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TALES FROM DICKENS

By

HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES

Author of
The Castaway, Hearts Courageous
A Furnace of Earth, etc.

With Illustrations by Reginald B. Birch







[Illustration: David Copperfield and his friend, Mr. Micawber
_See page 112_]



Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers

Copyright 1905
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
November




To

GEORGE BAKER ROBBINS, JR.




CONTENTS

  CHARLES DICKENS                                              1


  THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

     I Little Nell                                            19
    II The Wanderers                                          26
   III The Search                                             35

  OLIVER TWIST

     I How Oliver Came to London and What He Found There      49
    II Oliver's Adventures                                    58
   III How Everything Turned Out Right for Oliver
        in the End                                            65

  BARNABY RUDGE

     I Barnaby's Boyhood                                      77
    II The Mysterious Stranger and Who He Was                 83
   III Barnaby Gets Into Trouble                              89
    IV Barnaby Prospers at Last                               95

  DAVID COPPERFIELD

     I David's Early Ups and Downs                           105
    II Little Em'ly                                          115
   III David and His Child-Wife                              120
    IV David Finds All Well at Last                          124

  GREAT EXPECTATIONS

     I Pip and the Convict                                   131
    II The Queer Miss Havisham                               138
   III Pip Discovers His Benefactor                          147
    IV Pip Comes to Himself                                  152

  NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

     I Nicholas at Dotheboys Hall                            161
    II Nicholas Becomes an Actor                             167
   III Nicholas Comes to Kate's Rescue                       171
    IV What Happened to Everybody                            175

  DOMBEY AND SON

     I Little Paul                                           183
    II How Florence Lost Her Father                          191
   III How Florence Reached a Refuge                         199
    IV How Florence Found Her Father at Last                 203

  THE PICKWICK PAPERS

     I The Pickwickians Begin Their Adventures. They
        Meet Mr. Alfred Jingle, and Winkle Is Involved
        in a Duel                                            213
    II Tupman Has a Love-Affair With a Spinster, and
        the Pickwickians Find Out the Real Character
        of Jingle                                            218
   III Mr. Pickwick Has an Interesting Scene With Mrs.
        Bardell, His Housekeeper. Further Pursuit of
        Jingle Leads to an Adventure at a Young Ladies'
        Boarding School                                      224
    IV Sam Weller Meets His Father, and the Pursuit of
        Jingle Is Continued. Mr. Pickwick Makes a
        Strange Call on a Middle-Aged Lady in Yellow
        Curl Papers                                          230
     V The Pickwickians Find Themselves in the Grasp of
        the Law. The Final Exposure of Jingle, and a
        Christmas Merrymaking                                233
    VI The Celebrated Case of Bardell Against Pickwick.
        Sergeant Buzfuz's Speech and an Unexpected Verdict   238
   VII Winkle Has an Exciting Adventure With Mr. Dowler,
        and With the Aid of Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller
        Discovers the Whereabouts of Miss Arabella Allen     242
  VIII Mr. Pickwick's Experiences in the Debtors' Prison,
        Where He Finds an Old Enemy and Heaps Coals
        of Fire on the Head of Mrs. Bardell                  248
    IX Snodgrass Gets Into Difficulties, But Wins His
        Lady-Love. The Adventures of the Pickwickians Come
        to an End                                            252

  LITTLE DORRIT

     I How Arthur Came Home from China                       261
    II The Child of the Marshalsea                           266
   III What Riches Brought to the Dorrits                    274
    IV What Happened to Arthur Clennam                       280
     V "All's Well That Ends Well"                           284

  MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT

     I How Martin Left England                               295
    II Pecksniff and Old Chuzzlewit                          302
   III Jonas Gets Rid of an Enemy                            308
    IV What Came of Martin's Trip to America                 313
     V Old Chuzzlewit's Plot Succeeds                        318

  OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

     I What Happened to John Harmon                          325
    II Lizzie Hexam and the Dolls' Dressmaker                332
   III The Rise and Fall of Silas Wegg                       337
    IV Bella and the Golden Dustman                          343
     V The End of the Story                                  348

  A TALE OF TWO CITIES

     I How Lucie Found a Father                              357
    II Darnay Caught in the Net                              367
   III Sydney Carton's Sacrifice                             375

  BLEAK HOUSE

     I The Court of Chancery                                 383
    II Lady Dedlock's Secret                                 390
   III Little Joe Plays a Part                               398
    IV Esther Becomes the Mistress of Bleak House            405

  HARD TIMES

     I Mr. Gradgrind and His "System"                        413
    II The Robbery of Bounderby's Bank                       420
   III Harthouse's Plan Fails                                427
    IV Stephen's Return                                      432

  THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

     I John Jasper                                           441
    II The Coming of Neville Landless                        444
   III The Choirmaster's Dinner                              449
    IV Jasper Shows His Teeth                                455

  INDEX TO CHARACTERS                                        463




TALES FROM DICKENS




CHARLES DICKENS


Charles John Huffham Dickens, the master story-teller, was born in
Landport, England, February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in one of
the offices of the Navy, and he was one of eight children.

