Charles Dickens: A Life (84 page)

  
4.
Phrase from D to Macready, 31 Mar. 1863,
P
, X, p. 227.

  
5.
In
Chapter 6
of
Our Mutual Friend
. Dickens’s first experience of the river also came from his childhood, when his father took him on the Navy yacht to Sheerness.

  
6.
Everything about the nature of these attacks – their timing, their acute painfulness, the swelling that made it impossible for him to wear a shoe or boot, their moving from one foot to the other and later to a hand – indicates gout. Dickens strongly resisted and denied this diagnosis, perhaps because gout was associated with high consumption of alcohol. He always insisted it was caused by walking in the snow. When a summary of his symptoms over the last five years was submitted to a group of doctors recently they were unanimous in seeing gout as the reason for the pain in his feet and hand.

  
7.
D to Wills, 19 Sept. 1857,
P
, VIII, p. 449.

  
8.
D to Wills, 20 Sept. 1857,
P
, VIII, pp. 450–51.

  
9.
D to Macready, ‘a piece of news I have, that I think you will be pleased to hear. Lord Gardner has married Julia Fortescue, and they are living quietly and very happily.’ 13 Dec. 1856,
P
, VIII, p. 238. It is not certain that any legal marriage took place.

10.
D to Buckstone, 13 Oct. 1857,
P
, VIII, p. 466.

11.
D to De La Rue, 23 Oct. 1857,
P
, VIII, pp. 471–2.

12.
Una Pope-Hennessy,
Charles Dickens
(London, 1945), p. 176, no source given.

13.
See
Chapter 27
below for Katey’s account of this to Gladys Storey, told in
Dickens and Daughter
(London, 1939), p. 96.

14.
D to Lady Duff Gordon, 23 Jan. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 508; D to Mrs Watson, 7 Dec. 1857,
P
, VIII, p. 488.

15.
D to Wilkie Collins, 21 Mar. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 536.

16.
D to F, 27 Mar. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 537, and 30 Mar. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 539.

17.
Account by Yates, given in K. J. Fielding (ed.),
The Speeches of Charles Dickens: A Complete Edition
(Brighton, 1988), p. 263.

18.
D to Coutts, 9 May 1858,
P
, VIII, pp. 558–60. In Aug., Catherine’s aunt Helen Thomson wrote to Mrs Stark, a family connection, telling her that Dickens had tried to get a doctor to say Catherine was of unsound mind, and that the doctor had refused, saying he considered her perfectly sound in mind.
P
, VIII, Appendix F, p. 746.

19.
Lucinda Hawksley’s
Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens’s Artist Daughter
(London, 2006) suggests that Georgina underwent a virginity test and that the certificate of virginity was among the family papers, although no one knows its present location. See p. 134 and fn.

20.
Catherine’s letter to Miss Coutts is given in
P
, VIII, p. 565, fn. 2. Catherine might have been better advised to stay at Tavistock House and force Dickens to move out. It would also have made it more difficult for him to keep the children.

21.
D to Coutts, 19 May 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 565.

22.
Dickens met Ouvry, a partner in Farrer’s, in 1856, and began to use him in preference to Mitton for much of his business. The final settlement on Catherine gave her a house of her own and a respectable £600 a year.

23.
D to Ouvry, 26 May 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 569.

24.
Annie Thackeray to Amy Crowe, [n.d.], Gordon N. Ray,
Thackeray
, II (Oxford, 1958), p. 478, n. 46.

25.
Bradbury & Evans, in a statement put out in May 1859, described Dickens’s desire that they should publish his statement in
Punch
, a comic magazine, as expecting them ‘to gratify an eccentric wish by a preposterous action’. See Appendix C in
P
, IX, [p. 565].

26.
D to Charley, [?10–12 July 1858],
P
, VIII, p. 602.

27.
D to Yates, 8 June 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 581.

28.
See
P
, VIII, pp. 740–41.

29.
Cited in
P
, VIII, p. 648, fn. 4.

30.
Catherine D’s letter quoted by Helen Thomson, Aug. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 559, fn. 1. Henry and Alfred both spoke later of regular affectionate visits.

