The Dickens circle

Front matter

■>--. VSWcA J' 'Jff W A.--

Chakles Dickens

(1836) From a Pencil Sketch by George Cruikshanlc Frontispiece

Preface

From the time when, as a very raw youth, I first came to know anything about Charles Dickens, I have been attracted by the magnetic personality of the man himself even more than by the men and women he created. The outstanding impression that I gained from my first reading of Forster's Life of Charles Dickens was of this magnetism of his personality which attracted to him so many of the most brilliant men and women of the time, and won for him their whole-hearted friendship. That impression was deepened as I read more widely. Youth, of course, discovers wonders continually which it is amazed to find are already well known to its parents, but the amazement in my case arose out of the fact that this very striking phase of Dickens's character — this extraordinary capacity of his for friendship — had not apparently been discovered. At any rate, it had never been adequately dealt with. I was struck by the fact that this man Dickens, comparatively unlettered as he was, who had had no material advantages in life, but, on the contrary, many disadvantages, should not merely have come to know so many of his peers — that was inevitable — but should have so won their affection ; should have been so loved by old men like Landor and Leigh Hunt, and Jeffrey, by men of his own age like Forster, and Maclise, and Talfourd, and by men of a younger generation like Percy Fitzgerald, James Payn and Charles Kent; should have been accepted by them all as the sun of their firmament.

If it be true that the proper study for mankind is Man, it is equally true that men most reveal themselves in their relations with men. In my desire to gain a true notion as to what manner of man Dickens really was, I found Forster's book disappointing. I have no quarrel with him on that viii PREFACE

ground; he could not be expected to give more than a comprehensive portrait of his subject, with the lights and shades that he himself saw. But his book did little more than whet my appetite, as it were. Paragraphic references were made to famous men of brilliant and fascinating parts, little more than hints were given of the novelist's relations with some of those men. And so I sought elsewhere. I began to read widely in Victorian biography and autobiography, and thus I gained a knowledge, not only of Dickens, but of many other noble and worthy men of the period, which I could not have gained otherwise, and which has been helpful and inspiring to me.

The result of my labours — unhappy word! — is here. It has many faults, I have no doubt. I only claim that it has been done conscientiously by one who loves his subject. My difficulty has been to decide what to omit. I have been almost overwhelmed with material, but I tried all along to avoid anything in the nature of a Gradgrindish compilation. I am vain enough to hope that my fellow Dickensians will find this book a useful auxiliary to Forster. I am modest enough to have aimed at nothing higher.

I suppose it would be impossible for any man to write a book on Dickens to-day without having to acknowledge indebtedness to Mr. B. W. Matz. That gentleman has been one of my most valued personal friends for a good many years now. I succeeded him as Hon. General Secretary of the Dickens Fellowship, and sat with him on the Council of that remarkable organisation for five years ; I was a member, with him, of the little Committee which, with fear and trembling, launched The Dickensicm, that bright little magazine which he has so ably edited for fourteen years; I have been associated with him in innumerable Dickensian ventures ; and time and time again I have been indebted to him for his advice and help — both ever ready and ever valuable — as well as for many personal kindnesses of a more intimate character. And now I want to say that but for him I could never have written this book. I have had to turn to him again and again. His unique knowledge was always at my disposal, so were the contents of his excellent library, and when he did not himself possess a book that I needed he begged or borrowed it for me. But for his persistent encour-

PREFACE ix

agement I doubt if I should ever have seriously tackled the work at all ; but for his consistent help I know I could never have completed it.

There are others who have rendered help which I gratefully acknowledge. Mr. William Miller, another old Dickensian friend, has answered many inquiries out of his marvellous store of knowledge, and loaned me books ; Mrs. Perugini, too, has most kindly answered inquiries; the Marquis of Crewe generously loaned to me the originals of all Dickens's letters to his father and mother; Lord Tennyson gave me some valuable information about his father's friendship with Dickens, and authorised me to quote from his Memoir of his father; Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., gave me a personal interview.

Of the books I have consulted I could not possibly give a complete list. Their name is Legion. But where I have quoted I have made acknowledgment in the text or in a footnote.

J. W. T. Ley.

Newport, Mon., June 1918.

