. He did it with great caution and delicacy, preparing me by the remark that ‘a jolly queer start had taken place;’ but the shock was very great notwithstanding. I am not wholly free from suspicions of poison. A malicious butcher has been heard to say that he would ‘do’ for him: his plea was that he would not be molested in taking orders down the mews, by any bird that wore a tail. Other persons have also been heard to threaten: among others, Charles Knight, who has just started a weekly publication price fourpence:
Barnaby
being, as you know, threepence. I have directed a post-mortem examination, and the body has been removed to Mr. Herring’s school of anatomy for that purpose.

“I could wish, if you can take the trouble, that you could inclose this to Forster immediately after you have read it. I cannot discharge the painful task of communication more than once. Were they ravens who took manna to somebody in the wilderness? At times I hope they were, and at others I fear they were not, or they would certainly have stolen it by the way. In profound sorrow, I am ever your bereaved friend C. D. Kate is as well as can be expected, but terribly low, as you may suppose. The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles. But that was play.”

Maclise’s covering letter was an apotheosis, to be rendered only in fac-simile.

In what way the loss was replaced, so that
Barnaby
should have the fruit of continued study of the habits of the family of birds which Grip had so nobly represented, Dickens has told in the preface to the story; and another, older, and larger Grip, obtained through Mr. Smithson, was installed in the stable, almost before the stuffed remains of his honoured predecessor had been sent home in a glass case, by way of ornament to his master’s study.

I resume our correspondence on what he was writing: “I see there is yet room for a few lines” (25th March), “and you are quite right in wishing what I cut out to be restored. I did not want Joe to be so short about Dolly, and really wrote his references to that young lady carefully, — as natural things with a meaning in them. Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious old inn opposite the churchyard, — such a lovely ride, — such beautiful forest scenery, — such an out-of-the-way, rural place, — such a sexton! I say again, name your day.” The day was named at once; and the whitest of stones marks it, in now sorrowful memory. His promise was exceeded by our enjoyment; and his delight in the double recognition, of himself and of
Barnaby
, by the landlord of the nice old inn, far exceeded any pride he would have taken in what the world thinks the highest sort of honour.

“I have shut myself up” (26th March) “by myself to-day, and mean to try and ‘go it’ at the
Clock;
Kate being out, and the house peacefully dismal. I don’t remember altering the exact part you object to, but if there be anything here you object to, knock it out ruthlessly.” “Don’t fail” (April the 5th) “to erase anything that seems to you too strong. It is difficult for me to judge what tells too much, and what does not. I am trying a very quiet number to set against this necessary one. I hope it will be good, but I am in very sad condition for work. Glad you think this powerful. What I have put in is more relief, from the raven.” Two days later: “I have done that number, and am now going to work on another. I am bent (please Heaven) on finishing the first chapter by Friday night. I hope to look in upon you to-night, when we’ll dispose of the toasts for Saturday. Still bilious — but a good number, I hope, notwithstanding. Jeffrey has come to town, and was here yesterday.” The toasts to be disposed of were those to be given at the dinner on the 10th to celebrate the second volume of
Master Humphrey:
when Talfourd presided, when there was much jollity, and, according to the memorandum drawn up that Saturday night now lying before me, we all in the greatest good humour glorified each other: Talfourd proposing the
Clock
, Macready Mrs. Dickens, Dickens the publishers, and myself the artists; Macready giving Talfourd, Talfourd Macready, Dickens myself, and myself the comedian Mr. Harley, whose humorous songs had been the not least considerable element in the mirth of the evening.

