SOURCE: "Uncle Tom and Charles Reade," in American Literature, Vol. 17, January, 1946, pp. 334-47.

[In the following excerpt, Burns and Sutcliffe suggest that Reade's style of documentary realism was influenced by Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.]

I

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) achieved an unparalleled popularity, both in America and Europe. That we all know. What is not so well known is the extent to which the novel, and the accompanying "Key" (The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1853) influenced the thinking and writing of European novelists—among others Charles Reade.

Several scholars have noted a relationship between the work of Mrs. Stowe and that of Reade. Léone Rives, Reade's latest biographer, recognizes similarities in method:

Mrs. Beecher Stowe utilise également une méthode analogue, fondée entièrement sur l'observation. Encore à la manière de Reade, elle fait part au lecteur de son procédé, dans La case de l'Oncle Tom:

Les divers incidents que composent ce récit sont en grande partie authentiques; beaucoup d'entre eux ont été observés soit directement par l'auteur, soit par ses amis intimes … et la plupart des propos sont retranscrits mot à mot, tels qu'elle les a entendus ou qu'on les lui a rapportés.¹

This is sound enough, but she summarily dismissed Edmund Ahlers's theory:²

Reade wurde zu diesem seinem ersten sozialen Tendenzroman wahrscheinlich durch den 1852 erscheinenen Roman Uncle Tom's Cabin von Harriet Beecher-Stowe angeregt. Uncle Tom's Cabin richtete sich gegen die grausame Behandlung der Negersklaven in einigen Staaten Nordamerikas. Das Thema war also ein ganz ähnliches, wie Reade selbst in Never too late to Mend hervorhebt (Vgl. S. 76). Die ungeheure Wirkung, die der Roman der Amerikanerin hatte, muszte in unserem Autor den Wunsch wachrufen, such seiner sozialen Tendenz in Romanform zum Siege zu verhelfen.³

There is some truth here, despite Rives; and also in Cross's statement: that "It is Never Too Late to Mend … was directly inspired by Uncle Tom's Cabin"⁴—just how much truth, however, remains to be determined, for none of these scholars has made a thorough study of the influence. Our aim is to make such a study, and thereby prove that Uncle Tom and The Key (1) furnished inspiration and ideas for the prison sections of It Is Never Too Late To Mend, and (2) played a vital role in Reade's development as a novelist of the "Matter-of-Fact."

II

At the time Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, Charles Reade was still an obscure writer, known only as an adapter of French plays. He was lonely and despondent, and continued so through-out 1852 and most of 1853.⁵ But he kept on writing, almost desperately at times, trying to find a medium, a subject, and a method that would bring him the recognition he so much desired. During the summer and fall of 1852 he completed the drama Masks and Faces (in collaboration with Tom Taylor); his first novel, Peg Woffington; and his first original drama, Gold. All were bids for success, especially Gold.⁶ His hopes and fears for this play he set down in his "diary":

Sept. 27, Magd. Col., Oxford.—Have nearly finished a great original play, a drama in four acts, containing the matter and characters that go to a five-act piece. I suppose I must go to London to push it.

Mem.—Not to let it go out of my hands. Not to trust it in any theatre, because there are plenty of blackguards about, and any fool could write a play that would go down upon this subject. I am glad in one way of having written this play. I want to show people that, though I adapt French pieces, I can invent too, if I choose to take the trouble. And it is a trouble to me, I confess.⁷

Reade's fears were soon realized, for on October 23 (or perhaps a day or two earlier) the "Surrey" produced "a new piece entitled 'Off to the Diggins; or, London Schemes in 1852.'"⁸ Neither Reade nor any of his biographers refers to this play,⁹ but on the very day it was reviewed, Reade vented his feelings thus:

Oct. 23, London.—Charles Reade in account with literature—

Dr.	£	s.	d.	Cr.
Pens, Paper, Ink, Copying	11	11	0	0
Brains,	4000	0	0
	4011	11	0

List of my unacted plays: 1. "The Way Things Turn." 2. "Peregrine Pickle." 3. "Marguerite." 4. "Honor before Title." 5. "Masks and Faces." 6. "Gold." 7. "Nance Oldfield." 8. "The Dangerous Path." 9. "The Hypochondriac." 10. "Fish, Flesh, and Good Red Herring." 11. "Rachel the Reaper." I don't remember the rest. I am a little soured, and no wonder.¹⁰

