Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2241 page)

Enormous meanwhile, and without objection audible on any side, had been the success of the completed
Pickwick
, which we celebrated by a dinner, with himself in the chair and Talfourd in the vice-chair, everybody in hearty good humour with every other body; and a copy of which I received from him on the 11th of December in the most luxurious of Hayday’s bindings, with a note worth preserving for its closing allusion. The passage referred to in it was a comment, in delicately chosen words, that Leigh Hunt had made on the inscription at the grave in Kensal Green:
“Chapman & Hall have just sent me, with a copy of our deed, three ‘extra-super’ bound copies of
Pickwick
, as per specimen inclosed. The first I forward to you, the second I have presented to our good friend Ainsworth, and the third Kate has retained for herself. Accept your copy with one sincere and most comprehensive expression of my warmest friendship and esteem; and a hearty renewal, if there need be any renewal when there has been no interruption, of all those assurances of affectionate regard which our close friendship and communion for a long time back has every day implied. . . . That beautiful passage you were so kind and considerate as to send me, has given me the only feeling akin to pleasure (sorrowful pleasure it is) that I have yet had, connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion; for whom my love and attachment will never diminish, and by whose side, if it please God to leave me in possession of sense to signify my wishes, my bones, whenever or wherever I die, will one day be laid. Tell Leigh Hunt when you have an opportunity how much he has affected me, and how deeply I thank him for what he has done. You cannot say it too strongly.”

The “deed” mentioned was one executed in the previous month to restore to him a third ownership in the book which had thus far enriched all concerned but himself. The original understanding respecting it Mr. Edward Chapman thus describes for me: “There was no agreement about
Pickwick
except a verbal one. Each number was to consist of a sheet and a half, for which we were to pay fifteen guineas; and we paid him for the first two numbers at once, as he required the money to go and get married with. We were also to pay more according to the sale, and I think
Pickwick
altogether cost us three thousand pounds.” Adjustment to the sale would have cost four times as much, and of the actual payments I have myself no note; but, as far as my memory serves, they are overstated by Mr. Chapman. My impression is that, above and beyond the first sum due for each of the twenty numbers (making no allowance for their extension after the first to thirty-two pages), successive checks were given, as the work went steadily on to the enormous sale it reached, which brought up the entire sum received to two thousand five hundred pounds. I had, however, always pressed so strongly the importance to him of some share in the copyright, that this at last was conceded in the deed above mentioned, though five years were to elapse before the right should accrue; and it was only yielded as part consideration for a further agreement entered into at the same date (the 19th of November, 1837), whereby Dickens engaged to “write a new work, the title whereof shall be determined by him, of a similar character and of the same extent as the
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
,” the first number of which was to be delivered on the 15th of the following March, and each of the numbers on the same day of each of the successive nineteen months; which was also to be the date of the payment to him, by Messrs. Chapman & Hall, of twenty several sums of one hundred and fifty pounds each for five years’ use of the copyright, the entire ownership in which was then to revert to Dickens. The name of this new book, as all the world knows, was
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby;
and between April, 1838, and October, 1839, it was begun and finished accordingly.

All through the interval of these arrangements
Oliver Twist
had been steadily continued. Month by month, for many months, it had run its opening course with the close of
Pickwick
, as we shall see it close with the opening of
Nickleby;
and the expectations of those who had built most confidently on the young novelist were more than confirmed. Here was the interest of a story simply but well constructed; and characters with the same impress of reality upon them, but more carefully and skillfully drawn. Nothing could be meaner than the subject, the progress of a parish or workhouse boy, nothing less so than its treatment. As each number appeared, his readers generally became more and more conscious of what already, as we have seen, had revealed itself amid even the riotous fun of
Pickwick
, that the purpose was not solely to amuse; and, far more decisively than its predecessor, the new story further showed what were the not least potent elements in the still increasing popularity that was gathering around the writer. His qualities could be appreciated as well as felt in an almost equal degree by all classes of his various readers. Thousands were attracted to him because he placed them in the midst of scenes and characters with which they were already themselves acquainted; and thousands were reading him with no less avidity because he introduced them to passages of nature and life of which they before knew nothing, but of the truth of which their own habits and senses sufficed to assure them. Only to genius are so revealed the affinities and sympathies of high and low, in regard to the customs and usages of life; and only a writer of the first rank can bear the application of such a test. For it is by the alliance of common habits, quite as much as by the bonds of a common humanity, that we are all of us linked together; and the result of being above the necessity of depending on other people’s opinions, and that of being below it, are pretty much the same. It would equally startle both high and low to be conscious of the whole that is implied in this close approximation; but for the common enjoyment of which I speak such consciousness is not required; and for the present Fagin may be left undisturbed in his school of practical ethics with only the Dodger, Charley Bates, and his other promising scholars.

