Charles Dickens: A Life (77 page)

      The railway did not succeed and was overtaken by other lines. Although a few trains were still running up to 1951, all traces of it have now disappeared. See Nick Catford’s admirable account of it on
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/p/poplar/index.shtml
.

  
2.
1 July 1834, Hansard, from which the account of what was said in parliament given in this paragraph is derived.

  
3.
Poulett Scrope, Thomas Attwood, Sir Henry Willoughby are the three speakers mentioned here. The quality of the arguments used against the amendments to the Poor Law is impressive. The debates, recorded in Hansard, can be read online.

  
4.
One example: about 1860, Joseph Arch’s father was dying, penniless after a life of labour. Arch took him in and his wife had to give up her charring to look after him. Arch asked parish guardians to give his wife 1
s
.6
d
. a week, 6
d
. less than she had earned, towards nursing his father. He was told that his father could go into the workhouse. He refused angrily, his father died in his home, and the Arches got into debt. See
Joseph Arch: The Story of His Life, Told by Himself
(1898).

  
5.
The phrase is given by Forster in his
Life
of Charles Dickens
, I (London, 1872),
Chapter 4
. The first piece to be signed ‘Boz’ was in the Aug. issue of the
Monthly
magazine.

  
6.
D to Mitton and Thomas Beard, Nov., Dec. 1834,
P
, I, pp. 43–51.

  
7.
Furnival’s Inn was on the north side of Holborn, between Leather Lane and Brooke Street. It was demolished in 1906.

  
8.
When Fred went out in the evening, Dickens would sometimes send for a friend to keep him company, as on 31 Dec. 1835 when he invited Mitton round, even though he was busy writing.

  
9.
D to Thomas Beard, 16 Dec. 1834,
P
, I, p. 50; D to Henry Austin, 20 Dec. 1834,
P
, I, p. 51. The brandy could have come from his French employer.

10.
D to Thomas Beard, 11 Jan. 1835,
P
, I, p. 53.

11.
Dickens’s view of the Hogarths’ superior standing is suggested in a letter, D to Catherine Hogarth, [?June 1835],
P
, I, p. 67, in which he is asking her to be at the head of his breakfast table, and says, ‘you might without difficulty head a more splendid one my dear girl, through life.’

12.
Catherine Hogarth to her cousin, 11 Feb. 1835, Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens: Interviews and Recollections
, I (London, 1981), p. 16.

13.
D to Catherine Hogarth, [?June 1835],
P
, I, p. 64. In fact they were not able to marry until Apr. 1836.

14.
D to Catherine Hogarth, [?late May 1835],
P
, I, p. 61. The letter suggests they have been engaged for three weeks. It was carried by Fred, and Dickens’s warning seems to have been effective.

15.
D to Catherine Hogarth, 4 Nov. 1835,
P
, I, pp. 86–7.

16.
D to Catherine Hogarth, 1 Dec. and 16 Dec. 1835,
P
, I, pp. 100, 107. His experience in covering elections did nothing to encourage him to respect the political process: he saw violence, corruption and stupidity at work, which he would satirize in
Pickwick
.

17.
D to Catherine Hogarth, 18 Dec. 1835,
P
, I, pp. 109–10.

18.
D to Macrone, 27 and 29 Oct. 1835,
P
, I, pp. 83, 84.

19.
D to Macrone, 7 Jan. 1836,
P
, I, p. 115.

  
1.
D to Catherine Hogarth, [?21 or 22 Jan. 1836] and [?23 Jan. 1836],
P
, I, pp. 119, 120.

  
2.
According to George Sala, a protégé of Dickens decades later, the woman Macrone treated so badly was his aunt Sophia, and her loan was never repaid.

