THE LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22491, 27 August 1938, Page 20

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS

Art and Energy

(Abridged from, an Address before the Christchurch branch of the Dickens Fellowship.)

[By J. H. E. SCHRODER.!

There is no attempt in this paper to characterise Dickens in any comprehensive way, or to re-estimate him as a writer. It is nothing but an account of such things in the letters as have filled out or modified ideas of Dickens formed on other evidence.

The impression which the letters have done most to form and deepen in me is the impression of an immense energy and industry. No biographer or critic has made me realise the extent and variety of Dickens's work. There is a reason for this: the novels always come first in every account of Dickens, as of course they should; but the amount of space and attention given to them is deceptive in one respect. It makes you fancy that in Dickens's life the proportion between novelwriting and other activity was much the same. And this is a mistake. Everybody knows that Dickens edited or controlled "Household Words" and "All the Year Round," for example. Probably not one Dickensian in 100 has understood how closely Dickens was tied to these journals, how much time he spent writing for them, arranging the issues, reading and revising contributed articles and stories, corresponding with contributors, working over the proofs, and so on. Dickens was in fact a working journalist whose literary conscience loaded him with duties that smaller men would not have seen or lazier men would have rejected. He would rewrite articles, the material of which was better than the workmanship. He would touch and retouch stories to right the economy or truth of their effect. Platform and Stage Again, everybody knows about Dickens's public readings: I don't think many realise how widely he travelled on his reading tours and how arduous travel was, 70 or 80 years ago, how many readings he gave, or how much he put into these performances. (A tour might embrace 50 to 70 readings; the American programme was for 84. In April, 1867, Dickens had been "working through a series of readings. widely dispersed through England, Scotland, and Ireland," had "not once been at home at Gad's Hill since last January," and was "little likely to get there before the middle of May.") These were not, in Dickens's own phrase, "mere readings out of a book." He was an actor: he had been a writer since his infancy, he said, and an actor as long. His public readings were dramatic versions of the text of the novels, carefully rewritten for the new purpose, and given out with an extraordinary mustering and concentration of force. Dickens learned by heart every word of these dramatisations, two hours long, or longer; and in that time one man indeed played many parts. Then, third, everybody knows that .Dickens loved play-acting—-writing plays, managing and producing plays, and acting in them. But again, 1 should think, few readers have any impression but that these stage performances which Dickens organised year by year and took part in were easy, unexacting affairs of the drawing-room or the private hall. It is a false impression. His company was carefully built up; he called in professionals to help; the rehearsing was long and severe; the stage management was always thorough; and the company gave public performances, often travelling far afield, in public theatres. All of this work was done because Dickens enjoyed it; much <-f it was done for charity. But it was hard work. Gnce Dickens took it up, he had his hands full: he was producer, managing actor, property master, publicity agent. . . . "Working Like a Dragon" These three activities, of editorship, of the theatre, of the public readings, were carried on for many years, filling the pauses between the great novels and not those pauses only. When Dickens first took out an insurance policy—in 1838—the examiners thought that he worked too much. Until he wrote his very last novels—they came out first in monthly parts or serial instalments —he was never ahead of his contract with the printers but always, as he said when he was doing "The Old Curiosity Shop," "mortally pressed for time." Thinking out the "Christmas Carol," he would walk about the black streets of London, 15 and 20 miles many a night, when "all the sober folk had gone to bed." Writing "The Chimes," in Italy, he "wore himself to death" in.a month of concentrated work, when he could not "divest himself" of the story and

Crowded Days

| ended up "nervous as a man who is dying of drink and as haggard as a murderer." Dickens talks about "a paroxysm" of Copperfield, of "working like a dragon" on "Our Mutual Friend," so that he became a "terror to the household, likewise to all the organs and brass bands" in the neighbourhood. "This is an old story with me," he says about his work on the same book; "I have never divided a book of my writing with anything else, but have always wrought at it to the exclusion of everything else." When he came back from his last American reading tour, his business partner, Wills, was ill, so that Dickens had to assume the business management of "All the Year Round" as well as the literary control, and to master all the money matters that were new to him; and while he was doing this he went to Paris and took over the production of a play that was running in one of the theatres there and saved it from the failure that the professionals were facing. He was "used up" after writing "Hard Times." He had intended to do no large work .of fiction for a year, but the idea "laid hold of him by the throat in a very violent manner." He never, so far as I can make out, ceased to press, advise, and minutely instruct his illustrators, after the fashion of this letter to Cattermole:

