Judged as a work of art, The Battle of Life is perhaps the least successful of Dickens’s “Christmas Books.” Edward FitzGerald’s opinion of it was shown in an autograph letter which came into the market only the other day. “What a wretched affair is The Battle of Life!” he writes; “it scarce even has the few good touches that generally redeem Dickens.”
“The Last Song” with the suppressed border. (By George Cruikshank)
Whilst we are on the subject of an illustration which should have been suppressed but was not, it should be pointed out that this was not the only occasion upon which Leech misunderstood Dickens’s purport. This we learn from Mr. F. G. Kitton’s monumental work, Dickens and {41} his Illustrators. Here he tells us that in another Christmas book, The Chimes, Leech delineated, in place of Richard as described in the text, an extremely ragged and dissipated-looking character, with a battered hat upon his head. When the novelist saw it the drawing had already been engraved, but the woodcut was promptly suppressed; there still exists, however, an impression of the cancelled engraving, which is bound up with what is evidently a unique copy of The Chimes (now the property of Mr. J. P. Dexter), where blank spaces are left for some of the woodcuts. This particular copy is probably the publishers’ “make-up,” which had accidentally left their hands.
Let us now consider for a moment a very remarkable etching which was, so far only as regards an important portion of it, cancelled in all but the very first issue of The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. These were published in two volumes in 1838. Besides writing the preface, Dickens was only responsible for the editing of Mr. Egerton Wilks’s manuscript, which had been prepared from autobiographical notes. A good deal of fault was found with the work, particularly {42} on the ground that Dickens himself could never have seen Grimaldi. To this he very pertinently replied, “I don’t believe that Lord Braybrooke had more than the very slightest acquaintance with Mr. Pepys, whose memoirs he edited two centuries after he died!”[12]
The volumes are now most valued for the twelve etchings by George Cruikshank; but the important thing from the bibliolater’s point of view is to possess the earliest issue with “The Last Song” surrounded by a grotesque border. This border, which is here produced, was removed from the plate after the first issue of the first edition. I have just had offered to me a copy of this edition containing “The Last Song” in the two states, i.e. with and without the border, for the modest sum of eight guineas!
[12] My attention was lately called to a copy of the memoirs in which the former owner had pasted the following amusingly irrelevant note:—“At the Beckford sale a copy of the famous Grimm—the Grimm with the illustrations printed in bronze-coloured ink—fetched £64.” I have a very shrewd suspicion that the annotator had an unmethodical brain, and believed Grimm to be short for Grimaldi! Requiescat in pace.
CHAPTER IV DICKENS CANCELLED PLATES: “OLIVER TWIST,” “MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT,” “THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN,” “PICTURES FROM ITALY,” AND “SKETCHES BY BOZ.”
IN dealing with the episode of the suppressed plate in Oliver Twist we must be careful to bear in mind the fact that between the publication of Pickwick and the later novel there was an essential difference. The former was first published in self-contained parts, whereas the latter was published serially in Bentley’s Miscellany. Hence, the first editions of Pickwick in book form are to be met with bound from the parts, whereas the first editions in book-form of Oliver Twist are only to be found as issued by the publishers complete in three volumes. And unless we grasp this distinction at the outset we shall find it impossible to understand the apparently erratic appearance and disappearance {44} of the suppressed plate of “Rose Maylie and Oliver: the Fireside Scene” and its substitute.
The first instalment of the novel was published in the second number of Bentley’s Miscellany, February 1837, and it continued to run for nearly two years and a quarter. From this it will be seen that the last instalment of the novel was not published until three months of the year 1839 had elapsed.