LONDON:

1837.

Then on

third floor

which he

CHAPTER VI.

WRITING THE PICKWICK PAPERS.

1837.

THE first letter I had from him was at the close of

1836 from Furnival's-inn, when he sent me the book of his opera of the Village Coquettes, which had been pubof No. 15; lished by Mr. Bentley; and this was followed, two months later, by his collected Sketches, both first and second series; which he desired me to receive as a very small 'testimony of the donor's regard and obligations, as well as of his desire to cultivate and avail himself of a friend

had occupied since Christmas 1935; having

moved from

the same floor of

which he

first went in 1834.

No. 13, to ship which has been so pleasantly thrown in his way.......... 'In short, if you will receive them for my sake and not 'for their own, you will very greatly oblige me.' I had met him in the interval at the house of our common friend Mr. Ainsworth, and I remember vividly the impression then made upon me.

As he was 35 years

ago.

Very different was his face in those days from that which photography has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full

1837.. Personal

tion.

wide nostril, eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and LONDON: running over with humour and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with sensibility. The descriphead was altogether well-formed and symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it were extremely spirited. The hair so scant and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whisker; but there was that in the face as I first recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books, and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion flashed from every part of it. It was as if made of steel, was said of it, four or five years Remark after the time to which I am referring, by a most original Carlyle. and delicate observer, the late Mrs. Carlyle. 'What a 'face is his to meet in a drawing-room!' wrote Leigh Hunt to me, the morning after I made them known to each other. It has the life and soul in it of fifty human of Leigh 'beings.' In such sayings are expressed not alone the restless and resistless vivacity and force of which I have spoken, but that also which lay beneath them of steadiness and hard endurance.

Several unsuccessful efforts were made by each to get the other to his house before the door of either was opened at last. A son had been born to him on twelfthday (the 6th January 1837), and before the close of the

VOL. I.

H

of Mrs.

Hunt.

Birth of son.

his eldest

CHALK:
GRAVES

END: 1837.

Last letter from Fur

following month he and his wife were in the lodgings at Chalk they had occupied after their marriage. Early in March there is a letter from him accounting for the failure of a promise to call on me because of 'a crew of 'house agents and attornies' through whom he had nearly missed his conveyance to Chalk, and been made more 'than half wild besides.' This was his last letter from nival's-inn. Furnival's-inn. In that same month he went to 48, Doughty-street; and in his first letter to me from that address, dated at the close of the month, there is this passage. 'We only called upon you a second time in the hope of 'getting you to dine with us, and were much disappointed 'not to find you. I have delayed writing a reply to your 'note, meaning to call upon you. I have been so much engaged, however, in the pleasant occupation of "moving" 'that I have not had time; and I am obliged at last to write and say that I have been long engaged to the 'Pickwick publishers to a dinner in honour of that hero 'which comes off to-morrow. I am consequently unable 'to accept your kind invite, which I frankly own I should 'have liked much better.'

First from
Doughty-

street.

C. D. to

J. F.

That Saturday's celebration of his twelfth number, the anniversary of the birth of Pickwick, preceded by but a few weeks a personal sorrow which profoundly A long-re moved him. His wife's next younger sister, Mary, who lived with them, and by sweetness of nature even more than by graces of person had made herself the ideal of his life, died with a terrible suddenness that for the time completely bore him down.* His grief and suffer

membered

BOITOW.

* Her epitaph, written by him, remains upon a gravestone in the cemetery

HAMP

STEAD:

1837.

ing were intense, and affected him, as will be seen, through many after years. The publication of Pickwick was interrupted for two months, the effort of writing it not being possible to him. He moved for change of scene to Hampstead, and here, at the close of May, I visited I visit him him, and became first his guest. More than ordinarily susceptible at the moment to all kindliest impressions, his heart opened itself to mine. I left him as much his friend, and as entirely in his confidence, as if I had known him for years. Nor had many weeks passed before he addressed to me from Doughty-street words which it is my sorrowful pride to remember have had literal fulfilment. I look back with unmingled pleasure to every 'link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard, I hope, ere any

'thing but Death impairs the toughness of a bond now so

C. D.

tc

J. F.

firmly riveted.' It remained unweakened till death came. There were circumstances that drew us at once into Hasty com frequent and close communication. What the sudden pacts with publishers. popularity of his writings implied, was known to others some time before it was known to himself; and he was only now becoming gradually conscious of all the disadvantage this had placed him at. He would have laughed if, at this outset of his wonderful fortune in literature, his genius acknowledged by all without misgiving, young, popular, and prosperous, any one had compared him to the luckless men of letters of former days, whose common fate was to be sold into a slavery

at Kensal-green. 'Young, beautiful, and good, God numbered her among 'his angels at the early age of seventeen.'

1837.

LONDON: Which their later lives were passed in vain endeavours to escape from. Not so was his fate to be, yet something of it he was doomed to experience. He had unwittingly sold himself into a quasi-bondage, and had to purchase his liberty at a heavy cost, after considerable suffering.

Self-sold into bondage.

for a monthly magazine.

It was not until the fourth or fifth number of Pickwick (in the latter Sam Weller made his first appearance) that its importance began to be understood by the trade,' and on the eve of the issue of its sixth number, the 22nd Agreement August 1836, he had signed an agreement with Mr. Bentley to undertake the editorship of a monthly magazine to be started the following January, to which he was to supply a serial story; and soon afterwards he had agreed with the same publisher to write two other tales, the first at a specified early date; the expressed remuneration in each case being certainly quite inadequate to the claims of a writer of any marked popularity. Under these Bentley agreements he was now writing, month by month, the first half of Oliver Twist, and, under his Chapman and Hall agreement, the last half of Pickwick, not even by a week in advance of the printer with either; when a circumstance became known to him of which he thus wrote to me.

Another for two novels.

C. D.

to

J. V.

'I heard half-an-hour ago, on authority which leaves me ' in no doubt about the matter (from the binder of Pickwick in fact), that Macrone intends publishing a new issue of 'my Sketches in monthly parts of nearly the same size 'and in just the same form as the Pickwick Papers. I 'need not tell you that this is calculated to injure me most 'seriously, or that I have a very natural and most decided