Read Online Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin - Free Book Online
Authors: Claire Tomalin
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cheerful about returning to London, even though he had to end his letter with a P.S., ‘Damn the Tories – They’ll win here I am afraid’ – and they did. 17
Before the year was out, he was writing the libretto for a comic opera on an English theme,
The Village Coquettes
, with music by Fanny’s friend from her student days, John Hullah. He was also overseeing the proofs of his first book. It had come about through another new friend, the novelist Harrison Ainsworth, who was growing rich from his historical and low-life fiction,
Rookwood
, about Dick Turpin, and
Jack Sheppard
, another criminal hero. He was seven years older than Dickens, good-looking, well dressed and sophisticated. He lived with a lady not his wife, the formidable Eliza Touchet, who made clever conversation; she was older than him, the widow of a cousin, and since he had separated from his wife she had taken charge of him, at Kensal Lodge, where they entertained in style. Ainsworth saw how good Boz’s work was, set out to discover his true identity, introduced himself and urged Dickens to publish a collection of his sketches. Nothing could be easier: here was his own publisher, John Macrone, and here was another friend, George Cruikshank, the most admired artist in the country, to provide the illustrations. Ainsworth knew how to do things.
In October, Dickens was negotiating with Macrone, inviting him to Furnival’s for ‘Scotch Whiskey and Cigars’ and setting up a sensational new piece to crown the first collection of his sketches, an account of Newgate Prison. A day-long visit was arranged through Black, who persuaded a radical MP to take Dickens inside: this was the occasion for which he rose from his sick bed. 18 In the prison school he saw young boys awaiting trial for picking pockets. They appeared pleased with their own importance and they shocked him: ‘fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld. – There was not one redeeming feature among them – not a glance of honesty – not a wink expressive of any thing but the gallows and the hulks …’ The resulting sketch, ‘A Visit to Newgate’, ended with the condemned cell, plainly described, where he allowed himself to imagine the dreams of a prisoner who is to be hanged in the morning.
The name of Dickens was not to appear – he was to remain ‘Boz’, and the title he suggested was
Sketches by ‘Boz’, Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People
, chosen because ‘it is both unaffected and unassuming – two requisites which it is very desirable for a young author not to lose sight of.’ This is at any rate what he meant to write, although he slipped up and left out the ‘not’. 19 It was to be published in two volumes on 8 February 1836, the day after his twenty-fourth birthday.
5
Four Publishers and a Wedding
1836
For Dickens, 1836 was to be an
annus mirabilis
, but it did not feel like it in January. ‘I am so ill this morning that I am unable to work,’ he wrote to Catherine. ‘I wrote till 3 oclock this morning (I had not done for the paper till 8) and passed the whole night … in a state of exquisite torture from the spasm in my side far exceeding anything I ever felt. It still continues exceedingly painful and my head is aching so from pain and want of rest, that I can hardly hold it up … I have not had so severe an attack since I was a child.’ Stoically he was up and working again after writing to her, and the following day he described how he had ‘dragged on as well as I could ’till a little after One in the morning, and got up at eight’. 1 On most evenings he was either at the House, taking down debates into the small hours, or at the theatre, with a review to write afterwards. Deadlines loomed perpetually for stories or sketches promised to other papers, and he was under pressure to get on with his libretto for the planned opera,
The Village Coquettes
. At the office he was arguing about his terms of
Before the year was out, he was writing the libretto for a comic opera on an English theme,
The Village Coquettes
, with music by Fanny’s friend from her student days, John Hullah. He was also overseeing the proofs of his first book. It had come about through another new friend, the novelist Harrison Ainsworth, who was growing rich from his historical and low-life fiction,
Rookwood
, about Dick Turpin, and
Jack Sheppard
, another criminal hero. He was seven years older than Dickens, good-looking, well dressed and sophisticated. He lived with a lady not his wife, the formidable Eliza Touchet, who made clever conversation; she was older than him, the widow of a cousin, and since he had separated from his wife she had taken charge of him, at Kensal Lodge, where they entertained in style. Ainsworth saw how good Boz’s work was, set out to discover his true identity, introduced himself and urged Dickens to publish a collection of his sketches. Nothing could be easier: here was his own publisher, John Macrone, and here was another friend, George Cruikshank, the most admired artist in the country, to provide the illustrations. Ainsworth knew how to do things.
In October, Dickens was negotiating with Macrone, inviting him to Furnival’s for ‘Scotch Whiskey and Cigars’ and setting up a sensational new piece to crown the first collection of his sketches, an account of Newgate Prison. A day-long visit was arranged through Black, who persuaded a radical MP to take Dickens inside: this was the occasion for which he rose from his sick bed. 18 In the prison school he saw young boys awaiting trial for picking pockets. They appeared pleased with their own importance and they shocked him: ‘fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld. – There was not one redeeming feature among them – not a glance of honesty – not a wink expressive of any thing but the gallows and the hulks …’ The resulting sketch, ‘A Visit to Newgate’, ended with the condemned cell, plainly described, where he allowed himself to imagine the dreams of a prisoner who is to be hanged in the morning.
The name of Dickens was not to appear – he was to remain ‘Boz’, and the title he suggested was
Sketches by ‘Boz’, Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People
, chosen because ‘it is both unaffected and unassuming – two requisites which it is very desirable for a young author not to lose sight of.’ This is at any rate what he meant to write, although he slipped up and left out the ‘not’. 19 It was to be published in two volumes on 8 February 1836, the day after his twenty-fourth birthday.
5
Four Publishers and a Wedding
1836
For Dickens, 1836 was to be an
annus mirabilis
, but it did not feel like it in January. ‘I am so ill this morning that I am unable to work,’ he wrote to Catherine. ‘I wrote till 3 oclock this morning (I had not done for the paper till 8) and passed the whole night … in a state of exquisite torture from the spasm in my side far exceeding anything I ever felt. It still continues exceedingly painful and my head is aching so from pain and want of rest, that I can hardly hold it up … I have not had so severe an attack since I was a child.’ Stoically he was up and working again after writing to her, and the following day he described how he had ‘dragged on as well as I could ’till a little after One in the morning, and got up at eight’. 1 On most evenings he was either at the House, taking down debates into the small hours, or at the theatre, with a review to write afterwards. Deadlines loomed perpetually for stories or sketches promised to other papers, and he was under pressure to get on with his libretto for the planned opera,
The Village Coquettes
. At the office he was arguing about his terms of
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