In 1837 Dickens sat for his portrait to his friend Samuel Laurence, an artist distinguished for remarkable skill in the art of portrait-sketching. Shortly after the death of Mr. Laurence in 1884, his drawings were disposed of by auction at the sale of his effects on June 12th, and the “Boz” portrait which is here reproduced then became the property of Mr. Horace N. Pym, the editor of “Caroline Fox’s Journal.” Of this portrait Mr. F. G, Kitton writes in “Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil”: “The artist has admirably succeeded in rendering with marvellous skill the fire and beauty of the eyes—the sensitiveness and mobility of the mouth.”

This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Thackeray referred to it in terms of the highest praise. “Look at the portrait of Mr. Dickens,” he wrote, “well arranged as a picture, good in colour and light and shadow, and as a likeness perfectly amazing; a looking-glass could not render a better fac-simile. Here we have the real identical man Dickens; the artist must have understood the inward ‘Boz’ as well as the outward before he made this admirable representation of him. What cheerful intellectuality is about the man’s eyes, and a large forehead! The mouth is too large and full, too eager and active, perhaps; the smile is very sweet and generous.”

A portrait, reproduced from an engraving by C. H. Jeens after the original sketch by Daniel Maclise, R. A., which is now in the South Kensington Museum. Forster called it “An occasion rather memorable in which was the germ of those readings to larger audiences, by which, as much as by his books, the world knew him in his later life.” With reference to Maclise’s pencil-drawing he continued, “It will tell the reader all he can wish to know. He will see of whom the party consisted; and may be assured (with allowance for a touch of caricature to which I may claim to be considered myself as the chief and very marked victim) that in the grave attention of Carlyle, the eager interest of Stanfield and Maclise, the keen look of poor Laman Blanchard, Fox’s rapt solemnity, Jerrold’s skyward gaze, and the tears of Harness and Dyce, the characteristic points of the scene are sufficiently rendered.”

The original of this pencil drawing by Daniel Maclise, R.A., which was executed in 1843, a few years after the marriage of Dickens, is now in the South Kensington Museum. It was engraved by C. H. Jeens and dated by error 1842. “Never did a touch so light carry with it more truth of observation,” wrote Forster. “The likenesses of all are excellent.... Nothing ever done of Dickens himself has conveyed more vividly his look and hearing at this yet youthful time. He is in his most pleasing aspect; flattered if you will; but nothing that is known to me gives a general impression so lifelike and true of the then frank, eager, handsome face.”

Dickens had the title to be called a born comedian, declared Forster, but his strength was rather in the vividness and variety of his assumptions, than in the completeness, finish, or ideality he could give to any part of them. The rendering of the novelist as Bobadil by C. R. Leslie, R.A., was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1846. The artist has represented Dickens seated upon a sofa, dressed as a bearded swashbuckler and braggadocio, just at the moment when Tib enters to announce the arrival of a visitor and Captain Bobadil declares: “A gentleman! Odds so, I am not within.”

Of this drawing, which is reproduced from a lithograph after a sketch by Alfred Count D’Orsay, Mr. F. G. Kitton writes in “Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil”: “As compared with other portraits belonging to this period, the features look pinched and small, although due justice has been done to the luxuriant hair and the fashionable style of coat and stock peculiar to that day.”

The first practitioner of daguerreotype portraiture in England was Mr. John Mayall, sen., who left America in 1845 and established himself in Regent Street, London. He soon numbered among his clientÈle many celebrities of the day, including Charles Dickens, who paid his first visit shortly after returning from the Continent. During a period of several years Dickens sat to Mr. Mayall, the first of these portraits being taken while he was writing “David Copperfield.”

This famous portrait was exhibited in 1856 in the Royal Academy, and in July 1870 was purchased by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, where it now hangs. Dickens himself considered it “a fine spirited head, painted at his [Scheffer’s] very best, and with a very easy and natural appearance in it. But it does not look to me at all like, nor does it strike me that if I saw it in a gallery, I should suppose myself to be the original.... As a work of art, I see in it spirit combined with perfect ease, and yet I don’t see myself. So I come to the conclusion that I never do see myself.”

The interesting miniature by Miss Margaret Gillies has mysteriously disappeared, and is not improbably buried in some private collection. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1844.

Charles Dickens in 1859. After the painting by W. P. Frith, A.R.A.

see page 23