THE SCHOLARLY PAGES
The Composition, Publication, and Reception
of
Our Mutual Friend
Robert L. Patten
Rice University
OUR
MUTUAL FRIEND was the last novel Charles Dickens issued
as a twenty-part monthly serial, from May 1864 to November 1865.
He and his publishers, Edward Chapman and William Hall, had devised
this mode of publishing in 1836, when they were jointly producing
The Pickwick Papers. By the time of Our Mutual Friend
(1864-1865), the formula for Dickens's serials had become standardized:
a new shilling part every month for eighteen months. Each part
contained two illustrations that preceded thirty-two pages of
letterpress. Plates and text, along with such advertising inserts
as the publishers had been commissioned to include, were stitched
into flimsy green-paper wrappers. On the front wrapper was imprinted
a wood-engraved design incorporating the title and figuring characters,
incidents, and allegorical allusions to the themes and other concerns
of the novel. The last monthly part was a "double number"
(numbers 19 and 20). It comprised 4 illustrations and 64 pages
of letterpress and cost 2 shillings. The four illustrations included
two plates depicting scenes in the closing chapters, a frontispiece
that, like the wrapper design, represented the principal themes
and persons of the story, and an illustrated title page that provided
a small vignette scene. The 64 pages of text comprised the last
chapters plus those pages that would be inserted at the front
of the first number if the monthly parts were reassembled and
bound up as a volume. Thus there would be a half-title page, dedication,
Table of Contents, List of Illustrations, a Preface, and sometimes
instructions to the binder where the illustrations should be placed,
so that they appeared on the page facing the scene described in
the text.
Issuing a novel over 19 months had advantages
for the author, for the publishers and printers, and for the public.
Authors got paid for each installment, instead of having to starve
until the novel was completed and then hoping to sell it to a
publisher. Dickens married in the spring of 1836 on the strength
of his monthly stipend for writing Pickwick Papers, and throughout
his lifetime, whenever a new serial was being issued, he enjoyed
a payment nominally made around the 20th of the month when he
turned in his manuscript for the printers to set in type. Most
Victorian authors hated the royalty system, which deferred any
remuneration not only until after the whole book had been completed
and accepted for publication, but also until after the publisher
had received accounts for all costs and receipts, reckoned his
administrative overheads, and figured out the net sales or income
on which royalty was to be paid. Serials gave authors income while
writing, with the possibility of more income should the book prove
popular with the buying public.
Moreover, the monthly format broke down
the task of writing several hundred thousand words into more manageable
pieces, pieces that themselves could be designed in sub-sections
of the whole. Dickens tended to write three-chapter numbers, including
materials in each number about his primary and secondary plots
or themes, often orchestrated in alternating chapters. In one
number, for instance, the main plot/characters/theme might appear
in chapters 1 and 3 while the comic or subplot/characters/theme
were broached in chapter 2; in the following number, the subplot
might be prominent in chapters 4 and 6, the main plot in chapter
5: an ABA BAB construction. (Dickens tried out many variations
of this paradigm, just as nineteenth-century composers tried out
variations of the ABA sonata form.) Dickens also tended to demarcate
the mid-point of the novel, and sometimes the mid-points of the
mid-points, so that numbers 5, 10, and 15 complete stages of the
larger narrative trajectory. By the 1850s, Dickens was also thinking
in terms of binding the parts into two entities, rather than one:
Little Dorrit (1854-55) was divided into two "books,"
and Our Mutual Friend is divided into four "books"
designed to be issued in two bound volumes, each separately paginated,
thus:
Volume I (numbers 1-10; pp. 1-320)
Book the First. The Cup and the Lip (numbers 1-5)
Book the Second. Birds of a Feather (numbers 6-10)
Volume II (numbers 11-20, pp. 1-309)
Book the Third. A Long Lane (numbers 11-15)
Book the Fourth. A Turning (numbers 16-20)
The first volume, bound up from unsold
numbers and encased in a stamped cloth binding, went on sale in
February 1865, after number 10 had been issued, at 11 s. Included
in the 32 printed pages were a half-title, title page, dedication
page, contents, and "Illustrations to Volume I." The
very first illustration for the first number, "The Bird of
Prey," showing Gaffer and Lizzie in the boat on the Thames,
was used as frontispiece. The second volume appeared in November
1865 at the end of the serial run. In addition to the usual preliminary
leaves, volume II contained a "Postscript in Lieu of Preface,"
since the issuance of volume I in February precluded adding a
preface to it in November. As there was no vignette title, the
illustrator Marcus Stone supplied an extra illustration (three
rather than two) and a frontispiece of John Rokesmith retrieving
the Dutch bottle from a dust heap while Venus and Wegg spy on
him. Subsequently unsold parts were reused to make up a one-volume
edition.
If serial publication rewarded the author
while writing and helped to organize his structures and composition,
it had at least as great advantages for publishers. First of all,
the expenses of each number were partially recovered before the
next was manufactured, so publishers could print the novel at
a fraction of its usual cost, recycling their profits every month.