The appearance of "Off to the Diggins…" may account for some of Reade's bitterness, but not all: for months past he had been "soured"—almost to the point of a complete nervous breakdown. No longer a young man, he apparently felt that he must write a "hit" soon, or resign himself to obscurity and failure.¹¹

It was in this mood that he received the impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Here was a book he admired, and one that was achieving unprecedented popularity. No one, so far as we know, has made a full and detailed study of the novel's reception in England, but the general facts are available. Sampson Low, who later became Mrs. Stowe's English publisher, estimated its success as follows:

From April to December, 1852, twelve different editions (not reissues), at one shilling, were published; and within the twelve months of its first appearance no less than eighteen different houses in London were engaged in supplying the demand that had set in. The total number of editions was forty, varying from the fine illustrated edition of 15 s. to the cheap and popular one at 6d. After carefully analyzing these editions and weighing possibilities with ascertained facts, I am able pretty confidently to say that the aggregate number circulated in Great Britain and her colonies exceeded one million and a half.

It was read everywhere, by all classes of people; talk of it filled the atmosphere. Heated discussions, occasioned by it, resounded in cottage, farmhouse, business offices and palatial residences all over the land. The pity, distress and soulfelt indignation in which it had been written, were by it transferred to the minds and consciences of its readers, and the antagonism it everywhere engendered, threw the social life of this country and England into angry effervescence through all its strata.¹²

Furthermore, the dramatic adaptations were almost as successful as the novel itself. "During 1852 almost every suburban theatre, as well as the Olympic and the Adelphi in the West End, presented a version of the American novel."¹³ At least one of these Reade certainly knew intimately, for on November 29, 1852, nine days after the production of Masks and Faces, the Adelphi presented Slave Life, a dramatization of Uncle Tom by Mark Lemon and Tom Taylor.

The popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin must have impressed Reade, the seeker after "hits." It is even conceivable that the novel, or perhaps one of its stage counterparts, influenced the genesis of Gold, the play which he later turned into the novel It Is Never Too Late To Mend.¹⁴ The dates are right. Reade first mentioned Gold on August 10, 1852: "I have sketched the plot of an original drama; I am studying for it a little."¹⁵ The theme, as originally conceived, was concerned with prisons—possibly with prison abuses—¹⁶ a type of subject new to Reade, and a type that might have been suggested by Uncle Tom's Cabin. And finally, the method Reade used in writing the play resembled Mrs. Stowe's in certain respects:

One of my characters is to be a thief. I have the entrée of Durham Gaol, and I am studying thieves. I have got lots of their letters, and one or two autobiographies from the chaplain. But the other subject, the gold-diggings makes me very uneasy. I feel my lack of facts at every turn.¹⁷

However, since the play, as finally produced and printed, did not include the prison section, but was constructed around the other subject, the "gold-diggings," we have no direct evidence to prove that Uncle Tom influenced the writing of Gold. We are merely suggesting a possibility.

III

But whether or not Uncle Tom's Cabin gave Reade any ideas for Gold, it is certain that the novel and The Key gave him some ideas for It Is Never Too Late To Mend.

During the spring and summer of 1853, Reade was still in much the same mood as a year earlier—a bit more sanguine, perhaps, but still striving to become "one of the writers of the day." The modicum of success he had achieved only increased his desire for a real triumph.¹⁸ In the meantime the popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin continued unabated; and in the early spring of 1853 Mrs. Stowe published A Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which she laid bare her creative process, even going so far as to reproduce whole batches of factual material that had gone into the novel. Reade probably read The Key soon after it was published in England; or if not, he must have seen the lengthy review of the book in the Athenœum.¹⁹ We do not wish to make too much of the point—it may be mere coincidence—but a short time after the appearance of The Key and the Athenœum review, Reade began to consider the possibility of turning Gold into a novel:

