Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin Page B

printer in time. He wrote in a small hand, with a quill pen and black (iron gall) ink at this stage – later he favoured bright blue – on rough sheets of grey, white or bluish paper, measuring about 9 x 7½ inches, that he’d fold and then tear in half before starting to write; he called these sheets ‘slips’. 5 For
Oliver
he spaced the lines quite widely, fitting about twenty-five lines on each sheet where later he would cram forty-five. Something like ninety-five slips made up one monthly number. In the course of a day he might produce eleven or twelve slips, and if pushed up to twenty. He had also to arrange for the two illustrators – Browne for
Pickwick
, Cruikshank for
Oliver
– to see the copy to work from, more often than not deciding for them what would make the best picture. On top of this he was editing
Bentley’s
Miscellany
, which meant commissioning and dealing with other writers, and with the printers. The pressure was intense, but the results were gratifying: in February
Pickwick
sold 14,000 copies, and after the opening instalment of
Oliver
was reviewed in four papers, 1,000 extra copies had to be printed of the next number.
    So far so good, but two weeks after giving birth Catherine was suffering from depression. She refused to eat, and only Dickens could persuade her to take anything. He himself had ‘a violent attack of God knows what, in the head’ and dosed himself with ‘as much medicine as would be given to an ordinary-sized horse’. He told Bentley that, although he considered
Oliver
to be the best subject he had ever thought of, ‘I really
cannot
write under these combined disadvantages’, but at least he had finished this month’s work. 6 Catherine had difficulty feeding the baby and gave up trying. A wet nurse was easily found to take over but, according to her sister, ‘every time she sees her Baby she has a fit of crying and keeps constantly saying she is sure he will not care for her now she is not able to nurse him.’ Mary sounds sympathetic but brisk in her letter, saying Catherine should forget what she had been through and remember that she has everything in the world to make her happy, including a husband who is ‘kindness itself’. She goes on to talk proudly of his success: ‘his time is so completely taken up that it is quite a favour for the Literary Gentlemen to get him to write for them.’ 7
    Dickens wanted fresh air and exercise, and when the first number of
Oliver
was in print, with Cruikshank’s illustration showing the small, starved hero asking the workhouse master for more gruel, he took Catherine, Mary and the baby with nurse or nurses to their honeymoon lodgings in Chalk for five weeks. Here he was able to write without interruption, although he had to return to London each week, either by steamer from Gravesend or else on the Dover coach. February, being short of days, was always a challenge for a writer working for monthly publication, but this time he had
Oliver
finished by the 10th and
Pickwick
by the 22nd. Then he was able to take the ladies to see the fortifications at Chatham and enjoy a ‘snug little dinner at the Sun’. Catherine cheered up, and Tom Beard was invited to Chalk for the weekend, and to keep her and Mary company while Charles went out to dinner without them, invited by a contributor to the
Miscellany
, a literary lieutenant in the Marines living in the barracks in Chatham. Meanwhile he had made up his mind to leave Furnival’s and instituted a search for a London house; and as soon as a suitable one was found in Doughty Street, between Gray’s Inn and Mecklenburgh Square, he at once took a three-year lease at £80 a year. He asked Bentley for an advance of £100 to cover the cost of moving, and while the house was being prepared he and Catherine moved back to London, putting up for a few weeks in a rented house near Regent’s Park. On the last day of March they moved into No. 48 Doughty Street.
    The move was a mark of