Dickens

by Fred Kaplan

  Instead of lasting the expected ten or fifteen minutes, the interview went on, by Helps’s account, for half an hour, by Dolby’s for an hour and a half. Initially, they were both shy. With Helps as facilitator and the queen standing to put him at ease, they chatted lightly about superficial things. Dickens was at his most Victorian, optimistic, conservative, social, entertaining. The queen found his voice and manner pleasant. “He talked of his latest works, of America, the strangeness of the people there, of the division of classes in England which he hoped would get better in time. He felt sure that it would come gradually.” Again he told the story of Lincoln’s dream before his assassination. Helps thought the interview “interesting and amusing.” They exchanged gifts of books, the queen an author of sorts herself. Soon Dickens accepted an invitation that resulted in Mary and him being presented formally at court. After the interview, when he arrived late for their dinner appointment, Dolby impatiently implored him to “tell me everything.” “‘Everything! my dear fellow, everything! I tell you what, it would be difficult to say what we did not talk about.’”57 It was mostly, though, a tale of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. He soon declined the queen’s request that he give a private reading at Windsor. He needed a larger audience, and his reading days were over.

  His London obligations, though, continued into the spring, writing and reading proofs, seeing friends, and attending dinner parties. The social whirl became wearisome. He had gotten “into that complicated state of engagements that my life is positively made wretched.” On many days, he felt as if he were making only slow headway with his novel. Though he felt restless, he persevered. With the publication of the first number on April 1, he felt relieved at its immediate success. In early May, Georgina remarked that “I think he never wrote more quickly. The two first numbers have had an enormous sale—and an enormous success—he has just now finished the 5th—so he keeps well in advance.” When Mary gave a large party, newspaper gossip implied that he had become a worshiper of the aristocracy. At dinner at Lord Stanhope’s, he chatted with Disraeli, who noticed “the charm of his conversation, his brightness, and his humour,” an exception to “the general rule of authors being so much less interesting than their books.” At the end of April, he blandly addressed, fulfilling an old promise, the annual dinner of the Newsvendors’ Benevolent Institution. Early in May, he attended a breakfast hosted by William Gladstone. He preferred the Liberal “Tweedledum” to the Conservative “Tweedledee,” as Carlyle called them, having come to admire Gladstone’s policies on Ireland and other issues. Gladstone seemed more congenial to the vestiges of his own youthful radicalism, some fallen aspect of which he had superficially alluded to in his speech in Birmingham when he had remarked that his “faith in the people governing, is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in The People governed, is, on the whole illimitable.”58

  Through much of the spring Dickens felt ill, though not enough to desist from his usual activities. He had brief attacks, which he referred to as “uneasiness and hemorrhage,” coming with “a sudden violent rush,” from which he recovered quickly enough to insist that they had “not the slightest effect on [his] general health.” On April 28 he was shocked to read in the newspaper at a railway station that Daniel Maclise had died in his Brighton lodgings. Wrenched into memories and miseries by the death of his “dear old friend and companion,” he struggled to get some command over himself, and only succeeded by “at once thinking of it and avoiding it in a strange way.” Maclise had briefly surfaced from his seclusion a number of times in recent years, even attending the farewell banquet in 1867. He had sustained himself mostly, though, with memories, invoking for Forster in 1868 his unforgettable image of “you clambering up the goat path” near “King Arthur’s Castle of Tintagel” when the two of them, with Dickens and Stanfield, visited Cornwall in 1842. “In my vain wish to follow I grovelled and clung to the soil like Caliban and you in the manner of a picksy spirit and stout Ariel actually danced up and down before me.” Forster had recently said to Dickens that “we should one day hear that the wayward life into which he had fallen was over, and there should end our knowledge of it.”

  As if circumstance, that wonderful web that Dickens believed in and wove into his novels, had conspired like a masterful artist to bring all things round into a formal circle, he was scheduled the day after the news of Maclise’s death to give the principal address at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy of Art at their new Burlington House home. “Since first I entered the public list, a very young man indeed, it has been my constant fortune,” he told the members and guests, “to number among my nearest and dearest friends members of this Royal Academy. They have so dropped from my side one by one that I already feel like that Spanish monk … who had grown to believe that the only realities around him were the pictures he loved, and that all the moving life he saw, or ever had seen, was a shadow and a dream.” Amid the ghostly realities of his artist friends, he invoked a golden myth of the man whose intimate companion he had been for many years.59 The speech was a supreme fiction of Victorian eulogy. But he deeply believed his own words, and he mourned Maclise as he celebrated their shared ideals and as he eulogized the days that were no more.

