successful contributor as if she is an underling of her husband’s.41 In light of the ongoing professional relationship between Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell, who published under exactly that name, it is also possible to view the inclusion of her husband as a way Dickens expands the collaborative circle. William published another ballad from Barzaz-Breiz in the October 22, 1853, issue of Household Words and was involved in later negotiations surrounding the publication of Elizabeth’s novel North and South. All three individuals seem to have expected to interact through various pairings and triangulated communications. The Gaskell text appearing in Another Round is a translation of a translation, but the filtering does not stop there. Elizabeth writes the introductory paragraphs to the verse that William translates, and her preliminary note states that the scholar character hears the story from the mother of the woman who originally told it. Two layers of oral telling, one involving a fictional character, precede the written translations, and Elizabeth Gaskell, not Dickens in his role as conductor, is the one who massages all of these tellings and translations into the frame concept with impressive wit.42
The scholar opens the story with a defensive maneuver that unsettles the harmony of the round and further questions authorial dynamics: “I perceive a general fear on the part of this pleasant company, that I am going to burst into black-letter, and beguile the time by being as dry as ashes. No, there is no such fear, you can assure me? I am glad to hear it; but I thought there was” (32). Since Dickens would provide Gaskell with no outline or list of speakers, it is likely that Gaskell herself decided to insert a scholar into the fireside circle as a means of introducing her husband’s translated poem. Her nursemaid narrator for the first round addresses the group, and she would have observed the other speakers delivering comments that bounce off of other characters. Given that Wills decided on the final ordering of the stories for 1853, his involvement as a collaborator is also crucial to this dynamic. The scholar’s resistance to an idealized fireside image skillfully balances congenial teasing with hostility, and his desire to avoid boring his companions with too learned of a story recalls the schoolboy’s worries that the assembled group will move too quickly away from him. Wills very well could have placed this joint piece late in the number so that its setup would tie back to the first story. Both he and Gaskell would have been aware of the way in which her opening for the story deftly points out that Dickens is not the only writer who can exploit the fire puns, and her narrative framing demonstrates that contributors sometimes pull Dickens’s voice into theirs rather than vice versa.
Far from pedantic, the verse the scholar shares is gripping in its portrayal of a young wife who is tormented then killed as a result of male jealousy, and this second violent story from Gaskell reminds one that Dickens’s emphasis on the setting of the domestic fireside never excludes gruesome topics from the Christmas season. Count Mathieu departs to fight in the crusades, leaving his wife and infant son under the protection of a cousin who serves him as a clerk. The wife, never named, maintains devotion to her husband but must lock herself in her room to hide from the psychotic cousin, who badgers her with declarations of love. To provoke the couple, the madman kills his master’s dog and horse, sending letters each time that blame their deaths on the negligent wife, whom he also reproaches for entertaining suitors at glamorous balls. Count Mathieu finally takes the bait after the cousin murders the family’s infant son and accuses the lady of having cavalierly left the baby near a giant, hungry sow. Oblivious to the improbability of such a scenario, the lord arrives in a rage, slays his cousin for not taking better care of his family, kills his wife before she can speak a word, and is left to regret the horror of his own ignorant brutality.43 The ballad’s final lines describe a priest who sees the spirits of the hound, the steed, the wife, and the infant comforting each other in a churchyard, but they offer little relief from the deranged behavior that makes the verse so haunting.
The deeds that need amending in “Nobody’s Story” are not nearly as bloody, as Dickens closes the Round with his own prose in a tribute to workingmen. His story allegorically indicts the ruling classes for blaming societal ills on workers without funding infrastructures that would empower laborers to live more comfortably. The Bigwig family represents the wealthy classes while Nobody speaks for “the rank and file of the earth” who are ignored in monuments while the feats of less industrious noblemen are commemorated (36). As Nobody’s life advances, his children fall into immoral habits because they lack schooling while the Bigwigs debate educational policy, and his family dies from preventable disease that the Bigwigs care about only when their own families risk contagion (35–36). The final words of Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire implicate the reader directly in these dilemmas as Nobody implores, “O! Let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire, and not forget them when it is burnt out” (36). This plea for compassion addresses not only readers but also the fictional narrators of both Rounds with an inclusive “us” around the Christmas fire. The call brings all of the voices together and places the conductor’s baton firmly back in Dickens’s hand as he transforms it into a sort of poker to extinguish the fire that, for two years, has helped to create a polyvocal space where Dickens loosens his conductor’s grip and enjoys the music for a bit.
Dickens’s lack of autocratic control is even more apparent when we pay close attention to his correspondence with Wills. Dickens was traveling in Europe from October to early December when the 1853 Christmas issue was finished and sent to press—and when the details of a moustache-growing contest with his travel companions, Wilkie Collins and Augustus Egg, were more exciting to Dickens than the Christmas number.44 Dickens does not imagine his own stories, composed in Italy, specifically as framing pieces: “In making up the Christmas number, don’t consider my paper or papers, with any reference saving to where they will fall best. I have no liking, in the case, for any particular place.”45 Consistent with the round metaphor, Dickens thinks that his stories will work equally well in any position, but Wills’s placement of them in the first and last positions affords them extra prominence in published form and enhances their subsequent significance in the collection.
For the first time, Dickens’s own stories stand as bookends for a Christmas number, but he is not the person who decided to place them there. This fact reinforces Wills’s significance as a coeditor and leads one to envision the act of editing as a collaborative authorial endeavor.46 The fact that Wills, not Dickens, was reviewing and ordering submissions doubles the layers of collaboration. Discussing the number-in-progress in a letter to Emile de la Rue, Dickens reports that he has not read several of the pieces Wills plans to include.47 The same letter offers evidence that such confidence in Wills was not restricted to the Christmas numbers. Answering la Rue’s question about a piece in the weekly issue from November 19, Dickens writes, “I diffuse myself with infinite pains through Household Words, and leave very few papers indeed, untouched. But Kensington Church is not mine, neither have I ever seen it.”48 Prevailing critical tendencies make it more likely for one to have seen Dickens’s comment about self-diffusion cited as confirmation that he arrogantly controlled the journal rather than as an example showing that he was simultaneously ignorant of exactly what appeared in that journal. In this instance, travel presents itself as a logistical reason for such sharing of editorial authority, but as I demonstrate throughout the present volume, openness to other people’s input and willingness to share power persist in varying degrees as Dickens produces fourteen more Christmas numbers. Beyond Wills, Dickens draws into the collaborative group another major figure, John Forster, as he anticipates the need to proofread “The Schoolboy’s Story”: “Let Forster have the MS. with the proof, and I know he will correct it to the minutest point.”49 The number of pens, and minds, at work on the collection does not seem to have worried Dickens in the slightest, as he accepts that he is not in complete control of his work.50 Theories of collaboration in the periodical press must accommodate such an approach to authorship, as ceding control and allowing others to make decisions are crucial elements of Dickens’s collaborative practices.
The success of the Rounds’ structure is evident in its lasting appeal both to competitors and to Dickens. As Household Words attracted a growing audience, the Christmas numbers also increased in popularity throughout the 1850s and 1860s and spawned imitators.
