Charles Dickens
(1812 - 1870)
Charles John Huffam1 Dickens
was born 7 February 1812, second child of John and Elizabeth Dickens. The
family would eventually number seven children, plus a son who died in infancy,
and since neither parent seemed able to economize, things were generally
very hard financially for the family. Charles attended school for a time
in Kent, where the happiest days of his childhood were spent, but when
the family moved to London in 1822, Charles was simply never re-enrolled
in school, and was left to wander London largely unattended2.
When the oldest child, Fanny, was sent to the Royal Academy of Music for
training as a pianist, Charles, then 12, was deemed old enough to work
to help pay the family expenses. So, for six months, he worked in a factory
pasting labels onto containers of shoe polish. While there, John Dickens
was thrown into debtor's prison, and released a few months later under
the Insolvency Act3.
It was a feud between John Dickens
and the factory owner that eventually got Charles out of the factory and
back in school, though Elizabeth tried her best to make him go back, which
Charles never quite forgave her for. The factory experience will show up
again and again in Charles' novels, and it also left him with something
of a phobia about being dirty. In 1827, Charles left school again, more
voluntarily this time, and took work as a law clerk, and then a parliamentary
reporter. Though he also toyed with the idea of taking the stage (he loved
amateur theatricals all his life), he eventually starts writing sketches
for two of the London newspapers4,
publishing them under the name 'Boz'.
In 1835, now quite well-established
in his sketch-writing, Charles proposed to Catherine Hogarth, daughter
of George Hogarth, who had been advisor to Sir Walter Scott. They married
in April of 18365, and the
sweet-tempered Catherine generally allowed Charles to take charge of everything,
including even the eventual naming of their children. That same year, Charles's
began writing The Pickwick Papers, and suddenly he was famous. Imitations
of Pickwick appeared everywhere.
The now firmly upper-middle-class Charles
still has many family problems, however. His father is still in debt more
often than not, even going so far as to try to borrow money using his son's
name, and Charles ends up paying most of John's debts. Charles himself
would have four children after four years of marriage6,
and continually disciplines himself to work like a madman to avoid debt
of his own. With A Christmas Carol in 1843, Charles created his own literary
sub-genre, the Christmas story. He would write one for almost every Christmas
for the rest of his life.
In 1851, his next to last child, Dora7,
died, not yet a year old. It was about this time that his dissatisfaction
with his marriage became clear. By 1856, when Charles was working on a
play he had written that was about to hit the public stage, he hired professional
actresses to play the parts that his daughters and sister-in-law, Georgina,
had been playing. He hired Frances Ternan and two of her daughters, Maria
and Ellen. This was when the trouble really started. It was not long before
Charles was completely in love with Ellen Ternan8,
though Charles worked exceptionally hard to keep their relationship quiet.
By 1858, he and Catherine were officially separated.
Rumor had it that Charles was having
an affair with Catherine's sister Georgina, which would have been considered
incestuous9. But she had been
helping care for the family for the last sixteen years, and brooked the
rumors and her family's displeasure to remain there. Charles gave 'incompatibility'
and Catherine's 'incompetence in managing a household' as the official
reasons for the separation, and would deal quite harshly with any friends
who he felt were taking Catherine's side10.
Charles was generally rather worried
about his children and their prospects. His younger daughter, Katie, married
Charles Collins, brother of novelist Wilkie Collins, though Charles suspected
that was more because she wanted to leave the house than because she loved
him. His second son, Walter, died while in the Army in India, leaving fairly
large debts behind for his father to pay. Charles Jr., after once filing
for bankruptcy, began working with his father on a journal that the elder
Charles had started called All the Year Round, and did fairly well; while
second youngest son Henry excelled as a scholar, but the other five children
seemed more inclined to debt than prosperity.
Though Charles' health was poor11,
he continued, almost until his death, to do series after series of readings
from his work, which earned him a great deal of money while at the same
time satisfying his longtime urge to perform onstage. His last reading
was on 15 March 1870, and Charles died, probably from a severe stroke,
on 9 June 1870. According the the wishes laid out in his will, made just
the month before, Charles was buried in an extremely private ceremony in
Westminster Abbey. Aside from his doctor and his lawyer, the only attendees
were eight members of his family (Catherine was noticeably absent) Wilkie
Collins; and John Forster, Charles' oldest friend and fellow literary man.
Ellen Ternan, as usual, was nowhere to be seen at this family gathering.
By the terms of his will, Ellen Ternan
received £100012 outright,
while the bulk of his estate was divided evenly among all his surviving
children, probably amounting to £6000 to £8000 each13.
Left unfinished (in fact, exactly half done) at the time of his death,
was the infamous Mystery of Edwin Drood, leaving Dickensian scholars with
a nice, though difficult puzzle to wrestle with. Still, Charles was one
of only a relatively few authors who received the praise and adulation
of their contemporaries14.
Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography. New York: William
Morrow & Company, 1988.
1. The first of many reasons Charles never liked
his parents.
2. Another reason or two there. Charles actually
wandered alone in an area of London known as Seven Dials. If you're not
familiar with that, imagine the Whitechapel slums that you may have seen
in movies on Jack the Ripper. Now imagine something ten times worse, and
you have Seven Dials. It was the most dangerous London slum.
3. A form of bankruptcy that was actually rather
harsh. All of the family's possessions, including the childrens' clothing
and other personal items, were officially valued and were not allowed to
exceed £20.
4. Newspapers in those days were just as full
of things like gossip and sketches (what we would call short stories today)
as they were of news.
5. As was fairly common in those days, one of
Charles' younger brothers and one of Catherine's younger sisters came to
live with them. This custom becomes important later on.
6. He would eventually have nine children who
survived past infancy. For some reason that I have not been able to fathom,
he blamed Catherine for this proliferation of children.
7. He had named her after the Dora in David Copperfield15,
a character whom he had always intended should die. But then, Charles had
strange ideas about suitable names for his children, such as: Walter Savage
Landor Dickens, Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Dickens.
8. She was 27 years his junior, and apparently
just as fond of him as he was of her. They stayed together, though extremely
secretly, until his death.
9. When William Thackeray heard this rumor, he
wrote in a letter, thinking to be helpful, "No says I no such thing--its
with an actress." Charles was not amused.
10. Charles' publisher, Frederick Evans, lost
Charles as a client for the crime of finding Catherine a house near his
own.
11. He probably had a several minor strokes during
the last year of his life, though he was too stubborn to admit to anything
of the kind.
12. Which she likely didn't even need. Charles
had already purchased a large house for her as a rental property, so she
probably had a good income from that already.
13. Roughly speaking, the equivalent of between
$500,000 and $700,000 in modern U.S. currency. So you see, Charles' hard
work paid off, at least for his children.
14. This was carried to an odd extreme in the
form of a farewell dinner for Charles on the eve of his departure for a
reading tour in the U.S. Originally suggested as a vague idea by Charles
Kent, a young man full of hero-worship, Charles pounced on the idea ("Yes!
A dinner for me would be a great idea! You do that!"), and was really the
one responsible for the rather opulent dinner that resulted.
15. This whole work was extremely autobiographical,
on purpose. I think it was Charles' way of working out his frustrations
about his marriage, since the aforementioned Dora, David's first and extraordinarily
unhelpful
wife, was basically an unflattering portrait of his own wife.
You can find the complete text in
Curso Académico 1999/2000
Narrativa en lengua inglesa I
© Ioana Basterra López
© a.r.e.a/ Dr. Vicente Forés López
Universitat de València Press
jobaslo@alumni.uv.es