94 KNOWING DICKENS
between us now, indeed. I would to Heaven, my dearest friend, that I could
remind you in a manner more lively and affectionate than this dull sheet of
paper can put on, that you have a Brother left. One bound to you by ties as
strong as ever Nature forged. By ties never to be broken, weakened, changed
in any way—but to be knotted tighter up, if that be possible, until the same
end comes to them as has come to these” (4.246–47). In the fervor often
generated by distance, Dickens not only puts himself into the place of the
dead brother, but competes for the stronger position in Forster’s affections.
The almost familial connection did last their lifetimes, though its nature was
altered when Forster married Eliza Colburn in 1856. By that time Dickens
had begun his friendship with the younger Wilkie Collins, and was inter-
nally moving toward a break with his wife.
From many points of view Dickens made a good choice in his profes-
sional alliance with Forster. Although Forster could be pompous, argumenta-
tive, and overbearing in social gatherings, he made Dickens’s career possible
in ways that extended far beyond his role as first reader and literary adviser.
Forster introduced Dickens to the other men who became his intimate asso-
ciates; he tried to tone down the exaggeration and melodrama in his writing;
he worked hard, though often unsuccessfully, to protect Dickens from his
own worst impulses on any number of occasions. He interposed his good
offices as a negotiator between Dickens and trouble, whether the trouble
was personal or one of the many conflicts between Dickens and his publish-
ers. In 1845–46, Dickens made plans to edit the Daily News over Forster’s
misgivings; he resigned two-and-a-half weeks after the publication of the
first issue. Forster took over the editorship until a permanent director could
be found.
The relationship was hardly an exclusive one. Forster, who had trained
as a barrister, made it his business to involve himself in editing the work
and managing the financial affairs of a number of men in his circle. The
connection with Dickens was, in retrospect, the most significant of these
entanglements, both because Dickens was in special need of “Forstering,”
and because in 1848 he invited Forster to be his official biographer. By that
time Forster had become the primary witness and consultant in Dickens’s
artistic struggles and triumphs. Dickens trusted him with his dark and rest-
less feelings, with the unsteady state of his health, and even with the secret
history of the blacking factory that he withheld from others. For many years
Forster was Dickens’s most important audience: the recipient of the wonder-
ful letters from abroad as well as the external conscience before whose bar
Dickens argued out his plans and intentions, and justified himself in the face
of his friend’s reservations.