with a batch of his
REMARKABLE LETTERS
By T. P. Cooper (1930)
FEW popular story-tellers, if any, have had so much written about them or their books and immortal characters as Charles Dickens. There is a fascinating, romantic, and enduring interest attached to all that is associated with the Great Novelist. Countless distinguished and able writers have treated upon almost every phase of his marvellous career and inimitable creations, yet there always seems to be something more to discover. Mr. Cooper has been fortunate in unearthing many new features of interest associated with the Novelist’s writings, and these it is proposed to make available to the public in a serial form in the DICKENS’S FOOTSTEPS SERIES.
The issuing of a good book, in Parts, is no new idea, and the exigencies of this post-war era have caused a revival of the custom. Fortunately the work, containing a wealth of newly discovered information, throwing additional light upon Dickensian scenes, incidents, and characters, both entertaining and informing, will lose none of its charm by being published in this way. Each part will contain rare, curious, and remarkable facts, together with occasional pictures and portraits not hitherto published.
The several extraordinary letters of the Real Micawber in this number, illustrated with associated particulars of his luckless life-story, cannot fail to interest and amuse the vast and increasing number of Dickens’s admirers and book-lovers generally.
“David Copperfield”
. . and . .
Wilkins Micawber
“The world . . . will seldom admit a very strongly marked character, either good or bad, in a fictitious narrative, to be within the limits of probability.” Preface to Nicholas Nickleby (First Edition).
ONE of the most popular novels that emanated from the prolific and inimitable pen of Dickens was David Copperfield. It was the Novelist’s favourite amongst all his works, and of it he said,—“I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.”
The book, as every reader is aware, contains much that purports to be autobiographical, written in the first person at the suggestion of his friend Forster; who, however, remarks that it would be a great “mistake to imagine anything like a complete identity of the fictitious novelist with the real one.” By the choice of this form of composition the author has secured a certain unity and completeness hardly ever equalled in a serial tale. It is universally acknowledged to be a wonderful specimen of literary skill composed with such strength of outline and vividness of colour as to enable us to feel a continued interest in the progress of, what is really, a complicated story with two plots.
The idea and scheme of the book—after much careful consideration ultimately named The Personal History of David Copperfield—occupied the Novelist’s thoughts during the latter months of the year 1848, and the first instalment was published in May the following year. It was completed in twenty monthly numbers, the last of which appeared in November 1850, and in the preface of a later edition the author records how sorrowfully he laid down his pen “at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task.”
By an avowal such as this we realise in a measure how Dickens was affected by the intense thought and prodigious labour he invariably put into his writings, both in the inception and the execution of a story. He spared no pains in making his work thorough for he systematically devoted his whole strength and mind to the subject in hand. The hero, Copperfield, is made to say, “Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well;” characteristics which have frequently and justly been applied to his creator. Dickens also resembled many great humorists whose enjoyment of their own fancies excels even that of their most appreciative readers. In a sense the Novelist became for the time being part of the characters he created, and his mood changed as, in amazing variety and as occasion required, they came upon the scene. While he wildly revelled in the exuberant whimsicalities of his humorous creations, physiologically he himself experienced the most poignant emotion in portraying those pathetic incidents which have touched the heart and brought tears to the eyes of many a reader.
Of David Copperfield and its gallery of exquisite personages much of an appreciative nature has been written. Thackeray remarks in Sketches and Travels in London, “How beautiful it is—how charmingly fresh and simple! In those admirable touches of tender humour, a mixture of love and wit—who can equal this great genius?”
The crowd of varying characters in the story, both great and small, live in our memories. Though they may not all be considered perfect portraits, they have the seeming reality of living creatures, flesh and blood, real, indeed, more real than half our acquaintances. The “lone, lorn creetur,” Mrs. Gummidge; stalwart Ham the fisherman; the Peggottys; the good-hearted carrier Barkis; the “umble” Uriah Heep; little Emily; Betsy Trotwood; Dora; Traddles; and others of the group will never die. They are not lofty personages, but, as old friends, they will outlive and outlast us, as they have outlived their inspired delineator.
The hilarious Wilkins Micawber is popularly hailed throughout the wide-world as the most arresting and superb creation of the gifted Novelist. With all Micawber’s wild eccentric ways and distinctive sayings, we are more intimately acquainted than with those of our brothers and sisters, and we feel that it is almost impossible to believe that such a person never had an existence. His typical reflections and aphorisms are irresistible, and are frequently quoted by eminent statesmen and publicists in all countries where the English language is spoken.
Almost everybody is familiar with the characteristic features of the happy-go-lucky Micawber, as pictorially illustrated down the years by Browne, Barnard, Reynolds and other artists. Hablôt Knight Browne, Dickens’s original illustrator, familiarly known as “Phiz”—a pseudonym probably adopted to harmonize with that of “Boz”—was a facile designer associated with the Novelist for above twenty years.—
To Browne we are indebted for the first droll and felicitous conceptions of Sam Weller, Mrs. Gamp, Pecksniff, Captain Cuttle, Dick Swiveller, and our immortal and fantastic friend Wilkins Micawber. The author fully appreciated his designs and intimated to Forster, August 22nd, 1849— “Browne has sketched an uncommonly characteristic and capital Mr. Micawber for the next number. I hope the present number is a good one. I hear nothing but pleasant accounts of the general satisfaction.” The master touches and the vivid distinguishing details in the portrait of “Mr. Micawber,” as originally conceived and etched by “Phiz,” appear in all the subsequent thousand-and-one representations of him by later artists. The only difference is that he is now pictured in more finished drawings because of the improved methods in the technical art of illustration.’