  
3.
Fletcher’s bust of Dickens was exhibited at the R A, but Dickens thought it ‘not like –
especially about the head
.’

  
4.
See
Chapter 3
above.

  
5.
D to Catherine Hogarth, 11 Mar. 1836,
P
, I, p. 139.

  
6.
D to Catherine Hogarth, [?20 Mar. 1836],
P
, I, pp. 140–41.

  
7.
D to T. C. Barrow, 31 Mar. 1836,
P
, I, pp. 144–5.

  
8.
He makes a joke of the difference between their rates of walking in a letter to his brother-in-law Austin, 7 Mar. 1844: ‘I was coming to you yesterday, and brought Kate to walk half the way. She walked so impossibly slowly, that I was benighted at Covent Garden Market, and came back again.’
P
, IV, p. 64.

  
9.
D to Catherine Hogarth, [?19 Nov. 1835],
P
, I, p. 95.

10.
Lillian Nayder’s biography of Catherine,
The Other Dickens
(Ithaca, NY, 2010), makes a brave attempt to establish her as a capable and intelligent woman, but essentially confirms the picture of a woman whose capacities, whatever they might have been under different circumstances, were stifled in her marriage.

11.
D to Hullah, 20 Sept. 1836,
P
, I, p. 175. Dickens won the argument, and the line remained in the Lord Chamberlain’s copy and the published version.

12.
Mary Scott Hogarth to her cousin Mary Hogarth, 15 May 1836,
P
, I, p. 689, in Appendix E.

13.
31 Dec. 1836, cited in Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens: The Critical Heritage
(London, 1971), p. 10.

14.
G. S. Lewes reported seeing the butchers’ boys. Ibid., p. 64.

15.
The agreement with Bentley for the novels was made 22 Aug. 1836, for editing the
Miscellany
on 4 Nov. 1836. Both agreements are given in
P
, I, p. 649.

16.
Edward Street, north of the City Road, was the address, a long way for him to go.

17.
John Pritt Harley, the son of a London draper, born 1786, apprenticed to another draper, worked as a law clerk and began to act in 1806, first as an amateur, then in companies in Kent and the north. From 1815 he worked in London, playing clowns in Shakespeare and farces, highly acclaimed and popular, and known as ‘Fat Jack’, being very thin. He acted with Macready at Covent Garden in 1838, joined Kean’s company in 1850. He was taken ill during a performance and died a few hours later, penniless, in 1858.

18.
It is Bill Sikes’s description of Fagin in
Chapter 13
.

19.
D to Chapman & Hall, 1 Nov. 1836,
P
, I, pp. 188–9.

20.
D to Macrone’s printer Hansard, [?1 Dec. 1836],
P
, I, p. 203 and fn. 1.

21.
D to Bentley, 12 Dec. 1836,
P
, I, p. 211.

22.
Forster’s review appeared in the
Examiner
, a radical paper edited by Albany Fonblanque, already an admirer of Dickens’s work, and to whom he had sent a ‘Book of the Songs’ in the opera.

23.
D to Hullah, 11 Dec. 1836,
P
, I, p. 210.

24.
D to Harley, 7 Apr. 1837,
P
, I, p. 246.

25.
D to Thomas Beard, [?Dec. – close to Christmas – 1836],
P
, I, p. 217.

  
1.
D to J. P. Collier, 6 Jan. 1837,
P
, I, p. 220.

  
2.
Mary uses the words ‘dreadful trial’ in describing her sister’s feelings, which might mean the failure to breastfeed but seems more likely to refer to the birth. Mary Hogarth to her cousin Mary Scott Hogarth, 26 Jan. 1837, Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens:
Interviews and Recollections
, I (London, 1981), p. 17.

  
3.
D’s diary for 6 Jan. 1838,
P
, I, p. 630.

  
4.
Dickens gives the warning in the preface to the 1848 edition of
Nicholas Nickleby
.

  
5.
Only about forty-five pages of the manuscript of
The Pickwick Papers
have survived, and 480 – about two fifths – of the manuscript of
Oliver Twist.
They are the corrected first drafts sent to the printer.

