CHAPTER IV DICKENS CANCELLED PLATES: "OLIVER TWIST," "MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT," "THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN," "PICTURES FROM ITALY," AND "SKETCHES BY BOZ."

IN dealing with the episode of the suppressed plate in Oliver Twist we must be careful to bear in mind the fact that between the pub­li­ca­tion of Pickwick and the later novel there was an essential difference. The former was first published in self-contained parts, whereas the latter was published serially in Bentley’s Miscellany. Hence, the first editions of Pickwick in book form are to be met with bound from the parts, whereas the first editions in book-form of Oliver Twist are only to be found as issued by the publishers complete in three volumes. And unless we grasp this distinction at the outset we shall find it impossible to understand the apparently erratic appearance and disappearance {44} of the suppressed plate of “Rose Maylie and Oliver: the Fireside Scene” and its substitute.

The first instalment of the novel was published in the second number of Bentley’s Miscellany, February 1837, and it continued to run for nearly two years and a quarter. From this it will be seen that the last instalment of the novel was not published until three months of the year 1839 had elapsed.

In the meantime, however, the novel and the illus­tra­tions had been completed, and the whole story was printed in book form and published in three volumes in the second year of its serial issue, the exact date being November 9, 1838.

As a consequence we shall find the following curious result—namely, that the owners of the very earliest issue of Oliver Twist find themselves not in the happy possession of the suppressed plate, as would be naturally expected, but in the melancholy possession of its exceedingly ugly substitute.

This, to the uninitiated, would prove as great a puzzle as to Macaulay’s New Zealander would appear the fact that in Truro Cathedral the older {45} structure is of a later style than the new. But this is comparing small things with great. For we are fain to confess that, unlike the law, de minimis curat helluo librorum.

Thus, then, we have to face this apparent anomaly, that, to possess a copy of Oliver Twist with brightest impressions of the etchings throughout, we are under the necessity of combining the early plates from Bentley’s Miscellany with the later plates from the first edition published in volume form. This not uninteresting fact I may, I believe, claim to be the first to point out, and it goes far to explain a very misleading note on p. 151 of Reid’s monumental Catalogue of George Cruikshank’s Works, which shows clearly that the late Keeper of the Prints was greatly at sea in the matter.

Referring to the “Fireside Scene,” he says: “The plate was used in 1838, when the work reappeared in three volumes, in lieu of the preceding (‘Rose Maylie and Oliver at Agnes’s Tomb’), which was thought by the publisher to be of too melancholy a nature for the conclusion of the story.” From which any casual reader would be {46} led to the conclusion that “Rose Maylie and Oliver at the Tomb” was the suppressed plate, and that the “Fireside Scene” was substituted for it, whereas exactly the opposite was the case.

The novel was ready for pub­li­ca­tion complete in three volumes in the autumn of 1838. The illus­tra­tions for the last volume had been somewhat hastily executed “in a lump.” And Dickens, who always was most solicitous about the work of his collaborating artists, did not set eyes upon them until the eve of pub­li­ca­tion. One of them, “The Fireside Scene,” he so strongly objected to that it had to be cancelled, and he wrote to the artist asking him to design “the plate afresh and to do so at once, in order that as few impressions as possible of the present one may go forth.”13 The pub­li­ca­tion of the book, however, could not be delayed, and thus we have it that the earliest issue of the first edition of Oliver Twist in book-form contains the “Fireside Scene” opposite p. 313, vol. iii., which it is the desire of every Dickens collector to possess, while the later issue of the latter part of the novel in Bentley’s Miscellany {47} contains that which Cruikshank substituted for it at the novelist’s request.

Both the plates are here reproduced for the convenience of the owner of this or that edition.

But this is not all that has to be said upon the subject of the “Rose and Oliver” plates, and again I claim to be the purveyor of a little exclusive information.14

It has generally been supposed that Cruikshank, although naturally put about by Dickens’s disapproval, did immediately proceed to carry out his author’s suggestion. For example, we find Mr. Francis Phillimore, in his introduction to the Dickens Memento, published by Messrs. Field and Tuer, saying: “The author was so disgusted with the last plate that he politely but forcibly asked Cruikshank to etch another. This was done at once.” I am, however, in a position to prove that this was emphatically not the case. And it is what one would naturally expect, for George was the last person in the world to acquiesce calmly and unhesitatingly in the condemnation of work which he had himself deemed sufficiently good. {48}