Second, the periodicity of issuance made serial fiction a good
place for advertising; Our Mutual Friend contains the largest
number of advertising sheets of any Dickens serial. Revenue from
this source reached £2,750, a very sizable addition to the
profits, shared fifty-fifty between author and publishers. Third,
serials often elicited multiple reviews; in the early days, when
they were a novelty, each part might receive separate notice.
Not that multiple reviews necessarily affected sales: for most
of Dickens's serials, sales declined through the serial run. But
having the novel discussed in the periodical press monthly further
blurred the distinction between reading a book, a closed container
whose contents are enjoyed in a private space and time separated
from diurnal activities, and reading an installment that is simultaneously
circulating, through reviews and conversation, in the public world
of daily events. As is often the case with movies, word-of-mouth
keeps up the public's interest; and when the product is a serial
with a shelf-life of nineteen months or more, such word-of-mouth
and multiple reviewing could be a crucial and highly cost-effective
way of sustaining interest in the title. Finally, once a serial
run concluded, the publisher could offer the text in many other
formats: Chapman and Hall could sell publishers' cloth covers
to bookbinders for encasing the parts, and sell bound copies made
up from the parts, and print new editions aiming at a higher (large
expensive paper, good quality plates) or lower end of the market
(small type set in columns, cheap paper, no or few plates). These
editions substantially contributed to back-issue receipts. And
thus a book designed and issued as a periodical might take on
a lucrative half-life for decades after its serial appearance.
For the public, serialization provided
many attractions. Labourers might actually own a copy of a novel,
instead of borrowing one from a circulating library or looking
at it in a working man's reading room or missing out altogether.
The standard price for a three-volume novel from the 1820s to
the 1890s was a guinea and a half: 31s. 6d. That was well beyond
the means of most people. But an outlay of a shilling a month
over eighteen months, and two shillings the last month, converted
one-off book purchases into no-interest installment payments.
The serial parts could be taken home, read privately, read aloud
to the family, perused by the non-literate for their illustrations
and advertisements, and eventually bound up or thrown out or replaced
by a new copy. We know of cases where the hard-up pooled their
pennies to buy an installment, and of workers who couldn't afford
even that luxury but who nevertheless knew Dickens by having his
work read aloud as entertainment at tea or in the evening, or
who found rubbishy used copies in bookstalls and took them home.
Dickens's books entered into the lives of his readers more thoroughly
than those of most other writers. Serial novels are seen today
as loose, baggy monsters, almost impossible to get through in
our crowded, rushed lives. But in the nineteenth century, breaking
down the novel's bulkiness into twenty snippets of entertainment
allowed readers to "inhabit" a world, like a television
soap opera, in manageable segments. Deprived of the luxury of
installment reading, readers today find features of Dickens's
prose overbearing that would be much more appealing if read, especially
read aloud, over a year and a half.
Our Mutual Friend was not one of Dickens's greatest success
at the time of its initial publication. Whereas twenty years before
serial fiction was the rage, by the mid-1860s even cheaper formats
had been devised: monthly magazines that sold for a shilling or
less included installments of several novels as well as informative
essays on a wide range of topics, and sometimes incorporated pictures,
letters to the editor, hints about housekeeping and grooming,
and other matters of interest to an increasingly urban, working
audience. Of the opening numbers of Our Mutual Friend,
an average of under 30,000 were sold; only 19,000 copies of the
final double number were stitched into the paper wrappers. Dickens
was, of course, an international celebrity, so Frederick Chapman,
now managing partner of his uncle Edward's publishing firm of
Chapman and Hall, sold copies, or stereotypes of the pages, around
the world: to Harper and Brothers in New York for serialization
there, to Canada and India and Australia and New Zealand, to Bernard
Tauchnitz for reprinting in Germany, and to Italy for reprinting
in English in an Italian newspaper.
The reviews were respectful, but they sometimes
compared Dickens's latest production unfavourably to his earlier,
sunny works. Dickens's biographer, John Forster, said in his biography
of the author a decade later that Our Mutual Friend "wants
freshness and natural development," and that too was a familiar
complaint at the time of the book's reception; Henry James said
it was "poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment,
but of permanent exhaustion." The attack on the Poor Law
was generally appreciated, although some wondered whether fiction
was the appropriate place to issue political ideas. The Saturday
Review protested the "odious vulgarity and malevolence which
Mr Dickens has put into the mouth of Society": "mere
moonshine, and not creditable to the author's insight or shrewdness."
Critics of the last half century have, on the whole, been more
appreciative of Dickens's late achievement than his contemporaries
were, and recent studies have begun to explore the complex and
profound ways Dickens's novel wrestles with the dehumanizing effects
of capitalism.
