I have thought it right to offer this small tribute to one who was in his way an interesting and remarkable man. No place has been found for him in the series known as English Men of Letters; and yet, as I have before pointed out, he had a place in literature that somewhat suggests the position of Dr. Johnson. What Forster said, or what Forster did, was at one time of importance to the community. This sort of arbiter is unknown nowadays, and perhaps would not be accepted. He will, however, ever be associated with Charles Dickens, as his friend, adviser, admirer, corrector, and biographer. There is a conventional meaning for the term "men of letters," men, that is, who have written books; but in the stricter sense it is surely one who is "learned in letters," as a lawyer is learned in the law. Johnson is much more thought of in this way than as a writer. Forster had this true instinct, and it was a curious thing one day to note his delight when I showed him a recent purchase: a figure of Johnson, his prototype, wrought in pottery, seated in chair, in an attitude of wisdom, his arms extended and bent, and evidently expatiating. Looking at it, he delivered an acute bit of criticism worthy of the Doctor himself.
"The interest," he said, "of this figure is not in the modelling, which is good, but because it represents Johnson as he was, in the eye of the crowd of his day; who looked on him, not as the writer, but as the grand argufier and layer-down of the law, the 'settler' of any knotty point whatever; with them the Doctor could decide anything. See how his arm is half raised, his fingers outspread, as if about to give his decision. You should show this to Carlyle, who will be delighted with it."
He often recurred to this and to the delight the Sage would have had. I forget whether I followed his advice. On the same occasion he noticed a figure of Washington. "Ah! there he stands," he said, "with his favourite air of state and dignity, and sense of what was due to his position. You will always notice that in the portraits there was a little assumption of the aristocrat." Forster's criticism was always of this kind—instructive and acute.
Forster was the envied possessor of nearly every one of Boz's MSS.—a treasure at the time not thought very much of, even by Dickens himself, but since his death become of extraordinary value. I should say that each was worth some two or three thousand pounds at the least. How amazing has been this appreciation of what dealers call "the Dickens stuff" during these years! It is almost incredible. I mind the day when a Dickens' book, a Dickens' letter, was taken tranquilly. A relation of my own, an old bachelor, had, as we thought, an eccentric penchant for early editions of Boz; and once, on the great man coming to the provincial city where he lived, waited on him to show him what he called his "Old Gold"; to wit, the earlier editions of Pickwick and Nickleby. We all smiled, and I remember Boz speaking to me good-naturedly of this enthusiasm. Not one of the party then—it was in 1865—dreamed that this old bachelor was far wiser than his generation. The original Pickwick, that is bound from the numbers, is indeed a nugget of old gold. I remember once asking Wills, his sub-editor, could I be allowed to have the original MSS. of some of Boz's short stories? He said, "To be sure, that nothing was more easy than to ask him, for the printer sent each back to him after use, carefully sealed up." What became of all these papers I cannot tell; but I doubt if anyone was then very eager about them.
Lately, turning over some old papers, I came upon a large bundle of proof "slips" of a story I had written for All the Year Round. It was called Howard's Son. To my surprise and pleasure I found that they had passed through Boz's own hands, and had been corrected throughout in his own careful and elaborate fashion, whole passages written in, others deleted, the punctuation altered and improved. Here was a trouvaille. These slips, I may add, have extraordinary value, and in the States would fetch a considerable sum. It was extraordinary what pains Boz took with the papers of his contributors, and how diligently and laboriously he improved and polished them.
Forster's latter days, that is, I suppose, for some seven or eight years, were an appalling state of martyrdom; no words could paint it. It was gout in its most terrible form, that is, on the chest. This malady was due, in the first place, to his early hard life, when rest and hours of sleep were neglected or set at nought. Too good living also was accountable. He loved good cheer and had an excellent taste in wines, fine clarets, etc. Such things were fatal to his complaint. This gout took the shape of an almost eternal cough, which scarcely ever left him. It began invariably with the night and kept him awake, the waters rising on his chest and overpowering him. I have seen him on the following day, lying spent and exhausted on a sofa and struggling to get some snatches of sleep, if he could. But as seven o'clock drew near, a change came. There was a dinner-party; he "pulled himself together:" began another jovial night and in good spirits. But he could not resist the tempting wines, etc., and of course had his usual "bad" night. Once dining with me, he as usual brought his Vichy bottle with him, and held forth on the necessity of "putting on the muzzle," restraint, etc. He "lectured" us all in a very suitable way, and maintained his restraint during dinner. There was a bottle of good Corton gently warming at the fire, about which he made inquiries, but which now, alas! need not be opened. When the ladies were gone, he became very pressing on this topic. "My dear fellow, you must not let me be a kill-joy, you must really open the bottle for yourself; why should you deny yourself for me? Nonsense!" It suggested Winkle going to fight a duel, saying to his friend, "Do not give information to the police." But I was inhospitably inflexible. These little touches were Forster all over. One would have given anything to let him have his two or three glasses, but one had to be cruel to be kind. Old Sam Johnson was of the same pattern, and could not resist a dinner-party, even when in serious plight. He certainly precipitated his death by his greed.
