Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2313 page)

Excepting always the haunts and associations of his childhood, Dickens had no particular sentiment of locality, and any special regard for houses he had lived in was not a thing noticeable in him. But he cared most for Devonshire-terrace, perhaps for the bit of ground attached to it; and it was with regret he suddenly discovered, at the close of 1847, that he should have to resign it “next lady-day three years. I had thought the lease two years more.” To that brief remaining time belong some incidents of which I have still to give account; and I connect them with the house in which he lived during the progress of what is generally thought his greatest book, and of what I think were his happiest years.

We had never had such intimate confidences as in the interval since his return from Paris; but these have been used in my narrative of the childhood and boyish experiences, and what remain are incidental only. Of the fragment of autobiography there also given, the origin has been told; but the intention of leaving such a record had been in his mind, we now see, at an earlier date; and it was the very depth of our interest in the opening of his fragment that led to the larger design in which it became absorbed. “I hardly know why I write this,” was his own comment on one of his personal revelations, “but the more than friendship which has grown between us seems to force it on me in my present mood. We shall speak of it all, you and I, Heaven grant, wisely and wonderingly many and many a time in after years. In the meanwhile I am more at rest for having opened all my heart and mind to you. . . . This day eleven years, poor dear Mary died.”

That was written on the seventh of May 1848, but another sadness impending at the time was taking his thoughts still farther back; to when he trotted about with his little elder sister in the small garden to the house at Portsea. The faint hope for her which Elliotson had given him in Paris had since completely broken down; and I was to hear, in less than two months after the letter just quoted, how nearly the end was come. “A change took place in poor Fanny,” he wrote on the 5th of July, “about the middle of the day yesterday, which took me out there last night. Her cough suddenly ceased almost, and, strange to say, she immediately became aware of her hopeless state; to which she resigned herself, after an hour’s unrest and struggle, with extraordinary sweetness and constancy. The irritability passed, and all hope faded away; though only two nights before, she had been planning for ‘after Christmas.’ She is greatly changed. I had a long interview with her to-day, alone; and when she had expressed some wishes about the funeral, and her being buried in unconsecrated ground” (Mr. Burnett’s family were dissenters), “I asked her whether she had any care or anxiety in the world. She said No, none. It was hard to die at such a time of life, but she had no alarm whatever in the prospect of the change; felt sure we should meet again in a better world; and although they had said she might rally for a time, did not really wish it. She said she was quite calm and happy, relied upon the mediation of Christ, and had no terror at all. She had worked very hard, even when ill; but believed that was in her nature, and neither regretted nor complained of it. Burnett had been always very good to her; they had never quarrelled; she was sorry to think of his going back to such a lonely home; and was distressed about her children, but not painfully so. She showed me how thin and worn she was; spoke about an invention she had heard of that she would like to have tried, for the deformed child’s back; called to my remembrance all our sister Letitia’s patience and steadiness; and, though she shed tears sometimes, clearly impressed upon me that her mind was made up, and at rest. I asked her very often, if she could ever recall anything that she could leave to my doing, to put it down, or mention it to somebody if I was not there; and she said she would, but she firmly believed that there was nothing — nothing. Her husband being young, she said, and her children infants, she could not help thinking sometimes, that it would be very long in the course of nature before they were reunited; but she knew that was a mere human fancy, and could have no reality after she was dead. Such an affecting exhibition of strength and tenderness, in all that early decay, is quite indescribable. I need not tell you how it moved me. I cannot look round upon the dear children here, without some misgiving that this sad disease will not perish out of our blood with her; but I am sure I have no selfishness in the thought, and God knows how small the world looks to one who comes out of such a sick-room on a bright summer day. I don’t know why I write this before going to bed. I only know that in the very pity and grief of my heart, I feel as if it were doing something.” After not many weeks she died, and the little child who was her last anxiety did not long survive her.

