James Gilbert of Lydd: The Dickens Connection
Among the vast amount of academic research that has been performed in connection with the life and works of Charles Dickens, the name of James Gilbert is very rarely mentioned, and the details of his life history and his connections with Dickens are almost non-existent. This article intends to highlight Gilbert’s links with Dickens and his other achievements, all of which may surprise, or at least be of interest to, the residents of Lydd, Romney Marsh and Kent generally.
James Gilbert, an ancestral relative of mine, was born in Lydd, Kent, in 1806, the son of James Gilbert senior and Sarah Strowd Finn. James Gilbert senior, was born in 1776 and christened at All Saints Church, and Sarah Strowd Finn was born 31st January 1779. James Gilbert senior married Sarah Strowd Finn on 17th July 1801 at St. Mary the Virgin, Dover, Kent, at which time James was said to be a grazier. They and their family lived at Tourney Hall, Lydd, on the southwest end of High Street, opposite the modern-day army camp. At the 1851 Census of Lydd, James Gilbert senior is described as ‘Stationer and Annuitant of landed property’. He died in 1857 and is buried at All Saints church. His wife, Sarah Strowd Finn Lydd, died in 1861 and is also buried at All Saints in a grave next to her husband’s, with a headstone stating that her children, including James, had erected it. Probate records state that she was resident at Tourney Farm, Lydd, and died there.
James Gilbert married Mary Grafton Grattan in 1833 at St. Botolph without Aldersgate, London. James was a publisher and bookseller. Mary was one of the daughters of Edward Alport Grafton Grattan (‘Edward Grattan’, my 3xgreat-grandfather) and sister to my 2xgreat-grandmother, Martha Matilda. At the 1841 Census, James and Mary lived with their family at Devonshire Grove, Peckham. Mary’s mother (and sister, Martha Matilda) lived with them. James and Mary Gilbert eventually had eight children.
Gilbert’s place of business was 51 Paternoster Row, and later No. 49, in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Paternoster Row was well-known for its concentration of booksellers and publishers. He was in partnership with his father- in-law, Edward Grattan, and the business was known as Grattan and Gilbert. His publishing speciality was maps and atlases, notably, in 1840, Gilbert’s Modern Atlas of the Earth.
In 1837, Grattan published thirty-two additional illustrations to Charles Dickens’s Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (The Pickwick Papers). Dickens, born 1812, was becoming popular. The Pickwick Papers was published monthly by Chapman and Hall in 1836-37, and his popularity led to publishers trying to jump on the bandwagon. The thirty- two Pickwick Papers illustrations published by Grattan were drawn by Thomas Onwhyn and were sometimes bound into early editions of The Pickwick Papers as extras.
In 1839 Grattan and Gilbert published forty additional Onwhyn illustrations to Dickens’s The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Onwhyn used the pseudonyms’ Sam Weller’ and ‘Peter Palette’. James Gilbert also published GWM Reynolds’s Master Timothy’s Bookcase, a pastiche of Dickens’s publication, Master Humphrey’s Clock. Dickens might have had Master Timothy’s Bookcase in mind whilst writing to his friend, John Forster, when considering whether or not to sue an unspecified party or parties for breach of copyright. Dickens’s commented to Forster: ‘that it is better to suffer a greater wrong than to have recourse to the much greater wrong of the law.’ He had little faith in the law, as was apparent in some of his works.
A notification alerting booksellers and the public of the imminent publication of Nicholas Nickleby included a PROCLAMATION which in part threatened what would happen to anyone who pirated his book: ‘we will hang them on gibbets so lofty and enduring, that their remains shall be a monument of our just vengeance to all succeeding ages.’ This tongue- in-cheek threat, which seems to have reflected Dickens’s serious concerns on the subject, was aimed at all literary pirates, including Grattan and Gilbert. Dickens’s Proclamation went on to give notice ‘TO THE POTENTATES OF PATERNOSTER-ROW’ (i.e. booksellers, again presumably including Grattan and Gilbert) of the details of each monthly issue of Nicholas Nickleby was to be issued and where and how they should collect their copies. The PROCLAMATION did not deter Grattan and Gilbert from publishing the extra Nicholas Nickleby illustrations.