With such work as this in hand, it will hardly seem surprising that as the time for beginning
Nickleby
came on, and as he thought of his promise for November, he should have the sense of “something hanging over him like a hideous nightmare.” He felt that he could not complete the
Barnaby Rudge
novel by the November of that year, as promised, and that the engagement he would have to break was unfitting him for engagements he might otherwise fulfill. He had undertaken what, in truth, was impossible. The labour of at once editing the
Miscellany
and supplying it with monthly portions of
Oliver
more than occupied all the time left him by other labours absolutely necessary. “I no sooner get myself up,” he wrote, “high and dry, to attack
Oliver
manfully, than up come the waves of each month’s work, and drive me back again into a sea of manuscript.” There was nothing for it but that he should make further appeal to Mr. Bentley. “I have recently,” he wrote to him on the 11th of February, 1838, “been thinking a great deal about
Barnaby Rudge
.
Grimaldi
has occupied so much of the short interval I had between the completion of the
Pickwick
and the commencement of the new work, that I see it will be wholly impossible for me to produce it by the time I had hoped, with justice to myself or profit to you. What I wish you to consider is this: would it not be far more to your interest, as well as within the scope of my ability, if
Barnaby Rudge
began in the
Miscellany
immediately on the conclusion of
Oliver Twist
, and were continued there for the same time, and then published in three volumes? Take these simple facts into consideration. If the
Miscellany
is to keep its ground, it
must
have some continuous tale from me when
Oliver
stops. If I sat down to
Barnaby Rudge
, writing a little of it when I could (and with all my other engagements it would necessarily be a very long time before I could hope to finish it that way), it would be clearly impossible for me to begin a new series of papers in the
Miscellany
. The conduct of three different stories at the same time, and the production of a large portion of each, every month, would have been beyond Scott himself. Whereas, having
Barnaby
for the
Miscellany
, we could at once supply the gap which the cessation of
Oliver
must create, and you would have all the advantage of that prestige in favor of the work which is certain to enhance the value of
Oliver Twist
considerably. Just think of this at your leisure. I am really anxious to do the best I can for you as well as for myself, and in this case the pecuniary advantage must be all on your side.” This letter nevertheless, which had also requested an overdue account of the sales of the
Miscellany
, led to differences which were only adjusted after six months’ wrangling; and I was party to the understanding then arrived at, by which, among other things,
Barnaby
was placed upon the footing desired, and was to begin when
Oliver
closed.

Of the progress of his
Oliver
, and his habits of writing at the time, it may perhaps be worth giving some additional glimpses from his letters of 1838. “I was thinking about
Oliver
till dinner-time yesterday,” he wrote on the 9th of March,
“and, just as I had fallen upon him tooth and nail, was called away to sit with Kate. I did eight slips, however, and hope to make them fifteen this morning.” Three days before, a little daughter had been born to him, who became a little god-daughter to me; on which occasion (having closed his announcement with a postscript of “I can do nothing this morning. What time will you ride? The sooner the better, for a good long spell”), we rode out fifteen miles on the great north road, and, after dining at the Red Lion in Barnet on our way home, distinguished the already memorable day by bringing in both hacks dead lame.

