Free Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin Page B

nearly £500. 15
    He now had arrangements with four different publishers, with all of whom he was for the moment on good terms. Macrone was just bringing out the second printing of the
Sketches
. At this point Dickens sensibly asked for time off from the
Chronicle
and was granted five weeks, since things were idle during the summer heat in London. He left with the suggestion that the
Chronicle
should run extracts from
Pickwick
while he was away.
    He took Catherine to the village of Petersham in Surrey, between Richmond Park and the Thames, where they put up at the inn and enjoyed the quiet water meadows and leafy walks around Ham House. There they stayed into September, Catherine now halfway through her pregnancy. But even during this holiday he was often obliged to return to London, and rather than go to their empty rooms at Furnival’s he took himself to his parents, currently lodging in Islington. 16 He was working on the opera with Hullah, and preparing for the opening of his farce,
The Strange Gentleman
, on 29 September at the St James’s Theatre, with his friend John Pritt Harley, a well-loved comic actor, playing the lead. 17 It was a success, running for sixty nights, and boxes were offered to friends, family and publishers.
    In November, Dickens signed his second agreement with Bentley. He also wrote to John Easthope at the
Chronicle
to tender his resignation; and he informed Macrone he wanted to withdraw from the agreement they had made on 9 May. Easthope was displeased at losing his brilliant reporter, and acrimonious letters were exchanged. The friendship with Macrone was also put under strain. He published the second series of
Sketches by Boz
in December, but things were not the same between them. Dickens was now committed to the following projects: he had to continue
Pickwick
in monthly instalments for another year; he had to provide a few more pieces for the
Sketches
; both his farce and his opera were being published and needed seeing through the press; he had promised a children’s book, ‘Solomon Bell the Raree Showman’, by Christmas; he had to start preparing for his editorship of
Bentley’s
Miscellany
, which began in January and for which he must commission articles and also contribute a sixteen-page piece of his own every month; Chapman & Hall were hoping for a sequel to
Pickwick
; Macrone still wanted ‘Gabriel Vardon’; and Bentley was expecting two novels.
    Clearly, this was not a possible programme for one man. For the publishers it was maddening to find him reneging on a promise, as he did to Macrone, to Tegg and then to Bentley. One of the problems for him was that, as his fame grew and he was ever more in demand, he resented having made agreements for lower sums than he could now command. If Dickens is to be believed, each publisher started well and then turned into a villain; but the truth is that, while they were businessmen and drove hard bargains, Dickens was often demonstrably in the wrong in his dealings with them. He realized that selling copyrights had been a mistake: he was understandably aggrieved to think that all his hard work was making them rich while he was sweating and struggling, and he began to think of publishers as men who made profits from his work and failed to reward him as they should. Chapman & Hall kept on good terms with him largely by topping up what they had initially agreed with frequent extra payments. The book for children was quietly dropped. But by the middle of the following year, 1837, there were furious rows. His friend Macrone was now a ‘blackguard’ and a ‘Robber’. Bentley was the next, becoming in due course an ‘infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew’ – a quotation from his own dialogue in
Oliver Twist
. 18
    Meanwhile, Dickens sent Chapman & Hall an apology for late delivery of the monthly instalments of
Pickwick
, with a cry of joy over its ever growing success: ‘If I were to live a hundred years, and write three novels in