Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/32

 at Manchester and Liverpool in July 1847, and added four hundred guineas to the benefit fund. In 1848 it was proposed to buy Shakespeare’s house at Stratford-on-Avon and to endow a curatorship to be held by Sheridan Knowles. Though this part of the scheme dropped, the projected performances were given for Knowles’s benefit. The ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ in which Dickens played Shallow, Lemon Falstaff, and Forster Master Ford, was performed at Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Glasgow, the gross profits from nine nights being 2,551l. In November 1850 ‘Every Man in his Humour’ was again performed at Knebworth, Lord Lytton’s house. The scheme for a ‘Guild of Literature and Art’ was suggested at Knebworth. In aid of the funds, a comedy by Lytton, ‘Not so bad as we seem,’ and a farce, by Dickens and Lemon, ‘Mr. Nightingale’s Diary,’ were performed at the Duke of Devonshire’s house in London (27 May 1851), when the queen and prince consort were present. Similar performances took place during 1851 and 1852 at various towns, ending with Manchester and Liverpool. A dinner, with Lytton in the chair, at Manchester had a great success, and the guild was supposed to be effectually started. It ultimately broke down, though Dickens and Bulwer Lytton were enthusiastic supporters. During this period Dickens had been exceedingly active. The ‘Haunted Man or Ghostly Bargain,’ the idea of which had occurred to him at Lausanne, was now written and published with great success at Christmas 1848. He then began ‘David Copperfield,’ in many respects the most satisfactory of his novels, and especially remarkable for the autobiographical element, which is conspicuous in so many successful fictions. It contains less of the purely farcical or of the satirical caricature than most of his novels, and shows his literary genius mellowed by age without loss of spontaneous vigour. It appeared monthly from May 1849 to November 1850. The sale did not exceed twenty-five thousand copies; but the book made its mark. He was now accepted by the largest class of readers as the undoubted leader among English novelists. While it was proceeding he finally gave shape to a plan long contemplated for a weekly journal. It was announced at the close of 1849, when Mr. W. H. Wills was selected as sub-editor, and continued to work with him until compelled to retire by ill-health in 1868. After many difficulties, the felicitous name, ‘Household Words,’ was at last selected, and the first number appeared 30 March 1849, with the beginning of a story by Mrs. Gaskell. During the rest of his life Dickens gave much of his energy to this journal and its successor, ‘All the Year Round.’ He gathered many contributors, several of whom became intimate friends. He spared no pains in his editorial duty; he frequently amended his contributors’ work and occasionally inserted passages of his own. He was singularly quick and generous in recognising and encouraging talent in hitherto unknown writers. Many of the best of his minor essays appeared in its pages. Dickens’s new relation to his readers helped to extend the extraordinary popularity which continued to increase during his life. On the other hand, the excessive strain which it involved soon began to tell seriously on his strength. In 1848 he had been much grieved by the loss of his elder sister Fanny. On 31 March 1851 his father, for whom in 1839 he had taken a house in Exeter, died at Malvern. Dickens, after attending his father’s death, returned to town and took the chair at the dinner of the General Theatrical Fund 14 April 1851. After his speech he was told of the sudden death of his infant daughter, Dora Annie (born 16 Aug. 1850). Dickens left Devonshire Terrace soon afterwards, and moved into Tavistock House, Tavistock Square. Here, in November 1851, he began ‘Bleak House,’ which was published from March 1852 to September 1853. It was followed by ‘Hard Times,’ which appeared in ‘Household Words’ between 1 April and 12 Aug. 1854; and by ‘Little Dorrit,’ which appeared in monthly numbers from January 1856 to June 1857. Forster thinks that the first evidences of excessive strain appeared during the composition of ‘Bleak House.’ ‘The spring,’ says Dickens, ‘does not seem to fly back again directly, as it always did when I put my own work aside and had nothing else to do.’ The old buoyancy of spirit is decreasing; the humour is often forced and the mannerism more strongly marked; the satire against the court of chancery, the utilitarians, and the ‘circumlocution office’ is not relieved by the irresistible fun of the former caricatures, nor strengthened by additional insight. It is superficial without being good-humoured. Dickens never wrote carelessly; he threw his whole energy into every task which he undertook; and the undeniable vigour of his books, the infallible instinct with which he gauged the taste of his readers, not less than his established reputation, gave him an increasing popularity. The sale of ‘Bleak House’ exceeded thirty thousand; ‘Hard Times’ doubled the circulation of ‘Household Words;’ and ‘Little Dorrit’ ‘beat even “Bleak House” out of the field;’ thirty-five thousand copies of the second number were