  For a few brief moments at the beginning of May 1870 he seemed quite well. Suddenly his foot flamed up again. He took heavy doses of laudanum in order to sleep. Extremely hot poultices were applied night and day, causing severe blistering. Limping between his office and Hyde Park Place, he carried on with his work, slightly drugged and in frequent pain, but making as light of it as he could. He begged off some dinner engagements, “literally laid up by the heels,” with “a neuralgic infection which usually seizes me about twice a year.” He went back to the myth of its originating “in over-walking in deep snow.” He did not disguise, though, from Forster that he was in “horrible pain.” He had to cancel his commitment at the middle of the month to address the Royal General Theatrical Fund dinner. “I could no more walk into St. James’s Hall than I could fly in the air.” The pain and invalidism went on for three weeks. Without exercise, which he needed, he believed, in order to write, he felt additionally depressed. Toward the end of the month, just before finally leaving Hyde Park Place, he claimed to be “much shocked to hear” that Mark Lemon, old Uncle Porpoise, had died. He blandly assured Lemon’s son that “there never was any serious estrangement between us,” though his old. companion’s death does not seem to have touched him deeply.60

  With his foot heavily bandaged, Dickens left for Gad’s Hill. The conservatory had been filled with scarlet geraniums for his return amid June brilliance. He went back to town almost immediately, partly for All the Year Round business, partly to direct Mamie and Katie’s performances at a friend’s home on Wednesday, June I, in a play called Prima Donna. The scenery had been designed by Millais. “Behind the scenes the whole time … his well-worn … haggard face, flitting by,” he stayed overnight at the office, he and Dolby having their usual Thursday business lunch. On parting, as they shook hands across the table, Dolby noticed that he seemed in great pain and could hardly walk. But he was unwilling to ask him about it. “So without another word on either side,” they parted. On Friday morning, he remained secluded, working in his office, with his door open. Finally, at 1 P.M., Charley, leaving for a weekend in the country, went into his father’s office and “saw that he was writing very earnestly. After a moment I said: ‘If you don’t want anything more, sir, I shall be off now,’ but he continued his writing with the same intensity as before, and gave no sign of being aware of my presence. Again I spoke—louder, perhaps, this time—and he rested his head and looked at me long and fixedly. But I soon found that, although his eyes were bent upon me, and he seemed to be looking at me earnestly, he did not see me, and that he was, in fact, unconscious for the moment of my very existence.”61

  During the weekend, at Gad’s Hill, though Dickens worked at Drood and wrote some letters, he clearly was not feeling well, his complexion
unnaturally gray, his breath short. After a brief walk with Katie on Sunday afternoon, he felt strikingly tired. He proudly showed her the new conservatory. “It is positively,” he said, “the last improvement.” In the evening, at dinner with his daughters and Georgina, he seemed better. Afterward, smoking his customary cigar, he invited Katie to tell him at length about her plans, particularly her thoughts about going on the stage, which he advised against. The life would be too difficult, too crass. “‘I will make it up to you.’ He went on to speak of other subjects—with regret. He wished, he said, that he had been ‘a better father—a better man.’” They talked until 3 A.M. Before she left the next morning, she insisted on going to the chalet to say good-bye. “As a rule, when he was busy, he would just put up his cheek to be kissed. But this day he took her in his arms, saying ‘God bless you, Katie!’” When she was halfway back to the house through the tunnel under the Gravesend Road, “something said to me, ‘go back,’ and I immediately ran up the steps, through the shrubbery, into the Chalet and tapped on the door. My father—who was seated with his back to it—called out, ‘Come in’; turning and seeing me he held out his arms into which I ran, when he embraced me again and kissed me very affectionately.”62

  On Monday afternoon, too fatigued to take his usual walk, Dickens went for a drive with Georgina through Cobham woods. He felt strong enough to walk back. After dinner, he sat for an unusually long time, chatting with her about how much he loved Gad’s Hill, watching “the effect of some Chinese lanterns he had hung in the conservatory.” On Tuesday and through much of Wednesday, he seemed well and in good spirits. He intended to make his usual Thursday visit to the office. At about one o’clock on Wednesday he came back into the house from the chalet and smoked a cigar in the conservatory. Going back to the chalet, late in the afternoon he put a flourish to the end of the last chapter of the sixth number of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, exactly the halfway point of the novel. Returning to the house an hour before his usual time, he sat down to dinner with Georgina. They were alone in the house, except for servants. Suddenly she noticed a striking change in his color and expression. He responded to her question, was he ill, “‘yes, very ill; I have been very ill for the last hour.’” She wanted to send for a doctor immediately. But he said no. He would be all right. He would go on with dinner and he would be all right. And then he would go to London afterward. He began talking “rapidly and indistinctly—mentioning Forster.” She begged him to lie down. “‘Yes, on the ground,’ he answered.” He got up from the table. She tried to hold him but he slid through her arms, suddenly, immediately, and totally unconscious.63

