by Dickens
The Dickens family celebrated their first Twelfth Night at Tavistock House with friends, who had been invited to see the family theatrical of Guy Fawkes, a burlesque written by Albert Smith and performed jointly by the Dickens and Lemon children. On the day after the party, Dickens wrote to his brother-in-law Henry Austin:
‘I am floored today; having, besides my cold, a Bilious attack which has robbed me of my appetite – set the dull knobs of two rusty pokers in my head instead of eyes – and generally enfeebled discomfited and perplexed me.’
The publication of Bleak House in 1852 was a great success for Dickens – although the book makes scant mention of Christmas and has no affecting Christmas scenes. He spent part of the year writing letters to the Royal Literary Fund on behalf of two impoverished writers, Maria Goodluck and Charles Whitehead, and was very pleased that the charity helped both of them. The Autumn of 1852 was depressingly cold and grey and Dickens wrote to his friend William de Cerjat in Switzerland:
‘For two months it has been incessantly raining. At last, however, we have had a noble afternoon; and now the stars are shining brightly out of a clear blue sky … I hope you will see the Xmas No. of Household Words, which has some very pretty stories in it – the first two, mine.’
Dickens’s Christmas plans received a setback by a sudden illness that afflicted W.H. Wills. Rather dramatically, Wills suddenly ‘went blind’, although it turned out to be a temporary condition. As a result, Dickens’s workload on Household Words doubled and on 23 December, he wrote to Wilkie Collins:
‘I am suddenly laid by the heels in consequence of Wills having gone blind without any notice … This obliges me to be at the office all day to-day, and to resume my attendance there tomorrow. But if you will come there tomorrow afternoon – say, at about 3 o’Clock – I think we may forage pleasantly for a dinner in the city, and then go and look at Christmas Eve in Whitechapel – which is always a curious thing.’
That Christmas, there were once again nine Dickens children in Tavistock House. Catherine and Charles’s last baby, a son named Edward (but always known by his nickname of Plorn) had been born in March. In contrast to baby Dora, whose health had been a concern all through her brief life, Plorn was a robust and healthy baby. His father wrote adoring letters about him to his friends, and had a friendly rivalry with Angela Burdett-Coutts, who had recently become the aunt of a new nephew, about which house the world’s best baby lived in. In the year in which the last Dickens baby was born, the author published a book for his children. It was called A Child’s History of England and was dedicated ‘To my own dear children whom I hope it may help, bye and bye, to read with interest larger and better books on the same subject.’ A Child’s History of England was under many families’ Christmas trees that year.
A couple of days after Christmas Dickens went to see a pantomime with a group of male friends. Although today pantomimes are aimed at children and young families, in the nineteenth century the audience was expected to be made up of all ages. At home, the Dickens children were preparing for their Twelfth Night performance of William Tell, by Robert Brough. Charles Dickens had also decided that, in the following year, he would embark on a series of public readings.
‘Now Christmas time has come again, with its family gatherings and rejoicings, its gaieties and household festivities, its glowing fires and loaded tables, its good cheer, its generous charities, and its hearty hospitalities. ‘Now the green holly bedecks many windows, the mistletoe is hung up for merry youths to sport under, and the old for a time forget the seriousness and the toils of life.
Now little children are in the highest glee, and look forward to their Christmas dinner, with its plum pudding and snapdragon, followed by romps and games, as the grandest festival of the year…. Now the young look forward, and the aged look back; the youth contemplating with joy the Christmas to come, the old looking back, perhaps, with saddened pleasure at the Christmases that have passed….
‘Christmas is the saturnalia of minors; when guardians, natural and appointed, are thrust from their authority, and must see to obey the behests of their young charges…. We must quit our solemn trifles, and address ourselves earnestly to the office of ministering to the mirth and enjoyment of our little lords and ladies paramount. Mammas must turn their thoughts from the formal prescriptions of domestic cookery to the wild regions of flammery, tartlets, syllabubs, and whipt cream; papas must sweep away all preoccupations of office, desk, and ledger, into the lumber-rooms of their brains, rub up their reminiscences of schoolboy pranks, and rack their fancies for new conundrums…. Commend us ever to the to the frank and genial pleasures of innocent games … ‘Hot Cockles’, ‘Blindman’s Buff’ and ‘Hunt the Slipper’…. The Lottery, or Tombola is quite a modern introduction, and is generally found productive of much fun.’