On that day week, Monday, the 13th, after describing himself “sitting patiently at home waiting for
Oliver Twist
who has not yet arrived,” which was his pleasant form of saying that his fancy had fallen into sluggishness that morning, he made addition not less pleasant as to some piece of painful news I had sent him, now forgotten: “I have not yet seen the paper, and you throw me into a fever. The comfort is, that all the strange and terrible things come uppermost, and that the good and pleasant things are mixed up with every moment of our existence so plentifully that we scarcely heed them.” At the close of the month Mrs. Dickens was well enough to accompany him to Richmond, for now the time was come to start
Nickleby;
and, having been away from town when
Pickwick’s
first number came out, he made it a superstition to be absent at all future similar times. The magazine-day of that April month, I remember, fell upon a Saturday, and the previous evening had brought me a peremptory summons: “Meet me at the Shakspeare on Saturday night at eight; order your horse at midnight, and ride back with me.” Which was done accordingly. The smallest hour was sounding from St. Paul’s into the night before we started, and the night was none of the pleasantest; but we carried news that lightened every part of the road, for the sale of
Nickleby
had reached that day the astonishing number of nearly fifty thousand! I left him working with unusual cheerfulness at
Oliver Twist
when I left the Star and Garter on the next day but one, after celebrating with both friends on the previous evening an anniversary
which concerned us all (their second and my twenty-sixth), and which we kept always in future at the same place, except when they were living out of England, for twenty successive years. It was a part of his love of regularity and order, as well as of his kindliness of nature, to place such friendly meetings as these under rules of habit and continuance.

CHAPTER VIII.

OLIVER TWIST.

1838.

Interest in Characters at Close of
Oliver
— Writing of the Last Chapter — Cruikshank Illustrations — Etchings for Last Volume — How executed — Slander respecting them exposed — Falsehood ascribed to the Artist — Reputation of the New Tale — Its Workmanship — Social Evils passed away — Living only in what destroyed them — Chief Design of the Story — Its Principal Figures — Comedy and Tragedy of Crime — Reply to Attacks — Le Sage, Gay, and Fielding — Likeness to them — Again the Shadow of
Barnaby
— Appeal to Mr. Bentley for Delay — A Very Old Story — ”Sic Vos non Vobis” —
Barnaby
given up by Mr. Bentley — Resignation of
Miscellany
— Parent parting from Child.

The whole of his time not occupied by
Nickleby
was now given to
Oliver
, and as the story shaped itself to its close it took extraordinary hold of him. I never knew him work so frequently after dinner, or to such late hours (a practice he afterwards abhorred), as during the final months of this task; which it was now his hope to complete before October, though its close in the magazine would not be due until the following March. “I worked pretty well last night,” he writes, referring to it in May, “very well indeed; but, although I did eleven close slips before half-past twelve, I have four to write to complete the chapter; and, as I foolishly left them till this morning, have the steam to get up afresh.” A month later he writes, “I got to the sixteenth slip last night, and shall try hard to get to the thirtieth before I go to bed.”
Then, on a “Tuesday night,” at the opening of August, he wrote, “Hard at work still. Nancy is no more. I showed what I have done to Kate last night, who was in an unspeakable ‘
state:
’ from which and my own impression I augur well. When I have sent Sikes to the devil, I must have yours.” “No, no,” he wrote, in the following month: “don’t, don’t let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed of the Jew, who is such an out-and-outer that I don’t know what to make of him.” No small difficulty to an inventor, where the creatures of his invention are found to be as real as himself; but this also was mastered; and then there remained but the closing quiet chapter to tell the fortunes of those who had figured in the tale. To this he summoned me in the first week of September, replying to a request of mine that he’d give me a call that day: “Come and give
me
a call, and let us have ‘a bit o’ talk’ before we have a bit o’ som’at else. My missis is going out to dinner, and I ought to go, but I have got a bad cold. So do you come, and sit here, and read, or work, or do something, while I write the LAST chapter of
Oliver
, which will be arter a lamb chop.” How well I remember that evening! and our talk of what should be the fate of Charley Bates, on behalf of whom (as indeed for the Dodger too) Talfourd had pleaded as earnestly in mitigation of judgment as ever at the bar for any client he had most respected.