In all the latter part of the year Dickens’s thoughts were turning much to the form his next book should assume. A suggestion that he should write it in the first person, by way of change, had been thrown out by me, which he took at once very gravely; and this, with other things, though as yet not dreaming of any public use of his own personal and private recollections, conspired to bring about that resolve. The determination once taken, with what a singular truthfulness he contrived to blend the fact with the fiction may be shown by a small occurrence of this time. It has been inferred, from the vividness of the boy-impressions of Yarmouth in David’s earliest experiences, that the place must have been familiar to his own boyhood: but the truth was that at the close of 1848 he first saw that celebrated sea-port. One of its earlier months had been signalised by an adventure in which Leech, Lemon, and myself took part with him, when, obtaining horses from Salisbury, we passed the whole of a March day in riding over every part of the Plain; visiting Stonehenge, and exploring Hazlitt’s “hut” at Winterslow, birthplace of some of his finest essays; altogether with so brilliant a success that now (13th of November) he proposed to “repeat the Salisbury Plain idea in a new direction in mid-winter, to wit, Blackgang Chine in the Isle of Wight, with dark winter cliffs and roaring oceans.” But mid-winter brought with it too much dreariness of its own, to render these stormy accompaniments to it very palatable; and on the last day of the year he bethought him “it would be better to make an outburst to some old cathedral city we don’t know, and what do you say to Norwich and Stanfield-hall?” Thither accordingly the three friends went, illness at the last disabling me; and of the result I heard (12th of January, 1849) that Stanfield-hall, the scene of a recent frightful tragedy, had nothing attractive unless the term might be applied to “a murderous look that seemed to invite such a crime. We arrived,” continued Dickens, “between the Hall and Potass farm, as the search was going on for the pistol in a manner so consummately stupid, that there was nothing on earth to prevent any of Rush’s labourers from accepting five pounds from Rush junior to find the weapon and give it to him. Norwich, a disappointment” (one pleasant face “transformeth a city,” but he was unable yet to connect it with our delightful friend Elwin); “all save its place of execution, which we found fit for a gigantic scoundrel’s exit. But the success of the trip, for me, was to come. Yarmouth, sir, where we went afterwards, is the strangest place in the wide world: one hundred and forty-six miles of hill-less marsh between it and London. More when we meet. I shall certainly try my hand at it.” He made it the home of his “little Em’ly.”

Everything now was taking that direction with him; and soon, to give his own account of it, his mind was upon names “running like a high sea.” Four days after the date of the last-quoted letter (“all over happily, thank God, by four o’clock this morning”) there came the birth of his eighth child and sixth son; whom at first he meant to call by Oliver Goldsmith’s name, but settled afterwards into that of Henry Fielding; and to whom that early friend Ainsworth who had first made us known to each other, welcome and pleasant companion always, was asked to be godfather. Telling me of the change in the name of the little fellow, which he had made in a kind of homage to the style of work he was now so bent on beginning, he added, “What should you think of this for a notion of a character? ‘Yes, that is very true: but now,
What’s his motive?
’ I fancy I could make something like it into a kind of amusing and more innocent Pecksniff. ‘Well now, yes — no doubt that was a fine thing to do! But now, stop a moment, let us see —
What’s his motive?
’“ Here again was but one of the many outward signs of fancy and fertility that accompanied the outset of all his more important books; though, as in their cases also, other moods of the mind incident to such beginnings were less favourable. “Deepest despondency, as usual, in commencing, besets me;” is the opening of the letter in which he speaks of what of course was always one of his first anxieties, the selection of a name. In this particular instance he had been undergoing doubts and misgivings to more than the usual degree. It was not until the 23rd of February he got to anything like the shape of a feasible title. “I should like to know how the enclosed (one of those I have been thinking of) strikes you, on a first acquaintance with it. It is odd, I think, and new; but it may have A’s difficulty of being ‘too comic, my boy.’ I suppose I should have to add, though, by way of motto, ‘And in short it led to the very Mag’s Diversions.
Old Saying.
’ Or would it be better, there being equal authority for either, ‘And in short they all played Mag’s Diversions.
Old Saying?
’

Mag’s Diversions.
Being the personal history of
Mr. Thomas Mag the Younger,
Of Blunderstone House.”

