Barnaby Rudge's raven was based on a bird owned by Dickens himself – also called Grip.
In 1841, Dickens wrote to his friend George Cattermole: "my notion is to have [Barnaby] always in company with a pet raven, who is immeasurably more knowing than himself. To this end I have been studying my bird, and think I could make a very queer character of him."
Unfortunately, just a few weeks after Dickens wrote that letter, Grip died – probably as a result of having stolen and eaten some paint, some months earlier. The bird had developed the strange habit of tearing sections off painted surfaces (including the family's carriage) and even drinking a quantity of white paint out of a tin. Dickens mourned his loss, and wrote a wryly humorous letter to his friend, the illustrator Daniel Maclise, about the raven's death: "On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but soon recovered, walking twice or thrice along the coach–house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed 'Halloa old girl' (his favourite expression) and died. He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity, and self–possession, which cannot be too much admired ... The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles. But that was play."
Dickens replaced Grip with two new birds: a second raven, also called Grip, and an eagle. Dickens's eldest daughter Mamie described the second Grip, in her memoirs, as "mischievous and impudent"; he was succeeded by a third Grip, which the novelist's son, Henry Dickens, recorded as being able to "dominate" the family's large mastiff, Turk, to the extent that the dog would stand back from his bowl and allow the raven to steal all the tastiest morsels of meat from his dinner.
The following year, the third Grip accompanied Dickens and his wife Catherine on a six–month trip to America. There they met Edgar Allan Poe, who had published several favourable reviews of Dickens's work; when Poe requested a meeting in Philadelphia, Dickens was happy to agree. Poe had enjoyed Dickens's descriptions of the raven in Barnaby Rudge, and was enchanted to discover that he was based on Dickens's own bird. Poe had described Grip in his review of the novel as "intensely amusing."
Although there is no concrete proof, most Poe scholars agree that the poet's fascination with Grip was the inspiration for his 1845 poem The Raven. Poe's lines are suggestive of the description of Barnaby's raven in Chapter 6 of Barnaby Rudge.
Poe's The Raven was published just four years before the poet's mysterious death at the age of 40. It was an instant success, and has become one of his best–known works. Even though his brief friendship with Dickens had soured, the two men were to remain forever connected through their ravens. Dickens honoured the memory of his troubled and unhappy friend in 1868, when he visited America for a second time. He paid a call on Poe's poverty–stricken mother–in–law, and gave her what has been described as "a substantial amount of money".
Poe's poem and Dickens's pet raven would go on to inspire one of the most famous paintings of the late 19th Century. In 1891, the disillusioned Paul Gauguin was preparing to leave France – and his wife and children – for the island of Tahiti. On the eve of his departure, his friends gave him a farewell dinner at the Café Voltaire, at which Poe's The Raven was read aloud. Although Gauguin denied he had been inspired by the poem, he gave the title Nevermore to one of his paintings of 1897 – the word repeated by the bird throughout the poem. The picture features a perched bird that watches over the figures below, and in the top left–hand corner of the canvas Gaugin painted the word 'NEVERMORE'. In a letter to his friend Daniel de Monfreid, written in 1897, Gauguin commented, "The title is Nevermore; it is not Edgar Poe's raven keeping watch, but the Devil's bird."
Gauguin's comment on the raven had a significance that he, as a non–English speaker, would not have known. The word 'dickens' has been used as a synonym for 'devil' since at least the 16th Century; Shakespeare used it in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Gauguin's Nevermore can be seen at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, but sadly the original manuscript of The Raven has been lost. As for Grip himself: following the raven's demise, Dickens had him stuffed and mounted in an impressive case of wood and glass. This he hung above his desk, so that Grip could look down on him as he worked. After Dickens's death in 1870, Grip was bought by an American Poe collector. The original Grip, who has inspired a novelist, a poet, a painter and generations of Yeoman Warders, can still be seen today at the Free Library in Philadelphia.
This is an edited version of an article that appears on the BBC website, which was inspired by one of the Tower of London's famous ravens becoming the third to bear the name Grip. Hence the reference to Yeoman Warders in the last paragraph.
© Haydn Thompson 2017