Collaborative Dickens. Melisa Klimaszewski
refusing to obscure family history? Does she speak in order to humiliate the main actors in the story, warn future generations to avoid certain behaviors, or advocate for the semifallen woman? Told from the perspective of a servant, her story’s indictment of the unyielding Lord Furnivall for his stern parenting stances also rebukes the more privileged classes of her social “superiors.” The narrator’s position significantly influences one’s interpretation of the story’s message, making its context crucial to complete readings. The original timing of the number in anticipation of the Christmas holiday, with its attendant emphasis on forgiveness and generosity, may also impact one’s assessment of the story’s moral lessons. The appearance of “The Old Nurse’s Story” in anthologies, sometimes without any reference to its original publication in the Christmas number, limits these fruitful interpretive possibilities.8
If the “Old Nurse” has told a story about the mother of some of the people sitting around the fire, then we must also wonder how this contribution relates to the collection’s final piece: “The Mother’s Story” by Eliza Griffiths. Readers certainly could envision Miss Rosamond, the little girl from Gaskell’s tale, growing up to be the one telling Griffiths’s story, as the nursemaid has already identified Rosamond as the mother of some of those present. Within the structure of the round, if the timing were such that Gaskell’s story and Griffiths’s poem overlapped, the story of the Furnivall woman dying in the snow with her child would be interwoven with Griffiths’s poem about a mixed-race woman who collapses in the snow just before reuniting with her son after having endured twenty years of slavery away from her children. Repeated imagery of this sort helps to explain how a collection of tales that might seem randomly collected sometimes exhibits an organic cohesiveness. In the conglomeration of narrative voices, individual writers’ voices often become indistinguishable, and even though Dickens is the “conductor,” he does not always control the combined effect of the voices he conducts.
Edmund Ollier’s “The Host’s Story,” following Gaskell’s piece, is in verse form and adds unexpected irony to the collection as it relates the adventure of a greedy travelling merchant setting his host’s palace aflame. Sneaking through the palace as the household sleeps, the merchant “fills a bag with jewels and with gold,” sets a fire that nearly traps him, then escapes by jumping out of a window, leaving his treasure behind. Again, a contributor’s piece adds rich possibilities to the relationships between the storytellers in the frame. The poor relation presents John as a generous and modest host, noting that John does not want the group to dwell on the fact that he supports the poor relation financially. Considering Ollier’s piece, however, we might question whether a cautionary tale warning against taking advantage of hospitality shows the host to be less content in his role. The irony in Ollier’s poem, if it undercuts the credibility of Dickens’s narrator in the first story, may pose a challenge to Dickens’s authority that one would expect him to have put in check, but his correspondence with Gaskell and others displays more flexible editorial behavior than most critics allow.
Already the successful author of Mary Barton, Gaskell was a writer whom Dickens esteemed highly and whose authorial voice, from the very first issue of Household Words, sometimes melded with the public voice of Dickens. He was thrilled when she agreed to write a multipart story to help launch the periodical.9 As Linda Hughes and Michael Lund point out, “When [‘Lizzie Leigh’] appeared without attribution in Household Words, many inferred that the story was Dickens’s own, given its prominent place in the first number. And the story was first published in the United States under Dickens’s name.”10 By December 1851, Gaskell’s Cranford series had also begun appearing in the journal, which sparked some sparring between Dickens and Gaskell over the sketches’ references to Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.11 In regard to “The Old Nurse’s Story,” Dickens was confident enough to try to persuade Gaskell to change its conclusion. After complimenting the “wonderfully managed” writing and suggesting that Gaskell alter the ending so that the child sees more ghosts than the adults do, Dickens asks, “What do you say to this? If you don’t quite and entirely approve, it shall stand as it does.”12 Gaskell immediately makes it known that she did not “entirely approve.” A few days later, Dickens persists in trying to change her mind: “What I would propose to do, is, to leave the story just as it stands for a week or ten days—then to come to it afresh—alter it myself—and send you the proof of the whole, and the manuscript (your original manuscript) of the altered part; so that if you should prefer the original to the alteration, or any part of the original to any part of the alteration, you may slash accordingly.”13 The process Dickens describes is not one in which he bullies Gaskell into accepting his revisions. Rather, she is the one who may “slash,” and his proposal includes a creative cooling-off period that places his “alteration” on a level equal (not superior) to hers, as he is careful not to discard her “original” brusquely. These interactions force one to reevaluate Harry Stone’s assertion that Dickens’s usual practice with the Christmas number contributions is to “edit them with his usual freedom.”14 To the contrary, with the print deadline approaching, Dickens repeatedly asks Gaskell for her permission before making permanent changes to her text, and their correspondence points to a stimulating collaborative relationship.15
Gaskell left the ending as originally written, and Dickens printed the story as she wished, knowing that readers might think the story was his own.16 His letters to her then mix defensiveness with reassurance: “I have no doubt, according to every principle of art that is known to me from Shakespeare downwards, that you weaken the terror of the story by making them all see the phantoms at the end. And I feel a perfect conviction that the best readers will be the most certain to make this discovery. Nous verrons. But it is greatly improved, and in making up the Xmas No. finally today, I shall of course be careful to preserve the New Ending, exactly as you have written it.”17 Even while placing himself in a direct line of descent from the Bard to defend his vision, Dickens concedes to Gaskell, demonstrating that their disagreement does not nullify the act of collaboration. As if to reinforce their status as creative allies, two days later he adds, “Pray don’t, in any corner cupboard of your mind, put away the least doubt or disparagement of the story. I read it carefully on Saturday (when I made up the Number finally) and did so with the greatest interest and admiration.”18 Dickens almost apologizes for having voiced his opinion so emphatically. He does not simply pay lip service to the idea of having an open mind when it comes to his collaborators’ choices but revisits their work and sometimes changes his valuation of it.
Once the number is published, Gaskell sends Dickens compliments on the stories she (correctly) guesses are his, while Dickens again contradicts his previous opinion: “I don’t claim for my ending of the Nurse’s Story that it would have made it a bit better. All I can urge in its behalf, is, that it is what I should have done myself.”19 The Dickens/Gaskell exchange bears out Rachel Sagner Buurma’s view that “literary authority in Victorian England was much more contingent, variable, and contested than has previously been thought.”20 In this case, the critical binary between anonymous authors as either exploited or subversive does not do justice to the original collaborative texts. Dickens strives to present work that accomplishes his storytelling goals and also allows the Christmas Rounds to tell the stories of his contributors with respect for their artistic integrity. The issue’s “conductor” listens, calibrating final decisions with consideration for the wishes of his talent.
James White’s “The Grandfather’s Story” again shows Dickens changing his mind about what he deems acceptable for the number, as he initially rejects a story that he ultimately prints. In his letter to White about the number’s frame, Dickens specifies the types of characters and plot that he desires: “The grandfather might very well be old enough to have lived in the days of the highwaymen. Do you feel disposed, from fact, fancy, or both, to do a good winter-hearth story of a highwayman?”21 White obliged, and his narrator speaks of his days as a bank clerk when he and a colleague, Tom Ruddle, are robbed while delivering gold to the bank’s clients on Christmas Eve. Pursuing a thief who has slit a full bag but taken only three guineas, Ruddle and the grandfather become sympathetic toward the criminal because he is motivated only by trying to keep his wife and baby from starvation after having been swindled (25).