This was hardly satisfactory, I thought; and it soon became apparent that he thought so too, although within the next three days I had it in three other forms. “
Mag’s Diversions
, being the Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of Mr. David Mag the Younger, of Blunderstone House.” The second omitted Adventures, and called his hero Mr. David Mag the Younger, of Copperfield House. The third made nearer approach to what the destinies were leading him to, and transformed Mr. David Mag into Mr. David Copperfield the Younger and his great-aunt Margaret; retaining still as his leading title,
Mag’s Diversions
. It is singular that it should never have occurred to him, while the name was thus strangely as by accident bringing itself together, that the initials were but his own reversed; but he was much startled when I pointed this out, and protested it was just in keeping with the fates and chances which were always befalling him. “Why else,” he said, “should I so obstinately have kept to that name when once it turned up?”

It was quite true that he did so, as I had curious proof following close upon the heels of that third proposal. “I wish,” he wrote on the 26th of February, “you would look over carefully the titles now enclosed, and tell me to which you most incline. You will see that they give up
Mag
altogether, and refer exclusively to one name — that which I last sent you. I doubt whether I could, on the whole, get a better name.

“1.
The Copperfield Disclosures.
Being the personal history, experience, and observation, of Mr. David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone House.
“2.
The Copperfield Records.
Being the personal history, experience, and observation, of Mr. David Copperfield the Younger, of Copperfield Cottage.
“3.
The Last Living Speech and Confession of David Copperfield Junior
, of Blunderstone Lodge, who was never executed at the Old Bailey. Being his personal history found among his papers.
“4.
The Copperfield Survey of the World as it Rolled.
Being the personal history, experience, and observation, of David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery.
“5.
The Last Will and Testament of Mr. David Copperfield.
Being his personal history left as a legacy.
“6.
Copperfield, Complete.
Being the whole personal history and experience of Mr. David Copperfield of Blunderstone House, which he never meant to be published on any account.

Or, the opening words of No. 6 might be
Copperfield’s Entire;
and
The Copperfield Confessions
might open Nos. 1 and 2. Now, what say you?”

What I said is to be inferred from what he wrote back on the 28th. “The
Survey
has been my favourite from the first. Kate picked it out from the rest, without my saying anything about it. Georgy too. You hit upon it, on the first glance. Therefore I have no doubt that it is indisputably the best title; and I will stick to it.” There was a change nevertheless. His completion of the second chapter defined to himself, more clearly than before, the character of the book; and the propriety of rejecting everything not strictly personal from the name given to it. The words proposed, therefore, became ultimately these only: “The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery, which he never meant to be published on any account.” And the letter which told me that with this name it was finally to be launched on the first of May, told me also (19th April) the difficulties that still beset him at the opening. “My hand is out in the matter of
Copperfield
. To-day and yesterday I have done nothing. Though I know what I want to do, I am lumbering on like a stage-waggon. I can’t even dine at the Temple to-day, I feel it so important to stick at it this evening, and make some head. I am quite aground; quite a literary Benedict, as he appeared when his heels wouldn’t stay upon the carpet; and the long Copperfieldian perspective looks snowy and thick, this fine morning.”
The allusion was to a dinner at his house the night before; when not only Rogers had to be borne out, having fallen sick at the table, but, as we rose soon after to quit the dining-room, Mr. Jules Benedict had quite suddenly followed the poet’s lead, and fallen prostrate on the carpet in the midst of us. Amid the general consternation there seemed a want of proper attendance on the sick: the distinguished musician faring in this respect hardly so well as the famous bard, by whose protracted sufferings in the library, whither he had been removed, the sanitary help available on the establishment was still absorbed; and as Dickens had been eloquent during dinner on the atrocities of a pauper-farming case at Tooting which was then exciting a fury of indignation, Fonblanque now declared him to be no better himself than a second Drouet, reducing his guests to a lamentable state by the food he had given them, and aggravating their sad condition by absence of all proper nursing. The joke was well kept up by Quin and Edwin Landseer, Lord Strangford joining in with a tragic sympathy for his friend the poet; and the banquet so dolefully interrupted ended in uproarious mirth. For nothing really serious had happened. Benedict went laughing away with his wife, and I helped Rogers on with his overshoes for his usual night-walk home. “Do you know how many waistcoats I wear?” asked the poet of me, as I was doing him this service. I professed my inability to guess. “Five!” he said: “and here they are!” Upon which he opened them, in the manner of the gravedigger in
Hamlet
, and showed me every one.