Mr. Matz, an enthusiastic Dickensian, in expressing a favourable estimate of Browne’s drawings remarks that “Phiz is the one man who created pictorially the Dickens’s characters: all others merely gild them.” We owe a debt of gratitude to the versatile “Phiz” for a host of charming conceptions. The extent of his influence and that of succeeding draughtsmen upon the public mind and sentiment cannot now and possibly at no time could be estimated. But, there can be no doubt that the fanciful portraits drawn by “Phiz” largely contributed to the general appreciation and the real enjoyment of the stories in which they appeared. The popularity of Dickens and the success of his entertaining books may justly be attributed, in some degree, to the famous illustrator who possessed the happy knack of hitting off appropriate sketches of his striking characters and imaginative episodes, and in no case was “Phiz” more successful than in that of depicting the immortal Micawber.
There is no disputing the fascinating interest attaching to the sayings and doings of Wilkins Micawber. Even in these prosaic modern times when eccentrics of his type are as extinct as the dodo, his personality possesses an undoubted realism for most people. But curiously enough in one of Dickens’s greatest admirers this sense was wanting. Thackeray in a letter to David Masson, acknowledging a review of Pendennis in The North British Review, gave a more subdued and analytical critique of Dickens’s genius than the unstinted praise of the Novelist’s work in general already quoted. He wrote,—“I think Mr. Dickens has in many things quite a divine genius, so to speak, and certain notes in his song are so delightful and admirable that I should never think of trying to imitate him. I quarrel with his Art in many respects; which I don’t think represents nature duly; for instance Micawber appears to me an exaggeration of a man, as his name is of a name. It is delightful, and makes me laugh, but is no more a real man that my friend Punch is......... There is no doubt, according to my notions, that his writing has one admirable quality—it is charming—that answers everything. Another may write the most perfect English, have the greatest fund of wit, learning, and so forth—but I doubt if any novel-writer has that quality, that wonderful sweetness and freshness which belongs to Dickens.”
There is good reason for maintaining, however, that Thackeray’s conclusion in this case was too hasty. Wilkins Micawber unquestionably had his original in a very “real man,” whose career and character tallied in a marked degree with the eccentric individual we find in the pages of David Copperfield. It cannot be denied that although many of the Novelist’s characters are purely imaginary, there are not a few that had recognisable prototypes in real life. Actual early Victorian personages whom he met here and there were visualised and transferred to his pages as heroes and heroines.
The quest for Dickens’s originals has occasionally been condemned as futile and useless, but by others it is regarded as a legitimate and fascinating pursuit, therefore we feel justified in pursuing the inquiry. Who was the accepted prototype of Wilkins? When and where did he live? How did he live? These are interesting themes to many devotees of the great and inspired story-teller.
Dickens himself said in writing to Leigh Hunt, who had protested against the sketch of Harold Skimpole,—“The character is not you, for there are traits in it common to fifty thousand people besides......... Under similar disguises my own father and mother are in my books, and you might as well see your likeness in Micawber.” The marvellous and sumptuous portrait of Wilkins Micawber, it is generally believed,—a belief endorsed by Forster—was suggested and originally founded on Dickens the Elder, an improvident and luckless man, whom the character somewhat resembles in his gay and sad moments, in his occasional rhetorical sayings and exuberant outbursts. But the Novelist’s eldest son, whose word should have some authority, has declared that the current belief and the assertions of Forster are absolutely without foundation, “except within the limits of the description given in the autobiographical sketch, and except as to certain odd phrases and turns of expression in speech and letter writing.” Mrs. Eleanor Christian in the Temple Bar magazine of March 1888, in describing Mr. John Dickens remarks,—“the Novelist’s father appeared younger than his wife did, and was a plump, good-looking man, rather an old buck in dress, but with no resemblance to Micawber that I could detect; no salient characteristics that could be finished into anything so grotesque, except that he indulged occasionally in fine sentiments and long-worded sentences, and seemed to take an airy, sunny-sided view of things in general.” The resemblance of John Dickens to Micawber, it would therefore appear, is only superficial.
Boz more probably obtained the main idea of William Dorrit, the father of the Marshalsea from old John Dickens, a character which seems, from all we know of him, to present a far more likely family picture than the illustrious Wilkins.
Charles Dickens was quietly observant, and always on the look-out for the freaks and the prodigies of humankind. He possessed an unusual natural aptitude for catching hints, he readily noticed curious personal traits, whimsical or funny actions, and eccentric habits. He seized every salient peculiarity, and aided by not a little exaggeration, he embodied them in his fictional characters. Not copying with fidelity any individual in real life, but by adding one person’s quaint characteristics to that of another’s foibles, together with somebody’s singular style of conversation, he thus produced a matchless word-portrait endowed with a veiled identity.
An alleged prototype of Micawber, from whom Dickens may have copied certain mannerisms, was met by that author during his first visit to America in the year 1842—a queer literary gent, Thomas Powell, whose idiosyncrasies were set forth many years ago and published in the Boston Index. In the story it is mentioned that he had a decided mania for writing letters of a flamboyant style, and possessed some of the outstanding comicalities characterized in the great Wilkins Micawber.
But there was certainly another original of almost incredible individuality, Richard Chicken, of York, who for several years, strange to relate, was intimately associated with Alfred Lamert Dickens, the Novelist’s younger brother. And it was this peculiar personage who is more likely than any other to have been the principal subject of the Novelist’s pen-portrait. Chicken is well described as possessing an “indescribable character of faded gentility.” He is no newly-discovered prototype; it was often remarked by his York contemporaries—that he was the real person from whom Micawber’s principal characteristics were grafted.
