Dickens and Christmas

by Lucinda Hawksley

  ‘Hackney-coaches and carriages keep rattling up the street and down the street in rapid succession, conveying, doubtless, smartlydressed coachfuls to crowded parties; loud and repeated double knocks at the house with green blinds, opposite, announce to the whole neighbourhood that there’s one large party in the street at all events; and we saw through the window, and through the fog too, till it grew so thick that we rung for candles, and drew our curtains, pastry-cooks’ men with green boxes on their heads, and rout-furniture-warehouse-carts, with cane seats and French lamps, hurrying to the numerous houses where an annual festival is held in honour of the occasion … Take the house with the green blinds for instance. We know it is a quadrille party, because we saw some men taking up the front drawing-room carpet while we sat at breakfast this morning, and if further evidence be required, and we must tell the truth, we just now saw one of the young ladies “doing” another of the young ladies’ hair, near one of the bedroom windows, in an unusual style of splendour, which nothing else but a quadrille party could possibly justify … More double knocks! what an extensive party! what an incessant hum of conversation and general sipping of coffee! … The toast is drunk with acclamation ... and the whole party rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room. Young men who were too bashful to dance before supper, find tongues and partners; the musicians exhibit unequivocal symptoms of having drunk the new year in, while the company were out; and dancing is kept up, until far in the first morning of the new year.’

  Charles Dickens, ‘The New Year’ (1836)

  As the new year of 1837 dawned, Dickens needed to concentrate on practical matters. With Charley’s birth, they had outgrown their apartments at Furnival’s Inn, so he took on the lease of a new home and, on 25 March 1837, the family, including Fred Dickens and Mary Hogarth, moved into 48, Doughty Street (now the Charles Dickens museum). This was the grandest house that he had ever lived in, and the fact that he had managed to afford to do so through his writing and hard work, was a source of great pride. He described it as ‘a frightfully first-class Family Mansion, involving awful responsibilities’ and he must have felt that he was, at last, leaving behind the spectre of the Marshalsea prison and his time as a ‘little labouring hind’, pasting labels onto blacking bottles. Whilst living at Doughty, Street Dickens completed The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist (the first instalment of which had been published in February 1837, a month before the family left Furnival’s Inn) and wrote Nicholas Nickleby. He moved into 48, Doughty Street as a rising star, and when he moved out less than three years later, he had become a dazzling household name.

  The first year in their new home, however, was not a good one and the first family Christmas at Doughty Street was suffused with sadness. The year had begun very well, with Catherine and the baby thriving and Charles’s writing becoming increasingly successful, but on the night of Saturday 6 May 1837, everything changed. Charles, Catherine and Mary Hogarth had spent the evening at St James’s Theatre, watching a farce written by Charles, Is She His Wife?, or, Something Singular!. Shortly after they returned home, seventeen-year-old Mary collapsed. By the following afternoon, she was dead. The family had been in their new home only a few weeks and Mary died just days before Catherine’s twenty-second birthday. Catherine, who was pregnant again, suffered a miscarriage, caused by the shock of her sister’s death.

  In September 1837, the family celebrated the marriage of Fanny Dickens to her fellow musician Henry Burnett, but Christmas was still subdued and sad without Mary Hogarth. The new year was ushered in by a party at Doughty Street, for a select gathering of friends and family, and Henry Burnett remembered:

  ‘It was near the hour of twelve, when we went up to the windows, and each person became mute, excepting an excusable whisper every now and then from two or three ladies. The constrained silence was at an end as soon as the first stroke of a distant clock came upon the ear. Then a muffled counting was heard from one or two, and then the clear voice of our Host called out, “Best Wishes and a kiss for each lady, and a Happy New Year to us all!.”’