  
6.
D to Bentley, 24 Jan. 1837,
P
, I, p. 227.

  
7.
Mary Hogarth to her cousin Mary Scott Hogarth, 26 Jan. 1837, Collins,
Interviews and Recollections
, I, p. 17.

  
8.
The house is now the Charles Dickens Museum.

  
9.
Bentley published his editions of Austen in 1833. Forster noted that Dickens had not read any Austen when writing
Nickleby
, and, according to a later friend, the poet Frederick Locker-Lampson, ‘he did not unduly appreciate Miss Jane Austen’s novels’. Collins,
Interviews and Recollections
, I, p. 117.

10.
Bentley’s recollection is given in
P
, I, p. 253, fn. 2.

11.
Letter to unknown person, probably relation of Mary, June 1837,
P
, I, p. 268.

12.
D to Thomas Beard, 17 May 1837,
P
, I, p. 259.

13.
D to Richard Johns, 31 May 1837,
P
, I, p. 263.

14.
D to Mrs Hogarth, 26 Oct. 1837,
P
, I, p. 323.

15.
D to Richard Johns, 31 May 1837,
P
, I, p. 263; D to Thomas Beard, 17 May 1837,
P
, I, p. 260.

16.
D to Thomas Beard, 12 May 1837,
P
, I, p. 258.

17.
It is still standing, a private house behind walls, known as Wylds.

18.
John Forster,
The Life of Charles Dickens
, I (London, 1872),
Chapter 6
.

19.
Only those who subscribed to the 39 Articles of the Church of England could graduate.

20.
Quotes from James A. Davies,
John Forster: A Literary Life
(New York, 1983), p. 9, and from Richard Renton,
John Forster and His Friendships
(London, 1912), p. 12.

21.
Forster,
Life
, I,
Chapter 4
.

22.
It is possible, although not certain, that she had engaged in several love-affairs and even borne children to her publisher, as well as having flings with Forster’s friends Maclise and Bulwer. Her story ended tragically when she married the Governor of the Gold Coast in 1838, travelled with him to Africa and died there of poisoning, possibly suicide.

23.
D to F, 3 Nov. 1837,
P
, I, p. 328.

24.
D to F, [?26 July 1837],
P
, I, p. 287; D to F, [?Aug. 1837],
P
, I, p. 297; D to F, 24 Sept. 1837,
P
, I, p. 312; D to F, [?Oct. 1837],
P
, I, p. 317; D to F, 11 Jan. 1838,
P
, I, p. 353. This was their first visit to Jack Straw’s Castle, according to Forster.

25.
He put together a collection of entertaining pieces called
The Pic Nic Papers
. It was not easy to organize, and did not appear until 1841, but then provided £450 for Eliza Macrone and her two children. Macrone died in Sept. 1837, the
Sketches
were reissued from Nov. by Chapman & Hall in pink covers at one shilling a number.

26.
Macready noted his disapproval in his diary: William Toynbee (ed.),
The Diaries of William Charles Macready
, II (London, 1912), pp. 45–6. For arguments on both sides see Robert L. Patten,
Charles
Dickens and His Publishers
(Oxford, 1978), p. 85.

27.
F to Bentley, 22 Oct. 1838, cited by Davies in
Forster
, from manuscripts in the Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

28.
Forster,
Life
, I, p. 105.

29.
Unsigned review in the
Examiner
, 2 July 1837. Auden said in his essay that Mr Pickwick ceases to be a god and becomes human at this point.

30.
D to F, 2 July 1837,
P
, I, pp. 280–81. Dickens transposes the words of the marriage service, ‘till death us do part’.

31.
D to F, [?11 Feb. 1838],
P
, I, pp. 370–71.

32.
D to F, [?6 Dec. 1839],
P
, I, p. 612.

33.
D to F, 8 July 1840,
P
, II, p. 97.

34.
D to J. Chapman, 3 Aug. 1842,
P
, III, p. 302. Dickens tells the story of his meeting with a ‘most intimate friend’ on his return from the US without naming him, but there can be no doubt about his identity.

  
1.
Galas had been held in 1827 and 1830, but in Dec. 1839 there was a row at the dinner when Forster, who wanted the proceedings to be dignified, told off some members for unseemly behaviour during a speech, leading to a mass exit and the demise of the club.