Whoever Dickens had in mind when depicting Micawber with all his admirable humorous touches, his careless address, his peculiar flourishes of speech, his grotesque gloomy forebodings, his whimsical cheerfulness; there can be no doubt that the Novelist created the character with exultant exuberance. Indeed, he seems to have revelled in the magnitude of the full-length portrait, and in his own inherent and marvellous powers, as he invested Wilkins with such a gorgeous personality.
Alfred Lamert Dickens
. . and the . .
Real Micawber
“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.” Great Expectations.— Mr. Jaggers.
BEFORE attempting the story of Richard Chicken, and adducing certain remarkable evidence, together with a few of his amazing letters, it will, perhaps, be of interest to mention the Novelist’s connection with the City of York, as well as that of his brother, and their intercourse with some of its citizens and notabilities.
Dickens had several friends in the Minster City and was particularly intimate with two. He was on terms of friendship with Henry S. Belcombe, a physician, whose residence was in the Minster Yard at the east end of the noble cathedral. The Novelist was also friendly with John Camidge, Doctor of Music, the then organist at the Minster, whom he visited on several occasions at his home in the King’s Manor House, the rendezvous of many celebrities in the realms of literature, music and art. Mr. John Stimpson Camidge, his son, distinctly remembered seeing Boz, and with rapt interest listened to a conversation the Novelist had with his sister, Miss Camidge, in the garden amongst the ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey. The early recollections of Mr. J. S. Camidge were embodied in a letter to the present writer,—
“I have a clear recollection of Dickens coming into the Manor House garden from the Museum Grounds. As he entered, my sister, a girl of eighteen, and her younger brother, were lying on the grass near to what we called The Rock, a group of stones my mother had set up as showing the termination of the choir of the Abbey Church. He took May, my sister, by the hand—how pleasantly he talked! and she told him her story of the Minster and the adjoining Abbey. He laughed and chatted away; and I remember how, with boyish delight on this occasion, the dear old garden appeared so pretty in the bright sunlight. May, being older than I was, afterwards told me who the visitor was—the author of Pickwick Papers. I think it was in the summertime of 1843, or perhaps it was a year or two earlier.”
Alfred Lamert Dickens was ten years younger than his gifted and illustrious brother Charles, and he first saw the light at Chatham in the year 1822. Comparatively little has been written about him or his career, but he is incidentally mentioned by the author in his Letters, and occasionally family episodes in which he took part are recorded in Forster’s Life, and in similar memoirs. For example he formed one of a holiday party inaugurated by Dickens in celebration of the first instalment of Master Humphrey’s Clock, on Saturday, April 4th, 1840. The Novelist, with Mrs. Dickens, left town on the Friday, and accompanied by Forster, and Maclise the artist, the party in holiday mood visited Stratford-on-Avon, and the birthplace of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer, at Lichfield. Alfred travelled from Tamworth—where he was engaged as a student-engineer— and joined the group of rejoicing friends, all of whom were gratified at the success of Master Humphrey, and the immediate sale of sixty-thousand copies, with orders in hand for ten-thousand more. Towards the end of their short tour the literary ramblers found their purses almost depleted, and their combined resources straitened.
With amusing similarity to Mr. Micawher’s resourcefulness in “raising the wind,” Alfred was chosen by the Novelist as a go-between with a pawnbroker at Birmingham for this purpose. Here he deposited the several gold watches carried by his companions in distress, and successfully raised as much cash as enabled them all to entrain for the homeward journey.
The next time we hear of Alfred we find him evidently a capable civil engineer, in the employ of John Cass Birkinshaw, at York, who had charge of the laying out of several new railroads in the East Riding of Yorkshire. This was in 1845, the year of the great railway boom, when York was the chief centre of activity and share speculation. The city possessed a Stock Exchange associated with George Hudson, the dictator of early railway enterprise, whom Carlyle, with all his wonted powers of invective, satirized in the seventh of his Latter Day Pamphlets, as the “big swollen gambler.”
At a house in Micklegate, York, now divided into two shops numbered 79 and 81, were the original offices of Birkinshaw, which were subsequently removed to a building in Hudson Street (Railway Street), now the Adelphi Hotel. At this time, by a strange coincidence, Richard Chicken held a subordinate position in this office, and he had frequent intercourse during the execution of his duties with Alfred Dickens.
The late Mr. Charles Hornsey, of York, an engineer and surveyor, who served in Birkinshaw’s office, remembered many amusing incidents that took place during the years he was associated with the singular individual, Chicken, and Alfred Dickens, both of whom had a predilection for the stage, and often entertained the officials with their drollery and dramatic sketches. Mr. Hornsey and Alfred Dickens were very intimate, and the former gentleman used to tell an especially amusing anecdote against his friend and himself.
In the month of December, 1845, they both were members of a party of engineers who were surveying and laying out the Hull and Bridlington railway line. Finishing their duties two days before Christmas for the holidays, they foregathered at Bridlington, and put up for the night at an old posting house, the Black Lion Hotel, with thoughts of spending the festive day at their respective homes in York. Being in a frolicsome mood, they perpetrated, what they thought, a practical joke upon the landlord of the inn. Before retiring for the night they figured upon the room ceiling with the smoke of lighted candles, a large gruesome design. They outlined in sooty black a coffin, inscribing on it the name “R. CARR,” a fellow surveyor, and represented skulls and cross-bones in particular places, chuckling to themselves that they would get away at an early hour the next morning before the disfigurement was observed. Breakfast over, with some trepidation, the bill was called for, and to their dismay, an unexpected item in the charge ran,—“To scouring ceiling and whitewashing same, 10s. 6d.”
