An Introduction by R.H. Horne

Our story for today begins, with two of the most celebrated writers of their time, and with a far-sighted idea. Charles Dickens and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, working together, wished to found a “Guild of Literature and Art”, a society which would have both prestige and practical benefits. It would provide life assurance and retirement homes for its literary members, and it would also strengthen the sometimes dubious social status of men of letters. Bulwer-Lytton would contribute land for the housing, and he would write a new play, a five-act comedy, to be staged as a benefit performance to raise funds for the new Guild. His friend Charles Dickens would write a new farce to follow the comedy, an after-piece, that is, a light one-act wind-down play, a farce, which by convention wrapped up the evening’s more substantial fare. This ambitious plan was the genesis of Mr. Nightingale’s Diary.

Dickens began working on his contribution, while his wife Catherine was taking a month for a medical holiday at Malvern. Dickens stayed with her there for much of the time. He wrote to an old friend, mentioning a begging letter he had received, and added (28 Mar 1851): “also I am here with Kate for her health—cold water cure!” (Pilgrim 6:338). The “cold water cure”, hydropathy, was a regimen of medical treatment at Malvern and other retreats; it centred on cold water taken internally and externally, and included rest, controlled diet, exercise, and abstinence from alcohol. It also sometimes included wrapping the patient in wet sheets; that last bit can’t have helped a sick person too much, but the remainder sounds fairly healthy.

Dickens started writing some farce while at Malvern—perhaps Diary, perhaps a different one—but he soon ran into trouble. As he wrote Forster (23 Mar 1851): “I have written the first scene, and it has droll points in it, ‘more farcical points than you commonly find in farces,’ really better. Yet I am constantly striving, for my reputation's sake, to get into it a meaning that is impossible in a farce; constantly thinking of it, therefore, against the grain; and constantly impressed with a conviction that I could never act in it myself with that wild abandonment which can alone carry a farce off” (Pilgrim 6:329). Stumped on how to proceed, and concerned he would be too busy to complete it, Dickens at some point called on the aid of Mark Lemon, a practiced farceur, who had already had thirty of his burlettas and farces produced in London.

 Lemon was a founding editor of Punch (1841), and soon the sole editor. A family friend, Dickens and Lemon had met years before (1843), probably introduced by Douglas Jerrold. Dickens’s daughters Mary and Kate were particularly close to Lemon’s daughters Lally and Betty, and Lemon dedicated his fairy tale “The Enchanted Doll” to the Dickens girls (1850). Mary and Kate called Lemon “Uncle Mark”. Lemon and his Punch colleagues frequently took a part in Dickens’s amateur theatricals, and the editor had once played Falstaff, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, with no extra padding necessary (1848). In Mr. Nightingale’s Diary, Lemon’s character is said to have played Prince Henry drinking sack, and this is an oblique allusion to the Falstaff role (Falstaff drinks sack in King Henry IV parts 1 and 2). In fact you will see many references in Diary to Lemon’s amateur acting and Falstaffian size.

Dickens’s life was often crossed with great adversity, and during the period of writing Diary, the beloved author suffered an almost unthinkable tragedy—he lost first his father, and then his youngest child, only two weeks apart. Lemon and Forster together gave Dickens the news of the death of his infant daughter Dora, and it was Lemon who stayed by Dickens that night (14 Apr 1851). Years later, Dickens wrote Lemon: “…I have not forgotten (and never shall forget) who sat up with me one night when a little place in my house was left empty. | It is hard to lose any child, but there are many blessed sources of consolation in the loss of a baby” (Pilgrim 7:599). Despite the loss, or because of it, Charles Dickens looked deep into the place where writers look, and in partnership with Mark Lemon, he wrote his best play. Years later, Dickens wrote Lemon: “It is quite a treat to think of a new farce. We had so many happy hours with the old one” (Pilgrim 8:155). It is to be hoped that the writing and acting of Diary provided some ease to Dickens’s grief.

By May 1st, the collaboration was nearly complete, and Dickens wrote Bulwer-Lytton: “…I am now obliged to fall to work on the Farce, in which I am assisting Lemon and which must be finished this week. I think it will be very good. It is called | Mr. Nightingale's Diary” (Pilgrim 6:371–72). An early draft of the play by Lemon exists in manuscript, and has been published (see Fisher). Surprisingly, the Lemon draft features three of Dickens’s most popular characters—and the action is set in Malvern.

Did Dickens give Lemon his unfinished first scene? Did Dickens suggest ideas to Lemon, to get the collaboration started? It may be, but whatever the case, it does appear, from reading Lemon’s draft, that the Punch editor was trying to think like Dickens, and to come up with scenes and characters to engage the interest of the great author and his fans. In a very real sense, it doesn’t matter; for the nature of a successful collaboration is that each partner tries to come up with work to please and represent the team entire. In this case Lemon hit exactly the right note—a farce which was short, broad, and silly enough to satisfy the genre, but which also included analogues of Sam Weller, Mrs. Gamp, and Betsey Prig, who were to give a tremendous thrill to Dickens’s audiences, despite the farce’s lack of “meaning”.