  Calling for the servants, who lifted him onto a sofa, she tried to make him comfortable. He did not respond. In the hope that he might be moved, a bed was brought into the dining room. Doctors were sent for, telegrams dispatched. Forster, receiving his in Cornwall, turned homeward immediately. Mamie and Katie were at a dinner party in London. Before they had gone out for the evening, Katie had suddenly said, “‘Mamie, I feel something is going to happen to us.’ ‘Nice or nasty?’ returned Mamie. ‘I cannot say,’” she replied. On receiving the message, they left at once for Gad’s Hill with Frank Beard. The doctor from Rochester had already arrived and cut away his coat and other clothes. When Mamie saw the look on Georgina’s face, “the last faint hope” died within her. Entering the house, they could hear their “father’s deep breathing.” Watching him through the night, they took turns putting hot bricks at his icy cold feet. He never moved or spoke. Knowing that there was no hope, they prayed that he would not become conscious again, so that he might be “spared the agony of parting,” the farewells that he hated so much. When Charley arrived in the morning, the ninth of June, with an eminent specialist who later sent a bill for twenty guineas, the doctors “found unmistakable symptoms of brain haemorrhage.” At 6 P.M. his breathing declined. Ten minutes later a tear “trickled down his cheek.” He gave a deep sigh, and stopped breathing altogether.

  When Henry arrived from Cambridge the next morning, bright sunlight flooded the room. His father’s body had been moved onto the bed. Millais soon came to do a death cast, but settled for a pencil drawing. To Georgina, the house already seemed “dreadful now, without him,” the first moments of the long cold lonely years without his sunshine. “The light has gone from our lives, and they can never be the same again and our hearts are very desolate and broken.”64 Katie left to break the news to her mother. She returned with Ellen. Forster arrived, and then went immediately to London. Unable to hold back his violent sobs, Forster arranged with Dean Stanley, who agreed to the conditions stated in the will, that Dickens be buried in Westminster Abbey. Arrangements under way for burial in Rochester Cathedral were canceled. A grave had already been dug there. Bells had been tolled.

  Three carriages entered the Abbey yard at 9:30 A.M. two days later. The closed coffin was waiting. During the night it had been delivered from Rochester to London, “like game,” though it had not “rained hard all the way.” The son of Kent was again to become part of the dust of London. At the graveside, his only surviving sister represented the family of his childhood. Georgina represented the sisters and wives of his imagination and desire. Other than his two daughters, the only other woman present was his eldest son’s wife, whose wedding he had declined to attend. His disappointing namesake and the successful scholar of the family represented the survivors of his exiled tribe of unhappy and unhappy-making sons. Of the five friends who accompanied the coffin and watched it lowered into the earth it was appropriate that one was his doctor, another his lawyer, and one the son-in-law to whom he had reluctantly given his favorite daughter. The other two were his closest friends and collaborators, Forster and Collins, the men who knew best the secrets of his heart. Without applause, without an audience other than these twelve, without Ellen’s presence, without an echo of his wife other than in the quiet attendance of four of her children, he was buried silently on a beautiful summer morning “in that vast space of the Abbey.” Dean Stanley pronounced to believers and unbelievers alike the resonant phrases of the Anglican burial service. The Sparkler, the Inimitable, the manager, became part of the great majority. As the procession left the cathedral, the dean asked Forster “whether, as it would be a great disappointment to the public, he would allow the grave to be kept open for the remainder of the day.” Forster said, “‘Yes; now my work is over, and you may do what you like.’”65

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  The following abbreviations and short titles are used in the notes:

  MANUSCRIPTS

  Berg Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

  BL British Library

  DHM Dickens House Museum

  HH The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California

  Morgan Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

  NLS National Library of Scotland

  PH The Free Library, Philadelphia

  PR The Parrish Collection, Princeton University

  TEX The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas

  V&A Forster Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum

  Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

  PEOPLE

  ABC Angela Burdett Coutts

  AD Alfred Dickens

  AR Arthur Ryland

  AS Albert Smith

  ASM Arthur Smith

  AT Augustus Frederick Tracey

  B&E Bradbury and Evans

  BP Bryan Procter

  CaD Catherine Dickens

  C&H Chapman and Hall

  CC Charles Collins

  CCF Cornelius C. Felton

  CD Charles Dickens

  CDJr Charles (Charley) Dickens, Jr.

  CK Charles Kent

  CL Charles Lever

  CS Clarkson Stanfield

  CW Charles Ward

  DJ Douglas Jerrold

  DkD Duke of Devonshirer />
  DM Daniel Maclise

  EBL Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  ED Edward B. L. (Plorn) Dickens

  EG Elizabeth Gaskell

  EP Edward Pigott

  ER Emile de la Rue

  ET Edward Tagart

  EY Edmund Yates

  FB Fanny (Dickens) Burnett

  FD Frederick Dickens

  FDN Frances Dickinson

  FE Frederick Evans

  FL Frederick Lehmann

  FO Frederic Ouvry