Can you do for me by Saturday evening [this was Wednesday]—l know the time is short, but I think the subject will suit you, and I am greatly pressed—a party of rioters (with Hugh and Simon Tappertit consoicuous among them) in old John Willett's bar, turning the liquor taps to their advantage, smashing bottles, cutting down the grove of lemons, sitting astride on casks, drinking out of

Charles Dickens (1844)

—From a wood engraving by Charles Martin,

the best punch-bowls, eating the great cheese, smoking sacred pipes, etc., etc.; John Willett, fallen backward in his chair, regarding them with a stupid horror, and quite alone among them, with none of The Maypole customers at his back. • It's in your way, and you'll do it a hundred times better than I can gest it to' you, I know.

In the last sentence is a touch of the "winning manner" that came into play when Dickens had Doyle and Leech to breakfast, specially to persuade them to draw and cut illustrations afresh.

corroding me, if I flattered myself that I was in repose. On the other hand, I think that my habit of easy self-ab-straction and withdrawal into fancies has always refreshed and strengthened me in short intervals, wonderfully. I always seem to myself to have rested far more than I have worked; and I do really believe that I have some exceptional faculty of accumulating young feelings in short pauses, which obliterates a quantity of wear and tear.

This tour was a triumph that exhausted Dickens. It is impossible to read about it without being astonished by the public enthusiasm, by the power which Dickens had at command, and by the sad contrast between the tired, hoarse, almost voiceless, sick man, resting before a performance, and the giant who rose up behind the reading table on the platform. The end of the story is familiar. Dickens began what was to be a farewell reading tour of England: it had to be broken off. He did much work afterwards, but he never recovered his elastic strength; and the next year he died. (To be continued.)

This is a sample day of 1856, in which you see a story for one of the famous Christmas numbers, a novel, the routine of "Household Words," and the preparation of a stage performance all surging forward together:

You may faintly imagine, my venerable friend, the occupation of these also gray hairs, between "Golden Marvs,", "Little Dorrits," "Household Worcises," four stage-carpenters entirely

boarding on the premises, a carpenter's shop erected in the back garden, size always boiling over on all the lower fires, Stanfield perpetually elevated on planks and splashing himself from head to foo.t, Telbin requiring'impossibilities of smart gasmen, and a legion of prowling nondescripts for ever shrinking in and out. Calm amidst the wreck, your aged friend glides away on the "Dorrit" stream, forgetting the uproar for a stretch of hours, refreshing himself with a ten or 12 miles' walk, pitches headforemost into foaming rehearsals, placidly emerges for editorial purposes, smokes over buckets Qf distemper with Mr Stanfield aforesaid, again calmly floats upon the "Dorrit" waters.

And this is a day from 1857, when you see Dickens writing a special article, giving a reading, rehearsing, vehemently getting out the .current number of "Household Words," acting, celebrating and speechifying, and collapsing and bounding up again:

I hope you have seen my tussle with the "Edinburgh." I saw the chance last Friday week, as I was going down to read the "Carol" in St. Martin's Hall. Instantly turned to, then and there, and wrote half the article. Flew out of bed next morning, and finished it by noon. Went down to the Valley of Illustration (we acted that night), did the day's business, corrected the proofs in Polar costume in dressingroom, broke up two numbers of "Household Words" to get it out directly, played in "Frozen Deep" and "Uncle John," presided at supper of company, made no end of speeches, went home, and gave in completely for four hours, then got sound asleep, and next day was as fresh as you used to be in the far-off days of your lusty youth. Penalty

It isn't surprising that in the early 1860's you catch signs of the pressure telling. Fag—faintness: these are hints of his having drawn too heavily on his wealth of energy. -By 1866 he could say himself: - "I am not so foolish as to suppose that ail my work can have been achieved without some penalty, and I have noticed for some time a decided change in my buoyancy and hopefulness—in other words, in my usual tone." The letters before that anticipate this confession. But Dickens was not to be checked by these warnings from undertaking the American reading tour of 1867-68, He argued down all advice against it:

I shall never rest much while my faculties last, and (if I know myself) have a certain something in me that would still be active in rusting and