Belfast News Letter 26 December 1853
Ever since the publication of A Christmas Carol, newspapers took delight in reporting Scrooge-like conversations in their columns. They sought out heartwarming Christmas stories and gleefully reported them. In 1853, the Lincolnshire Chronicle reported on a story which they titled A Good Example:
‘Messrs. Clayton, Shuttleworth and Co., iron-founders of this city, have presented a 20-stone sack of flour and a goose to each of the foremen in their extensive foundry as a Christmas treat. The leading workmen were also entertained at the Globe inn on Saturday night, when a splendid supper was provided on the occasion.’
The reporter also wrote about a special Christmas tea party held for around 300 children:
‘The rooms were tastefully ornamented with evergreens and artificial roses, including mottoes and illustrations emblematical of the season. There was a most ample supply of excellent plum bread and tea, to which ample justice was done by the happy juveniles. After singing hymns, the children repaired to the boys’ schoolroom, where a Christmas tree was fixed, loaded with every variety of fruit, & c., enabling every child to possess a sample. The children were addressed in a very feeling and useful manner by the Rev. G. Rigg, and after playing some good old Christmas games, retired highly delighted…. The cost of this treat was defrayed entirely by subscription.’
Dickens spent much of 1853 preparing for his new series of Christmas readings. His performances of A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth were performed in Birmingham, in aid of the new Birmingham and Midland Institute. On New Year’s Eve he wrote to John Forster that the Birmingham readings had attracted ‘nearly six thousand people’. Dickens had specified to the organisers that he wanted the tickets to be available to as many ‘working people’ as possible and on 2 January he wrote to Angela Burdett-Coutts, ‘If you could have seen the two thousand five hundred workpeople on Friday night, I think you would have been delighted.’
He was back in London on time for the Twelfth Night family theatrical. This year he was not only the production’s manager, he was also an actor. The Dickens and Lemon families were performing Tom Thumb in the converted Tavistock House schoolroom, which Dickens had named the smallest theatre in the world. Both Charles Dickens and Mark Lemon acted alongside the children and this began a new tradition of bringing in adult friends to take starring roles in the plays. In Tom Thumb, Dickens played the ghost of Gaffer Thumb, Lemon played the Giantess Glumdalca and Henry Fielding Dickens, aged four, played Tom Thumb. As Henry’s diction was very indistinct, the audience was given a printed copy of his words, so they could follow what he was meant to be saying.
A record of what it was like to perform in these plays was left by Alfred Ainger, a schoolfriend of the Dickens boys and a regular actor at the Tavistock House performances. At the end of 1870, he published an article entitled ‘Mr Dickens’s Amateur Theatricals’ in Macmillan’s Magazine.
‘What evenings were those at Tavistock house, when the best wit and fancy and culture of the day met within its hospitable walls! … In one sense our theatricals began and ended in the schoolroom. To the last that apartment served us for stage and auditorium
and all. But in another sense we got promotion from the children’s domain by degrees. Our earliest efforts were confined to the children of the family and their equals in age, though always aided and abetted by the goodnatured manager … Another year found us more ambitious, and with stronger resources, for Mr. Dickens himself and Mr. Mark Lemon joined our acting staff, though, with kindly consideration for their young brethren, they chose subordinate parts…. What fun it was, both on and off the stage! The gorgeous dresses from the eminent costumier of the Theatres Royal; our heads bewigged and our cheeks rouged by the hands of Mr. Clarkson himself; the properties from the Adelphi; the unflagging humour and suggestive resources of our manager, who took upon him the charge of everything, from the writing of the playbills to the composition of the punch, brewed for our refreshment between the acts, but “craftily qualified”, as Michael Cassio would have said, to suit the capacities of the childish brain; for Dickens never forgot the maxima reverentia due to children, and some of us were of a very tender age; … Nonsense, it may be said, all this; but the nonsense of a great genius has always something of genius in it.’