It appeared that the innkeeper’s daughter had casually looked into the vacated room, and with horrified surprise, she discovered the striking decoration left by the practical jokers. However, no bones were broken, the Yorkshire boniface claimed quits, and he wished his guests a hearty good-day. The landlady smiled and bade them good morning as they passed her in the bar; the chamber-maid peeped around and giggled; the women servants who were about the place came out and laughingly nodded; the boots with a roguish grin gave them a farewell salute; and the ostler, as they drove away, greeted them with a final send-off. The good-humoured people of the establishment were all smiles, and had enjoyed the half-guinea joke, as well, indeed, better than the disconcerted perpetrators of it, who, no doubt, inwardly felt, as Boz appropriately reminds us in his Sketches, that “practical jokes are very capital in their way, if you can only get the other party to see the fun of it.”
Unfortunately their drive to Scarborough was beset with snowstorms, mishaps, and delays, and the belated roisterers missed the last train on the newly-opened line to York, and were compelled to spend their Christmas at the seaside.
In the year 1846, “The Malton and Driffield Junction Railway Act” was passed, and Alfred Dickens, it seems, was the local resident engineer who supervised this new undertaking. Official copies of the Act, with his signature, are still in the possession of the North Eastern Railway Company, a great enterprise which absorbed the Malton and Driffield, as well as many other minor lines and companies. To be near the scene of his professional activities, he, at first, lived in apartments at Hillside Cottage, Malton. On the 16th May, 1846, he married Miss Helen Dobson, the daughter of Robert Dobson, stationmaster at Strensall, near York, on the Scarborough line. The nuptial ceremony was performed at the church of St. Andrew, Holborn, London, and the friends present on the auspicious occasion who signed the register, were the bride’s father, and Miss Georgina Hogarth, the Novelist’s favourite and trusted sister-in-law.
For some little time the newly-married couple lived at York, and Charles Dickens, writing to Miss Hogarth from Edinburgh, Thursday, I3th December, 1847, remarks,—”We have some idea of going to York on Sunday, passing that night at Alfred’s, and coming home on Monday.” Alfred subsequently removed to Derwent Cottage, Norton, near Malton, and by an 1851 directory we learn that he had an office in the quaint Market Place of the latter town.
When the work of laying out the Malton and Driffield railroad, and other local works were completed, Birkinshaw, the engineer, transferred his offices to London, and Alfred Dickens left the district. A few years later he was professionally engaged at Manchester, where he died somewhat suddenly under distressing circumstances, on the 27th July, 1860. Charles Dickens, who always took a solicitous interest in his brother’s welfare, and materially assisted him on many occasions by influence and otherwise, received the intelligence of his demise with profound sorrow. When mentioning the sad occurrence to Forster he wrote,—“I was telegraphed for to Manchester on Friday night. Arrived there at a quarter-past ten, but he had been dead three hours, poor fellow! He is to be buried at Highgate on Wednesday, I brought the poor young wife back with me yesterday.”
The Novelist at this time was hard at work on his story Great Expectations; and with sorrow and other anxieties he was seriously handicapped in his literary projects. “To-morrow,” he wrote immediately after the funeral, “I have to work against time and tide and everything else, to fill up a No. keeping open for me, and the stereotype plates of which must go to America on Friday.” Dickens conscientiously aided and did his utmost towards the bereaved, as he characteristically had done to other members of the Dickens’s family. In March, 1861, when advising Wills, his sub-editor of All the Year Round, how to deal with one of the many begging letters he so frequently received, he confessed “I am quite weighed down and loaded and chained in life by the enormous drags upon me which are already added to the charges of my own large family .... I declare to you that what with my mother—and Alfred’s family—and my wife .... I seem to stop sometimes like a steamer in a storm, and deliberate whether I shall go on whirling, or go down.” This was written at a period when he was suffering from mental fatigue and disquietude, caused by the anxieties consequent upon his literary enterprises, family solicitude, and the exacting preparations for his second series of paid public readings. However, by resorting to physical counteractants—long walks and similar exercises—he endeavoured to dispel the spirit of unrest and anguish.
Mrs. Helen Dickens, the widow of Alfred Dickens, returned to York to be near her own people, and lived at 79 Union Terrace, from the 24th November, 1863, to the 20th March, 1866. Her father, Robert Dobson, who had relinquished his connection with the Railway Company, resided at 3 Grove Terrace (now 31 Huntingdon Road), where he died about the year 1866, at which date Mrs. Dickens then went to live with her mother.
Such matter-of-fact details of the haunts and homes of Alfred Dickens, and of his family, have an interest, because they recall incidents connected with the personality and footsteps of the great author. That the Novelist frequently visited Alfred at York, and his widow at the places mentioned, there is no doubt whatever, because elderly citizens who were friendly neighbours saw Dickens and knew of his visits.
Although few references to Alfred Dickens are found in the Novelist’s published correspondence, we must not forget that these Letters are only a mere selection of the voluminous missives he penned to intimate friends. Neither can we expect every visit that Charles made to York carefully described. But there must have been a thousand-and-one personal incidents, and many letters from Alfred to his author-brother, all of which have passed into oblivion as a consequence of the strange and peculiar course Dickens adopted, when he gathered all his papers and private correspondence together, took them into a paddock at Gad’s Hill, and made a great bonfire of them.
A Batch
. . of . .
Micawber’s Letters
“What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions is plain truth to another.” Preface.—Martin Chuzzlewit.
