Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 106, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1911 — “PICKWICK” IN PIECES [ARTICLE]

“PICKWICK” IN PIECES

MANUSCRIPT ‘ WASN'T PRESERVED IN ITS ENTIRETY: f "*' v'" ■' ■ Mtm Die People Welcomed the Parte of the Famous Novel—Dickens Gave Away Original of "Our Mutual Friend.” "During my search for the manuscript of ‘Pickwick,' " writes J. Holt Schooling in the Strand, "I heard from one source that the original was in America. "The Americans are zealous cotlectors of Charles Dickens’ letters and writings and one day when I was examining volume after volume of the original manuscripts their keeper told me that many Americans go to him every year and beg permission Just to touch one of the bound volumes of manuscript. “Later inquiry about the manuscript of ‘Pickwick’ brought the following information from Miss Hogarth: 'The manuscript of “Pickwick” was never preserved in its entirety at all. Stray fragments of It have turned up—and are dikbersed about the world, I believe. But it was not given by its. author to any one. I don’t think he attached much importance to his manuscripts in those early days.’ “So we must go without this manuscript. It is of course impossible for us of the present generation to realize what a godsend to the people of nearly a century ago were the light' green monthly parts of ‘Pickwick.’ It came out in heavy days, when people bad solid mahogany sideboards, weighing tons (mdre or less), and when the vogue of the black horse hair covered shiny sofa was supreme; they had armchairs, but no easy ones, and this remark applies to the literature of the period as well as to its furniture. “Thomas Carlyle wrote in a letter to a friend: ‘An archdeacon with his own venerable lips repeated to me the other night a strange profane story of a solemn clergyman who had been administering ghostly consolation to a sick person, having finished, satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick person ejaculate: “Well, thank God! ‘Pickwick’ will be out in ten days any way!” This is dreadful.’ The binder prepared 400 copies of Part I. of ’Pickwick’ and of Part XV. his order was for more than 40,000.

“The manuscript of ‘Our Mutual Friend’ was given by Charles Dickens to Mr. Dallas (the husband of Miss Glyn, the well known actress). Mr. Dallas at the time ‘Our Mutual Friend’ was published was a writer in the London Times, and he wrote a very sympathetic and pleasant review of the book, which pleased Charles Dickens, who very seldom read reviews. When the manuscript was bound up he gave- it to Mr. Dallas. Shortly after Charles Dickens died Mr. Dallas sold the manuscript, and it was bought by George W. Childs of Philadelphia for a large sum. “Some of the American papers said that it had been sold by Charles Dickens to Mr. Dallas and afterward resold by him. When this false statement reached Charles Dickens’ executrix that lady asked Mr. Childs to contradict the statement in America, and this was at once done. ‘As for Charles Dickens to have sold any manuscript of his own,' wrote Miss Hogarth to me, ‘this was simply an impossibility.’ ”