Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin Page A

part’
     
1837–1839
     
    Sometime in the evening or night of Thursday, 5 January, Catherine went into labour. Dickens was at home, and by the next morning both his mother and Mrs Hogarth had arrived to help and advise out of their considerable experience of childbirth; and with Mrs Hogarth came Catherine’s sister Mary. In the morning Dickens found time to write to a colleague on the
Chronicle
to explain that he was ‘chained to Mr Pickwick just now, and cannot get away’, but hoped to be free on Tuesday. 1 Then, leaving Catherine in the care of the two mothers and the monthly nurse, and with the family doctor present or on the way, he and Mary went out together. They spent much of the day wandering happily from one second-hand furniture shop to another in search of a small table for the bedroom as a present for Catherine. At last a table was bought and they arrived back at Furnival’s Inn, and soon after six in the evening Catherine gave birth to a son. The birth was a ‘dreadful trial’ to her, but the baby arrived safely, and the family could rejoice. 2 What Dickens chose to remember, when he looked back a year later, was that, since there was no room for Mary to sleep at Furnival’s, he took her home to Brompton that night. It was too far for her to walk on a winter evening, which meant hiring a hackney cab, but he is likely to have walked back, taking the time to think about his work, and the happiness of the day which, being the festival of Twelfth Night, was a good birthday for his son. The following day Mary came to them again, and remained for most of the month, helping and cheering her sister and brother-in-law. A year later, when they no longer lived at Furnival’s, he recalled this as a time of supreme happiness: ‘I shall never be so happy again as in those Chambers … I would hire them to keep empty, if I could …’ 3
    The baby – ‘our boy’, or ‘the infant phenomenon’ in his father’s letters – was not christened for nearly a year, neither parent considering it a pressing matter or one of great religious significance, although Tom Beard was chosen to be godfather. For Dickens everything had to fall into place behind his work schedule, driven as he was to keep up the monthly instalments of
Pickwick
for Chapman & Hall, and preparing to embark on a new novel for Bentley,
Oliver Twist
, also scheduled to appear in monthly numbers starting in February in the
Miscellany
. The two serial stories would be running simultaneously for ten months, and Dickens would have to work like a juggler to keep both spinning. He said later that he was warned against serial publications – ‘My friends told me it was a low, cheap form of publication, by which I should ruin all my rising hopes’ – but whoever these friends were he triumphantly proved them wrong, and readers were as pleased with the pathos, horror and
grand guignol
of
Oliver
as with the comedy of
Pickwick
. 4
    Managing this double feat was an unprecedented and amazing achievement. Everything had to be planned in his head in advance.
Pickwick
had started as a series of loosely rambling episodes, but he was now introducing plot, with Pickwick accused of breach of promise, the dealings with lawyers, the trial and his imprisonment, all of which demanded more care in setting up each number; and
Oliver
was tightly plotted and shaped from the start. There was no going back to change or adjust once a number was printed; everything had to be right first time. How different this is from the way most great novelists work, allowing themselves time to reconsider, to change their minds, to go back, to cancel and rewrite. Each number of
Pickwick
and
Oliver
consisted of about 7,500 words, and in theory he simply divided every month, allotting a fortnight to each new section of each book. In practice this did not always work out as he hoped, and although he sometimes got ahead, there were many months when he only just managed to get his copy to the