31.
D to GH, 25 Aug. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 637, and fn. 4.

32.
D to Coutts, 23 Aug. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 632.

33.
D to Mary Boyle, 10 Sept. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 656, and 9 Dec. 1858,
P
, VIII, p. 717.

34.
Gladys Storey’s notes of her conversations with Katey held between 1923 and her death in 1929, now lodged at Charles Dickens Museum. See
Chapter 27
below.

35.
D to Wills, 25 Oct. 1858,
P
, VIII, pp. 686–7.

36.
Robert L. Patten,
Charles Dickens and His Publishers
(Oxford, 1978), p. 262.

37.
F’s letter given in
P
, IX, p. 10, fn. 2.

38.
F to D, 14 Jan. 1859,
P
, IX, p. 11, fn. 5.

  
1.
Forster gives this comment in his
Life of Charles Dickens
, III (London, 1874),
Chapter 9
.

  
2.
D to his tour manager Arthur Smith, 26 Jan. 1859,
P
, IX, p. 17.

  
3.
William Richard Hughes,
A Week’s Tramp in Dickens-Land
(London, 1891), p. 87.

  
4.
John Hollingshead,
My Lifetime
, I (London, 1895), p. 97.

  
5.
Fred was released from prison after three months, but from now on he sank into poverty, unrelieved by his elder brother, who had almost no more contact with him.

  
6.
See
P
, IX, p. 11, fn. 1.

  
7.
We do know, however, that her sister Maria took over her part.

  
8.
Dickens put it out in monthly parts, with illustrations by Hablot Browne (‘Phiz’), to appeal to his old public.

  
9.
HW
was closed in May.

10.
D to F, 16 June 1859,
P
, IX, p. 78. Wills had naturally moved with Dickens and continued to be his chief assistant, and with a share in the profits. Chapman & Hall, which would publish the monthly parts, took some of the 100,000 copies, and some went to America, but it was still an impressive figure.

11.
Robert L. Patten,
Charles Dickens and His Publishers
(Oxford, 1978), p. 332.

12.
D to Wilkie Collins, 6 Oct. 1859,
P
, IX, p. 128.

13.
John Sutherland’s essay on
A Tale of Two Cities
adds considerably to the pleasure of reading the novel, and is found in his
Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?
(Oxford, 1999).

14.
Patten,
Dickens and His Publishers
, p. 304.

15.
Great Expectations
,
Chapter 20
.

16.
Ibid.,
Chapter 7
.

17.
Ibid.,
Chapter 15
.

18.
Ibid., Chapter 57.

19.
Ibid., Chapter 29.

20.
D to Wilkie Collins, 12 June 1859,
P
, IX, p. 76.

21.
D to Frank Beard, 25 June 1859,
P
, IX, p. 84.

22.
D to Frank Beard, 1 July – ‘the new medicines have prevailed, and nearly thrown the enemy’, and 6 Aug. 1859,
P
, IX, pp. 88, 103.

23.
D to Wilkie Collins, 16 Aug. 1859,
P
, IX, p. 106.

24.
That Dickens, who worked to save young women from becoming prostitutes, may have used prostitutes himself may be hard but not impossible to believe.

25.
D to Frank Beard, 29 Jan. 1861,
P
, IX, p. 377.

26.
According to Forster in his
Life
, III,
Chapter 14
.

27.
D to Macready, 11 June 1861,
P
, IX, p. 424.

28.
D to Wills, 11 Mar. 1861,
P
, IX, p. 391.

29.
See D to Coutts, 8 Apr. 1860,
P
, IX, p. 233, in which he writes, ‘I do not suppose myself blameless.’ D to Coutts, 12 Feb. 1864,
P
, X, p. 356.

30.
Mrs Puckle was the daughter of Macready’s youngest son, Sir Neville Macready. Her remarks are printed in an article by Philip Collins, ‘W. C. Macready and Dickens: Some Family Recollections’ in
Dickens Studies
, 2, 2 (May 1966), p. 53.