Five days later he writes, “I finished the number yesterday, and, although I dined with Jeffrey, and was obliged to go to Lord Denman’s afterwards (which made me late), have done eight slips of the
Lamplighter
for Mrs. Macrone, this morning. When I have got that off my mind, I shall try to go on steadily, fetching up the
Clock
lee-way.” The
Lamplighter
was his old farce,
which he now turned into a comic tale; and this, with other contributions given him by friends and edited by him as
Pic Nic Papers
, enabled him to help the widow of his old publisher in her straitened means by a gift of £300. He had finished his work of charity before he next wrote of
Barnaby Rudge
, but he was fetching up his lee-way lazily. “I am getting on” (29th of April) “very slowly. I want to stick to the story; and the fear of committing myself, because of the impossibility of trying back or altering a syllable, makes it much harder than it looks. It was too bad of me to give you the trouble of cutting the number, but I knew so well you would do it in the right places. For what Harley would call the ‘onward work’ I really think I have some famous thoughts.” There is an interval of a month before the next allusion: “Solomon’s expression” (3d of June) “I meant to be one of those strong ones to which strong circumstances give birth in the commonest minds. Deal with it as you like. . . . Say what you please of Gordon” (I had objected to some points in his view of this madman, stated much too favorably as I thought), “he must have been at heart a kind man, and a lover of the despised and rejected, after his own fashion. He lived upon a small income, and always within it; was known to relieve the necessities of many people; exposed in his place the corrupt attempt of a minister to buy him out of Parliament; and did great charities in Newgate. He always spoke on the people’s side, and tried against his muddled brains to expose the profligacy of both parties. He never got anything by his madness, and never sought it. The wildest and most raging attacks of the time allow him these merits: and not to let him have ‘em in their full extent, remembering in what a (politically) wicked time he lived, would lie upon my conscience heavily. The libel he was imprisoned for when he died, was on the Queen of France; and the French government interested themselves warmly to procure his release, — which I think they might have done, but for Lord Grenville.” I was more successful in the counsel I gave against a fancy he had at this part of the story, that he would introduce as actors in the Gordon riots three splendid fellows who should order, lead, control, and be obeyed as natural guides of the crowd in that delirious time, and who should turn out, when all was over, to have broken out from Bedlam; but, though he saw the unsoundness of this, he could not so readily see, in Gordon’s case, the danger of taxing ingenuity to ascribe a reasonable motive to acts of sheer insanity. The feeblest parts of the book are those in which Lord George and his secretary appear.

He left for Scotland after the middle of June, but he took work with him. “You may suppose,” he wrote from Edinburgh on the 30th, “I have not done much work; but by Friday night’s post from here I hope to send the first long chapter of a number and both the illustrations; from Loch Earn on Tuesday night, the closing chapter of that number; from the same place on Thursday night, the first long chapter of another, with both the illustrations; and, from some place which no man ever spelt but which sounds like Ballyhoolish, on Saturday, the closing chapter of that number, which will leave us all safe till I return to town.” Nine days later he wrote from “Ballechelish,” “I have done all I can or need do in the way of
Barnaby
until I come home, and the story is progressing (I hope you will think) to good strong interest. I have left it, I think, at an exciting point, with a good dawning of the riots. In the first of the two numbers I have written since I have been away, I forget whether the blind man, in speaking to Barnaby about riches, tells him they are to be found in
crowds
. If I have not actually used that word, will you introduce it? A perusal of the proof of the following number (70) will show you how, and why.” “Have you,” he wrote shortly after his return (29th July), “seen No. 71? I thought there was a good glimpse of a crowd, from a window — eh?” He had now taken thoroughly to the interest of his closing chapters, and felt more than ever the constraints of his form of publication. “I am warming up very much” (on the 5th August from Broadstairs) “about
Barnaby
. Oh! if I only had him, from this time to the end, in monthly numbers.
N’importe!
I hope the interest will be pretty strong, — and, in every number, stronger.” Six days later, from the same place: “I was always sure I could make a good thing of
Barnaby
, and I think you’ll find that it comes out strong to the last word. I have another number ready, all but two slips. Don’t fear for young Chester. The time hasn’t come —
 
— there we go again, you see, with the weekly delays. I am in great heart and spirits with the story, and with the prospect of having time to think before I go on again.” A month’s interval followed, and what occupied it will be described shortly. On the 11th September he wrote, “I have just burnt into Newgate, and am going in the next number to tear the prisoners out by the hair of their heads. The number which gets into the jail you’ll have in proof by Tuesday.” This was followed up a week later: “I have let all the prisoners out of Newgate, burnt down Lord Mansfield’s, and played the very devil. Another number will finish the fires, and help us on towards the end. I feel quite smoky when I am at work. I want elbow-room terribly.” To this trouble, graver supervened at his return, a serious personal sickness not the least; but he bore up gallantly, and I had never better occasion than now to observe his quiet endurance of pain, how little he thought of himself where the sense of self is commonly supreme, and the manful duty with which everything was done that, ailing as he was, he felt it necessary to do. He was still in his sick-room (22d October) when he wrote, “I hope I sha’n’t leave off any more, now, until I have finished
Barnaby
.” Three days after that, he was busying himself eagerly for others; and on the 2d of November the printers received the close of
Barnaby Rudge
.