The following year, there was once again great excitement about the special Christmas edition of Household Words. Dickens wrote to his friend in Switzerland:
‘My Dear Cerjat, When your Christmas letter did not arrive according to custom, I felt as if a bit of Christmas had fallen out and there was no supplying the piece. However, it was soon supplied by yourself, and the bowl became round and round again … The Christmas No. of Household Words, I suppose will reach Lausanne about Midsummer. The first ten pages or so … are written by me; and I hope you will find, in the story of the Soldier which they contain, something that may move you a little. It moved me not a little in the writing, and I believe has touched a vast number of people. We have sold 80,000 of it … The whole nine [children] are well and happy. Ditto Mrs Dickens. Ditto Georgina … They are all agog now about a great Fairy-play, which is to come off here next Monday.’
The 1854 Christmas story in Household Words was ‘The Seven Poor Travellers’. Until this time, the magazine’s Christmas issue had been filled with a selection of short stories by different writers. This year, Dickens had tried a new structure; still commissioning stories by different writers but fitting them into an overarching storyline, of which he wrote the beginning and the ending. The Seven Poor Travellers is set in Rochester, in Kent, on Christmas Eve, and was inspired by an historic building Dickens remembered from his childhood. The building was a hospice which provided a night’s free lodging and food for any travellers passing through the town. In the story, there were six poor travellers staying in the hospice, and the narrator who becomes the seventh traveller of the title. He asks the landlady if he can meet the six other travellers, at which she first refuses until he persuades her:
‘I urged to the good lady that this was Christmas-eve; that Christmas comes but once a year – which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to stay with us the whole year round we shall make this earth a very different place; that I was possessed by the desire to treat the Travellers to a supper and a temperate glass of hot Wassail … In the end I prevailed, to my great joy. It was settled that at nine o’clock that night a Turkey and a piece of Roast Beef should smoke upon the board; and that I … should preside as the Christmas-supper host of the six Poor Travellers.’
At the dinner, each of the travellers was encouraged to tell a story (these were written by Charles Dickens, George Augustus Sala, Wilkie Collins, Eliza Lynn and Adelaide Anne Procter). The critics were not entirely happy with this new format of the Christmas story and the critic for the Kentish Advertiser was particularly unhappy:
Mr Dickens appears to labour under a sort of delusion that it is incumbent upon him to publish annually something apropos to the pleasant season of Christmas, which shall add to the enjoyment of our good cheer … His last Christmas tale was a dead failure; but still he is unwilling to confess himself beaten.’
The thing that seemed to annoy the Kentish reviewer most was that Dickens had played with historic fact to produce a work of fiction. Although other reviewers were also lukewarm about the story, the public loved the Christmas edition of Household Words. Dickens had hit upon a winning formula.
In between Christmas and the start of 1855, Dickens was on tour once again. He wrote to Catherine from Bradford, in Yorkshire, ‘The hall is enormous. They expect to seat tonight, 3,700 people!’ He was back in time for New Year’s Eve, where they held a party ‘to see the Old Year out’. They also invited friends for Twelfth Night, ‘to see the children’s Fairy-play. As Charley’s birthday falls on a Saturday, we mean to keep it on Monday the 8th when will be presented Fortunio and his seven gifted Servants, by the entire strength of the Company.’ As the Dickens children grew up and provided an even bigger cast for the family theatricals, each Twelfth Night play became more elaborate and Dickens threw himself into each one with great enthusiasm. On 4 January 1855, he postponed a planned business dinner because ‘Dress rehearsal of the young Company demands the managerial presence!’
After the excitement of the Christmas season was over, Dickens became restless and depressed. Once again, he decided to leave London and try living abroad. His marriage was in serious trouble and it is possible that he and Catherine imagined that removal to a new city, might help. In reality, it seemed to make Dickens more restless and the gulf between them became even more apparent.