And Dickens? How did he feel about what
was to be his final completed novel? He had trouble all the way
through its composition. He had been haunted by a great Dust Heap
for sixteen years, ever since 1850 when he published an article
on the topic in his journal Household Words . And Dickens also
had his title in mind for years, finally settling on it in October
of 1862, well in time for his illustrator to begin designing the
wrapper (done early in 1864) and his publishers to begin soliciting
advertising. But then, nothing. "I am trying to plan a new
book, but have not got beyond trying," he wrote in March
in 1862. The lament was repeated throughout the next six months.
Finally in October his creative energies began to stir. By the
end of January 1863 he had written two numbers--Dickens always
tried to stay a few months ahead, and did so by composing several
numbers before the start of publication. But he felt "dazed"
by the hugeness of his undertaking; twenty numbers seemed an impossibly
large volume to fill. As usual, he constructed "number plans"
in advance for the whole work, with facing pages for notating
the contents of the number and suggestions and decisions about
what to put in, leave out, or postpone. But the blank sheets seemed
to stretch into infinity.
Once publication commenced, Dickens fell
behind, gradually losing his advance because he could not keep
up the pace of writing. He often was ill, his life was constantly
interrupted by other commitments, and his energy and attention
were compromised. "I have dropped astern this month instead
of going ahead," he reported at the end of August 1864. He
struggled on, plagued with work and worry, until he had to get
away to France in June 1865 for a brief holiday or "break
down." The train in which he returned was involved in a bad
accident; ten passengers were killed and forty seriously injured.
Dickens was heroic in his endeavors to rescue and comfort the
injured and dying; at the last moment he managed to retrieve from
the teetering railway carriage the installment he had been carrying
with him. (That event is referred to in the last sentences of
his "Postscript" to the novel.) Shaken but determined,
Dickens canceled all social and professional engagements and worked
"like a Dragon" at a "labour of love" which
had now seized him "by the throat." He managed to complete
the last double installment in the nick of time.
Dickens's illustrator for Our Mutual
Friend , Marcus Stone (1840-1921), was the son of a former
neighbour and close friend, Frank Stone. Although Marcus had drawn
a few designs for reprints of Dickens's stories, he had never
been engaged for a serial before. Stone's predecessors had executed
steel etchings; Stone designed plates which highly skilled craftsmen
transferred onto endgrain blocks of wood that they then carved
to make wood engravings. Stone worked rapidly and on the whole
congenially with Dickens. He introduced Dickens to the St. Giles's
taxidermist's on which Dickens then modeled Mr. Venus's shop,
and he took Dickens's painstaking suggestions about every dot
and line of his trial drawings without complaint. "The doll's
dressmaker is immensely better than she was," Dickens told
the young artist after he revamped an unsatisfactory sketch. Such
praise was less forthcoming than corrections, but Stone never
complained about his collaboration with Dickens. He also never
worked again in book illustration. As an aged and distinguished
member of the Royal Academy, Stone denigrated his Dickens plates
as immature work.
When the last "t" had been crossed
and the "Postscript" proofed and printed, Dickens did
something quite unusual. He had been giving his manuscripts and
proofs to his authorized biographer, John Forster, for twenty-five
years. But this time, moved by the not-altogether-favourable review
(issued anonymously) that the critic E. S. Dallas had published,
Dickens gave Dallas the holograph. Subsequently Dallas sold it,
and eventually J. P. Morgan, a far more vital and fearsome plutocrat
than Mr. Veneering, bought it for his library. The manuscript
is now housed at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.
Installments of Our Mutual Friend
Volume I
Part I. May 1864. Book the First. Chapters 1-4, pp. 1-32
Part II. June 1864. Chapters 5-7, pp. 33-64
Part III. July 1864. Chapters 8-10, pp. 65-96
Part IV. August 1864. Chapters 11-13, pp. 97-128
Part V. September 1864. Chapters 14-17, pp. 129-60
Part VI. October 1864. Book the Second. Chapters 1-3, pp. 161-92
Part VII. November 1864. Chapters 4-6, pp. 193-224
Part VIII. December 1864. Chapters 7-10, pp. 225-56
Part IX. January 1865. Chapters 11-13, pp. 257-88
Part X. February 1865. Chapters 14-16, pp. 289-320, plus 12 pages
(six leaves) of preliminary matter (half-title, etc.)
Volume II
Part XI. March 1865. Book the Third. Chapters 1-4, pp. 1-32
Part XII. April 1865. Chapters 5-7, pp. 33-64
Part XIII. May 1865. Chapters 8-10, pp. 65-96
Part XIV. June 1865. Chapters 11-14, pp. 97-128
Part XV. July 1865. Chapters 15-17, pp. 129-60
Part XVI. August 1865. Book the Fourth. Chapters 1-4, pp. 161-92
Part XVII. September 1865. Chapters 5-7, pp. 193-224
Part XVIII. October 1865. Chapters 8-11, pp. 225-56
Parts XIX and XX. November 1865. Chapters 12-[17] ("Chapter
the Last"), pp. 257-306, plus "Postscript" (4 pp.)
and eight pages (four leaves) of preliminary matter
