an illustrated edition, e.g. Du Maurier’s Trilby. But when a reader has formed his own idea of a character, those of the artist jar on preconceived impressions. Seymour was selected to illustrate Pickwick, but he committed suicide between the appearance of the first and second numbers; then a single number was illustrated by Mr Buss; and finally Hablot Browne was selected, and he was, in Forster’s words, “not unworthily associated with the masterpieces of Dickens’ genius.”
Personally I feel nothing but astonishment that the illustrations should have been liked by anybody. Dickens was, however, saved from a worse fate—that of being illustrated by Thackeray, who, in speaking of Dickens at a Royal Academy dinner, said, “I recollect walking up to his chambers in Furnival’s Inn with two or three drawings in my hand, which strange to say, he did not find suitable.”
Forster’s chapter on the writing of Pickwick contains some personal recollections of the author which may find a place here. “Very different was his face in those days, circa 1837, from that which photography has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He had a capital forehead . . . eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humour and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with sensibility.” He speaks, too, of the beardless face and rich brown hair in “most luxuriant abundance.” What remained to
the last was the expression of “keenness and practical power,” and the “eager, restless, energetic outlook” which suggested a man of action rather than a writer of books. Leigh Hunt said of it, “What a face . . . to meet in a drawing-room! . . . It had the life and soul in it of fifty human beings.”
A touching proof of Dickens’ sensibility is given by the fact that the writing of Pickwick was interrupted for two months by the death of his wife’s younger sister Mary.
The Quarterly Review, Oct. 1837, referring to the fact that Pickwick and Oliver Twist were appearing at the same time, said, “Indications are not wanting that the particular vein of humour which has hitherto yielded so much attractive metal, is worked out. . . . The fact is, Mr Dickens writes too often and too fast. . . . If he persists much longer in this course it requires no gift of prophecy to foretell his fate—he has risen like a rocket, and he will come down like the stick”—a singularly incorrect prediction.
The success of Pickwick [208] was enormous, but the profits reaped by the author can hardly share in that adjective. There was no agreement about its publication, except a verbal one. For each number Dickens was to receive fifteen guineas, and the publishers paid him at once for the first two numbers “as he required the money to go and get married with.” Besides
these payments he seems at the time to have received only £2500. In 1839 Dickens wrote to Forster of “the immense profits which Oliver has realised to its publisher, and is still realising,” and “the paltry, wretched sum it brought to me.” . . .
His friends made an important part of Dickens’ life. One of the earliest was Macready, [209] the actor, to whom he first wrote apparently in 1837, inviting him to a Pickwick dinner. He here addresses him as “My dear Sir,” but in 1838 he becomes “My dear Macready.”
In that year Dickens wrote a farce for Macready,