THE period when Dickens was engaged in writing David Copperfield synchronizes with his brother’s sojourn in York, and with the years of his close association with Richard Chicken, a living prototype from whom, assuredly in many respects, the comic masterpiece Micawber was copied. The Novelist was undoubtedly supplied by Alfred, from time to time, with details, humorous traits, and suggestive characteristics of his eccentric colleague. It is also affirmed by contemporaries that Dickens himself met this real type in the flesh on several occasions, and, moreover, that he had seen some of his remarkable letters. Chicken therefore unconsciously posed, and Wilkins was invested with many of his foibles and whimsicalities.
For upwards of thirty years, Richard Chicken was popularly known as one of York’s genteel oddities, and everybody knew the luckless story of the jaunty play-actor. He was born in Low Ousegate, where his father was established in business as a wine merchant. The premises are now occupied by a licensed victualler with the sign of Macgregor’s Hotel. At St. Michael’s Church, on the opposite side of the street, he was baptised on the 14th August, 1799. His father, Nicholas Chicken, formerly of Blades, in the county of Durham, married at Pocklington in 1798, Elizabeth, the daughter of Richard Huddlestone, a gentleman sometime steward to the Denisons of Kilnwick Percy.
Chicken’s chequered career was beset with shabby troubles and misfortunes. On the early death of his father he was sent to Bingley Grammar School, then under the headmastership of the Rev. Richard Hartley, D.D. He had three years training at this celebrated educational establishment, which had turned out many remarkable scholars and university wranglers. The subjects he distinguished himself in can only be surmised, but we do know that like Micawber, he was the happy possesser of “a variety of qualifications” and “great talent.” Elocution, doubtless, was his favourite study.
In the sequence of his life’s events we discover that, for some years, he was attached to the itinerant Stock Company of Players connected with the Theatre at Nottingham, “a profession so adapted to his fertile resources and his flow of language.” In 1823 he appeared on the boards at York. The exact date of his debut before a local audience, and the title of the play are, indeed, amusingly and peculiarly suggestive, especially when we consider how he was “the victim” from the cradle, “of pecuniary liabilities.” He fittingly appeared as Mr. Ollapod, an eccentric apothecary in “The Poor Gentleman,” a comedy by George Colman, the younger, which was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, on February 11th, 1801. In the play one of the characters, Sir Robert Bramble, addresses him thus,— “Oh, Master Ollapod, your little foibles are like your small quantities of magnesia—they give no great nausea, and do neither harm nor good.”
YORK.
THIS EVENING, THURSDAY, APRIL IST, THE
COMEDY OF
THE POOR GENTLEMAN.
OLLAPOD - - - - MR. CHICKEN.
(His first appearance)
FREDERICK - - MR. F. RAMSEY.
(His second appearance)
As was customary, a night at the Theatre Royal was set apart for the
BENEFIT OF
MR. CHICKEN.
On Saturday Evening, May 22nd, 1824,
His Majesty’s Servants will perform the
admired Play of ....
LOVERS’ VOWS.
In this piece the character of Count Cassel was sustained by Chicken, a role in which we imagine he revelled with delight, as he pompously moved about the stage and fluently voiced the grandiloquent declamations of his part.
Micawber was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a creature, about everything but his own affairs, as ever existed, and never so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any profit to him. Chicken was similarly disposed. He had the same genteel air, the same farcical deportment, and the same condescending roll of voice that the Novelist gives to Micawber. Another characteristic of Chicken was his lofty style of composition and conversation, so whimsically portrayed in his immortal counterpart.
“Mr. Micawber had a relish in” the “formal piling up of words, which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was,” his creator says, “not at all peculiar to him.” Chicken exhibited similar peculiarities in his lofty conversation, as well as in the phraseology of the extraordinary begging letters he wrote when in embarrassing circumstances. The following typical and emotional missive which he sent to the Lord Mayor of York will be recognised as a Micawber gem of the first water.
“May it please your Lordship,Sabbath as it is, I must devote a few moments of it to address you. In an emergency it is lawful to take the shewbread; works of necessity and mercy may be performed on a Sunday; the priests denied the temple on the Sunday and were blameless. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. I have frustrated as long as I can my landlord’s intentions, who will tarry no longer. The citizens have just made up £1 12s. 6d. for me, so that I now require seven shillings and sixpence. Pray exercise your benevolence to me at this time. If it be your first and your last, let me experience at your hands that feature in the body, of the charity designated almsgiving. I want some employment, anything however tedious or irksome is better than dependence. Can you work me in your office occasionally to execute errands or what not? I am to be relied on. Chicken and punctuality are synonymous terms. I can vie with Pythagoras for sobriety and with Scipio for continence.
“I worship with the Methodists, and joined that body when I was with Mr. Birkinshaw. I have been attached to them from boyhood, ever since I was trained by my grandmother at Pocklington, at the time my grandfather was steward to the Denisons of Kilnwick Percy. In a temporal point of view, I mourn the most over the five years I wasted in my clerkship in the Ecclesiastical Court—precious time wasted and useful money misapplied in my articles and keep. The profession was not my choice, as I was not consulted but placed there by my father’s executors. I should have preferred the temporal courts. I lament leaving the stage. There I was composed, if not happy; but my delicate constitution gave way under the fatigue of itinerant acting. In the early part of next year we may be in a more easy condition, as my wife’s mother is dead, and part of her property viz., the inn at Doncaster, was sold on the 8th ult. for £775, and there is yet a dwelling-house and two gardens to go by private contract, after which she and her sisters will divide the inheritance. Her brother, however, is sordid, mercenary, avaricious, and gripping. His heart’s in the world, and the world’s in his heart.
Your humble servant,
RICHARD CHICKEN.
