The Battle of Life. “Leech’s grave mistake”
Every Dickens collector desires to possess the complete set of the “Christmas Books” in their dainty red cloth bindings, dated from 1843 to 1848. A really desirable set includes, of course, {36} the Christmas Carol,[11] with coloured plates by Leech, with the green end-papers and “stave 1”; The Chimes, with the publishers’ names within the engraved part of the title-page; and The Battle of Life, with the publishers’ names on both titles. But it is only the last of these that is entitled to mention in a treatise on cancelled illustrations, and that, as I have said, not because it was suppressed, but because it should have been.
[11] It may be mentioned that there are two or three copies of the Christmas Carol known with the title-page and half-title printed in green and red, instead of in red and blue. Much store is laid by this variation amongst really moonstruck collectors.
By those who are familiar with the story it will be remembered that an early part of the plot leads one to suppose that Marion Jeddler had eloped with Michael Warden, when, as a matter of fact, she had merely escaped to her aunt. Leech, who was engaged as illustrator, was immensely busy, and only read so much of the story as seemed necessary for his purpose. As a result he was deceived, as Dickens intended his readers should be, and designed the double illustration here reproduced, in which the festivities to welcome the bridegroom at the top of the page {37} contrast with the flight of the bride in company with Michael Warden represented below. Thus was Dickens curiously “hoist with his own petard.” And the curious thing is that, notwithstanding the publicity given to the mistake in Forster’s Life of Dickens, this tragic woodcut, which wrongs poor Marion’s innocence and makes a hash of the whole story, is reproduced in the reprints up to this very day. The poor girl’s tragic figure remains, and seems likely to continue to do so, a victim to the stereotype.
This episode is generally referred to as “Leech’s grave mistake,” and grave undoubtedly it was; but the matter has its bright side, which redounds to the credit of the great novelist. I take the liberty of quoting from what has always seemed to me a very noble letter when we remember that Dickens was of all men most sensitive to any shortcomings in the work of his collaborators. He writes to Forster:
When I first saw it it was with a horror and agony not to be expressed. Of course I need not tell you, my dear fellow, Warden has no business in the elopement scene. He was never there. In the first hot sweat of this surprise and novelty I was going to implore the printing of that sheet to {38} be stopped, and the figure taken out of the block. But when I thought of the pain that this might give to our kind-hearted Leech, and that what is such a monstrous enormity to me, as never having entered my brain, may not so present itself to others, I became more composed, though the fact is wonderful to me.
Of course, had it been in these days of hurried publication, Dickens would hardly have given the matter a second thought. The average illustrator of to-day is curiously superior to the requirements of his author. He either does not read the episodes that he is called upon to illustrate, or, if he reads them, he does not grasp their meaning, or, if he grasps their meaning, the meaning does not meet with his approval. At any rate, he constantly makes a hash of the whole thing. Take for example Penelope’s English Experiences, by Miss Kate Wiggin, now lying before me. Look at the illustration, opposite p. 58, of Lady de Wolfe’s butler, who struck terror into Penelope’s soul because he did not wear a livery, and try, if you can, to recognise him in the shoulder-knotted, stripe-waistcoated, plush-breeched, silk-stockinged menial with an “unapproachable haughtiness of demeanour,” which the illustrator has portrayed. {39} Nor is this one of a few exceptional cases: their number might be multiplied ad infinitum.
But to return to The Battle of Life. Curiously enough, there is another little episode connected with this book, never, I believe, noticed before, which accentuates our impression of the generosity of Dickens’s character.
Three years after its publication a somewhat scurrilous little volume (now excessively rare), bearing the allusive title The Battle of London Life; or Boz and his Secretary, issued from the press. It was illustrated by six lithographs signed with the name of George Augustus Sala. It was a poor enough performance, but attracted attention by its ad captandum title, and the portrait of “Boz in his Study.” It is an imaginary and far from complimentary account of Dickens’s employment of a secretary, whose occupation it is to show him round the haunts of vice in London, by way of providing “local colour” for the novels. Eventually the secretary turns out to be a detective, who has been told off by the Government to discover the nature of the novelist’s intimacy with the revolutionist, Mazzini. It is a vulgar little {40} brochure, and, for all its futility, must have been very distasteful to the idol of the day. It was therefore the more magnanimous of Dickens to ignore the part which Sala had in it, and to speak so generously of him as we find him doing in the Life, besides employing him and pushing him, as he did largely later on, in his periodicals. A smaller man would not have allowed himself to forget such youthful indiscretions, for “memory always obeys the commands of the heart.”