CHARLES DICKENS, circa 1864
(Reproduced from The Favourite Magazine, by kind permission of Messrs. Paul Naumann, Ltd.)
his book rapidly achieving a degree of popularity which we cannot but regard as astounding even in these days of large editions. The “Pickwick Papers” originated in this way. The junior partner of what was then a young publishing house, Messrs. Chapman & Hall (now a leading London firm), called upon the rising author at his rooms in Furnival’s Inn with a proposition that he should furnish the letterpress for a “monthly something” that should be a vehicle for certain sporting-plates by a humorous draughtsman named Seymour. The first idea of a sort of Nimrod Club did not appeal to Dickens, for the excellent reason that he was no sportsman, and it was therefore eventually decided that, having agreed to supply the text, he should exercise a free hand, allowing the illustrations to arise naturally from the text. To give a complete history of the “Pickwick Papers” would occupy considerable space. Suffice it to say that the book was issued in shilling monthly parts (1836-37), then a favourite method of publishing novels, and consistently adopted by Dickens; that it was illustrated by means of etchings; that the sale of the first few numbers was so small that both publishers and author were in despair; and that the success of the work was assured as soon as Sam Weller made his first bow to the public—a character which, by reason of its freshness and originality, called forth such admiration that the sale of ensuing numbers increased until a circulation of forty thousand copies was attained! The creation of Sam Weller, therefore, was the turning-point in Dickens’s fortune, and so great became the popularity of the book that the name of “Pickwick” was bestowed by enterprising tradesmen upon their newest goods, while portraits of Dickens himself were in the ascendant. People of every degree, young and old, revelled in the pages of the “Pickwick Papers”—judges on the bench as well as boys in the street; and we are reminded of Carlyle’s anecdote of a solemn clergyman who, as he left the room of a sick person to whom he had been administering ghostly consolation, heard the invalid ejaculate, “Well, thank God, ‘Pickwick’ [the monthly number] will be out in ten days, anyway!”
A PORTION OF DICKENS’S MS. TAKEN FROM “THE CHRISTMAS CAROL”
The identity of the author of “Pickwick,” by-the-bye, was not disclosed until that work was nearly completed. It had given rise to much conjecture until the name of the young writer was at length revealed, when the following “Impromptu” appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany:
Who the dickens “Boz” could be
Puzzled many a learned elf,
Till time revealed the mystery,
And “Boz” appeared as Dickens’ self.