When he was four years old, his father moved to the town of Chatham,
near the old city of Rochester. Round about are chalk hills, green
lanes, forests and marshes, and amid such scenes the little Charles's
genius first began to show itself.

He did not like the rougher sports of his school-fellows and preferred
to amuse himself in his own way, or to wander about with his older
sister, Fanny, whom he especially loved. They loved to watch the stars
together, and there was one particular star which they used to pretend
was their own. People called him a "very queer small boy" because he was
always thinking or reading instead of playing. The children of the
neighborhood would gather around him to listen while he told them
stories or sang comic songs to them, and when he was only eight years
old he taught them to act in plays which he invented. He was fond of
reading books of travel, and most of all he loved _The Arabian Nights_
and _Robinson Crusoe_.

He had a great affection for Chatham and Rochester, and after he began
to write stories that were printed, he often used to put these places
into them. It was at Chatham that poor little David in the story, _David
Copperfield_, lay down to sleep when he was running away from London to
find his aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood. It was to Rochester that Mr.
Pickwick in _Pickwick Papers_, rode with Jingle. Rochester was really
the "Cloisterham" where the wicked choir master, John Jasper, killed his
nephew, in _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. And it was in those very
marshes near by, that Magwitch, the escaped convict in _Great
Expectations_, so frightened little Pip. It is easy to see that the
young Charles Dickens noted carefully and remembered everything he saw,
and this habit was of great use to him all his life.

These happy years were not to last long. When he was nine years old, his
father became poor and the family was obliged to move to London, where
it lived in a shabby house in a poor suburb. Before another year had
passed, his father was put into prison for debt--the same prison in
which Little Dorrit, in the story of that name, grew up. A very bitter
period followed for the solitary ten-year-old boy--a time in which, he
long afterward wrote, "but for the mercy of God, he might easily have
become, for any care that was taken of him, a little robber or a little
vagabond." The earlier history of David in _David Copperfield_ is really
and truly a history of the real Charles Dickens in London. He was left
to the city streets, or to earn a hard and scanty living in a dirty
warehouse, by pasting labels on pots of blacking. All of this wretched
experience he has written in _David Copperfield_, and the sad scenes of
the debtors' prison he has put into _Pickwick Papers_ and into _Little
Dorrit_. Even Mrs. Pipchin, of whom he told in _Dombey and Son_, and Mr.
Micawber in _David Copperfield_, were real people whom he knew in these
years of poverty and despair. Dickens's life at this time was so
miserable that always afterward he dreaded to speak of it, and never
could bear even to walk in the street where the blacking warehouse of
his boyhood had stood.

Better days, however, came at last. He was able to begin school again,
and though the head-master was ignorant and brutal (just such a one as
Mr. Creakle in _David Copperfield_) yet Dickens profited by such
teaching as he received.

After two or three years of school, he found employment as clerk in a
lawyer's office. This did not content him and he made up his mind to
learn to write shorthand so as to become a reporter, in the Houses of
Parliament, for a newspaper. This was by no means an easy task. But
Dickens had great strength of will and a determination to do well
whatever he did at all, and he succeeded, just as David Copperfield did
in the story.

And like the latter, too, about this time Dickens fell in love. He did
not marry on this occasion, as did David, but how much he was in love
one may see by the story of David's Dora.

The theater had always a great attraction for Dickens. Throughout his
life he loved to act in plays got up and often written, too, by himself
and his friends. Some of his early experiences of this kind he has told
in the adventures of Nicholas Nickleby at Mr. Crummles's theater. But
his acting was for his own amusement, and it is doubtful if he ever
thought seriously of adopting the stage as a profession. If he did, his
success as a reporter soon determined him otherwise.