In 1842, Grattan and Gilbert appear to have run into financial difficulties, unconnected with Dickens, and were committed to The Fleet debtors’ prison in London, but were able to redeem themselves. There is some irony in their committal to The Fleet since Mr Pickwick, the subject of Grattan’s additional illustrations, was himself committed to the same debtors’ prison in Dickens’s novel, The Pickwick Papers. In 1847 James Gilbert was again subject to bankruptcy proceedings but again was able to secure his release.
Gilbert’s next contact with Dickens was in May 1849 when he wrote to Dickens complaining that Bradbury and Evans, Dickens’s new publisher, was charging 8s 9d per dozen for the shilling numbers of David Copperfield, as opposed to the 8s 6d previously charged by publisher Chapman and Hall. Dickens sent the letter to Bradbury and Evans. In his covering letter, he admonished the publisher for causing offence, commenting: ‘I am very sorry that we cannot get on, without calling for such letters as the enclosed. What does it mean? Is it not ill-advised, and very ill-advised, to give any semblance of colour to such complaints? They used never to be made, and how is it that they begin now?’ The criticism stung
Bradbury and Evans, and a seemingly indignant Mr Evans responded: ‘I am very sorry that anyone should have induced you to write as you have done to me – because I am sure that in all cases we have acted so as best to promote your interests.’ He further commented that James Gilbert was ‘a man of no character or Estimation whatever – perfectly powerless to affect the sale of your works and whose sole disappointment is that he loses the advantage he never ought to have had.’ In a conciliatory letter to Mr Evans, Dickens replied, ‘ I am sorry you took the complaints ….. so much to heart’.
James Gilbert became Secretary of the Newsvendors’ Benevolent and Provident Institution. In this capacity, he wrote to Dickens in 1849, inviting him to attend and speak at the Institution’s tenth anniversary dinner. Dickens accepted and duly attended the dinner on 21st November 1849 at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate Street, London. At the dinner, Dickens proposed to the health of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the royal family. He praised the work of newsvendors, and he praised the Institution. He commented, with tongue-in-cheek humour, that he was indebted to them for bringing him the news ‘that the City of London was the best watered, the best drained and the most wholesome city in the world’, an oblique reference to the then-current cholera epidemic in London and implied criticism of London’s aldermen who had made these claims for the city. Dickens said that Newsvendors had also brought him the surprising news that the same aldermen who had claimed this for London’ were not locked up in the incurable cellars of Bethlehem Hospital’ (a mental institution).
Dickens also commented on reaction to his recently expressed distaste for public executions. Those opposed to Dickens’s opinions had branded him as bloodthirsty, characterising him as one who made ghoulish visits to public executions, whereas any such visits that Dickens made were in connection with his campaign to ban them. He did not necessarily disagree with capital punishment but strongly objected to the debauched spectacle of public executions.
Dickens became President of the Newsvendors’ Institution in 1854 until he died in 1870.
After the dinner, which James Gilbert presumably attended (and may even have met Dickens), Gilbert wrote a thank you letter to Dickens, taking the opportunity to raise once again the question of book pricing, this time relating to the Cheap Edition of David Copperfield. Dickens replied that he had no intention of reducing his price, especially since his books contained three times the material in an ‘ordinary novel.’
Gilbert also published educational books in the Gilbert & Ince’s Outlines series, of which hundreds of thousands were printed and issued to Victorian schools and scholars, so Gilbert played a role in the field of education.
At the 1871 Census, James Gilbert was recorded as residing at 51 Hill Street, Camberwell, London, and was said to be an author, aged 66, born in Lydd, Kent. He died in Camberwell in 1874, aged 69.
Acknowledgements:
The Pilgrim Edition – The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 5, editors Graham Storey, K. J. Fielding, Oxford University Press;
Keith Fielding, The Speeches of Charles Dickens, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1960.