Contents

CHAP. PAQB

I. INTRODUCTORY 1

II. FRIENDS OF BOYHOOD AND YOUTH ... 6

Chapter I Introductory

" My art has brought acquaintances by scores, But to my character I owe my friends.",

There is no surer test of a man's character than to ask, "Who are his friends?" For the unworthy man does not hold the friendship of worthy men. Few men come out of the test better than Charles Dickens. Many other great men have had big circles ; many Davids have had their Jonathans ; but no man ever had a bigger or more notable circle, and none was ever more loved by those who were admitted to his friendship. He had, indeed, the capacity for friendship in a superlative degree. Of the attractiveness of his personality many have written in terms of enthusiasm. They all bear testimony to the truth of Forster's declaration:

"His place was not to be filled by any other. To the most trivial talk he gave the attraction of his own character. It might be a small matter; something he had read during the day, some quaint odd fancy from a book, a vivid little outdoor picture, the laughing exposure of some imposture, or a burst of sheer mirthful enjoyment; but of its kind it would be something unique, because genuinely part of himself. This, and his unwearying animal spirits, made him the most delightful of companions ; no claim on good-fellowship ever found him wanting; and no one so constantly recalled to his friends the description Johnson gave of Garrick, as the cheerfullest man of his age."

In another place Forster says:

"It was an excellent saying of the first Lord Shaftesbury, that, seeing every man of any capacity holds within himself two men, the wise and the foolish, each of them ought freely to be allowed his turn; and it was one of the secrets of Dickens's social charm that he could, in strict accordance with this saying, allow each part of him its turn: could afford thoroughly to give rest and relief to what was serious in him, and when the time came to play his gambols, could surrender himself wholly to the enjoyment of the time, and become the very genius and embodiment of one of his own most whimsical fancies."

These are the declarations of a man who loved Dickens as his life, but they are confirmed by a hundred witnesses. But he was something very much more than a bright and delightful companion. He won friendship, and he won it because he gave it. "Charles Dickens," says Lady Pollock, "was and is to me the ideal of friendship." "He was indeed a man of magnanimous and practical sympathy," wrote Mrs. Cattermole. Read of him cheering Macready in his lonely retirement ; read of him going to see Stanfield in his illness and so cheering him by his description of Fechter's latest play, "fighting a duel with the washstand, defying the bedstead, and saving the life of the sofa-cushion," that the sick man "turned the corner on the spot." Read of him always glad to slap a friend on the back and felicitate him on a success ; always first to cheer him in failure; always by to grasp his hand and say and do the right thing in sorrow and suffering ; read of him helping to start capable young writers on the road that leads to success ; read of him as an editor to whom nothing was too much trouble if he could advise or help a young and promising contributor; read of him the life and the soul of children's parties. What wonder that this man should have attracted good men to him and wound their affections round his heart?

"Angels," says Young, "from Friendship gather half their joys." Dickens was, indeed, a happy man. Scarce a great man of his time but loved him. And, be it noted, in all his

INTRODUCTORY 3

wide circle there was none who sought reflected glory. They all shone by their own unaided light. Many of them were famous before he had been heard of; there were few of them who were not better educated than he was, who had not had better opportunities in life. Herein, surely, lies proof of the man's innate greatness. It is a wonderful thing that this newspaper reporter who had had no opportunities but what he had made for himself, whose earliest admirers had been the frequenters of the bar-parlour at Chatham, who had had practically no schooling at all, whose chief mentors in his boyhood had been the inmates of a Debtors' prison, whose boyhood companions had been the drudges of a blacking warehouse — that this man should, before he was thirty years old, have been the dominating spirit in a circle which comprised some of the finest minds of a period which was so rich in fine minds.

Before he was thirty years old! Nay, before he was twenty-six years old. He celebrated his thirtieth birthday in America, where he had already formed close friendships with Washington Irving, Longfellow, Felton, and others, whilst he had left behind him men like Macready, Maclise, Forster, Jerrold, Talfourd, Jeffrey, Landor, who loved him truly, with whom he was on terms of intimate friendship.

When he was yet some two or three years short of thirty he was one of the leading members of the Shakespeare Society, in association with Proctor, Talfourd, Macready, Thackeray, Blanchard, Charles Knight, Douglas Jerrold, Maclise, Stanfield, Cattermole, Charles and Thomas Landseer, and Frank Stone. Every one of these names is that of a man of first-class abilities who called Dickens friend. And to them, even at this time, must be added Jeffrey, Leigh Hunt, Landor, Samuel Rogers, Carlyle, etc. A short three years before Dickens had been an utterly obscure newspaper reporter with never a book to his credit. Practically every one of these men had at that time achieved independent fame. Several of them were much older than Dickens ; three of them were old enough to be his grandfather, and had been famous before he was born. They were exceptionally gifted men of widely differing temperaments, irresistibly attracted by the magnetism of this young writer. And as the years rolled on none of them drifted away. In one or two cases the friendships were temporarily clouded, but in all such cases the sun rose again, and the friendships were renewed to last unto death. The Circle grew steadily year by year, and each new friendship was cemented as the old ones had been.