By May 9th, Mrs. Nightingale’s Diary was privately printed for Dickens (by Bradbury and Evans) as a prompt-copy, to help the actors learn their lines. Most editors and commentators, the current editor included, follow Forster, in believing that Dickens and Lemon contributed to the writing equally. Since Lemon initiated the writing, then if both authors were equal partners, the play should be credited to Lemon and Dickens. But Dickens has usually gotten top billing, and sometimes (unfortunately) sole billing, perhaps because his name was more commercial. As to who wrote what, a reader might assume each author wrote his own part, and to some extent this is probably true, but a few of Dickens’s best lines appear in the Lemon draft. The play should be considered a collaboration.

The Guild’s centrepiece play, Bulwer-Lytton’s comedy Not so Bad as we Seem, premiered at Devonshire House, before Victoria and Albert (16 May), on an evening which has become the stuff of legend. The Great Exhibition had just opened (1 May), and the play was said to be “one of the very few topics, in fact, the interest of which has not been put down and eclipsed by the Crystal Palace” (Fisher, 12). Little wonder, for the Devonshire stage was built by Joseph Paxton, who was the architect of the Crystal Palace. There was no after-piece or farce that first night. The general manager—Dickens—knew that the Queen would get too restless near midnight. Mr. Nightingale’s Diary premiered eleven days later (27 May), on the same stage, after the second showing of the comedy.

It was a great hit. Bentley’s Miscellany wrote: “The vivacity of this smart farce told with remarkable effect after the stately and comparatively sombre tone of the comedy” (Fisher, 12). Mr. Nightingale’s Diary became the most popular portion of the program. Another farce, Two o’Clock in Morning, later had to be cut. Dickens wrote: “Funny as it used to be, it is become impossible to get anything out of it after the scream of Mr. Nightingale's Diary” (Pilgrim 6:748). R.H. Horne, an author who acted in Not so Bad as we Seem, wrote two articles describing every aspect of the production of both plays, including Dickens’s management and the audience’s thrilled reactions. These are included in the Afterword.

The Guild took the two new plays on the road, and had several successful benefit tours throughout the provinces over the next year and a half, eventually giving Diary about 20 performances. A few years later, Dickens and friends revived the play, to serve as the after-piece to the amateur premiere of The Lighthouse, a new play by Wilkie Collins. It was played three nights on the children’s stage in Dickens’s Tavistock House—billed as “THE SMALLEST THEATRE IN THE WORLD!” (16, 18, 19 June 1855). Rosina was acted by Dickens’s daughter Kate, and Susan by his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth. In modern times, the play, which is, as noted, set in Malvern, has been revived, very appropriately, at the Malvern Festival Theatre (1969): “very successfully” (“Revived”, 177).  It was also staged for five nights in Leicester (1970),  and given a costumed reading by the Mark Lemon Society in Sussex (1991).

The Guild of Literature and Art itself was not so popular as the Diary. It was handicapped by the restrictive terms of its act of incorporation (1854), and though three retirement houses were eventually opened (1865), no occupants could be found for the homes, nor purchasers for the life assurance. The Guild was finally disbanded (1897).

What remains behind as a monument to the Guild, and perhaps to Dora also, is a marvellous little one-act farce, which to modern-day readers will at first be difficult, but when finally penetrated is extremely funny. Stick with the play until the end, when comes Dickens’s tour de force as a quick-change trickster and personator. The dazzling scene fulfils one of his juvenile dreams—to give a Charles-Mathews-style performance. Charles Mathews (1776-1835) was a popular London comic monologist. His one-man shows, of sketch comedy, rapid costume changes, witty songs, and dialect and ethnic impersonations, were a very significant influence on the young Charles Dickens. In Mathews’s performances, he would enact a one-act farce, playing all the parts himself, rapidly shedding and donning coats, wigs, moustaches, and props, while likewise switching his voice, attitude, posture, and body language. Mathews called such a show a “monopolylogue”. When Dickens applied for an audition as an actor (1832), he told the theatre manager he knew three or four years worth of Mathews’s shows, from sitting in the pit to hear them (Pilgrim 4:244).

Dickens’s public readings were a bit like Mathews’s “At Home” spectacles, but Dickens did his readings in formal evening wear, while Diary is a full-gauge full-costume performance. You will see Gabblewig (the Dickens character) impersonating not only Sam Weller, but also Dickens himself, in his role as a prodigious pedestrian, and other characters as well. Most galvanizing of all is the image of Dickens playing Mrs. Gamp to Lemon’s Betsey Prig; the scene has an vividness which is startling. This is the closest you will ever come to seeing one of Dickens’s public readings in person. Prepare to see this now, much as that night so long ago, when the crowd would have returned from intermission, the fine ladies and gentlemen would be seated, the lights would go down, the house would grow quiet, and the curtain would rise.

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