G. K. Chesterton

THE asseveration that “Dickens” is “a name to conjure with” seems almost a truism. The innumerable editions of his works so constantly pouring from the press abundantly testify to the continued and unabated popularity of the most famous writer of fiction of the Victorian epoch. As regards the circumstances appertaining to his career the start in life under harassing conditions, the brilliant success attending his initial efforts in authorship, the manner in which he took the world by storm and retained his grip of the public by the sheer force of genius—there is, I venture to believe, no parallel in the history of literature. Born in a humble station of life, his early years spent in the midst of an uncongenial (not to say demoralising) environment, his natural gifts, combined with almost superhuman powers of perseverance, enabled him to overcome obstacles which would have deterred ordinary men, with the result that he rapidly attained the topmost rung of the ladder of fame, and remained there.

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CHARLES DICKENS IN 1844

From a Miniature by Miss Margaret Gillies exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1844. Engraved on wood by R. Taylor for “The Magazine of Art”

(Reproduced from The Magazine of Art, by kind permission of Messrs. Cassell & Co., Ltd.)

Although the leading incidents in the life of Charles Dickens are generally familiar, thanks to the various biographies of him published from time to time, a few facts, briefly stated, will not, I hope, be devoid of interest. The novelist first saw the light at No. 387, Commercial Road, Mile End, Landport, in the Island of Portsea. Like David Copperfield, he was born on a Friday, the natal day being February 7th, 1812. The baptismal register of Portsea Parish Church (St. Mary’s, Kingston), where he was christened, records that three names were bestowed upon him, Charles John Huffam, the second being that of his father, and the third the cognomen of his godfather, Christopher Huffam, a “Rigger to his Majesty’s Navy,” who lived at Limehouse Hole, on the north bank of the Thames. The birthplace in Landport—still existing is an unpretentious tenement of two storeys, surmounted by a dormer window, and fronted by a small railed-in garden. John Dickens, the father of Charles, had filled a clerical

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From a photo by Fradelle & Young

CHARLES DICKENS AT WORK

position in the Navy Pay Office, Somerset House, whence he was transferred to a similar post at Portsea. About four years after the birth of Charles (the second child), the Dickens family removed to Chatham, residing there until the boy was eleven years old. It was at Chatham where he first went to school, and where he, being endowed with exceptional powers of observation, imbibed his earliest impressions of humanity, to be subsequently made available as material for his inimitable sketches.

London, however, was again to be the home of John Dickens—the mighty metropolis which, with its phantasmagoria of life in its every aspect, its human comedies and tragedies, ever attracted the great writer, whose magic pen revelled in the delineation of them. It was in 1823 that the Dickens family took up their residence in Bayham Street, Camden Town—then the poorest part of the London suburbs. There had come a crisis in the affairs of the elder Dickens which necessitated the strictest economy, and the house in Bayham Street (which may still be seen at No. 141) was nothing but “a mean tenement, with a wretched little back garden abutting on a squalid court.” This was the beginning of a sad and bitter experience in the life of Charles Dickens. Here he seemed to fall into a solitary condition, apart from all other boys of his own age, and, recalling the circumstances in after years, he observed to Forster: “As I thought, in the little back-garret in Bayham Street, of all I had lost in losing Chatham, what would I have given, if I had had anything to give, to have been sent back to any other school, to have been taught something anywhere?” Not only did the exceptionally intelligent lad miss the pleasures of association with his schoolfellows and playmates at Chatham, but he no longer had recourse to the famous books whose acquaintance he had made there.—“Don Quixote,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Arabian Nights,” et hoc genus omne—which, as admirers of his works will remember, he was so fond of quoting. The account given by Forster of the Bayham Street days is painful reading, and we are told that, thus living under circumstances of a hopeless and struggling poverty, the extreme sensitiveness of the boy caused him to experience acute mental suffering.

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From a photo by Ellis & Wallery

No. 1. DEVONSHIRE TERRACE

Dickens’s residence from 1839 to 1850, where much of his best work was done

(Reproduced from The Windsor Magazine by kind permission of the Editor)

After a short residence in Bayham Street, the family removed their belongings to Gower Street North (the identical house was demolished a few years ago), and an effort was made to bring grist to the mill by an attempt on the part of Mrs. Dickens to start a school for young ladies; but the venture proved abortive, notwithstanding the fact that Charles did his utmost to aid the project by leaving “at a great many doors, a great many circulars,” calling attention to the advantages of the establishment. John Dickens’s financial difficulties increased, tradesmen became pertinacious in their claims for a settlement of long-standing debts, which could not be met, until at last the father was arrested, and lodged in a debtors prison—events

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After the painting by W. P. Frith, A.R.A., in the Forster Collection at the South Kensington Museum

CHARLES DICKENS IN 1859

Rischgitz Collection

which the novelist afterwards vividly recalled, and which will be found duly set forth in “David Copperfield.”