It was his sheer joy in life, his frank, hearty, wholly unspoiled outlook, his joyous laugh, yet withal his realisation of the seriousness, as well as the joy of life, his love for human nature and his never-failing determination to take it at its best — these were the qualities that won for him such a host of friends. It has been noted that he was the dominating personality in all this great company. That surely is the most remarkable fact of all. He was not simply admitted to the company of his peers : it was they who formed the Dickens Circle. They were the planets and stars that circled around the Dickens sun. Let it be a Christmas party, a game of leap-frog, a trip to Cornwall, amateur theatricals, a public dinner to Macready or Thackeray, or a private dinner to Black — whatsoever it be, if Dickens is in it at all, he is the moving spirit. All his associates, great men as well as lesser men, are dominated by the personality of this man who, in social upspring, education, and all that usually counts for so much, was their inferior.

It is no conscious, aggressive domination either; it is just the working of the natural law which forces the strong man to the top. He had learned self-reliance in a hard school. All he had achieved was due absolutely to his inborn genius and to his own force of character. He had faced fearful odds in his most impressionable years — the years during which the boy begets the man. He had conquered, and out of the fight he had come strong, self-reliant, clean-minded and pure-hearted, joyous at his victory, with no trace of bitterness in him. Those early struggles had made him what he was. They had had some ill-effects, no doubt, but the good far outweighed the ill, and at the age of twenty-five Dickens sprang before the world, fully equipped to take and to hold his place among men.

Let us spend a short time in the Dickens Circle. Let us see the man in the company of his friends. Thus shall we come to know him better even than we know him now, and to love him more. We shall see him the j oiliest of com-

INTRODUCTORY 5

panions for the social hour; we shall see him the kind sympathetic friend in times of sorrow and of sadness; we shall see him almost womanly in his tenderness when his friends are stricken; we shall see him ever ready to prove his friendship at whatsoever sacrifice; we shall see him winning and holding surely the whole-hearted love of scores of men who did not lightly give their love ; we shall find that he was indeed "the ideal of friendship" — "the good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever friendly, noble Dickens, every inch of him an honest man."

Chapter II Friends Of Boyhood And Youth

And to imitate David Copperfield, and begin at the beginning, there are one or two friends of the novelist's early years who certainly must have mention. First, a couple of friends of his boyhood. Let Bob Fagin have pride of place. Scarcely entitled to a place in the Dickens Circle, you say. Well, no; but a friend of Dickens's all the same, a friend in the darkest days : Bob Fagin, the fellow-drudge in the blacking warehouse, who, when a third drudge, Poll Green, objected to the future novelist being treated as "the young gentleman," "settled him speedily"; who, when "the young gentleman" was one day taken ill, was so kind to him, filled empty blacking-bottles with hot water, and applied relays of them to his side half the day, and when it came towards evening, refused to allow him to go home alone. "I was too proud to let him know about the prison," Dickens tells us, "and after making several efforts to get rid of him, to all of which Bob Fagin in his goodness was deaf, shook hands with him on the steps of a house near Southwark Bridge on the Surrey side, making believe that I lived there. As a finishing piece of reality, in case of his looking back, I knocked at the door, and asked, when the woman opened it, if that was Mr. Robert Fagin's home." Kind-hearted Bob Fagin, it was hardly fair, was it? to use your name so roughly in after years.

Then there were his schoolfellows at Wellington House Academy, whither he went when the days of drudgery were over — Daniel Tobin, Henry Danson, Owen R. Thomas, and Richard Bray. They were his chief associates in those days when the sun had begun to shine again. That the young Dickens made some impression on these boyish friends is evident from the fact that Thomas preserved a letter which

FRIENDS OF BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 7

the future Boz wrote to him when he was between thirteen and fourteen years old.

Writing to Forster after Dickens's death, Thomas said: " After the lapse of years I recognised the celebrated writer as the individual I had known so well as a boy, from having preserved this note; and upon Mr. Dickens visiting Reading in December 1854 to give one of his earliest readings, . . . I took the opportunity of showing it to him, when he was much diverted therewith. On the same occasion we conversed about mutual schoolfellows, and among others Daniel Tobin was referred to, whom I remember to have been Dickens's most intimate companion in the school-days (1824 to 1826). His reply was that Tobin either was then, or had previously been, assisting him in the capacity of amanuensis ; but there is a subsequent mystery about Tobin, in connection with his friend and patron, which I have never been able to comprehend; for I understood shortly afterwards that there was an entire separation between them, and it must have been an offence of some gravity to have sundered an acquaintance formed in early youth, and which had endured, greatly to Tobin's advantage, so long."