31.
D to Wills, 30 June 1859,
P
, IX, p. 87. The ‘woman I trust’ for an opinion on his proofs, mentioned by D to Bulwer, 15 May 1861,
P
, IX, p. 415, is surely Nelly.

32.
Berger was supposedly reported by Andrew de Ternant in
Notes and Queries
in 1933, the year of Berger’s death, aged ninety-nine. I have lately found that de Ternant was a notorious fabricator of stories, about Debussy among others, and regularly planted his inventions in
Notes and Queries
, which suggests this is another of his hoaxes.

33.
Quoted in fn. 3 to D to Fields, 20 May 1860,
P
, IX, p. 256.

34.
Katey is the source here, talking to Gladys Storey,
Dickens and Daughter
(London, 1939), p. 106.

35.
D to Frances Dickinson, 19 Aug. 1860,
P
, IX, p. 287.

36.
Katey was not present, as is sometimes said, but abroad on her honeymoon.

37.
According to Storey,
Dickens and Daughter
, p. 107, and given in
P
, IX, p. 304, fn. 1.

38.
So he told first Collins and then his Swiss friend Cerjat, 24 Oct. 1860, 1 Feb. 1861,
P
, IX, pp. 331, 383. Readers of Kate Summerscale’s
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
will know that a quite different solution emerged.

39.
D to Cerjat, 1 Feb. 1861,
P
, IX, p. 383.

40.
Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens:
Interviews and Recollections
(London, 1981), I, p. 156, cites Alfred’s memory of the rowing trips in an interview given in Nov. 1910. Frank also recalled rowing him to Maidstone.

41.
The observation was Kate Field’s, made later in her
Pen Photographs of Charles Dickens’s Readings
of 1868, and cited by Malcolm Andrews in his
Charles Dickens and His Performing Selves: Dickens and the Public Readings
(Oxford, 2006), p. 255.

42.
Stephanie Harvey’s translation of Dostoevsky’s letter, dated 18 July O.S. 1878, in her article ‘Dickens’s Villains: A Confession and a Suggestion’,
Dickensian
(2002), p. 233.

43.
D to Régnier, 17 Sept. 1859,
P
, IX, p. 124.

44.
Great Expectations
, Chapter 29.

45.
Ibid.

  
1.
D to Letitia Austin, 4 Jan. 1862,
P
, X, p. 4.

  
2.
D to Thomas Beard, 1 Feb. 1862,
P
, X, p. 29.

  
3.
D to GH, 24 and 28 Jan. 1862,
P
, X, pp. 22, 25.

  
4.
D to Thomas Beard, 5 Apr. 1862,
P
, X, p. 66.

  
5.
D to F, 8 Apr. 1862,
P
, X, p. 67.

  
6.
D to Cerjat, 16 Mar. 1862,
P
, X, pp. 54–5.

  
7.
D to Yates, 3 Apr. 1862,
P
, X, p. 64.

  
8.
Arthur A. Adrian,
Georgina Hogarth and the Dickens Circle
(Oxford, 1957), pp. 76–81 and esp. p. 79.

  
9.
D to Wilkie Collins, 20 Sept. 1862,
P
, X, p. 129; D to F, 5 Oct. 1862,
P
, X, p. 134.

10.
D to Wilkie Collins, 8 Oct. 1862,
P
, X, p. 137; D to Mrs Brown, 21 Oct. 1862,
P
, X, p. 150.

11.
I am much indebted to John Bowen’s article ‘Bebelle and “His Boots”: Dickens, Ellen Ternan and the Christmas Stories’ in the
Dickensian
(2000), pp. 197–208, which discusses how Dickens’s writing may be read in relation to his life at this time. He points out that Dickens introduces a character, M. Mutuel, who seems to be based on his Boulogne landlord; and that Langley, the central figure, has quarrelled with his daughter in England, who also had a child who has died. Dickens’s contributions to the next two Christmas issues of
AYR
, ‘Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings’ (1863) and ‘Mrs Lirriper’s Legacy’ (1864), were further concerned with an illegitimate birth, and then with a visit to France.