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CHARLES DICKENS GIVING A READING, 1861

From a photo by Fradelle & Young

It was at this awkward juncture that some relatives of the family, named Lamert, realising that an opportunity should be given to the poor neglected lad of earning a livelihood, found him an occupation in their blacking-manufactory (started in opposition to the famous Warren), and here he earned a few shillings a week by covering and labelling pots of paste blacking! While infinitely preferable to a state of enforced idleness under demoralising conditions, the boy’s experience during what is usually referred to as “the blacking-bottle period” for ever remained a terrible nightmare, and the novelist pointedly referred to that unhappy time when in “David Copperfield” he observed that no one could express “the secret agony” of his soul as he sank into the companionship of those by whom he was then surrounded, and felt his “early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man” crushed in his breast. In respect of a miserable and neglected boyhood, Alphonse Daudet suffered as did Charles Dickens, and, phoenix-like, both emerged triumphantly from the ashes of what to them appeared to be a cruel conflagration of their desires and aspirations.

CHARLES DICKENS DRIVING WITH MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY

Reproduced from The Favourite Magazine, by kind permission of Messrs. Paul Naumann, Ltd.

There is no doubt that the ordeal of poverty, with its unhappy accompaniments, had counteracting advantages in the case of Charles Dickens: his natural abilities were sharpened, as well as his powers of observation, his excellent memory enabling him in after years to record those actualities of life which render his books a perpetual joy and delight. Fortunately, brighter days were in store. The elder Dickens (in whom it is easy to detect glimpses of Mr. Micawber) was in a position to send Charles to a reputable school in the Hampstead Road, known as Wellington House Academy (still standing), where he remained two years, and on leaving it he entered another scholastic establishment near Brunswick Square, there completing his studies, rudimentary at the best.

The year 1827 proved a memorable one for the subject of this sketch, for then it was that he, in his fifteenth year, “began life,” first as a clerk in a lawyer’s office in Lincoln’s Inn, and then acting in a similar capacity for a firm of attorneys in Gray’s Inn, where his weekly salary amounted to something under a sovereign. As was his wont, he made mental memoranda of his environment, noting the manners, customs, and peculiarities of lawyers, their clerks and clients, for the result of which one needs only to turn to the pages of the immortal “Pickwick.” His father, who had left the Navy Pay Office, turned his attention to journalism, and at this time had become a newspaper parliamentary reporter. Charles, craving for a similar occupation, in which he believed there might be an opening for greater things, resolutely determined to study shorthand, and became an assiduous attendant at the British Museum. His persevering struggle with the mysteries of stenography was recalled when recording David Copperfield’s experience—a struggle resulting in ultimate victory. Following in his father’s footsteps, he, at the age of nineteen, succeeded in obtaining an appointment as a reporter in the Press Gallery at the House of Commons, where he was presently acknowledged to be the most skilful shorthand writer among the many so engaged there.

Dickens had just attained his majority when, in 1833, he essayed to venture into the realm of fiction. He has himself related how, one evening at twilight, he stealthily entered “a dark court” in Fleet Street (it was Johnson’s Court), and with fear and trembling dropped into “a dark letter-box” the manuscript of his first paper—a humorous sketch entitled “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” (afterwards called “Mr. Minns and his Cousin”); and how, when it “appeared in all the glory of print,” he walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because (he explains) his eyes “were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there.” To this initial effort (which was published in the old Monthly Magazine, December, 1833) there is a slight reference in the forty-second chapter of “David Copperfield,” where the youthful hero intimates that he “wrote a little something, in secret, and sent it to a magazine, and it was published in the magazine.” His journeys across country by coach or postchaise, when reporting for his newspaper (the Morning Chronicle), proved invaluable from a literary standpoint, inasmuch as those expeditions by day and night and in all seasons afforded him special opportunities of studying human idiosyncrasies, as he necessarily came into contact with “all sorts and conditions of men.”

The success of his little paper in the Monthly Magazine induced him to try his hand at others, for gratuitous publication in the same journal. They bore no signature until the sixth sketch appeared, when he adopted the curious pseudonym of “Boz”: this had for some time previously been to him

a familiar household word, as it was the nickname of his youngest brother, Augustus, whom (in honour of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” one of his favourite books) he had dubbed Moses, which, being facetiously pronounced through the nose, became Boses, and being shortened became Boz.