There was no mystery about it. "The offence," says Forster, "went no deeper than the having at last worn out even Dickens's patience and kindness." Forster records that he could recollect Dickens helping this old schoolfellow on many occasions, and he adds : "His applications for relief were so incessantly repeated, that to cut him and them adrift altogether was the only way of escape from what had become an intolerable nuisance."

Danson, who became a physician, also recorded at Forster's request, his recollections of those days, and it is interesting to note that he remembered that the boys had a small club for the lending and circulating of small tales written by Dickens. He also records that the theatrical instinct was even then strong in Dickens. The boys mounted small theatres, and got up very gorgeous scenery to illustrate "The Miller and his Men" (for which play Dickens retained a curious liking — I had nearly written affection — all his life) and "Cherry and Fair Star."

It will be seen that Dickens made no lasting friendship at school, though Tobin hung on to him for years ; but with a schoolfellow of his brother's he did form a friendship that endured till the end. This was Thomas Mitton, who was with the other Dickens boys at Mr. Dawson's school in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square. Afterwards, it is believed, he and Charles were fellow-clerks at Mr. Molloy's in New Square, Lincoln's Inn, where Dickens was employed for a few weeks between leaving school and going to Mr. Blackmore's. Mitton stuck to the law, and in 1838 we find him drafting his friend's will. And so late as June 13, 1865, we find a letter to him giving a full account of the Staplehurst accident.

There is a friend who should be mentioned here, though he only just walks across the stage, as it were. His name was Potter, and he was a fellow-clerk in the office of Mr. Blackmore, attorney, Gray's Inn. It is recorded of him that he did much to stimulate Dickens's theatrical tastes. The pair took every opportunity, we are told by their employer, of going together to a minor theatre, where they not infrequently engaged in parts. That is all we know about Potter, but he was Dickens's friend — or shall we say pal? — during a very interesting and not at all unimportant phase of the novelist's life, and so he is entitled to a place in the Circle.

We pass on to the next period in the career of Pickwick's author. In the big Dickens Circle see that John Black is given his proper place. He was not an intimate friend; I suppose he and Dickens rarely met on really equal terms ; but Black was the first friend who influenced Dickens's career and encouraged him when he could as yet scarcely have dreamed of future fame. "Dear old Black ! my first out-andout appreciator," Dickens wrote only a few weeks before he died. He never forgot that it was "this good old mirthloving man" who flung the slipper after him, as he put it, who first recognised his genius and encouraged him. For Black was Editor of the "Morning Chronicle" when young Dickens was a reporter on that paper, and Charles Mackay, who was also a member of the staff, tells us that he repeatedly heard Black predict the future greatness of Charles Dickens. Indeed, says Mackay, it was because he had heard his Editor say this so often that he begged from him the letter which Dickens wrote proposing to write for the paper the Sketches by Boz. Dickens was an unknown man with

FRIENDS OF BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 9

no worldly prospects when he became a member of Black's staff, and undoubtedly he owed much to the Editor, who was then past his fiftieth birthday. He always acknowledged it and paid hearty tribute. In that well-known speech at the dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund in 1865, for instance, in which he recalled some of his journalistic experiences, he said: "Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been, in my time, belated in miry by-roads, towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken postboys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew." And I have already quoted what he said not long before he died. After he gave up journalism he saw but little of this excellent man, but they met occasionally, Black proud of his old reporter, Dickens loving and respecting his old Editor and never forgetting his indebtedness to him. In 1843 Black ceased to be Editor of the "Morning Chronicle," "in circumstances," says Forster, "strongly reviving all Dickens's sympathies." The novelist wrote : "I am deeply grieved about Black. Sorry from my heart's core. If I could find him out, I would go and comfort him this moment." He did find him out, and he gladdened his old Editor's heart by arranging in his honour a dinner at Greenwich. This is the last record of any meeting between the two men, but I do not doubt but that they did meet again, for Black lived another twelve years not far from London.

Two of Dickens's colleagues on the "Morning Chronicle" were Charles Mackay and Thomas Beard. The former calls for no more mention than he has already had, but with Beard a very close friendship was formed, which lasted right through the years until that sad day in June 1870. Beard was the first friend he made when he entered the gallery; indeed, he was the only friend among his gallery colleagues, for Dickens seems to have kept himself very much to himself in those days — a curious fact in view of his great capacity for friendship and his great sociability in all other periods of his career. Beard's was one of the familiar faces at Twickenham in the summer of 1838; he was present at the Haunted Man christening dinner; and he was a guest at the wedding of Kate Dickens to Charles Collins in 1860; whilst in 1862, when the novelist thought of going to America for a reading tour, he proposed to his old friend to accompany him as secretary.