Mem. If I ever write a novel on "Gold," introduce a Jew and a learned Divine (Chaplain of Tom Robinson's gaol), who meet with a holy horror of each other, battle, argue, find they were both in the dark as respects each other, and that all supposed monsters are men—no more, no less.²⁰

This was June 14, 1853. By June 20, 1853, he had come to a decision and had begun collecting more data on prison conditions: "For instance, Tom Robinson is in gaol. I have therefore been to Oxford Gaol and visited every inch, and shall do the same at Reading."²¹

Just how or why he came to this decision is not clear. Nor is it clear why he had decided to include the theme of prison reform. On August 22, 1853, Reade described his plans at some length:

Aug. 22, London.—Tom Taylor has made me over his chambers. They are in a healthier part than Covent Garden, and I feel as if I could set to work. My plans: I will work hard at my tale of "Gold," whether under that title or another. I will hunt up two men who have lived in Australia, and are very communicative; from them I will get real warm facts. I will visit all the London prisons, and get warm facts from them for the Robinson business. I will finish the "Box Tunnel" for Bentley's Miscellany. I will write plays with Tom Taylor—his exuberance makes it easy. I will prepare for publication a series of stories under one title. I will play steadily for hits. I will not be worse than the public—or not too much so. I will write better than "Christie Johnstone." The story there is dry and husky. I will live moderately. I will take decisive measures for being out of bed at eight.²²

These last two extracts from Reade's "diary,"²³ while they do not fully explain the genesis of Never Too Late To Mend, certainly dispose of the accepted explanation, which, curiously enough, was originally offered by Reade himself. In a letter to the Times, August 26, 1871, he wrote as follows: "A noble passage in the Times of September 7 or 8, 1853, touched my heart, inflamed my imagination, and was the germ of my first important work…. "²⁴ Yet Reade's own "diary" proves that he had begun work on the novel as early as June 20, 1853. It is a case of Reade vs. Reade, and the "diary" entries outweigh the letter, written years later, in a controversial vein.²⁵ Perhaps, as we shall hypothesize shortly, Reade meant only to imply that the Times article was the "germ," not of the whole novel or the prison sections, but of the prison sections in their final form.

In any case, the most likely theory of genesis seems to be this: Reade (perhaps by some adventitious circumstance such as Coleman described)²⁶ became acquainted with prison conditions about the time Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared. Then, whether influenced by Uncle Tom or not, he decided to include prison material in his play Gold; but for some reason—probably because of the exigencies of dramatic form—he finally decided to eliminate the prison sections when he came to prepare the play for stage production. Therefore, when he chose to make a novel from his play (because of the influence of Uncle Tom and/or The Key, or for some other reason,²⁷ he had certain prison materials, such as prisoners' biographies,²⁸ already at hand. This was in July and August of 1853, and it seems likely that Never Too Late To Mend, as he then contemplated it, was to be a double-barreled adventure story (Gold plus prisons) of the picaresque type, treating prison conditions incidentally, after the manner of Smollett, Fielding, Goldsmith, Dickens, and a host of others—but with perhaps an added pinch of Mrs. Stowe's melodramatic humanitarianism. At this point in the evolution of the novel, the extent of the Stowe influence is problematical.

Reade had barely begun work on this traditional plan when the article on the Birmingham prison atrocities appeared in the Times. Already at work on the prison sections of his novel, he was quick to see in these warm new facts a subject that would enable him to write "a solid fiction" of three full volumes²⁹—with something of the aim, scope, and appeal of Uncle Tom's Cabin. And he could do all this within the framework of his original story, merely by sending his thief (Tom Robinson of Gold) to a "model prison" and exposing him to certain types of maladministration that were being practiced under the name of the "separate system."³⁰

In attempting to reconstruct the way Reade evolved the novel in his own mind, we have been careful not to ascribe too much influence to Uncle Tom and The Key, but in this last stage of the evolvement we are on more certain ground. The chapters on model prisons (presumably added to his original material after the appearance of the Times article) clearly reveal traces of both Uncle Tom and The Key, suggest strongly that Reade, in his first attempt to write out-and-out social propaganda, was consciously attempting to emulate Mrs. Stowe.