The time had now arrived when he considered himself justified in endeavouring to increase his stipend as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle by offering to contribute to its pages a similar series of sketches, for which he should be remunerated, and the proposal was acceded to. Accordingly we find several papers signed “Boz” in the Evening Chronicle, an offshoot of the Morning Chronicle. Some of his sketches of “Scenes and Characters” (signed “Tibbs”) appeared simultaneously in Bell’s Life in London, and a couple also in “The Library of Fiction,” edited by Charles Whitehead. Early in 1836 Dickens collected together a number of these bright little articles and stories, and sold the copyright for £100 to Macrone, who published them in two volumes under the title of “Sketches by Boz.”

Although remarkable for their humour and originality, the “Boz” sketches were presently to be eclipsed by a work which immediately took the world by storm, and upon which the reputation of Dickens securely rests. I allude to the ever fascinating “Pickwick Papers,” and perhaps the most extraordinary circumstance in connection therewith is the fact that the author was then only three-and-twenty.

his book rapidly achieving a degree of popularity which we cannot but regard as astounding even in these days of large editions. The “Pickwick Papers” originated in this way. The junior partner of what was then a young publishing house, Messrs. Chapman & Hall (now a leading London firm), called upon the rising author at his rooms in Furnival’s Inn with a proposition that he should furnish the letterpress for a “monthly something” that should be a vehicle for certain sporting-plates by a humorous draughtsman named Seymour. The first idea of a sort of Nimrod Club did not appeal to Dickens, for the excellent reason that he was no sportsman, and it was therefore eventually decided that, having agreed to supply the text, he should exercise a free hand, allowing the illustrations to arise naturally from the text. To give a complete history of the “Pickwick Papers” would occupy considerable space. Suffice it to say that the book was issued in shilling monthly parts (1836-37), then a favourite method of publishing novels, and consistently adopted by Dickens; that it was illustrated by means of etchings; that the sale of the first few numbers was so small that both publishers and author were in despair; and that the success of the work was assured as soon as Sam Weller made his first bow to the public—a character which, by reason of its freshness and originality, called forth such admiration that the sale of ensuing numbers increased until a circulation of forty thousand copies was attained! The creation of Sam Weller, therefore, was the turning-point in Dickens’s fortune, and so great became the popularity of the book that the name of “Pickwick” was bestowed by enterprising tradesmen upon their newest goods, while portraits of Dickens himself were in the ascendant. People of every degree, young and old, revelled in the pages of the “Pickwick Papers”—judges on the bench as well as boys in the street; and we are reminded of Carlyle’s anecdote of a solemn clergyman who, as he left the room of a sick person to whom he had been administering ghostly consolation, heard the invalid ejaculate, “Well, thank God, ‘Pickwick’ [the monthly number] will be out in ten days, anyway!”

The identity of the author of “Pickwick,” by-the-bye, was not disclosed until that work was nearly completed. It had given rise to much conjecture until the name of the young writer was at length revealed, when the following “Impromptu” appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany:

As soon as the first number of the “Pickwick Papers” was launched (that is, in April, 1836), its author took unto himself a wife, the bride being Miss Catherine Thomson Hogarth, eldest daughter of Mr. George Hogarth, his fellow-worker on the Morning Chronicle. By her he had several children, and among those surviving are Mrs. Kate Perugini, a clever painter, and Mr. Henry Fielding Dickens, the eminent K.C. Mrs. Dickens survived her husband nine years and five months.

Before the last of the twenty numbers of “Pickwick “ was launched, the author became a public favourite. Certain sage prophets foretold that as “Boz” had risen like a rocket, he would of a surety fall like the stick. But, as events proved, they were wrong, for Dickens not only became the most popular novelist of the ’thirties and ’forties, but, by the sheer strength of his genius, maintained that supremacy. Story after story flowed from his pen, each characterised by originality of conception, each instinct with a love of humanity in its humblest form, each noteworthy for its humour and its pathos, and nearly every one “a novel with a purpose,” having in view the exposure of some great social evil and its ultimate suppression.

Following “Pickwick” came “Oliver Twist,” attacking the Poor Laws and “Bumbledom”; “Nicholas Nickleby,” marking down the cheap boarding-schools of Yorkshire; “The Old Curiosity Shop” and “Barnaby Rudge”; “Martin Chuzzlewit”; “Dombey & Son”; “David Copperfield”; “Bleak House,” holding up to ridicule and contempt the abuse of Chancery practice; “Little Dorrit”; “A Tale of Two Cities”; “Great Expectations”; “Our Mutual Friend”; and, finally, the unfinished fragment of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” to which Longfellow referred as “certainly one of his most beautiful works, if not the most beautiful of all.”