When he was twenty-one he saw his first printed sketch in a monthly
magazine. He had dropped it into a letter-box with mingled hope and
fear, and read it now through tears of joy and pride. He followed this
with others as successful, signed "Boz"--the child nickname of one of
his younger brothers. This was his beginning. He was soon on the road to
a comfortable fortune, and when at length _Pickwick Papers_ appeared,
Dickens's fame was assured. This was his first long story. It became,
almost at once, the most popular book of its day, perhaps, indeed, the
most popular book ever published in England. Soon after the appearance
of its first chapters, Dickens married Miss Catherine Hogarth, daughter
of the editor of one of the London newspapers, who had helped him in his
career.

Many have tried to explain the marvelous popularity of _Pickwick
Papers_. Certainly its honest fun, its merriment, its quaintness, good
humor and charity appealed to every reader. More than all, it made
people acquainted with a new company of characters, none of whom had
ever existed, or could ever exist, and yet whose manners and appearance
were pictured so really that they seemed to be actual persons whom one
might meet and laugh with anywhere.

With such a success, and the money it brought him, Dickens had leisure
to begin the wonderful series of stories which endeared him to the whole
English-speaking world, and made him the most famous author of his day.
_Oliver Twist_ came first, and it was followed by _Nicholas Nickleby_
and _The Old Curiosity Shop_.

In the first two of these stories one may see most clearly the principle
that underlay almost all of Dickens's work. He was never content merely
to tell an interesting story. He wrote with a purpose. In _Oliver Twist_
that purpose was, first, to better the poorhouse system, and second, to
show that even in the lowest and wickedest paths of life (the life
wherein lived Fagin with his pupils in crime and Bill Sikes the brutal
burglar) there could yet be found, as in the case of poor Nancy, real
kindness and sacrifice. In _Nicholas Nickleby_ the purpose was to show
what terrible wrongs were done to children in country schools, numbers
of which at that time were managed by men almost as cruel and inhuman as
was Squeers in the story. It is good to learn that, as a result of this
novel, an end was made of many such boys' schools. True artist as he
was, Dickens seldom wrote without having in his mind the thought of
showing some defect in the law, or some wrong condition of affairs which
might be righted. No one could read _Pickwick Papers_ or _Little Dorrit_
without realizing how much wrong and misery was caused by the law which
made it possible to throw a man into prison for debt. Nor can one read
_Bleak House_ without seeing that the legal system which robbed quaint
Miss Flite of her mind and kept poor Richard Carstone from his fortune
till the fortune itself had disappeared, was a very wrong legal system
indeed. Often, too, Dickens's stories are, in a sense, sermons against
very human sins. In _The Old Curiosity Shop_ it is the sin of gambling
which brings about the death of Little Nell. In _Great Expectations_ it
is the sin of pride which Pip has to fight. In _Martin Chuzzlewit_ the
evil and folly of selfishness is what Dickens had in mind.

With his increasing wealth, Dickens had, of course, changed his manner
of life. He lived part of the time in the country near London, in
Brighton, in Dover, and in France and Italy. He liked best, however, a
little English watering place called Broadstairs--a tiny fishing
village, built on a cliff, with the sea rolling and dashing beneath it.
In such a place he felt that he could write best, but he greatly missed
his London friends. He used to say that being without them was "like
losing his arms and legs."

The first great grief of his life came to him at this time, in the death
of his wife's sister, Mary Hogarth, a gentle, lovable girl of seventeen.
No sorrow ever touched him as this did. "After she died," he wrote years
afterward, "I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and always with
a kind of quiet happiness, so that I never lay down at night without a
hope of the vision coming back." Hers was the character he drew in
Little Nell in _The Old Curiosity Shop_. When he came to the part of the
story which tells of Little Nell's death, he could scarcely write the
chapter. When he ended it he said, "It seems as though dear Mary died
but yesterday."

When he was less than thirty, Dickens was invited to visit Scotland, and
there he received his first great national tribute. A public banquet was
given him in Edinburgh, and he was much sought after and entertained. Up
to this time he had never seen the United States; he decided now to
visit this country and meet his American readers face to face.

He landed at Boston accompanied by his wife, in 1842, and visited many
of the greater cities of the Eastern states. Everywhere he was counted
the guest of the nation, and the four months of his stay were one
continual welcome. Unfortunately, however, Dickens had taken a dislike
to American ways, and this dislike appeared in many things he wrote
after his return to England. The pictures he drew of American life in
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ were both unjust and untrue, and made him for a time
lose a large part of the good opinion which American readers had had for
him. Dickens soon came to regret the writing of these chapters, and
when, twenty-five years later, he visited the United States a second
time, he did all in his power to show his kindly feeling, and America
admired and loved him so much that it gradually forgot the incident in
the great pleasure with which it read his stories.