IV

That Uncle Tom's Cabin, or perhaps the novel in conjunction with The Key, gave Reade the idea of doing for the prisons what Mrs. Stowe had done for slavery is really not surprising. Many philanthropists had seen the connection between the evils of slavery and those existing in England; among others, Lord Shaftesbury, who had written Mrs. Stowe:

You are right, too, about Topsy. Our Ragged Schools will afford you many instances of poor children, hardened by kicks, insults, and neglect, moved to tears and to docility by the first word of kindness. It opens new feelings, develops, as it were, a new nature, and brings the wretched outcast into the family of man. I live in hope—God grant it may rise to faith!—that this system is drawing to a close. It seems as though our Lord had sent out this book as the messenger before his face to prepare his way before him. It may be that these unspeakable horrors are now disclosed to drive us to the only "hope of all the ends of the earth," the second advent of our blessed Saviour. Let us continue, as St. Paul says, "fervent and instant in prayer," and may we at the great day of account be found, with millions of this oppressed race, among the sheep at the right hand of our common Lord and Master!

Believe me, madam, with deep respect,
Your sincere admirer and servant,
SHAFTESBURY³¹

Reade himself pointed out certain parallels in an encomiastic reference to Uncle Tom's Cabin:

The book was "Uncle Tom," a story which discusses the largest human topic that ever can arise; for the human race is bisected into black and white. Nowadays a huge subject greatly treated receives justice from the public, and "Uncle Tom" is written in many places with art, in all with red ink and with the biceps muscle.

Great by theme, and great by skill, and greater by a writer's soul, honestly flung into its pages, "Uncle Tom," to the surprise of many that twaddle traditional phrases in reviews and magazines about the art of fiction, and to the surprise of no man who knows anything about the art of fiction, was all the rage. Not to have read it was like not to have read "The Times" for a week.

Once or twice during the crucifixion of a prisoner, Mr. Eden had said bitterly to Fry, "Have you read 'Uncle Tom'?"

"No!" would Fry grunt.

But one day that the question was put to him, he asked with some appearance of interest, "Who is Uncle Tom?"

Then Mr. Eden began to reflect. "Who knows?" The cases are in a great measure parallel. Prisoners are a tabooed class in England, as are blacks in some few of the United States. The lady writes better than I can talk. If she once seizes his sympathies by the wonderful power of fiction, she will touch his conscience through his heart. This disciple of Legree is fortified against me; Mrs. Stowe may take him off his guard. He said slyly to Fry, "Not know Uncle Tom! Why, it is a most interesting story—a charming story. There are things in it too, that meet your case."³²

In another passage, Reade openly called attention to the parallels between Legree and Hawes—and in a manner which suggests that he wished to acknowledge his indebtedness and thereby increase the effectiveness of his own writing. Hawes is talking to his assistant, Fry:

"Well, Fry, thank your stars that you were born in Britain. There are no slaves here, and no buying and selling of human flesh; and one law for high and low, rich and poor, and justice for the weak as well as the strong."

"Yes, sir," said Fry, deferentially—"are you coming into the jail, sir?"—"No," replied Hawes, sturdily, "I won't move till I see what becomes of the negro, and what is done to this eternal ruffian."

"But about the prisoners in my report, sir," remonstrated Fry.

"Oh, you can see to that without my coming," replied Hawes with nonchalance. "Put 40 and 45 in the jacket four hours apiece. Mind there's somebody by with the bucket against they sham."—"Yes, sir."

"Put the boy on bread and water, and to-morrow I'll ask the justices to let me flog him. No. 14—humph! stop his supper, and his bed, and gas."

"And Robinson?"—"Oh, give him no supper at all, and no breakfast—not even bread and water; d'ye hear? And at noon I'll put him with his empty belly in the black hole,—that will cow him down to the ground. There, be off!"³³

From these two quotations one can begin to see the nature of Reade's indebtedness. First, he considered the two themes (slaves and prisoners) to be similar—a fact which may have influenced the genesis of the prison chapters;³⁴ secondly, he much admired Mrs. Stowe's zeal;³⁵ and finally, if our paraphrase is correct, he hoped to receive justice from the public (i.e., financial and artistic recognition) by a judicious imitation of her "theme," "skill," and "soul."

