CHARLES DICKENS AS EDITOR.*
* Charles Dickens as Editor : Letters Written to W. If. Wills, his Sub-Editor. Selected and Edited by IL C. Lehmann, London Smith, leader and Co. [I2s. Od. net.] Tim series of letters to W. H. Wills begins en p. 11. Charles Dickens was then editor of the newly. founded Daily News, a position which be held for not quite three weeks. It was not a task to his liking. "I dine out to-morrow and the next day, and shall not be here either evening till rather late. . . I shall not be here generally on Sunday nights," he writes on February 4th, 1846. This is a little odd for an editor, par- ticularly as the paper was only a fortnight old. Wills was one of the sub-editors who had to fill their chief's place. In 1850 Household Words was started, Wills being appointed sub-editor at a salary of £8 per week, with a share of profits. In 1858 came the quarrel with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans and the establishment of All the Year Round, Wills asso- ciated himself in his old capacity with the new enterprise. The letters between chief and -vicegerent dealing with the affairs of these two publications, and incidentally with other matters, occupy nearly the whole of the volume. Wills had probably a greater share of the work of editing than commonly falls to a man in his position. Dickens was busy with his own literary work ; lie gave him- self a fair allowance of holidays, and in 1858 be began a regular course of public readings. His autumn tour for that • year lasted from August 2nd to November 3rd, and the readings, his experiences, and his profits bulk largely in the ten letters which belong to this time. Still there is plenty to justify the title of the volume. We do see much of " Charles Dickens as Editor," and what we see shows him prudent, tactful, and generally well acquainted with his business. The relation between chief and subordinate was one of unbroken good will. It survived what easily might have been a fatal shook when Dickens " put his foot down " in the matter of an additional employment which had been offered to Wills in the editorship of the Civil Service Gazette. His prohibition was absolute, and it must have required no little command of temper for Wills to accept it as he did. All this is interest- ing; so are the occasional notes which we get about con- tributors to the journals, or, rather, to the earlier of the two ; there is no record for All the Year Round enabling Mr. Lehmann to identify the authorship of contributions. For Household
1Vords there is a goodly array of names, among them Frank Buckland, Wilkie and Charles Collins, Georgina M. Craik, Mrs. Gaskell, John Forster, and William Howitt. Alto- gether we get some interesting sidelights on English literature in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the nineteenth century. The last letter (excepting a note of invitation to dinner) is dated January 22rd, 1870, and gives some personal details which are full of a fatal significance. "My ordinary pulse is 72: it runs up under this effort [of reading] to 112.
. . I have something the matter with my right thumb and cannot write plainly." Yet he went on reading up to March lfith. On June 8th he died.
Previous page
