THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. BY JOHN FORSTER. VOLUME THE SECOND. 1842-1852. TWELFTH THOUSAND. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1873. [The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.] CORRECTIONS MADE IN THE LATER EDITIONS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. A NOTICE Written under date of the 23rd December, 1871, appeared with the Tenth Edition. Such has been the rapidity of the demand for successive impres'sions of this book, that I have found it impossible, until now, to correct at pages '11, 66, and 76 three errors of statement made in the former editions; and some 'few other mistakes, not in themselves important, at pages 75, 80, and 81. I 'take the opportunity of adding, that the mention at p. 62 is not an allusion to 'the well-known "Penny" and "Saturday" magazines, but to weekly periodicals ' of some years' earlier date resembling them in form. One of them, I have since 'found from a later mention by Dickens himself, was presumably of a less wholesome and instructive character. "I used," he says, "when I was at school, to ""take in the Terrific Register, making myself unspeakably miserable, and "frightening my very wits out of my head, for the small charge of a penny ""weekly; which, considering that there was an illustration to every number ""in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least one body, was cheap." 'An obliging correspondent writes to me upon my reference to the Fox-underthe-hill, at pp. 42-3: "Will you permit me to say, that the house, shut up """ and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of a curious and most ""precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past Salisbury-street. "It was once, I think, the approach to the halfpenny boats. The house is now shut out from the water-side by the Embankment." I proceed to state in detail what the changes thus referred to were. 666 ... The passage about James Lamert, beginning at the seventh line of p. 11, now stands: His chief ally and encourager in these displays was a youth of some 'ability, much older than himself, named James Lamert, stepson to his mother's 'sister and therefore a sort of cousin, who was his great patron and friend in his 'childish days. Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles Barrow, himself a lieutenant ' in the navy, had for her first husband a commander in the navy called Allen ; on whose death by drowning at Rio Janeiro she had joined her sister, the navy'pay clerk's wife, at Chatham; in which place she subsequently took for her 'second husband Doctor Lamert, an army-surgeon, whose son James, even after 'he had been sent to Sandhurst for his education, continued still to visit Chatham 'from time to time. He had a turn for private theatricals; and as his father's 'quarters were in the ordnance-hospital there, a great rambling place otherwise 'at that time almost uninhabited, he had plenty of room in which to get up his 'entertainments.' Two other corrections were consequent on this change. At the 21st line of page 18, for the elder cousin' read the cousin by marriage ;' and at the 19th line of p. 29, 'cousin by his mother's side' should be 'cousin by 'his aunt's marriage.' At the 14th line of the 21st page, 'his bachelor-uncle, fellow-clerk,' &c. should be the uncle who was at this time fellow-clerk,' &c. At the 7th line of page 34, 'Charles-court' should be 'Clare-court.' The allusion to one of his favourite localities at the 29th line of page 42 should stand thus: 'a little public-house by 'the water-side called the Fox-under-the-hill, approached by an underground 'passage which we once missed in looking for it together.' The passage at pp. 65-6, having reference to an early friend who had been with him, as I supposed, at his first school, should run thus: In this however I have 'since discovered my own mistake the truth being that it was this gentleman's 'connection, not with the Wellington-academy, but with a school kept by Mr. 'Dawson in Hunter-street, Brunswick-square, where the brothers of Dickens were 'subsequently placed, which led to their early knowledge of each other. I fancy that they were together also, for a short time, at Mr. Molloy's in New-square, 'Lincoln's-inn; but, whether or not this was so, Dickens certainly had not quitted 'school many months before his father had made sufficient interest with an attorney of Gray's-inn, Mr. Edward Blackmore, to obtain him regular employment in his 'office.' There is subsequent allusion to the same gentleman (at p. 159) as his school-companion at Mr. Dawson's in Henrietta-street,' which ought to stand as 'having known him when himself a law-clerk in Lincoln's-inn.' At p. 75 I had stated that Mr. John Dickens reported for the Morning Chronicle; and at p. 80 that Mr. Thomas Beard reported for the Morning Herald; whereas Mr. Dickens, though in the gallery for other papers, did not report for the Chronicle, and Mr. Beard did report for that journal; and where (at p. 81) Dickens was spoken of as associated with Mr. Beard in a reporting party which represented respectively the Chronicle and Herald, the passage ought simply to have described him as 'connected with a reporting party, being Lord John Rus'sell's Devonshire contest above-named, and his associate chief being Mr. Beard, 'entrusted with command for the Chronicle in this particular express.' At p. 76 I had made a mistake about his 'first published piece of writing,' in too hastily assuming that he had himself forgotten what the particular piece was. It struck an intelligent and kind correspondent as very unlikely that Dickens should have fallen into error on such a point; and, making personal search for himself (as I ought to have done), discovered that what I supposed to be another piece was merely the same under another title. The description of his first printed sketch should therefore be (Mr. Minns and his Cousin, as he afterwards 'entitled it, but which appeared in the magazine as A Dinner at Poplar Walk).' There is another mistake at p. 136, of 'bandy-legged' instead of bulky-legged ;' and, at p. 155, of 'fresh fields' for 'fresh woods.' Those several corrections were made in the Tenth Edition. To the Eleventh |