V

The quotations themselves have revealed that the "theme" and "soul" of Reade's novel derived (in part) from Uncle Tom; and The Key shows that Reade was to some extent indebted to Mrs. Stowe for his "skill," as we interpret the word, his "narrative method."

Mrs. Stowe's Key, it will be recalled, appeared in England in the spring of 1853, at a time when Reade was still casting about for a subject and a method. Reade saw The Key, or a review of it,³⁶ and then on June 20, he formulated his new literary credo:

June 20.—The plan I propose to myself in writing stories will, I see, cost me undeniable labor. I propose never to guess where I can know. For instance, Tom Robinson is in gaol. I have therefore been to Oxford Gaol and visited every inch, and shall do the same at Reading. Having also collected material in Durham Gaol, whatever I write about Tom Robinson's gaol will therefore carry (I hope) a physical exterior of truth.

George Fielding is going in a ship to Australia. I know next to nothing about a ship, but my brother Bill is a sailor. I have commissioned him to describe, as he would to an intelligent child, a ship sailing with the wind on her beam—then a lull—a change of wind to dead aft, and the process of making all sail upon a ship under that favorable circumstance.

Simple as this is, it has never been done in human writing so as to be intelligible to landsmen.

One of my characters is a Jew—an Oriental Jew. It will be his fate to fall into argument not only with Susan Merton, but with the Chaplain of my gaol. It will be my business to show what is in the head and in the heart of a modern Jew. This entails the reading of at least eight considerable volumes; but those eight volumes read will make my Jew a Truth, please God, instead of a Lie.

My story must cross the water to Australia, and plunge after that into a gold mine. To be consistent with myself, I ought to cross-examine at the very least a dozen men that have farmed, dug, or robbed in that land. If I can get hold of two or three that have really been in it, I think I could win the public ear by these means. Failing these I must read books and letters, and do the best I can. Such is the mechanism of a novel by Charles Reade. I know my system is right; but unfortunately there are few men so little fitted as myself to work this system. A great capacity for labor is the first essential. Now I have a singularly small capacity for acquisitive labor. A patient, indomitable spirit the second. Here I fail miserably. A stout heart the third. My heart is womanish. A vast memory the fourth. My memory is not worth a dump.

Now, I know exactly what I am worth. If I can work the above great system, there is enough of me to make one of the writers of the day; without it, NO, NO.³⁷

This "system," which constitutes a formulation, in brief, of Reade's theory of the "Matter-of-Fact Romance," is in all essentials strikingly similar to what Mrs. Stowe outlines in The Key—from Reade's emphasis on various types and methods of documentation to his implied belief that factual and literary truth are one and the same. Reade does seem to depart from The Key in frankly avowing that his aim is to become "one of the writers of the day," but this is only a seeming difference. He, too, has his share of evangelical piety (It Is Never Too Late To Mend is full of it) and wrote by his own admission, as a reformer, not merely as a novelist.³⁸ He even went so far as to write a "key" in reply to charges against It Is Never Too Late To Mend.³⁹

Reade's technique also reveals borrowings of a more specific nature. In many instances he used Mrs. Stowe's very terms: he labeled certain of the materials in his famous notebooks, "nigri loci"; he used the term "dark places" in the novels and in Readiana;⁴⁰ and in his notebooks he called his proofs of the material in Never Too Late To Mend "Key to Sera Nunquam."⁴¹

Finally, the novel itself reveals that his application of the documentary technique is quite similar to Mrs. Stowe's. His social criticism is fundamentally different in that he blames the men, not the system; but after all, he is not dealing with the same subject. In other respects, his treatment of documentary materials bears a close resemblance to that of his American prototype. His handling of the Birmingham prison atrocities, as presented in the Times articles, is a case in point. He culls all the sensational facts available, borrowing freely, even literally at times; and he uses these facts to fit his own melodramatic and humanitarian aims—much as Mrs. Stowe used the personal histories and newspaper articles presented in The Key.⁴²