The second half of 1855 was spent in preparation for moving to Paris for a year. It was a very busy year for the French capital, as the city was hosting the Exposition Universelle, a response to the Great Exhibition in London of 1851. The family spent the summer in Boulogne, one of their favourite holiday destinations, and in the autumn, Charles and his sister-in-law Georgina, travelled to Paris to find suitable accommodation for the winter. On 6 October 1855, Dickens wrote to his wife:
‘My Dearest Catherine,
We have had the most awful job to find a place that would in the least suit us, for Paris is perfectly full, and there is nothing to be got at any sane price. However, we have found two apartments – an entresol and a first floor – with a kitchen and servants’ rooms at the top of the house – at No. 49 Avenue des champs Elysées
You must be prepared for a regular continental abode. There is only one window in each room, but the front apartments all look upon the main street of the champs Elysées, and the view is delightfully cheerful. There are also plenty of rooms. They are not over and above well-furnished, but by changing furniture from rooms we don’t care for, to rooms we do care for, we shall be able to make them comfortable and presentable. I think the situation itself, almost the finest in Paris; and the children will have a window from which to look on the busy life outside.’
He wrote to Wilkie Collins that their Parisian home was ‘a regular little pack of closets with the ordinary queer staircase &c, but the most wonderful and amusing view from the windows, ever beheld.’ Whilst in Paris, Dickens was courted by society hostesses and besieged by people asking him for money. He was also invited to sit for his portrait at the studio of two of the most famous portrait painters in Paris, the brothers Ary and Henri Scheffer. He took his daughter Katey, an aspiring portrait painter, to the studio, so she could observe how the brothers worked. It was not easy for Dickens to take time out from his work during the ‘busiest time of my year’ and the pressure became so intense that he was forced to postpone one sitting because ‘the approach of Christmas brings me so many Proof sheets from England and involves me in so much correspondence (in addition to my regular occupation with my new book).’ At the start of December he complained to John Forster:
‘You may faintly imagine what I have suffered from sitting to Scheffer every day since I came back. He is a most noble fellow, and I have the greatest pleasure in his society … but I can scarcely express how uneasy and unsettled it makes me to have to sit, sit, sit with Little Dorrit on my mind, and the Christmas business too.’
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bsp; He was also disconcerted to discover that the Scheffers had invited around sixty people to come to the studio and hear him read The Cricket on the Hearth.
Throughout the second half of November, Dickens wrote a flurry of letters to W.H. Wills about the Christmas magazine, and about the fact he was worrying about his latest novel, confessing that he was ‘Not working very well at Little Dorrit, since I went back to her from the Xmas No.’ As a solution, Wills travelled to Paris so they could work on the proofs of the magazine’s Christmas issue together. Dickens was excited to see him and took him to dinner at his favourite restaurant, the Trois Frères, and to the theatre.
Just as he had done from Genoa, Dickens travelled back to London for business meetings, but it was so much easier from Paris that he wrote to his friend Emile de la Rue mentioning that he was able to go ‘backwards and forwards to London once a month or so’. In the middle of December, he was back in England to do readings in Peterborough and Sheffield. He also visited his now-widowed friend Lavinia Watson and her children at Rockingham Castle.
The Christmas story for 1855 was The Holly Tree Inn, once again a collection of stories written by Dickens and others. It tells the story of a traveller, who believes he has been rejected by the woman he loves and decides to emigrate to America. On Christmas Eve, he is the only guest at the Holly Tree Inn, where he and the staff are snowed in. The traveller whiles away the time writing down the stories the staff tell him; this gave Dickens the chance to include his own story The Boots at the Holly Tree Inn, which would go on to become one of his favourite Christmas readings once he started on his public reading tours. Other stories were written by Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Anne Proctor, William Howitt and Harriet Parr. At the end of the story, when the snow has gone and the roads are passable, the young man discovers that his love is requited, and, instead of emigrating, he travels back to London and gets married. Dickens found the task of trying to incorporate other people’s writing into his framework a very difficult task, and the story and its editing preoccupied him for months. By the time it was published, he was sick of what he described to Wilkie Collins as a ‘prodigious … botheration’.