“P.S.—Do you think, sir, that you have a coat or trousers in reversion? Quintus (my son) will call for your considerations tomorrow (Monday), as he goes to the station at nine.”
It will be noticed that in this “eloquent” appeal, Chicken asks for employment, and curiously enough, Mrs. Micawber when discussing her husband’s inability to secure a situation, remarks,—“Mr. Micawber cannot get into those firms—which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his services in an inferior capacity.” In the allusion to such classical names as Pythagoras and Scipio, we could almost believe that Dickens had perused this identical letter, as Mr. Micawber, when talking to Copperfield, says,—“Sometimes I have risen superior to my difficulties .... there have been times when they have been too many for me, and I have given in, and said to Mrs. Micawber, in the words of Cato— “Plato, thou reasonest well.”
“Bless and save the man!” exclaimed Betsy Trotwood, alluding to Micawber, “he’d write letters by the ream, if it were a capital offence!” and it is most remarkable, that reams of Chicken’s letters, addressed to various influential citizens and firms, more than half-a-century ago, have been preserved. One batch in the office of an attorney is neatly filed, and docketed “Curious letters from Mr. Chicken.” Chicken was a celebrity, a popular character, and well-known to everybody in authority or of importance in business circles. His pecuniary involvements were the common gossip of the city, and his characteristic missives still in the possession of various persons have been treasured as relics of a strange, improvident, happy-go-lucky personage of Dickensian days.
With his usual importunity he confidentially unburdens his heart in this truly pathetic note, to the clerks in Mr. Buckle’s office— .
“Gentlemen,For the last 9 weeks I have been suffering from a species of physical declension, which at length assumed so serious an aspect, that it became expedient I should have medical aid. I consequently became an out-patient of the Hospital last week. I don’t much anticipate a recovery, and am not at all anxious about it, as I have an enduring inheritance above.
“Within the last six weeks I have lost 17 lbs. weight, and go on decreasing. I have an abundance of medicine from the Institution, but I had much rather have been an in-patient, as I should then have had the advantage of the house diet. When an individual feeds on drugs, he is soon satiated.
“I am ordered generous support, such as Mutton Chops and Porter, but I cannot procure them; the wants of my family are too absorbing .... I do not affect to have any claim upon your regard or sympathy, but you may, perhaps feel disposed to grant me a trifling pecuniary aid towards assuaging my sufferings under the present dispensation for ‘Auld Lang Syne.’
“I am sure that if the late Mr. Buckle had been living, this appeal would not have been in vain. It is ‘the Actor’s last Cake.’
I am, Your obedient servant,
RICHARD CHICKEN.
“P.S.—I manage to take a little exercise, but am unequal to much locomotion. I will take the liberty of sending Sextus for your consideration in the course of the day.
“When I was a member of the Nottingham Company, they used to tell me that I looked as if a good dinner would be a memorable event in my history. Boddy, the light comedian, used to plague me about my lean condition. Poor fellow! he is now in the ‘Actors’ Paradise’—America.”
The officials frequently heard from their impecunious acquaintance, who could “not live without something widely different from existing circumstances turning up.” “The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself, as a prey to these dismal circumstances, was only to be equalled by the emphasis with which he read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered to it with a roll of his head, when he thought he had hit a sentence very hard indeed.”
Another of Chicken’s effusions reads as follows, and it is more than amusing to note that Mrs. Micawber also had a predilection for brown gloves.
“My dear Sir,I am just reminded that you and I pledged our vows at the hymeneal altar about the same time as our Gracious Sovereign, but we have not kept pace with her Blessed Majesty in progeny.
“As you are aware, it has always been my desire to maintain a correct personal appearance in whatever sphere I have had the fortune or the misfortune to have been cast, and I take this favourable opportunity of enquiring if you have the matter of half-a-dozen pairs of despised gloves a little worse for wear, they would be of service and appreciated by your old and
Ever grateful acquaintance,
RICHARD CHICKEN.
“P.S.—If I may be allowed to express a choice, those coloured brown would be preferred.”
Chicken at one time lived in St. Mary’s Row, Bishophill Senior, at a house now numbered 4, Victor Street, opposite the Golden Ball Inn; and in a street directory of the forties, with extraordinary appropriateness, he is described as a “Teacher of Elocution.” In the adjoining churchyard of St. Mary, may be seen a gravestone erected to the memory of some of his children. The monument is on the east side of the porch, close to the footpath, and unlike the others in the burial-ground, it is placed with its inscriptive face towards the south, and easily seen by passers-by.
ALEXANDER JORDAN, GUSTAVIUS, NICHOLAS HUDDLESTONE,
SONS OF
RICHARD AND LOUISA CHICKEN,
AGED RESPECTIVELY 11, 9, AND 7 YEARS,
WHO ALL DIED ON THE I3TH JUNE, 1845,
OF PESTILENTIAL FEVER;
ALSO
LOUISA ADELAIDE,
SISTER TO THE ABOVE, AGED 18 MONTHS,
WHO EXPIRED
ON THE 19TH OF THE SAME MONTH
UNDER A SIMILAR ATTACK,
AND ON THE 24TH OCTOBER, 1847,
JESSE QUARTISSIMO CHICKEN,
AGED 7 YEARS.
Such a record of a sad visitation is, indeed, sorrowful and “Implores the tribute of a sigh.” “At these times,” like Mr. Micawber in “his domestic troubles,” Chicken would be “transported with grief and mortification.” But “being in difficulties, all considerations of private feeling must give way,” with his head erect he would “go out, humming a tune with a greater air of gentility than ever,” with the hope that something would turn up. In a new sphere the erstwhile actor, sometime “one of His Majesty’s Players,” fortunately found casual employment as a clerk in the Railway Offices. Here he toiled for a while with a “certain indescribable air of doing something genteel.” His desk duties perhaps did not suit his health, or the monotonous confinement may have caused a feeling of unrest. However that may be, he wrote in his irrepressible style to the chief of the department, heedless of a due regard to consequences.