VI

Now that the case for the influence of Mrs. Stowe's method has been made, it is necessary to consider the counterevidence. Many forces other than The Key and Uncle Tom were pushing Reade toward documentary realism. Apart from his personal, intellectual, and sociological background, which certainly had an effect, but which cannot be discussed here, other and more specific influences were at work. Painting, especially Pre-Raphaelitism;⁴³ the drama, both French and English;⁴⁴ empirical philosophy;⁴⁵ the traditions of the English novel;⁴⁶ and more specifically the realistic and sensational literature of the thirties and forties—all these exerted a demonstrable influence on Reade's art, and all contributed to his theory and practice of sensational realism. In fact, Reade had already used social materials and research techniques in writing Peg Woffington and Christie Johnstone; and also in writing Gold,⁴⁷ which may or may not have been influenced by Uncle Tom. Hence, we must admit that Reade was on the way to becoming a writer of the "Matter-of-Fact" before the American novel appeared.⁴⁸

And yet the Stowe influence is uniquely important. Uncle Tom served as an inspiration and guide to Reade in his first attempt to write fiction of unmixed social purpose; and The Key (together with Uncle Tom) was one of the proximate influences that led him to modify his creative method, and to espouse the type of thorough-going documentary realism now associated with his name.

Notes

¹ Léone Rives, Charles Reade: sa vie ses romans (Toulouse, 1940), p. 197.

²Ibid., p. 258: Edmond [sic] Ahlers, affirme que Reade fut poussé à écrire ce roman, après la lecture de La Case de L'Oncle Tom. Or, ces deux oeuvres n'offrent aucune similitude de sujects, à proprement parler. Ils n'ont de commun, à part le réalisme de la technique, que la peinture de la souffrance humaine. Si l'on veut, Reade a autant fait pour les prisonniers du Royaume-Uni, que Mrs. Beecher Stowe pour les esclaves noirs d'Amérique.

³ Edmund Ahlers, Charles Reades Romane und ihr Verhältnis zu ihren literarischen Vorbildern (Münster, 1914), p. 85.

⁴ Wilbur L. Cross, The Development of the English Novel (New York, 1899), p. 213. Cf. also E. G. Sutcliffe, "Plotting in Reade's Novels," PMLA, XLVII, 835, 843 (Sept., 1932).

⁵ Charles L. Reade and Compton Reade, Charles Reade: A Memoir (New York, 1887), pp. 177-201. Hereinafter referred to as Memoir.

⁶ Not one of the three was received at first with general and unqualified approval: Masks and Faces eventually became "pretty successful," to quote Reade's own words, and something much less might be said for Gold; but the novel Peg Woffington (Dec. 17, 1852) and later the novel Christie Johnstone (Aug. 25, 1853) achieved in the fifties only a succès d'estime. Malcolm Elwin interprets the evidence differently—in contradiction, it seems, to Reade's own statements. See Malcolm Elwin, Charles Reade A Biography (London, 1931), pp. 84-86.

⁷Memoir, p. 196.

⁸ The Illustrated London News (Oct. 23, 1852) described the play thus:

Surrey

A new piece entitled "Off to the Diggins; or, London Schemes in 1852," has been produced here. The scene is laid both in London and California; and, in the second act, the diggers are shown at work, with all the picturesque accompaniments of dingy linen, spades, pick-axes, cradles and lynch-law weaponry. The bustle, excitement, and fun of the piece are extreme, and promise much success.

⁹ Coleman mentioned a French play, Les Chercheurs d'or. See John Coleman, Charles Reade As I Knew Him (London, 1903), p. 121; and Memoir, p. 223. A version of Gold in the Harvard Library substitutes California for Australia and turns Robinson into an adventurer. The adapter was Edward L. Davenport.

¹⁰Memoir, pp. 196-197.

¹¹ Cf. ibid., p. 225.

¹² Quoted by Grace Edith Maclean, Uncle Tom's Cabin in Germany (New York, 1910), p. 19. For a more complete analysis of Uncle Tom's reception in England, see Clarence Gohdes, American Literature in Nineteenth-Century England (New York, 1944), pp. 29-33.

¹³ Winton Tolles, Tom Taylor and the Victorian Drama (New York, 1940), p. 95.

¹⁴ The origin of Gold is not known, unless one is willing to accept Coleman's account. See Coleman, op. cit., pp. 118-119.

