CHAPTER II

CHARLES DICKENS--BOY AND MAN

The best way to understand Charles Dickens is to learn to know him first when he was a boy. Odd though it may sound, we can actually become acquainted with the boy Charles Dickens. David Copperfield, at least in the beginning of his story, is a close delineation of the writer's own boyhood. David's feelings, and many of the happenings of his youth, are the feelings and the happenings which made Charles Dickens the boy and the man that he was.

While this is true, it is true at the same time that we should use caution lest we read into a story more than the author intends us to find either about himself or of other people. Human beings are so wonderfully and strangely made that no mortal, no matter how hard he tries, can ever draw a perfectly true or a perfectly just picture of anyone. Some quality always escapes analysis, and each person living now, or who ever has lived, remains himself only. Dickens drew a wonderful picture of himself in David Copperfield. This is one reason why we love David and understand him so well. Yet David Copperfield is not exactly Charles Dickens. We can scarcely believe for one thing that David ever could have written as well about Charles as Charles has written about David.

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When Dickens was a boy of ten he was sent to work in a blacking warehouse by his father who was at that time in a debtors' prison. People, when Dickens was a boy, were sometimes left in prison for a long time if they could not pay their debts. Years afterwards, Dickens wrote of the secret agony of his soul while he worked at covering blacking bottles and of how he longed for companions, boys of his own age. Indeed, so unhappy were his recollections that when he was grown-up he mentioned these years to one person only, John Forster, the friend who wrote his biography; to remember this part of his life always gave him great pain.

Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, February 7th, 1812. Life in the Dickens family was not settled or stable. They moved frequently, and were always more or less uncertain as to the future. The father, as has been said, at one time was in a debtors' prison, and the family, including Charles, became familiar with the strange life of The Marshalsea which is described with exactitude in more than one of Dickens' novels, but especially in _Little Dorrit_. At other times, and even in the Marshalsea, life for the Dickens family was interesting, even exciting. Charles was unhappy because of the work to which he was put, and because he saw clearly, although he was only a little fellow, that he was losing the chance of obtaining an education. He was, however, an extraordinarily observant lad and read with passionate absorption all the books that he could find. Pictures of the strange people he met and of the queer things they {11} did remained with him throughout his life, and from this material gathered in his youth he fashioned his great novels.

He had dreams of what he would be and of what he would do. The family lived for a number of years in Chatham, his father being a clerk in the navy pay-office at the dockyard, and he used to see, when he was walking with his father in the neighbouring country, a house called Gadshill Place. He planned then that some day he would own that house. It was in 1856 that he became the owner of Gadshill when he was forty-four years old, a considerable achievement for the boy of ten who had washed and re-covered blacking bottles. But many greater achievements than this were brought about by the genius of Charles Dickens.

All his life these youthful days were lived over again in his stories and in his own memory. To a not inconsiderable extent they influence us, too, because of the novels which Dickens wrote. The roads of Kent, where he went walking when they lived in Chatham, are the great roads of his novels. The characters he wrote about were created from traits and habits which he had observed in people known by the boy Charles Dickens. The unjust laws and cruel customs against which he fought so powerful a battle were those whose victims had excited his pity long before he had grown up.

When the family fortunes were brighter, Charles Dickens went to school again for a couple of years. But from the time he was fifteen, he earned his own living. He began as a clerk or {12} office boy. Later, he studied shorthand, and entered the reporters' gallery of the House of Commons when he was nineteen. He began to write articles and sketches soon afterwards. His first book, _Sketches by Boz_, was published when he was twenty-four. In the same year, he married Catherine Hogarth, the eldest daughter of George Hogarth, a fellow writer on _The Morning Chronicle_, who had been kind to him.

From this year, 1836, until his death in 1870, he wrote a series of novels and stories with extraordinary speed and diligence. He travelled much, but never ceased writing. He gave many public readings from his own works. He visited the United States and Canada in 1842, and in 1867-68 gave readings in the eastern cities of the United States. Wherever he went he was received with acclaim, and he was at all times an object of public attention. His gifts were great, but no one who follows the story of his life can help being struck by his extraordinary capacity for hard work. All his life he laboured more assiduously than any ordinary person can work; and when he stopped writing, with one of his novels unfinished, he was, as far as we can tell, still in the enjoyment of almost undiminished powers as a writer.