  On 1 January 1838, Dickens wrote in his diary:

  ‘A sad new Year’s Day in one respect, for at the opening of last year poor Mary was with us. Very many things to be grateful for, since then, however. Increased reputation and means – good health and prospects. We never know the full value of blessings, ‘till we lose them …’

  Between New Year and Twelfth Night, letters and diaries record that Dickens spent time going to parties and gatherings, working on his biography of Joseph Grimaldi and planning a book about the history of London with his friend William Harrison Ainsworth – it was never written. On 2 January, Dickens noted, ‘With Ainsworth all day ... Afterwards to the ruins of the fire in the Borough, thence to the top of Saint Saviour’s Church; back to his Club to dinner, and afterwards to Covent Garden where we met Browning.’ The fire had broken out on 31 December, at a warehouse in Tooley Street, near London Bridge. The church that he mentions was renamed Southwark Cathedral in 1905; it would have held a special charm for Dickens because of its connections with Shakespeare. In early January, Fanny Burnett ‘sang beautifully’ at a party that her brother attended, and which he described in his diary as ‘full of City people – and rather dull’. Another guest recorded, ‘Met Boz – looks quite a boy.’

  Twelfth Night was spent with friends and Dickens recorded in his diary:

  ‘Our boy’s birth day – one year old. A few people at night – only Forster, the Degex’s, John Ross, Mitton and the Beards besides our families – to Twelfth Cake and forfeits.’

  By Charley’s birthday Catherine was in her seventh month of a new pregnancy, with the baby due in the spring, and by their second Christmas at Doughty Street the family home was made up of Charles, Catherine, ‘Uncle Fred’, toddler Charley and baby Mamie (christened Mary, after her deceased aunt).

  On Christmas Eve 1838, Charles went to a rehearsal of the pantomime, Harlequin and Fair Rosamund, with John Forster and the poet Robert Browning. It was being performed at the Covent Garden Theatre, by their friend, the actor-manager William Charles Macready. Dickens had promised to write a review. On Christmas Day, Catherine, who was a talented cook, helped her servants create a Christmas feast at 48, Doughty Street. In her memoirs, Mamie Dickens wrote about how her father would study a dinner party menu with delight and ‘then he would discuss every item in his humorous, fanciful way with his guests … and he would apparently be so taken up with the merits or demerits of a menu that one might imagine he lived for nothing but the coming dinner’. Mamie loved setting the table for Christmas, recalling:

  ‘A prettily decorated table was [father’s] special pleasure, and from my earliest girlhood the care of this devolved upon me. When I had everything in readiness, he would come with me to inspect the result of my labors, before dressing for dinner, and no word except of praise ever came to my ears.’

  Charley Dickens recalled a memory of that Christmas of 1838, when he was almost two years old:

  ‘I am not at all sure that the first recollection of my father is not more derived from tradition than actual memory … But I seem to remember very well on Christmas Day dinner at Doughty Street when, owing to the non-appearance of one of the guests the party consisted of thirteen and I was brought down from the nursery to fill the gap and afterwards set on a footstool on the table close to my father at dessert time. It was one of his few superstitions, by the by, this thirteen at the table.’

  Christmas was a time when everyone tried to look their best. In A Christmas Carol, the impoverished Cratchit family attempt to make their shabby clothes look as smart as possible and Mrs Cratchit is described as being ‘dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence’. In the 1850s, Dickens wrote in a letter, ‘My mother has a strong objection to being considered in the least old, and usually appears here on Christmas Day in a juvenile cap, which takes an immense time in the putting on.’ As Christmas grew in pop
ularity, so the tailors and shops began to sell special clothes for the Christmas season and church pews during services on Christmas Day were filled with people wearing the latest fashions.

  In between Christmas of 1838 and New Year, Charles Dickens attended three dinners given by male friends: the pioneering doctor John Elliotson; the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth; and the politician Thomas Noon Talfourd, to whom Dickens had dedicated The Pickwick Papers. On New Year’s Eve, he and Catherine hosted a dinner party at Doughty Street. In addition to all this socialising, he worked steadily on the serialisation of Nicholas Nickleby and he was also thinking about an idea for another novel, which would eventually be published as Barnaby Rudge. On 3 January 1839, Dickens wrote to John Forster, ‘The beginning is made and – which is more – I can go on, so I hope the book is in training at last.’ He kept on thinking about this idea for a novel, but other ideas kept coming to him and so it was put off until it was serialised between February and November 1841. Twelfth Night in 1839 was an even bigger celebration than usual in the Dickens household, because Mamie was christened on 5 January. The party to celebrate both the christening and Charley’s second birthday could not, however, be held on 6 January, as it was a Sunday. This meant that all Twelfth Night celebrations had to be delayed by a day until 7 January.