¹⁵Memoir, p. 195. The Illustrated London News listed Uncle Tom's Cabin in "Publications of the Month" on July 31, 1852.

¹⁶ A passage in the essay "A Terrible Temptation" (included in Readiana, Grolier ed., p. 388) seems to refer to his investigations of Durham Gaol in August, 1852: "I had also personally inspected many gaols, and discovered terrible things; a cap of torture and infection in one northern gaol…"; and the next few lines on the same page may also refer in part to his prison investigations preparatory to writing Gold: " … in a southern gaol the prisoners were wakened several times at night, and their reason shaken thereby. In another gaol I found an old man sinking visibly to his grave under the system; nobody doubted it, nobody cared. In another, the chaplain, though a great enthusiast, let out that a woman had been put into the'black hole' by the gaoler against his advice, and taken out a lunatic, and was still a lunatic, and the visiting justices had treated the case with levity…. "

¹⁷Memoir, p. 195. One or both of the autobiographies mentioned might possibly have furnished the basis for "The Autobiography of a Thief," originally intended for use in Never Too Late To Mend.

¹⁸Memoir, p. 201.

¹⁹ The review was continued through the following issues: March 26, 1853; April 2, 1853; and April 9, 1853. That Reade was well acquainted with the Athenœum at this time seems fairly certain: his first two novels were reviewed at some length and rather favorably (Athenœum, Jan. 1, 1852; and Oct. 1, 1853); moreover, in reference to the review of Peg Woffington, he wrote a letter that was published in the issue of Jan. 15, 1853.

We cite only the Athenœum, but of course many other reviews of The Key were also available to Reade.

²⁰Memoir, p. 197.

²¹Ibid., p. 198.

²²Ibid., p. 201.

²³ We have quoted only two extracts, in part. See Memoir, pp. 197-201.

²⁴ "Facts Must Be Faced," Readiana (Grolier ed.), p. 437. In a "Terrible Temptation" (ibid., pp. 388-389) Reade explained further: the Times article was followed by "an onslaught on the gaols" from "a hundred anonymous writers." Then, "I studied the two extraordinary Bluebooks, viz., the Royal Commissioners' Report on Birmingham Gaol, and also on Leicester Gaol…. Then I conversed with one of the Royal Commissioners, and he told me the horrors of Leicester Gaol had so affected one of the Commissioners that it had made him seriously ill for more than a month. Enlightened by all these studies … I did what the anonymous Press had done on a vast scale … : I struck a blow in defense of outraged law and outraged humanity. But unlike the Press, to whom the prison rules are unknown, I did not confound the system with all its abuses; on the contrary, I conducted the case thus: I placed before the reader not one government official, but two—the gaoler eternally breaking the prison rules, and the chaplain eternally appealing to the prison rules."

²⁵ Since many of our conclusions are wholly dependent on the chronology of the "diary" entries presented in the Memoir, we find it necessary to acknowledge one seeming discrepancy, previously overlooked: under the date June 14, 1853, appears this statement, "Still, I ought to make a great hit with my drama 'Gold.'" Yet Gold was produced on Monday, Jan. 10, 1853, and ran only six weeks. Perhaps Reade wrote "drama" when he meant "novel," or perhaps the authors of the Memoir did not transcribe correctly? In any case, since this is the only inconsistency we have found, it is probably more curious than important. Cf. Memoir, p. 197.

²⁶ Cf. above, footnote 14. However, one need not accept Coleman. Since prisons and prison abuses were very live topics in the years between 1849 and 1852, Reade might have derived his interest from newspapers or books. See, for example, Hepworth Dixon, The London Prisons (London, 1850), Preface, passim. Furthermore, one must not forget that "prisons" had furnished themes for Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, and Dickens, to name only four of Reade's favorite novelists. See Rives, op. cit., pp. 236-241.

The preceding suggestions presume that the prison element came first in the genesis of Gold. If (contrary to Coleman) the Australian element came first, then it might have brought up the idea of prisons, since Australia was settled partly by British convicts.

²⁷ Cf. above, p. 340.

²⁸ Cf. above, p. 338. Some prison chapters in It Is Never Too Late To Mend are written in play form, but there is no proof that any of the stagelike dialogue may first have been written for Gold and then rejected.