Of his many minor writings, special mention should be made of the attractive series of Christmas Books, the first of which, “A Christmas Carol,” has become almost a text-book; and we know that, by the reading aloud of this touching little allegory to enthusiastic audiences, Sir Squire Bancroft has afforded substantial aid to many deserving charities. Dickens is appropriately termed “the Apostle of Christmas,” and it is undoubtedly true that his Yuletide stories were the pioneers of Christmas literature.

Having thus briefly reviewed the literary career of Charles Dickens, it becomes almost essential to consider him from a personal and social point of view, in order to thoroughly realise what manner of man he was. Referring to his personal characteristics, Forster says that to his friends (and their name was legion) Dickens was “the pleasantest of companions, with whom they forgot that he had ever written anything, and felt only the charm which a nature of such capacity for supreme enjoyment causes every one around it to enjoy. His talk was unaffected and natural, never bookish in the smallest degree. He was quite up to the average of well-read men; but as there was no ostentation of it in his writing, so neither was there in his conversation. This was so attractive because so keenly observant, and lighted up with so many touches of humorous fancy; but with every possible thing to give relish to it, there were not many things to bring away.” He thoroughly endorsed the axiom that “what is worth doing at all is worth doing well.” He was most methodical in his habits, and energetic to a degree. “In quick and varied sympathy, in ready adaptation to every whim and humour, in help to any mirth or game, he stood for a dozen men.... His versatility made him unique.”

Concerning the novelist’s personality, the following testimony has recently been placed on record by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, a surviving member of the “Dickens Brigade” of young men who revered him as “the Master”: “I say advisedly, there was, and never could be, so genial, amiable, unaffected, and untiring a person in his treatment of friends and guests. He was always eager to listen rather than to speak—to take a second or third place; more anxious to hear, rather than to tell, an amusing story. His very presence was enough, with the bright, radiant face, the glowing, searching eyes, which had a language of their own, and the expressive mouth. You could see the gleam of a humorous thought, first twinkling there, and had a certain foretaste and even understanding of what was coming; then it spread downwards the mobile muscles of his cheek began to quiver; then it came lower, to the expressive mouth, working under shelter of the grizzled moustache; then, finally, thus prepared for, came the humorous utterance itself!”

Dickens was intensely fond of the Drama, as evidenced not only by the frequent reference in his writings to theatres and actors, but by the fact that he himself was an actor of an exceptionally

high order, and it is conceded that had he adopted the stage as a profession he would have attained first rank. Indeed, it was by the merest accident that he did not enter the profession, for when he was about twenty he applied for an engagement to the stage-manager at Covent Garden Theatre, and an appointment was made, which Dickens failed to keep on account of a terribly bad cold. After that he never resumed the idea. In later years he became the leading spirit of a wonderful company of amateur actors, who, on one occasion, performed before her late Majesty Queen Victoria, by special request. Sir John Tenniel is now the sole survivor of that merry confraternity.

As a reader, too, Dickens stood pre-eminent. It has lately transpired that his very first public reading took place, early in the fifties, at Chatham, in aid of the Rochester and Chatham Mechanics’ Institution, and the subject of the reading was the “Christmas Carol.” He gave public readings from his own works both in Great Britain and America, and an entertaining account of these tours may be found in Mr. George Dolby’s volume, “Charles Dickens as I Knew Him.” There can be no doubt that the mental tension caused by these readings (which covered a period of some fifteen years), supplemented by the strain of literary and editorial labours, curtailed the brilliant career of England’s greatest novelist. It was at his charming rural retreat, Gad’s Hill Place, near Rochester (his home from 1856), that Charles Dickens breathed his last, on June 9th, 1870, in his fifty-ninth year. “Before the news of his death even reached the remoter parts of England,” says Forster, “it had been flashed across Europe; was known in the distant continents of India, Australia, and America; and not in English-speaking communities only, but in every country of the civilised earth, had awakened grief and sympathy. In his own land it was as if a personal bereavement had befallen everyone.” Although he himself would have preferred to lie in the small graveyard under the ancient wall of Rochester Castle, or in the pretty Kentish churchyard of Cobham or Shorne, public sentiment favoured the suggestion that the mortal remains of Charles Dickens should be interred in Westminster Abbey; and there, in Poets’ Corner, they were laid to rest, quietly and unostentatiously. What Carlyle said of him, a few days later, will meet with universal acceptance:—

“The good, the gentle, high gifted, ever friendly, noble Dickens,—every inch of him an Honest Man.”

F. G. Kitton.