Dickens Interviews and Recollections Volume 1 Also by Philip Collins A Christmas Carol: The Public Reading Version (editor) A Dickens Bibliography Charles Dickens: David Copperfield Charles Dickens: The Public Readings (editor) Dickens and Crime Dickens and Education Dickens's Bleak House Dickens: The Critical Heritage (editor) English Christmas (editor) From Manly Tears to Stiff Upper Lip: The Victorian and Pathos James Boswell Reading Aloud: A Victorian Metier The Impress of the Moving Age Thomas Cooper, the Chartist Other Interviews and Recollections volumes available on BRENDAN BEHAN (two volumes) edited by E. H. Mikhail HENRY JAMES edited by Norman Page KIPLING (two volumes) edited by Harold Orel D. H. LAWRENCE (two volumes) edited by Norman Page KARL MARX edited by David McLellan TENNYSON edited by Norman Page THACKERAY (two volumes) edited by Philip Collins H. G. WELLS edited by J. R. Hammond Further titles in preparation DICKENS Interviews and Recollections Volume 1 Edited by Philip Collins M Selection and editorial matter© Philip Collins rg81 Softcover reprint of the hardcover ISt edition 1981 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1981 Reprinted 1983 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-04593-8 ISBN 978-1-349-04591-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04591-4 To Jean and Arthur Humphreys with love and gratitude Contents List of Plates IX Acknowledgements X List of Abbreviations Xll Introduction X Ill A Dickens Chronology xxvn INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS 'My Dear Collins': a Message from Novelist to Biographer Charles Dickens 1 'A Terrible Boy to Read' Mary Weller and Others 2 'Not Particularly Studious' Several Schoolfellows 4 A Smart Young Clerk Edward Blackmore and George Lear g Prospects Improving John Payne Collier I 3 The Fastest Shorthand Reporter in London Charles ,\1ackay I4 Courtship and Young Marriage Catherine and Mary Hogarth I6 Boz Emergent; or, the Young Lion John Forster and Others I 7 The Young Novelist at Work and Play Henry Burnett 2I 'Completely outside Philosophy, Science, etc.' G. H. Lewes 25 'Dear Dickens is a Most Extraordinary Man!' W. C. Macready 28 Dickens on Holiday ( I84o) and Afterwards Eleanor E. Christian 33 Yankee Inquisitiveness Pays Off C. Edwards Lester 4I Another Yankee Interviewer, I84I John D. Sherwood 44 'A Frank Cordiality, and a Friendly Clasp' W. P. Frith 48 America I 842 Various 5 I Vlll CONTENTS His American Secretary in I 842 George Washington Putnam 57 Maddest Nonsense and Tragic Depths Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle 6 I A French View in I 843 Paul Forgues 65 'Abominably Vulgar', but 'at the Top of the Tree' W. M. Thackeray 67 'No Nonsense' about Him R. H. Horne 70 A 'Manly Man', a 'Hearty Man' Thomas Adolphus Trollope 7I Editor of the Daily News W. H. Russell and Others 75 Views from the Castle Richard and Lavinia Watson 8o Dickens's 'Dearest Meery' Remembers Mary Boyle 83 Beaming Eye, Bank Balance, and Babies Francis Jeffrey 87 Splendid Strolling Mary Cowden Clarke go In the Chair George Eliot and Others 96 The Company He Kept John Forster and Elizabeth Gaskell 105 Dickens in Conversation: 'A Demon of Delightfulness' Henry Crabb Robinson and Others I 10 Working Habits Georgina Hogarth and Others I I9 The Pace ofSerialisation Charles Kent and Hablot K. Browne I 26 Dickens and his Parents E. Davey I 29 The Eldest Son's Recollections Charles Dickens Jr I 3 I One Apart from All Other Beings Mary (Mamie) Dickens I4I 'I Loved Him for His Faults' Kate Dickens Perugini I5I 'The Kindest and Most Considerate of Fathers' Alfred Tennyson Dickens I 55 'His Lovable and Great-Hearted Nature' Henry Fielding Dickens I 58 Charming with Children, Usually Kate Douglas Wiggin and Others I65 'That Curious Life-giving Power of His' Lady Ritchie I 76 List of Plates 1 (a) Miniature by Janet Barrow (1830) 1 (b) Miniature by Rose Emma Drummond ( 1835) 2 Drawing by Samuel Laurence (1837) 3 Portrait by Daniel Maclise ( 1839) 4 Sketch by Alfred, Count D'Orsay ( 1842) 5 Dickens with his wife and Georgina Hogarth (1843), sketch by Daniel Maclise 6 Dickens reading The Chimes ( 1844), sketch by Daniel Maclise 7 Dickens as Bobadil in Every Man in his Humour ( 1846), painting by Charles R. Leslie 8 Daguerreotype by Henri Claudet (c. 1850) Acknowledgements Dr Michael Slater and Dr Andrew Sanders, past and present editors of the Dickensian, have been generous in advice and in giving me permission to reprint material from their journal, as have their contributors, Professors K. J. Fielding, Jerome Meckier and John R. DeBruyn. The trustees of the Dickens House Museum have allowed me to publish manuscript material and to reproduce portraits from their collection, and the Curator of Dickens House, Dr David Parker, has been most helpful in giving