The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-14 00:00:00

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INCIDENTS IN , THE LIFE OF CHARLES

DICKENS.

"A writer of many years standing" in the Morning
Advertiser who was previously associated with several
invazines and reviews givas Some interesting and original
fats -respecting Charles Dickens' early literary career.
It t a mistake according to this writer to suppose that
Di rens earliest writings appeared in the Morning
0 '
Chronicle under the editorship onlf. Black. Mr. Dickens
fidst became connected with thniliorning Chronicle as a•re-
porter, in the gallery of the House of Commons. This
wt *n 1835-36 ; but Mr. Dickens had been previously
en.
f
ed, while in his nineteenth' year, as a reporter for
al3 lication entitled The Mirror of Parliament, in which
cal . city lie occupied the very highest rank among the
eighty or ninety reporters for the Press then in Parlia-
ment. It was about the year 1833-34,-before Mr.
Dickens's connexion with the Morning Chronicle, and- be-
for Mr. Black, then editor of that journal, had ever met
wi i him, that he commenced his literary career as an
am teur writer. He made his debut in the - latter
en of 1834 or the beginning of 1835 in the Old
It
Monthly Magazine, then conducted by Captain Holland.
It was a a half-crown magazine of good standing, and the
predecessor of the New Monthly Magazine, started under
the editorship of Thomas CaMpbell, which still. survives. It
was in this monthly periodical—not in the columns of the
Morning, Chronicle—that Mr. Dickens first appeared in
the realms of- literature. He sent, in the first instance, .
-:bis contributions to that periodical anonymously.
These caiisisted of sketches, chiefly of a humorous -
character; and Were simply signed "Boz." For a long
inre t .
~.,. did not attract any special attention; hilt were
'•-, :, ... 44.. en of n nQwspaper: notices of the magazine
as "c e er, t,- - - v frc. :,....t,• ....:
~ _
who signs himself "J. G.," uncle e e'r r -.. . i . '
the monthly magazine, which by this time had dropped
its prefix—early in 1836—and he expressed to the pro-
prietor his admiration of the " Sketches by Boz," . and
hoped they would be continued. He therefore asked what
the name of. the author was, when, strange to say, the
proprietor, Captain Holland, had forgotten it ! However
he promised to look up a letter of his and brine. it the fol-
lowing day. The letter was written in the most modest
terms. It was simply to the effect that as he (Mr.
Dickens) had hitherto given all his contributions—those
signed ' Boz"—gratuitously, he would be glad, if Captain.
Holland thought his " Sketches" worthy of any small re-
muneration, as otherwise he would be obliged to discon-
tinue them, because he wag going very soon to get married
and therefore would be subjected to more expenses
than he was while living alone, which he was during
the time, in Furnival's Inn. Thei new editor wrote to
propose a continuance of the sketches, and received in re-
turn a letter from Mr. Dickens to the effect that he had
just entered into an arrangement with Messrs; Chapman
and Hall to write a monthly serial. He did not name the
work, but I found, in a few weeks, it was none other than
'The " Pickwick Papers." He added, that as this serial
would occupy much of his spare time from his duties as a
reporter, he . could not undertake to furnish me with the
proposed sketches for less than eight guineas per sheet,
—which was at the rate of half a guinea per page.
" Only imagine," exclaims the writer, " Mr. Dickens
offering to furnish me with a continuation of his
`Sketches by Boz' for eight guineas a sheet, whereas in
little more than six months from that date he could—so
great in the interval had his .popularity become—have got
a hundred guineas per sheet of 16 pages from any of the
leading periodicals of the day," At first Charles Dickens
had little promise of the fame and' fortune he was to
acquire so rapidly. He was to receive from Chapman and
Hall for the ' Pickwick Papers " fifteen guineas a num-
ber, each number consisting of two sheets or thirty-two
pages. For the first five months " Pickwick " threatened
to be a failure, though great exertions were made to
. circulate him throughout the provinces. So small was the
demand for it, indeed, that the publishers, accord-
ing. to this account, thought of discontinuing
it altogether. However, Sam Weller made his
appearance, and produced a complete revolution.
The press was all but unanimous in praising " Samivel "
as an entirely original character, whom none but a great
genius could have created ; and all of a sudden, in conse-
quence of " Samivers " popularity, the " Pickwick
Prpers " rose to an unheard of popularity. The back
numbers of the work were ordered to a large extent, and
of course all idea of discontinuing it was abandoned.
By the time the " Pickwick Papers " had reached their
twelfth number, that being half, of the numbers of which
it was originally intended the work should consist, Messrs
Chapman and Hall were so gratified with the signal suc-
cess to which it had now attained that they sent Mr.
Dickens a cheque for five hundred pounds as a practical
expression of their satisfaction with the sale.
The work continued ' steadily to increase in cir-
culation until its completion, when the sale had
all but reached 40,000 copies. In the interval between
the twelfth and concluding number,Messrs. Chapman and
• Hall sent Mr. Dickens several cheques, amounting in all
to £3,000, in addition to the fifteen guineas per number
which they had engaged at the beginning to give him. It
was understood at the time that Messrs. Chapman and
Hall made a clear profit amounting to nearly £20,000 by
the sale of the " Pickwick Papers," after paying Mr.
Dickens in round numbers £3,500.
- -

