agreed to Chapman & Hall’s plan. There was a sad sequel: before the
Sketches
began to appear in November, Macrone fell ill and died. He was only twenty-eight, and his business had failed. Characteristically, Dickens forgot his rage against him and at once started a scheme to raise money for his widow and children. 25
Forster was disconcerted by the Macrone dealings, but was ready to take on negotiations with Bentley, and from then on was involved in all Dickens’s business with publishers. The result was that Dickens got back his copyrights after three years, had his salary for editing and contributing to the
Miscellany
raised, would be paid more than previously agreed for the long-planned next novel, ‘Gabriel Vardon’, now renamed
Barnaby Rudge
, and was promised bonuses for books that sold well. To Bentley, Forster was a bully who encouraged Dickens to be difficult and demanding, but the truth was that he spoke for Dickens and, when Dickens insisted on breaking contracts he had come to consider unfair, gave him support. Dickens’s habit of reneging on contracts was not morally defensible as business practice – even his friends said so – but it has been argued that, since no one had foreseen his spectacularly rising sales, which meant his publishers made thousands out of his work while his rewards remained relatively modest, he had a case. 26 In these circumstances he felt entitled to insist on adjustments to the contracts, and Forster backed him. Chapman & Hall were prepared to be generous – later in the summer they gave Dickens another £2,000 bonus for
Pickwick –
with the result that Dickens regarded them as friends, while Bentley became ‘the Robber’.
Dickens introduced Forster to Chapman & Hall, and soon Forster was acting as their chief literary adviser, where he continued until 1861 (and was succeeded by George Meredith). It was an arrangement that worked to everyone’s benefit, the more so since Forster moved on from literary editor of the
Examiner
to editor, remaining there until 1856. And from the late 1830s on he acted as Dickens’s ‘right hand and cool shrewd head’. As has often been pointed out, he became effectively his literary agent before the job was invented – though he was unpaid. With his good business sense and stubbornness, he proved an extremely effective negotiator, adopting a high ground on behalf of his author, as for instance in October 1838, when he assured Bentley that Dickens was ‘the greatest master of prose fiction in this or any other language’. 27 He read all his proofs, correcting and cutting when asked, and from 1838, as he recalled, ‘There was nothing written by him … which I did not see before the world did, either in manuscript or proof.’ 28 Unlike a modern literary agent, he also felt free to review Dickens’s books.
The July number of
Pickwick
was reviewed by Forster on its appearance, and gave him a chance to express his admiration for his new friend. It was the instalment in which Dickens described the Fleet Prison, where his hero is incarcerated for refusing to pay the breach-of-promise fine imposed on him by a corrupt judge. Every reader of
Pickwick
feels the change of tone and the great force of the account of prison life, and Forster was the first to do it justice: ‘The truth and power with which it is made are beyond all praise – so certain, so penetrating, and so deeply-aimed, and yet, at the same time, so obvious and familiar, are the materials employed. Every point tells, and the reality of the whole is wonderful. We place the picture by the side of those of the greatest masters of this style of fiction in our language, and it rises in the comparison … We recognize in this fine writer a maturing excellence.’ 29
Forster’s perceptiveness was especially acute in that he knew nothing, at this point, of Dickens’s childhood experiences in the Marshalsea Prison. Dickens wrote at once to thank him: ‘I feel your rich, deep
Sketches
began to appear in November, Macrone fell ill and died. He was only twenty-eight, and his business had failed. Characteristically, Dickens forgot his rage against him and at once started a scheme to raise money for his widow and children. 25
Forster was disconcerted by the Macrone dealings, but was ready to take on negotiations with Bentley, and from then on was involved in all Dickens’s business with publishers. The result was that Dickens got back his copyrights after three years, had his salary for editing and contributing to the
Miscellany
raised, would be paid more than previously agreed for the long-planned next novel, ‘Gabriel Vardon’, now renamed
Barnaby Rudge
, and was promised bonuses for books that sold well. To Bentley, Forster was a bully who encouraged Dickens to be difficult and demanding, but the truth was that he spoke for Dickens and, when Dickens insisted on breaking contracts he had come to consider unfair, gave him support. Dickens’s habit of reneging on contracts was not morally defensible as business practice – even his friends said so – but it has been argued that, since no one had foreseen his spectacularly rising sales, which meant his publishers made thousands out of his work while his rewards remained relatively modest, he had a case. 26 In these circumstances he felt entitled to insist on adjustments to the contracts, and Forster backed him. Chapman & Hall were prepared to be generous – later in the summer they gave Dickens another £2,000 bonus for
Pickwick –
with the result that Dickens regarded them as friends, while Bentley became ‘the Robber’.
Dickens introduced Forster to Chapman & Hall, and soon Forster was acting as their chief literary adviser, where he continued until 1861 (and was succeeded by George Meredith). It was an arrangement that worked to everyone’s benefit, the more so since Forster moved on from literary editor of the
Examiner
to editor, remaining there until 1856. And from the late 1830s on he acted as Dickens’s ‘right hand and cool shrewd head’. As has often been pointed out, he became effectively his literary agent before the job was invented – though he was unpaid. With his good business sense and stubbornness, he proved an extremely effective negotiator, adopting a high ground on behalf of his author, as for instance in October 1838, when he assured Bentley that Dickens was ‘the greatest master of prose fiction in this or any other language’. 27 He read all his proofs, correcting and cutting when asked, and from 1838, as he recalled, ‘There was nothing written by him … which I did not see before the world did, either in manuscript or proof.’ 28 Unlike a modern literary agent, he also felt free to review Dickens’s books.
The July number of
Pickwick
was reviewed by Forster on its appearance, and gave him a chance to express his admiration for his new friend. It was the instalment in which Dickens described the Fleet Prison, where his hero is incarcerated for refusing to pay the breach-of-promise fine imposed on him by a corrupt judge. Every reader of
Pickwick
feels the change of tone and the great force of the account of prison life, and Forster was the first to do it justice: ‘The truth and power with which it is made are beyond all praise – so certain, so penetrating, and so deeply-aimed, and yet, at the same time, so obvious and familiar, are the materials employed. Every point tells, and the reality of the whole is wonderful. We place the picture by the side of those of the greatest masters of this style of fiction in our language, and it rises in the comparison … We recognize in this fine writer a maturing excellence.’ 29
Forster’s perceptiveness was especially acute in that he knew nothing, at this point, of Dickens’s childhood experiences in the Marshalsea Prison. Dickens wrote at once to thank him: ‘I feel your rich, deep
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