  It was to be their final Christmas at 48, Doughty Street. In October 1839, Catherine gave birth to a second daughter, Catherine Elizabeth Macready Dickens, known as Katey. This sent Dickens into another frenzy of practicality as he sought to move his expanding family into a bigger home. With the success of Nicholas Nickleby, he was able to afford to do so in style and, in December 1839, just days before the seasonal festivities began, the family moved into 1, Devonshire Terrace. This was a beautiful house at the end of a fashionable row of large homes, opposite the York Gate of the Regent’s Park. Charles Dickens signed an eleven-year lease at the cost of £800, a sum of money that would have made his father’s eyes water. The rent was an additional £160 per year. One of the essential changes the author asked to be made to the house at Devonshire Terrace was to have the study soundproofed. It was in this study that he would write, amongst other books, his novella A Christmas Carol.

  The Christmas season of 1839 to 1840, with two toddlers and a baby in the house, was one of great celebration. In addition to the toddlers and the baby was a somewhat unusual pet; Grip, a talkative and mischievous raven. The earliest surviving reference to Grip in one of Dickens’s letters dates from 13 February 1840, when he wrote a jokey letter to Daniel Maclise stating, ‘I love nobody here but the Raven.’ Grip was a domineering personality, whom Dickens adored. He strutted around the house and garden commanding attention – and inspiring the author as he continued to make notes for what would become his fifth novel, Barnaby Rudge. The initial title for this was Gabriel Varden, but by the time it was published (after The Old Curiosity Shop) its title had changed. This novel was a long time coming; although he published four novels before it, it was in fact the first idea for a full length book which he had come up with.

  His diary entry for 1 January 1840 records, ‘Dinner party at home – Tom Hill, Blanchard, Stone, Thompson, Collinson, Hullah and wife, Maclise, Forster, Kate, and I.’ On 2 January 1840, Charles Dickens wrote a jovial letter to the publishers, Bradbury and Evans:

  ‘My Dear Sirs,

  I determined not to thank you for the Turkey until it was quite gone, in order that you might have a becoming idea of its astonishing capabilities.

  The last remnant of that blessed bird made its appearance at breakfast yesterday – I repeat it, yesterday – the other portions having furnished forth seven grills, one boil and a cold lunch or two.

  Accept my warm thanks (in which Mrs Dickens begs to join) for your annual recollection of us, which we value very highly as one of the pleasant circumstances of a pleasant season – and couple with them my hearty wishes for many happy years to both of you and both of yours – and of good health and good work and good feeling to all of us.’

  The following day he wrote to John Forster cancelling their engagement to visit the theatre, explaining that as he had kept the servants ‘up very late indeed for a great many nights’ and because he had so much writing to do he had ‘determined to resist the Pantomime and to come straight home like a good boy – for which resolution blame Christmas and the New Year; not me.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Pure as the New Fallen Snow’

  ‘Christmas was always a time which in our home was looked forward to with eagerness and delight, and to my father it was a time dearer than any other part of the year, I think. He loved Christmas for its deep significance as well as for its joys, and this he demonstrates in every allusion in his writings to the great festival, a day which he considered should be fragrant with the love that we should bear one to another, and with the love and reverence of his Saviour and Master. Even in his most merry conceits of Christmas, there are always subtle and tender touches which will bring tears to the eyes, and make even the thoughtless have some special veneration for this most blessed anniversary.’

  Mamie Dickens, Charles Dickens by his Eldest Daughter (1894)

  Ever since the mid-1840s, the name Charles Dickens has become synonymous with Christmas, but this was not how his early contemporaries would have thought of him.