--- -
The following is Charles Dickens' own account of the
first talk about " Pickwick " given some time since :—" I
was a young man of two or three-and-twenty, when
Messrs. Chapman and Hall, attracted by some pieces I
was at that time writing in the Morning Chronicle news-
paper, or had just written in the Old Monthly Magazine
((of which one series had lately been collected and pub-
lished in two volumes, illustrated by Mr. George Cruik-
shank), waited upon me to propose a something that
should be published in shilling numbers—then only
known to me, or, I believe, to anybody else by a dim
recollection of certain interminable novels in that form,
ti hich used to be carried about the country by pedlars,
and over some of which I remember to have shed innu-
merable tears before I had served my apprenticeship to
life. When I opened my door in Furnivals Inn to the
partner who represented the firm, I recognised in him
the person from whose hands I had bought, two or three
years previously, and whom I had never seen
before or since, my first copy of the magazine in
which my first effusion— a paper in the Sketches,' called
Mr. Minns and his Cousin '—dropped stealthily one
evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark
letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet-
street—appeared in all the glory of print ; on which
'occasion I walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned
into it for half-an-hour, because my eyes were so dimmed
with joy and pride, that they could not bear the
street, and were not fit to be seen there.
I told my visitor of the coincidence, which
we both hailed as a good omen, and so fell to business.
The idea propounded to me was, that the monthly some-
'thing should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed
by Mr. Seymour ; and there was a notion, either on the
part of that admirable humorous artist, or of my visitor,
that a Nimrod Club,' the members of which were to
go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting
themselves into difficulties through their want of dex-
terity, would be the best means of introducing these. I
objected, on consideration, that although born and partly
bred in the country I was no great sportsman, except
in regard of all kinds of locomotion ; that the idea was
not novel, and had been already much used; that it would
be infinitely better for the plates to arise naturally out of
the text ; and that I would like to take my own way,
with a freer range of English scenes and people, and was
afraid I should ultimately do so in any case, whatever
course I might prescribe to myself at starting. My views
being deferred to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote
the first number, from the proof sheets of which Mr.
Seymour made his drawing of the club, and his happy
portrait of its founder—the latter on Mr. Edward Chap-
man's description of the dress and bearing of a
real personage whom he had often seen. I connected
Mr. Pickwick with a club, because of the original
suggestion, and I put in Mr. Winkle expressly for the use
of Mr. Seymour. We started with a number of twenty-
four pages instead of thirty-two, and four illustrations in
lieu of a couple. Mr. Seymour's sudden and lamented
death before the second number was published brought
about a quick decision upon a point already in agitation ;
the number became one of thirty-two pages, with only two
illustrations, and remained so to the end. Boz,' my signature
in the Morning Chronicle and in the Old Monthly Maga-
zine appended to the monthly cover of this book, andretained
long afterwards, was the nickname of a pet child, a
younger brother, whom I had dubbed Moses, in honour
of the Vicar of Wakefield, which, being facetiously pro-
nounced through the nose, became Boses, and, being
shortened, became Boz. Boz was a very familiar house-
hold word to me, long before I was an author, and so I
came to adopt it."
Writing of the deceased author the London correspon-
dent of the Scotsman says :—Since his sudden seizure in
the midst of his readings last year Mr. Dickens had never
been the same man. After a little while he 'began to
go about as before, flitted to and fro in his ardent, restless
way, took long walks after his favourite fashion,
starting on the whim of the moment, at any hour,
for anywhere, and resumed his writing and other labours,
but not with the same lightness and vivacity as before.
Though a sturdy walker, there had always been
something of a limp in his gait, and this now became
more marked. He had more need of his stick, and stooped
perceptibly. He grew sooner wearied, both in walking
and in work, and complained at times of a strange
supineness of mind and laboured slowness with the pen.
Those who had not seen him for some time were most
struck on meeting him within the last few months
with the sudden whiteness of his hair. From grey he
became all at once white just as Mr. Bright did not
long since. I saw him a few weeks ago, just before he
left town, and his, sunburned face seemed set in snow,
beard and hair were blanched so perfectly. Beyond
question, I think it was " Edwin Brood " that killed
him. He went back to work too soon. He had had
the idea of the story for some time in his mind, I believe ;
but after the first impulse of the start was off, he found
the development of the incidents and characters slo w.
and painful. Within the last week or so he was com-
plaining much of this. He seemed to make so little pro-
gress and at the cost of such an effort. Perhaps it was
the hot weather, he thought, or he was out of sorts, and
would get into better trim by-and-by. But the disorder
was deeper and more fatal. Even before his illness
last year, however, he had had warnings of exhaustion.
He suffered at times from a terrible sleeplessness which

JUNE 14, 1870.

often drove him forth at midnight to walk—his favourite
remedy for all troubles—till dawn. Like Wordsworth,
he belonged to the school of peripatetics. Much given
myself to walking at all hours, I have come across him
often in his rambles, always marching swiftly, with ear-
nest resolute air, as if bound to be at some given spot
by the hour and minute, his quick glancing eye scanning
everything and everybody. In -the story of
the " Two Apprentices," which he wrote with
Wilkie Collins, he described his own restless
impetuous activity—laborious idleness he called it. All
this wear and tear of writing, public readings, and per-
petual movement, told even on his elastic and vigorous
constitution in the end. The American trip brought him
close upon £30,000 ; but otherwise I doubt whether it did
him much good. Altogether the strain was too severe.
Then came " Edwin Drood" to put the finishing stroke
to the work. Besides the three numbers already pub-
lished, there are, I believe, three others all but finished
for the press. The plot of the story is sketched out,
and it is hoped that sufficient materials remain
at least for the solution of the mystery which
forms the basis of the tale. There is a talk of a burial in
Westminster Abbey, and it will rest with the family to
decide it. In any case, there will certainly be a monu-
ment there. Literature, like virtue, is too often only its
own reward. But it may be mentioned that the author
of " Pickwick," starting as a Parliamentary reporter, and
Without any aid but his own energy and genius, acquired
a considerable fortune, which he leaves to his family.