I well recall the confusion and grief of one morning in July, 1870, when opening the Times I read in large capitals, Death of Charles Dickens. It must have brought a shock more or less to every reader. Nothing was less expected, for we had not at that time the recurring evening editions, treading on each other's heels, to keep us posted up every hour in every event of the day.
I am tempted here to copy from an old diary the impressions of that painful time. The words were written on the evening of the funeral at 6 p.m.: "Died, dear Charles Dickens. I think at this moment of his bright genial manner, so cordial and hearty, of the delightful days at Belfast—on the Reading Tours—The Trains—the Evenings at the Hotel—his lying on the sofa listening to my stories and laughing in his joyous way. I think, too, of the last time that I saw him, which was at his office in Wellington Street, whither I went to ask him to come to some theatricals that we were getting up. We talked them over, and then he began to bewail so sadly, the burden of 'going out' to dinner parties. He said that he would like to come, but that he could not promise. However, he might come late in the night if he could get away from other places. I see his figure now before me, standing at the table, the small delicate-formed shoulders. Then bringing me into another room to show me one of the gigantic golden yellow All the Year Round placards, presently to be displayed on every wall and hoarding of the kingdom. This was the announcement of a new story I had written for his paper, which he had dubbed 'The Doctor's Mixture,' but of which, alas! he was destined never to revise the proofs. It had been just hung up 'to try the effect,' and was fresh from the printers."
I look back to another of Forster's visits to Dublin when he came in quest of materials for his Life of Swift. He was in the gayest and best of his humours, and behaved much as the redoubtable Doctor Johnson did on his visit to Edinburgh. I see him seated in the library at Trinity College, making his notes, surrounded by the Dons. Dining with him at his hotel, for even here he must entertain his host, he lit his cigar after dinner, when an aged waiter of the old school interrupted: "Ah, you musn't do that. It's agin the rules and forbidden." He little knew his Forster; what a storm broke on his head—"Leave the room, you rascal. How dare you, sir, interfere with me! Get out, sir," with much more: the scared waiter fled. "One of the pleasantest episodes in my life," I wrote in a diary, "has just closed. John Forster come and gone, after his visit here (i.e. to Dublin). Don't know when I liked a man more. He was most genial and satisfactory to talk with. His amiable and agreeable wife with him. She told a great deal of Boz and his life at home, giving a delightful picture of his ordinary day. He would write all the morning till one o'clock, and no one was allowed to see or interrupt him. Then came lunch; then a long hearty walk until dinner time. During the evening he would read in his own room, but the door was kept open so that he might hear the girls playing—an amiable touch. At Christmas time, when they would go down on a visit, he would entertain them by reading aloud his proofs and passages not yet published. She described to us 'Boffin,' out of Our Mutual Friend, as admirable. He shows all to Forster before-hand, and consults him as to plot, characters, etc. He has a humorous fashion of giving his little boys comic names; later to appear in his stories. Thus, one known as 'Plorn,' which later appeared as 'Plornish.' This is a pleasant picture of the great writer's domestic life, and it gives also a faint 'adumbration' of what is now forgotten: the intense curiosity and eager anticipation that was abroad as to what he was doing or preparing. Hints of his characters got known; their movements and developments were discussed, and the incidents of his story were like public events. We have nothing of this nowadays, for no writer or story rouses the same interest. Forster also told us a good deal about Carlyle, whose proof-sheets, from the abundant corrections, cost three or four times what the original 'setting' did." Thus the diary.