“To Mr. Sheriff,May it please you Sir,
A few weeks ago I ventured (through the medium of Mr. Wilson) to bring before you the fact that I have for a considerable period suffered from disease in the region of the heart, and that very close application to the desk, with its accompanying contraction of the chest operate against me. My desk work in the Clearing-house is from 9 till 6 without intermission or interval (excepting dinner hour) and I am really unable to stand it. If you require a Medical Certificate on this point, ‘I can put one in.’
“Under these circumstances if you can give me an appointment where I might have more exercise and less restraint, it would be received with appropriate emotion by
Your humble Servant,
RICHARD CHICKEN.”
Yet, another “crisis” came, and with such “address and intelligence” as he possessed, with “injured dignity” his dismissal he thought necessitated the writing of a series of letters:
“To Mr. Wilson,Sir,
In the absence of Mr. Sheriff, I venture to acknowledge to you the receipt of my Discharge from the service of this Company. You signify no charge against me; and it appears to me a thing unreasonable to discard a servant against whom there appears to be no accusation. As I have been both attentive and diligent to my duties, as well as punctual to my appointments, I cannot conjecture why I am to be thrown “on my beam ends” .... You must excuse me when I say that I consider myself ill-used, when I reflect that Mr. S... .’s services are to be retained in some department, while I with a young family, which I hourly expect to be increased, am to be driven away.
“If I had continued in the tranquil employment of Mr. Hailey, or Mr. Benson in the Goods Office, this would not have occurred. Why was I transplanted, and why am I now to be rooted-up?
“I hope that Mr. Sheriff will reconsider his verdict, and allow me to tarry. The circumstances of my discharge will cause those gentlemen to wonder, through whose influence with Mr. Sheriff I obtained my first engagement.
I am, yours respectfully,
RICHARD CHICKEN.”
Though no response came to this fervent appeal, in which there is a particular vein of humour and pathos, we imagine that he felt irresistibly compelled to continue writing, which was one of his distinguishing diversions.
“To Mr. Sheriff,May it please you Sir,
In pursuance of my Discharge I quitted the service of the Company on Saturday, but as no charge was brought against me, I cannot conjecture the grounds of my dismissal ...... In the several departments in which I have been engaged since I entered the service of the Company in September last, I have been diligent, punctual, and obliging, and if I have erred, it has been in judgement, not design.
“Cast on my own resources at this juncture when my wife is confined of her eleventh child, and in a very delicate condition, the event operates doubly against her, producing restlessness and anxiety.
“It may be that you have been annoyed by the several notes which I have addressed to you Sir within the last two months, but I declare that I had none but a pure and legitimate object in view, and as I am a creature of circumstances, and act under such impulse, I hope you will not visit me with displeasure on that account. If not for my own sake, at least in consideration of my family I venture to hope that you will consider to offer me an engagement in some department which you may think adapted to me.”
Again no reply, another month elapsed, and a further letter was sent to the same gentleman containing similar expressions, and concluding,—“As I write this with a conscience void of offence, as regards my past services at the Railway, I cannot but exercise faith as to its result.”
Dickens says, Mr. Micawber’s letters were a part of himself, and are only to be equalled by Mrs. Micawber’s. It is therefore most significant that Mrs. Chicken entered the lists with equal fervour and eloquence in her husband’s behalf. Undaunted by the silence of the chief officials, the unfavourable results of his appeals, and those sent by his wife, Chicken, as a last resort, petitioned the Directors of the Company to review the subject of his dismissal. Poor Chicken! with such an inimitable combination of talents and not appreciated !
His experiences, moreover, essentially resembled those portrayed in David Copperfield,—“Indeed I may be superstitious,” remarked Mrs. Micawber, “but it appears to me that Mr. Micawber is destined never to receive any answers whatever to the great majority of the communications he writes.”
When Chicken was employed at Birkinshaw’s office, he frequently wrote begging epistles to Alfred Dickens, and, in fact, to everybody on the staff. His curious communications were almost of daily occurrence, and they were invariably couched in such terms as provoked no end of amusement to his colleagues. It was certainly true in his case to say that he “never missed any possible opportunity of writing a letter.” He was often known to compose and pen his missives during the quietude of alternate meal times, and slyly leave them on the desks for returning officials. This, one of Chicken’s distinctive traits, reminds us that “Mr. Micawber took the opportunity of Traddles putting on his great-coat, to slip a letter into Copperfield’s hand,” with a whispered request “to read it at leisure.”
Quoting David Copperfield’s observations, he informs us that “after all these occasions, Mr. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these meals which I well remember.” One of Chicken’s sons was engaged in the offices of the Railway Company at York, and his eccentric father, who could be confidential on the smallest possible provocation, frequently posted delightful and characteristic messages to the chief clerk. The following quotation has a distinct Dickensian flavour. It is the first paragraph of a letter, and though brief, it is especially humorous and original. It reflects, however, his decided “relish,” and an innocent pretence for arranging a “little treat.”
“On this the 6th August (the transfiguration of my birthday), Mrs. Chicken wishes to indulge me with something nicer than ordinary fare. We shall, therefore, be mutually obliged if you will allow Quintus to have 8s., as soon as you conveniently can after receiving this, as I shall send on for it at 10 o’clock.”
