Dickens Interviews and Recollections Volume 2 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}. R. Hammond Further titles in preparation DICKENS Interviews and Recollections Volume 2 Edited by Philip Collins Selection and editorial matter © Philip Collins 1981 Soft cover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1981 978-0-333-26255-9 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1()81 Reprinted 1983 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-04596-9 ISBN 978-1-349-04594-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04594-5 To Jean and Arthur Humphreys with love and gratitude Contents List of Plates IX Acknowledgements X INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS 'Quite the Best Man I Ever Knew' Marcus Stone 181 'A Faultless Host' (and a 'Delightful Hostess') Henry and Emmeline Compton 190 Office-staff Memories William Edrupt and Another 192 'My Master in Letters' George Augustus Sala 197 Another of 'Mr Dickens's Young Men' Edmund Yates 205 A Rod of Iron in his Soul Eliza ~nn Linton 21 1 Meeting Dickens: 'A Foretaste of Paradise' James Payn 215 The Conductor of Household Words John Hollingshead 218 'This Most Charming of Men' Percy Fitzgerald 223 'So Unlike Ordinary Great Men' Grace Greenwood 233 Just Like his Books Francesco Berger 238 Loving Memories of a Very Faithful Follower Charles Kent 241 A Reading of the Carol Kate Field 250 A Hero to his Readings Manager George Dolby 257 Gad's Hill: Views from the Servants' Hall Various 26g The Squire of Gad's Hill Local Residents 272 Guests at Gad's Hill Francis Finlay and Others 281 Conversations in 186o Author Unknown 289 His Knowledge of French Novelists Paul Fival 292 He 'Always Made Me Feel Rather Afraid' Justin McCarthy 294 America, 1867-8 Various 296 His Closest American Friends James and Annie Fields 304 An Informal Call upon Dickens in 1867 G. D. Carrow 323 Dickens's Characters, Talents and Limitations Edward Bulwer-Lytton 330 'Such a Man!' Sir Arthur Helps 331 Glimpses Various 337 Advice to a Beginner Constance Cross 344 Vlll CONTENTS At Lady Molesworth's Lady Dorothy Nevill and Lord Redesdale 349 One Week before his Death Herman Merivale 352 A Few Days before his Death Kate Dickens Perugini 354 Suggestions for Further Reading 359 Index 361 List of Plates 9 Portrait of Dickens by W. P. Frith ( I859) IO Photograph of Dickens by John Watkins ( I86os) I I Dickens at Gad's Hill with his family, photograph by Mason & Co. ( I86os) I 2 Photograph of Dickens by Ben Gurney (I 868) I3 Newspaper caricatures (I868) I 4 Frontispiece to Edwin Drood (I 870) I 5 Sketches by 'Spy' (I 870) I6 Dickens with Benjamin Disraeli, from The Tailor and Cutter (I 870) 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 Universiry (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 of Wisdom, I847-186J; 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 of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray; the Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press for the extracts from The Journal if Richard Henry Dana, Jr, I841-6o, 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. .