Where corrections have been made, the original ideas are so obscured that it is scarcely possible to decipher them. This is effected, not by the simple method of an obliteration of the words, as is common with some authors, by means of a line or two run through them at one stroke of the pen, but by a series of connected circles, or scroll-work flourishes, thus,
which must have caused greater muscular labour in execution. Let any one try the two methods for himself. Dickens was fond of flourishes, as witness his first published autograph, under the portrait which was issued with Nicholas Nickleby (1839). Some evidence of "writer's cramp," as it is termed, appears where the C in Charles becomes almost a G, and where the line-like flourishes to the signature thirty years later, under the portrait forming the frontispiece to Edwin Drood, are much shorter and less elaborate. All the earlier manuscripts are in black ink—the characteristic blue ink, which he was so fond of using in later years, not appearing until Hard Times was written (1854), and this continued to be (with one exception, Little Dorrit) his favourite writing medium, for the reason, it is said, that it was fluent to write with and dried quickly.
From a valuable collection of letters (more than a dozen—recently in the possession of Messrs. Noel Conway and Co., of Martineau Street, Birmingham, and kindly shown to me by Mr. Charles Fendelow), written by the novelist between 1832 and 1833 to a friend of his earlier years—Mr. W. H. Kolle—and not hitherto published, it appears that he had not then acquired that precise habit of inscribing the place, day of the week, month, and the year which marked his later correspondence (as has been pointed out by Miss Hogarth and Miss Dickens in the preface to the Letters of Charles Dickens), very few of the letters to Mr. Kolle bearing any record whatever except the day of the week, occasionally preceded by Fitzroy Street or Bentinck Street, where he resided at the time. It would be extremely interesting to ascertain the reason which subsequently led him to adopt the extraordinarily precise method which almost invariably marked his correspondence from the year 1840 until the close of his life. Possibly arrangements with publishers and others may have given him the exact habit which afterwards became automatic.
In addition to the manuscripts in the Forster Collection in the Museum there are corrected proofs of a portion of the Pickwick Papers, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit. Some of the corrections in Dombey and Son are said to be in the handwriting of Mr. Forster. All these proofs show marvellous attention to detail—one of the most conspicuous of Dickens's characteristics. Nothing with him was worth doing unless it was done well. As an illustration of work in this direction, it may be mentioned that a proof copy of the speech delivered at the meeting of the Administrative Reform Association at Drury Lane Theatre on Wednesday, June 27th, 1855, in the possession of the writer of these lines, has over a hundred corrections on the nine pages of which it consists, and many of these occur in punctuation. On careful examination, the alterations show that the correction in every case is a decided improvement on the original. The following fac-similes from the Hand-Book to the Dyce and Forster Collection, and from Forster's Life, illustrate the earlier, later, and latest handwritings of Charles Dickens as shown in the MSS. of Oliver Twist, 1837, Hard Times, 1854, and Edwin Drood, 1870.
"Oliver Twist," 1837, vol. i. ch. xii.