We have already remarked that Mrs. Chicken was also an adept at letter writing, and we have several of her plaintive notes before us, but space will only permit us quoting one or two particular extracts illustrative of our argument, that Dickens relied largely for the Micawber prototype upon Chicken.
“My dear Copperfield,” exclaimed Mr. Micawber rising with one of his thumbs in each of his waistcoat pockets, “under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts recoil—I allude to spectacles— and possessing myself of a cognomen to which I can establish no legitimate pretensions.”
To “raise the wind,” a pair of valuable spectacles had evidently been temporarily pledged in an assumed name, and with uncommon significance, Mrs. Chicken mentions in one of her letters a similar experience. She writes—
“ Madam,—I hope you will send me a little more work to commence on Monday. If you are so kind, be so good as to send me a reel of your nice cotton, those penny ones I purchased are not at all suitable for fine work.“Mr. C. had walked off with my spectacles, some months ago, but I redeemed them yesterday.”
In a second letter to the same lady we read,—“Chicken must look out for himself, I cannot work to feed him and see the children want.” The distressed mother, “by her woman’s wisdom,” took a “clear view of things” and endeavoured to keep the home together. She and her daughters, almost overwhelmed with difficulties, to augment their slender income—a small annuity paid to them—busied themselves with sewing for several sympathetic and philanthropic ladies.
The involvements of Chicken were identical with those of Micawber, and he “for some years, contended against the pressure of circumstances.” Crisis succeeded crisis, but with a genteel air and always “cheerfully sentimental,” Mr. Chicken “made all the show he could.” Right to the end of his improvident career in his inordinate self-esteem, he imagined himself fit and reliable; indeed, we see in his amazing eccentricities, his amusing foibles, his varied talents, and his polite manners, many of the traits reproduced with fidelity in his fictional counterpart.
Mrs. Chicken removed to 75, Camp Road, Leeds, and commenced a Preparatory School, which she was able to carry on for only a brief period. In this respect, and many others, it is most remarkable how the incidents and circumstances of the Chicken family largely coincide with those of the Micawbers. The greatest resemblance, however, as must have been gathered from the foregoing, was to be found in the financial straits of the two households.
Of all the immortal figures in the crowded gallery of personages to whom Dickens’s marvellous imagination gave birth, not one, perhaps, possesses more charm than Wilkins Micawber. He is a most popular character and he has won the hearts of the people. His domestic devotion is unparalleled, his sincerity of friendship unquestionable, and his cheery good fellowship claims our admiration. Though this popular ne’er-do-well made few genuine attempts to help himself, obviously due to his inborn ineptitude, we are apt to condone his repeated failures and look sympathetically upon the man. But we cannot wholly agree with the Novelist’s manner of ending his career, and delineating him as a successful colonist; it lacks fidelity to real life. Dickens, always attached to the people of his imagination, doubtless, had not the heart to pen a true and correct climax to such a buoyant personality. Micawber was an incurably unsuccessful man, and presumed to be about the age of sixty when he was shipped comfortably off to Australia.
In actual every-day life such failures in the old country would, we are convinced, be repeated in the new country, wherever the settlement might be. The probabilities are all against such a thriftless person being prosperous and becoming a colonial mayor. The highroad to success is marked by the same guiding posts in Australia as in England— common sense, energy, industry, efficiency, and perseverance. Mr. Micawber, the optimistic day-dreamer, if he had continued in the old haunts, would, year by year, as old age crept on apace, have lost those who befriended him, and his life would have ended in a final and supreme crisis, very similar to that of his York original. Poor Richard Chicken, possessed of no guiding principles, drifted hither and thither, “the sport and toy of debasing circumstances,” until he at last stepped into the shabby purlieus of the poorhouse.
Here, though in uncongenial surroundings, he had sufficient leisure to indulge in his odd propensity, and write in the old fluent and familiar strain. Letter-paper, however, was scarce in such an institution, and most curiously, from the back of some book, he tore the yellow fly-leaf and on it penned what was perhaps one of his last pathetic appeals:
“Mr. Simpson,You have perhaps heard that I am in the Workhouse, and in a bad condition of health. I don’t expect to come out alive. The confinement and the society will kill me: moreover, I cannot eat the porridge, which constitutes our breakfast and supper; but we are allowed to have coffee and tea if we find it ourselves. Many who have friends to assist them do obtain it. I desire my respects to the clerks in the office, and hope that they will have the humanity to raise me a trifle to procure a morsel of coffee and sugar, with a little tobacco to console and refresh me. Anything left at the lodge of the Workhouse will reach its destination.
Yours respectfully,
RICHARD CHICKEN.
P.S.—The society of idiots, the ignorant and the profane, is not adapted to me:—poor Chicken!”
Thus ended the ups and downs of the notorious Richard Chicken, a person of education, talents, and manners, one who had played many parts—law-clerk, professional actor, teacher of elocution, and railway clerk. Moreover, although eminently respectable, he was intimate with all the shady devices practised by court bailiffs, by exacting landlords, and by pressing creditors; and artfully existed as an insolvent debtor. It was a case of trying to live on his wits, “waiting for something to turn up.” He was unquestionably, indeed, the alter ego of Micawber. Some readers, such as Thackeray, whom we have already quoted as an example, may have deemed Dickens’s delineation of Micawber monstrous and impossible, and very near grotesque exaggeration. The foregoing letters, the life incidents, and the actual characteristics reveal fully to the unprejudiced that Dickens’s character had a double in real life; that Dickens knew all about this person and his idiosyncrasies; and that it was of Richard Chicken, York, the Novelist was principally thinking, when he breathed immortality into Wilkins Micawber.