Dickens was a very active man, and his life was simple and full of work
and exercise. He rose early and almost every day might have been seen
tramping for miles along the country roads, or riding horseback with his
dogs racing after him. He liked best to wander along the cliffs or
across the downs by the sea. When he was in London he often walked the
streets half the night, thinking out his stories, or searching for the
odd characters which he put in them. This natural activity and
restlessness even led him sometimes to make political speeches, and
finally to the establishment of a new London newspaper--the _Daily
News_--of which he was the first editor. Before this, he had started a
weekly journal, in which several of his stories had appeared, but it had
not been very successful. It was not long before he withdrew also from
this second venture.

In the meantime he had met with both joy and sorrow. Several children
had been born to him. His much loved sister, his father, and his own
little daughter, the youngest of his family, had died. These sorrows
made him throw himself into his work with greater earnestness. He even
found leisure to organize a theatrical company (in which he himself
acted with a number of other famous writers of the time), which gave
several plays for the benefit of charity. One of these was performed
before Queen Victoria.

People have often wondered how Dickens found time to accomplish so many
different things. One of the secrets of this, no doubt, was his love of
order. He was the most systematic of men. Everything he did "went like
clockwork," and he prided himself on his punctuality. He could not work
in a room unless everything in it was in its proper place. As a
consequence of this habit of regularity, he never wasted time.

The work of editorship was very pleasant to Dickens, and scarcely three
years after his leaving the _Daily News_ he began the publication of a
new magazine which he called _Household Words_. His aim was to make it
cheerful, useful and at the same time cheap, so that the poor could
afford to buy it as well as the rich. His own story, _Hard Times_, first
appeared in this, with the earliest work of more than one writer who
later became celebrated. Dickens loved to encourage young writers, and
would just as quickly accept a good story or poem from an unknown author
as from the most famous.

It was while engaged in this work that Dickens wrote the best one of all
his tales--_David Copperfield_, the one which is in so large a part the
history of his own early life.

This book brought Dickens to the height of his career. He was now both
famous and rich. He bought a house on Gad's Hill--a place near Chatham,
where he had spent the happiest part of his childhood--and settled down
to a life of comfort and labor. When he was a little boy his father had
pointed out this fine house to him, and told him he might even come to
live there some day, if he were very persevering and worked hard. And
so, indeed, it had proved.

Perhaps it is in connection with this house on Gad's Hill that the world
oftenest remembers Dickens now. Everyone, old and young throughout the
neighborhood, liked him. Children, dogs and horses were his friends. His
hand was open for charity, and he was always the champion of the poor,
the helpless and the outcast. Everyone, he thought, had some good in
him, and in all he met he was on the lookout to find it. The great
purpose underneath all his writings was after all to teach that every
man and woman, however degraded, has his or her better side. So earnest
was he in this that he was not pleased at all when a person praised one
of his stories, unless the other showed that he had grasped the lesson
that lay beneath it. The text of Dickens's whole life and work is best
expressed in his own words: "I hope to do some solid good, and I mean to
be as cheery and pleasant as I can." The wrongs and sufferings of the
young especially appealed to him, and perhaps the most beautiful speech
he ever made was one asking for money for the support of the London
Hospital for Sick Children. He spoke often in behalf of workingmen, and
once he spoke for the benefit of a company of poor actors, when, unknown
to him, a little child of his own was lying dead at home.

With such a tender heart for all the world, he was more than an
affectionate father to his own children, and gave much thought to their
happiness and education. In order that they should properly learn of
their own country, he went to the labor of preparing a _Child's History
of England_ for them, and at another time he wrote out the story of the
Gospels, to help them in their study of the New Testament. As the years
went by, his letters to his oldest son told of his own work and plans.
When his youngest son sailed away to live in Australia, he wrote: "Poor
Plorn is gone. It was a hard parting at the last. He seemed to me to
become once more my youngest and favorite child as the day drew near,
and I did not think I could have been so shaken."

When he moved to Gad's Hill it seemed as though Dickens had gained
almost all of the things men strive most for. But he was not to be happy
there--nor, perhaps, was he ever again to be really happy anywhere. He
and his wife were very different in all their tastes and habits, and had
never loved each other as well as people should when they marry.
Perhaps, after all, it would have been better if in his youth he had
married his Dora--the one whom he had pictured in the love-story of
David Copperfield and his child-wife. But, however this may be, Dickens
and his wife had not lived happily together, and now decided to part,
and from that time, though they wrote to each other, he never saw her
again. It is sad to reflect that he who has painted so beautifully for
others the joys and sorrows of perfect love and home, was himself
destined to know