²⁹ See E. G. Sutcliffe, "Plotting in Reade's Novels," PMLA, XLVII, 834-835 (Sept., 1932). Reade had originally planned to write a "two-volume" novel. See Elwin, op. cit., p. 98.

³⁰ See Wayne Burns, "More Reade Notebooks," Studies in Philology, XLII, 829-830 (Oct., 1945).

³¹ The last paragraph of a letter from Lord Shaftesbury to Mrs. Stowe, dated Dec. 14, 1852, quoted in the "Introduction" to Uncle Tom's Cabin (The Riverside Press, 1881), p. xxviii. Comparisons of a similar nature were commonplace: see, for example, Frances Trollope, Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy (London, 1840), II, 67-68, 164-165, 202, 254-256.

³² Charles Reade, It Is Never Too Late To Mend (Grolier ed.), I, 283-284. Mr. Eden speaks for Reade in the prison scenes.

³³Ibid., pp. 357-358.

³⁴ Cf. above, pp. 338, 341, 342.

³⁵ As is well known, Reade himself was a congenitally quarrelsome reformer.

³⁶ Cf. above, p. 339. The Key, we realize, was not absolutely necessary to an understanding of Mrs. Stowe's "method." The anonymous author of Uncle Tom in England, for example, borrowed his "method" from Mrs. Stowe before the appearance of The Key. See Uncle Tom in England; or a Proof that Black's White (London, 1852), pp. iii-iv, 206.

³⁷Memoir, pp. 198-199.

³⁸ Many of Reade's tracts and "keys" can be found in Readiana, which is a collection of his shorter nonfictional works.

³⁹ Unfortunately, no copy of this pamphlet is known to exist. See Michael Sadleir, Excursions in Victorian Bibliography (London, 1922), p. 161.

⁴⁰ Malcolm Elwin (p. 327) apparently did not fully understand what Reade meant by "Nigri Loci." Reade, in his "list of subjects entered as headings" in his notebooks (see Charles Reade's Notebooks, p. 108), defined the term thus: "NIGRI LOCI, or the dark places of the land. This is a heading of vast extent, comprising cruelties and iniquities in Prisons, Police cells, Asyla, Ships, Emigrant Ships especially, Mines, Secret or demi-secret tribunals, like the Committee of Privileges, House of Lords, Public Schools, Workhouses, Convents, Factories, violent exclusion of females, China Painters, female robbed of the maul stick, milliners' work rooms, etc."

Compare the terms "Nigri Loci" and "dark places" with Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 404.

⁴¹ See E. G. Sutcliffe, "Charles Reade's Notebooks," Studies in Philology, XXVII, 94 (Jan., 1930).

⁴² Forrest Wilson has pointed out that The Key was not made up of the materials Mrs. Stowe had before her when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; that The Key has consequently given many critics a false notion of Mrs. Stowe's creative method in writing Uncle Tom. We cannot accept this conclusion without qualification; but the nature and extent of our disagreement are of no immediate concern: Reade undoubtedly understood the essential elements of The Key as Mrs. Stowe intended them to be understood. See above, n. 19; and Charles E. Stowe, The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston and New York, 1891), pp. 173-174, 188-189. See also Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline (New York, 1941), pp. 332-333; Catherine Gilbertson, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York, 1937), pp. 172-180; and The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe, edited by Annie Fields (Boston and New York, 1898), pp. 171, 177, 209.

⁴³ Wayne Burns, "Pre-Raphaelitism in Charles Reade's Early Fiction," PMLA, LX, 1149-1164 (Dec., 1945).

⁴⁴ E. G. Sutcliffe, "The Stage in Reade's Novels," Studies in Philology, XXVII, 654-688 (Oct., 1930).

⁴⁵ Lewis F. Haines, "Reade, Mill, and Zola: A Study of the Character and Intention of Charles Reade's Realistic Method," Studies in Philology, XL, 463-480 (July, 1943).

⁴⁶ Edmund Ahlers, op. cit., passim.

⁴⁷ See above, p. 338.

⁴⁸ Elwin, op. cit., pp. 40, 67.