  After Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837), Dickens’s first novels make scant mention of Christmas. When Christmas is mentioned, in Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) Barnaby Rudge (1841) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), it is only in passing, or to mark the passage of time.

  Charles Dickens spent much of the Christmas season of 1840 to 1841 agonising over the plot of The Old Curiosity Shop. As he struggled to cope with the death of Little Nell, Dickens wrote to his friends that it brought back sad memories about the death of Mary Hogarth. Fans from all over the world, who were waiting eagerly for every new chapter to be published, wrote to Dickens begging him not to allow Little Nell to die, but he refused to change his mind, because he felt that the world was too unkind to sustain an impoverished child such as Little Nell. Just before Christmas 1840, he wrote instructions to his illustrator, George Cattermole, accompanied by the words, ‘I am breaking my heart over this story, and cannot bear to finish it.’ His brother-in-law Henry Burnett said, ‘Little Nell was an object of his life ... he mourned her loss for a month after her death, and felt as if one of his own dear ones had left a vacant chair.’

  On Christmas Eve, Charles and Catherine invited friends to Devonshire Terrace to play charades; they were also planning a New Year’s Eve party. On 18 December, Charles Dickens sent invitations to friends. To the actor and printer John Pritt Harley he wrote:

  ‘Come and dine here on the last day of this good old year, at 6 sharp … We have no serious party ... and want to see the year out with some charades and other frolics. I won’t tell you simply that you could come in dirty boots, but that stockings alone would be considered court dress.’

  To William Harrison Ainsworth he wrote:

  ‘...I want to make you promise to dine here on the last day of the old year at 6 exactly – quite at home and unceremoniously to see it out with forfeits and such like exercises.’

  Charley’s birthday and Twelfth Night party was a small one that year, with only Daniel Maclise and John Forster invited. Catherine was, once again, heavily pregnant, and due to give birth in a month. Walter Landor Dickens was born on 8th February 1841, a day after his father’s twenty-ninth birthday. His new son was described by Dickens as being ‘very fat ... like a plump turkey’.

  A few weeks after his son’s birth, the author was mourning the death of his pet raven. Grip was the victim of his own greed, having managed to prise off the lids of cans of lead paint and drink the contents. He took several days to die, and Dickens lovingly recorded his last words and movements. In a letter to Daniel Maclise, Dickens reported:

  ‘On the clock striking twe
lve he appeared slightly agitated, but soon recovered, walking twice or thrice along the coach-house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed “Halloa old girl” (his favourite expression) and died. He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity, and self-possession, which cannot be too much admired ... The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles. But that was play.’

  It was a feverish atmosphere in Devonshire Terrace in the winter of 1841. Grip had been replaced by a second raven, also named Grip, as well as by a pet eagle. In addition to the usual preparations for Christmas and New Year, Charles and Catherine were making preparations to leave the country – and, in doing so, to leave behind their four children, including the new baby, whose christening had to be arranged. Walter was christened on 4 December 1841 and a celebratory party was held afterwards.

  Charles Dickens was excited about his approaching tour of America and Canada, but Catherine, terrified of leaving her children, was frightened and apprehensive. Her husband’s enthusiasm and excitement bursts through in his correspondence of the time. Their friend, Charles Smithson, a lawyer who lived at Malton in Yorkshire, had sent the Dickens family a large festive pie; it was also he who had given the second Grip to Dickens as a present when his first raven died. On 20 December Dickens wrote to him,

  ‘My Dear Smithson,

  The Pie was no sooner brought into my room yesterday evening, than I fainted away.

  Topping put his shoulder out, in carrying it from the waggon to the hall-door, and John is in the hospital with a damaged spine – having rashly attempted to lift it!

  There never was such a Pie! We are mad to know what it’s made of, but haven’t the courage to cut it. Indeed we haven’t a knife large enough for the purpose. We think of hiring Fletcher to eat it. We sit and stare at it in dull astonishment and grow dizzy in the contemplation of its enormous magnitude.