There is one famous man whose place is in this chapter. He is Wentworth Dilke, grandfather of a still more famous grandson. He knew Dickens in the blacking warehouse days. He was acquainted with the future novelist's father, with whom he one day visited the warehouse, and gave the young (drudge a half-crown, receiving in return a low bow. In after years Dilke related this story to Forster, who mentioned it to Dickens. "He was silent for several minutes," says the biographer. "I felt that I had unintentionally touched a painful place in his memory ; and to Mr. Dilke I never spoke of the subject again." A few weeks later Dickens referred to the matter, however, and as a result of the conversation that followed, related the whole story of his unhappy boyhood. So that it is to Dilke that we owe the knowledge of that experience in the novelist's boyhood which helps us so much to understand the whole of his subsequent career. Through the after years Dilke remained a friend, though not a very intimate one. They were associated in connection with the Literary Fund, and were in opposite camps in respect of its management. For some years, says Forster, he fought unsuccessfully against Dilke in this matter, but there was no personal feeling in the struggle.

Chapter III

Suddenly, at the age of twenty-four, Dickens sprang into fame as the author of Pickwick. Previously, however, the Sketches by Boz, appearing in the "Morning Chronicle," had attained a considerable degree of popularity, and a few of the more discerning had read into them the promise which was so soon fulfilled. Among these was William Harrison Ainsworth, who ascertained the identity of Boz, advised him to publish the Sketches in book form, and introduced him to a publisher and to an illustrator. There is something odd in the fact that the man who rendered Dickens two of the greatest services of his life, has almost the least mention of any of the novelist's friends in Forster's book. For he very materially influenced Dickens's life. He was not only the first to encourage him to publish a book, introducing him to publisher and illustrator — Macrone and George Cruikshank — but also first made the young writer and John Forster acquainted, thus bringing about one of the most memorable friendships in literary history. In view of these facts one would expect to find him filling a very prominent place in a biography of Dickens from the pen of Forster. Yet he is not mentioned more than about half a dozen times.

The explanation is that though Ainsworth was still alive when Forster wrote his book, he had completely dropped out of the old circle, and was almost completely forgotten. Further, after the first few years he ceased to be one of Dickens's really intimate friends. In the beginning he was, undoubtedly, and up to the late 'forties he was still welcomed as a pleasant companion, but the original intimacy disappeared. The truth is, I think, that Ainsworth had not those solid qualities of friendship that Dickens required, and found in others. But in his early manhood he must have been a striking and attractive personality, and, in addition, he was the first prominent literary man with whom Dickens associated on level terms.

Imagine what the youthful "Boz" would feel. See what his boyhood had been. See how he had passed through the successive states of drudgery. Then he writes a few "specials" for his paper. Imagine his elation when he discovers that these sketches have been observed by no less a person than Harrison Ainsworth, the novelist who has recently taken the town by storm with "Rookwood" and that glorious description of Dick Turpin's ride to York. Is it surprising that he is elated by the honour of such a man's friendship? And naturally there is also a sense of indebtedness to Ainsworth for suggesting and facilitating the publication of the sketches in book form.

And so for a time the two young novelists are close friends and constant companions. But after a year years, as Dickens steadily establishes himself and forms a circle of famous friends around him, these two drift apart, until the old ties are severed altogether, and they live on through year after year without ever meeting at all. Ainsworth seems to have lost almost all his friends in much the same way. Indeed, the story of his life makes sad reading, for it is a tragic picture that it presents in the 'seventies of the old man, who thirty years before was one of the most brilliant stars in the London firmament, now neglected and wellnigh forgotten. "I recall a dinner at Teddington in the 'sixties," says Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, "given by Frederic Chapman, the publisher, at which were Forster and Browning. The latter said humorously: 'A sad, forlorn-looking being stopped me to-day, and reminded me of old times. He presently resolved himself into — whom do you think? — Harrison Ainsworth!' 'Good heavens !' cried Forster, 'is he still alive?' " That is one of the saddest anecdotes that I have ever read.

In the early days, however, when "Rookwood" was outdistanced in popularity only by Pickwick itself, and Forster was just beginning that career which was to make him one of the greatest literary forces of his time, we may be sure that none of the three ever foresaw the day when one should learn with surprise that another was still alive. It was at the Christmas of 1836 that Dickens and Forster met at