In the year 1892 I had the privilege of examining the splendid collection of Mr. H. W. Bruton, of Gloucester, which has since been dispersed. On that occasion he drew my attention to a unique impression of the “Fireside” plate in his possession, from which we (he was the first to see the point) drew the necessary conclusion which follows. The importance of the impression lies in the fact that it shows that a large amount of added work had been put into the plate, principally of a stipply nature, after all the impressions which had so displeased Dickens had been struck off. By which it is evident that George tried hard to improve the original plate instead of at once falling in with the suggestion that the subject should be designed afresh. This proof was probably submitted to Dickens and again rejected, for no impressions of the plate with stippled additions are known to have been published.15 And plainly it was only after considerable effort to make the plate do, that the artist designed the {49} far worse picture of “Rose Maylie and Oliver before the Tomb of Agnes,” which is a questionable adornment to the later issues of the story. And had it not been for the delay so caused, it is more than probable that the suppressed plate would have been even a greater rarity than it actually is.

As I have said above, Mr. Bruton’s collection was dispersed in 1897 at Sotheby’s. No. 145 in that sale was an unrivalled run of the Oliver Twist illus­tra­tions, seeing that it consisted of a complete set of proofs of the etchings, and included, with other rarities, the unique proof just mentioned. The lot sold for £32:10s. By the kindness of its late owner, I am enabled to present to my readers a re­pro­duc­tion of this unique impression of the plate in its second state.

So much then for the story of the suppressed plate. There is, however, something more to be said of its substitute.

If we turn to our edition of Oliver Twist, so long as it does not happen to be one published subsequently to 1845, or one containing the suppressed plate, we shall find Rose standing with her {50} arm on Oliver’s shoulder before a tablet put up to his mother’s memory, and we shall find that Rose’s dress is light in colour save for a dark shawl or lace fichu, which is thrown across her shoulders and bosom. In the 1846 edition of the book, the plate has been largely touched up and shaded, and Rose’s dress turned into a black one.16 Now, it is perfectly evident that it is the old plate altered and used over again and not a new plate copied from the old, for every line and every dot in the illus­tra­tion to the earlier editions reappears in this. The perplexing matter that I have to draw your attention to, however, is that, in the same lot (145) at the Bruton sale mentioned above, there was sold a proof of this plate with Rose Maylie in the black dress, and this a proof before letters, an impossible nut for the amateur to crack who does not know that the lettering of plates may be stopped-out or burnished away or covered up for the striking off of misleading impressions; from which the moral may be drawn that it is better to believe in proof impressions after letters where they are well {52} authenticated, than to presume that a proof is before letters merely because those letters do not appear. Verb. sat sap. The plate in this state is here reproduced for the sake of comparison.

Before passing from Oliver Twist, it should be pointed out that the first issue of 1838, which contains the suppressed plate, is also differentiated from the second issue of the same year by what is sometimes alluded to as the “suppressed title-page,” which runs as follows:—“Oliver Twist; / or, the / ‘Parish Boy’s Pro­gress;’ / by ‘Boz,’ / in three vol­umes, / Vol. I (II. or III.) / Lon­don: / Richard Bent­ley, New Bur­ling­ton Street. /——/ 1838.”

The second issue, with the substituted plate, has:—“Oliver Twist / By / Charles Dickens, / Author of ‘The Pick­wick Pa­pers,’” the rest of the title being as in the first. It is curious to notice, further, that in a later edition the original title is resumed.

So much for Oliver Twist. We must not, however, quit Dickens without mentioning one or two other items, which more or less of right find their place in a treatise on “Suppressed Plates.” {53}

There is, for example, the etched title-page to the first issue of the first edition of Martin Chuzzlewit, where the reward on the direction post appears as “100£” instead of “£100,” which is often wrongly labelled “suppressed.” As a matter of fact it was not suppressed at all. It is nothing more than the first state of a plate which was afterwards altered. However, the bait is so valuable a one with which to entice the bibliomaniac, that there is no prospect of the description being lightly relinquished, and as it is one object of this treatise to protect the unwary, allusion to it is not out of place. The fact that it is the title-page issued after the book had appeared serially with its forty illus­tra­tions, disposes of any lingering idea that in acquiring it we are assured of the possession of early impressions of the other plates. But the undiscriminating bibliomaniac requires no logical justification, and the plate will still retain its market value.

A like variation is to be found in a well-known etching by George Cruikshank, entitled “The Worship of Wealth.” The head of Mammon is represented by a small money-bag, and the {54} features of the face by the letters GOLD. Of this plate only one state was known until in a happy moment one of our best-known collectors discovered and secured a unique proof with all the letters printed in reverse, thus:—