Dickens had been a sickly boy, often ill and suffering. As soon as he could be put to stand on a chair, so young was he, he had given childish recitations and sung childish songs for the entertainment of his father's and mother's friends. He was, in effect, as a child somewhat spoiled by too much attention. Throughout his mature life he {13} lived at white heat; ordinary quiet days had no attraction for him. He was inclined to think that people treated him unjustly. In truth, one is reluctantly compelled to admit that Dickens was over-sensitive and somewhat quarrelsome. These are, perhaps, the only faults, certainly the main faults, in his character. It can be said with justice, however, that he was continually under strain and pressure from overwork; he was, as well, excitable by temperament.

One of the best brief descriptions of Dickens' appearance is by Leigh Hunt. "What a face is his to meet in a drawing room! It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings." He lived with an intensity which it is scarcely possible for less intense people to understand. He gave his wonderful vitality without stint to the writing of his books. When he finished _David Copperfield_ his life had been so absorbed in its characters that he wrote "I seem to be sending some part of myself into the Shadowy World." Thackeray said of _A Christmas Carol_, "It seems to me a national benefit..." Dickens was generous in his praise of the work of other writers, and deeply grateful for any kindness shown himself, no matter how slight the benefit was. He quarrelled, one may say, with America as well as with some of his friends and contemporaries, but years afterwards he wrote in a postscript to a later edition of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ a warm tribute to the magnanimity of the country. His married life was not altogether happy. But in Forster's _Life_, there is a story that his daughters Mary and Kate having taken pains to teach him the steps of the polka so {14} that he might dance it at their brother's birthday party, Dickens, waking in the middle of the night before the party, was afraid that he had forgotten the proper steps, and immediately got up out of bed to practise them.

Two of his characters, Wilkins Micawber and Mr. Dorritt, are drawn, to some extent at least, from the character of his father; Mrs. Nickleby is said to be a portrait of his mother. It can at least be conceded that Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby are among the greatest characters ever created by Dickens. Apparently he had no unkind intention; still, one would rather that he had denied himself the use of this material. He was attached to his father and mother and took pleasure in providing for their older years. He bought them a house a mile from the town of Exeter and looked after the furnishing of the house himself.

His feeling for his children was deeply rooted in his heart. It expressed itself in numberless ways, never more plainly than in a letter to his youngest son written on the eve of the boy's leaving to join his brother in Australia. (Forster's _Life of Charles Dickens_, Book xi, Part iii).

Dickens' popularity can hardly be over-estimated. There is a story that while _Dombey and Son_ was being published in monthly parts, a man who kept a snuff shop in London and had as well a number of lodgers, read aloud the month's instalment on the first Monday of every month at a tea. Only those who paid for the tea shared in it, but all the lodgers could listen to the story. The incident affords a striking picture of the power Dickens had over all kinds of people. Recent reminiscences {15} by one of Dickens' sons tell of how when he was walking once with his father along the broad walk at the Zoo in London, they met a little girl running ahead of her father and mother; when she saw who it was she ran back crying, "Oh, mummy! mummy! it is Charles Dickens." Dickens was greatly pleased.

He made for everyone who lived with him a life of constant gaiety and variety. Well-known and celebrated people shared this entertainment. His heart was passionately attached to the cause of the poor and oppressed. He had unfailing belief in human nature, and was hopeful of everyone and everything. A well-known statesman who lived in Queen Victoria's youth once said at a private dinner at which Dickens was present, "Nothing is ever so good as it is thought." Dickens at once answered him, "And nothing so bad." We remember that few opportunities came to him. His great career was the result of his own exertions. There was no one at all to help him when he was young. We think with pride and admiration of his great achievements, and we love him for his affectionate nature and goodness of heart. No one can read Dickens' novels without learning what his character was, ardent, generous and loving. He was a great novelist and a great benefactor.

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