me access to its riches. Other illustrations appear through the kindness of the Forster Collection (Victoria and Albert Museum), the National Portrait Gallery, and the Mander and Mitcheson Collection. Other friends and colleagues have helped by answering enquiries or securing material for me: Professor Sylvere Monod, Professor F. W.J. Hemmings, Professor Kathleen Tillotson, Dr John Podeschi, Miss Eva Searl, Mr lain Crawford, Mr Charles Leahy and Mr Richard Foulkes. Like all students of Dickens, I am much in the debt of the editors of the Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens, the annotation as well as the text of which has been invaluable. The staff of Leicester University Library have been energetic in obtaining materials for me, and the Epsom Library and the Eastgate House Museum, Rochester, have answered enquiries. I salute and thank my predecessors in this biographical field, whose researches have greatly eased mine: notably Frederic G. Kitton, William R. Hughes, Robert Langton and W.J. Carlton. I thank also the patient and skilful typists who have coped with my second and third as well as my first thoughts: Mrs Doreen Butler, Mrs Sylvia Garfield, Miss Anne Sowter, Mrs Pat Taylor and Mrs Brenda Tracy. For permission to reprint copyright material I thank the editors of The Times Literary Supplement, Harper's Magazine and University (Princeton, N.J.), and the following publishers: Oxford University Press and the Clarendon Press for the extracts from the Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson; The George Eliot Letters, ed. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XI Gordon S. Haight; Arthur A. Adrian's Georgina Hogarth and the Dickens Circle; and Gordon N. Ray's Thackeray: The Age rif Wisdom, I847-I863; John Murray (Publishers) Ltd for the extracts from James Milne's A Window in Fleet Street; Frederick Muller Ltd for the extracts from Gladys Storey's Dickens and Daughter; William Heinemann Ltd for the extracts from Sir Henry Fielding Dickens's The Recollections ofSir Henry Dickens, Q. C.; Harvard University Press, and Belinda Norman-Butler, literary executor for the Estate of William Thackeray, for the extracts from The Letters and Private Papers rif William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray; the Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press for the extracts from The Journal rif Richard Henry Dana, ]r, 184I-6o, ed. R. F. Lucid. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright-holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. List of Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used in the editorial matter. Dickens Circle J. W. T. Ley, The Dickens Circle: A .Narrative of the .Novelist's Friendships (I 9 I 8). Dkn The Dickensian (I 905-). Life John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (I872-4), ed.J. W. T. Ley (I928). Book and chapter, as well as page, references are given. N The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter (the Nonesuch Edition), 3 vols ( I938). p The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillot­ son (the Pilgrim Edition), 4 vols issued so far (Oxford, I965-77). Pen and Pencil Charles Dickens: By Pen and Pencil, including Anecdotes and Reminiscences Collected by his Friends and Companions, ed. Frederic G. Kitton ( I 890); with Supplement (I 890) . Speeches The Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. K. J. Fielding (Oxford, I 960). Introduction This book has been both a joy and an anguish to compile: a joy because Dickens is such a vivid, active and fascinating man, in whom I continually delight; an anguish because, even with two volumes allowed me, I have had to omit so many aspects and so many lively and intelligent accounts of him. His friend and colleague Edmund Yates aptly commented, 'I have always held that Dickens was an exception to the general rule of authors being so much less interesting than their books', 1 and, though not every­ body took to Dickens, I have never come across anyone who, meeting or seeing him, wrote him off as dull, uninteresting or negative. Moreover, his personality and multifarious activities are intimately and intricately connected with his art, as his commen­ tators have shown. I tried to illustrate this in an essay called 'How Many Men was Dickens the Novelist?', where I argued that it was impossible to isolate the Novelist from the many incarnations of the Man- the parent and family man, the journalist and editor, the philanthropist and public man, the brilliant after-dinner speaker, the amateur actor, theatrical director and public reader, even the author (as he intended to be) of a cookbook: and this list of his activities is far from exhaustive.2 Into all these activities, public and private, artistic and practical, he threw himself wholeheartedly.