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Title: Charles Dickens
Author: Kitton, Frederic George, Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Language: English
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_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
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Literature and Art for Old Gentlemen.
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_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
The Defendant.
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_“THE BOOKMAN” DIRECTORY FOR 1903_.
“THE BOOKMAN” DIRECTORY.
_Edited by
=J. E. Hodder Williams.=_
_OF BOOKSELLERS, PUBLISHERS,
AND AUTHORS._
Revised to date. Small 4to, =3 6= net.
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THE BOOKMAN A Monthly Journal for Bookreaders,
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=_The Bookman_= is edited by Dr. Robertson Nicoll, and is published during
the first week of every month, price =6d.= net. It is the only monthly
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great and ever increasing public that delights in books.
LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
AND
F. G. KITTON
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
1903
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CHARLES DICKENS _Frontispiece_
THE CORN EXCHANGE, ROCHESTER HIGH STREET 1
“BOZ” (CHARLES DICKENS). From a Drawing by S. Laurence 2
THE BIRTHPLACE OF DICKENS: NO. 387, COMMERCIAL ROAD, LANDPORT,
PORTSEA 3
NO. 15, FURNIVAL’S INN, HOLBORN 4
THE “LEATHER BOTTLE,” COBHAM 5
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1839 (from the Picture by Daniel Maclise, R.A.) 7
THE GRAVE OF LITTLE NELL 8
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP 9
CHARLES DICKENS READING “THE CHIMES” TO HIS FRIENDS AT 58, LINCOLN’S
INN FIELDS, MONDAY, THE 2ND OF DECEMBER, 1844 10
CHARLES DICKENS, HIS WIFE, AND HER SISTER (from a Pencil Drawing by
Daniel Maclise, R.A., in 1843) 11
DOTHEBOYS HALL, 1841 12
CHARLES DICKENS AS CAPTAIN BOBADIL IN “EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR” 12
A PORTRAIT OF CHARLES DICKENS IN 1842. By Count D’Orsay 13
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1851 14
DICKENS’S FAVOURITE RAVEN 15
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1855 (from the Painting by Ary Scheffer) 16
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE 17
EASTGATE HOUSE, ROCHESTER (THE ORIGINAL OF THE NUNS’ HOUSE IN “THE
MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD”) 18
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1844 19
CHARLES DICKENS AT WORK 20
NO. 1, DEVONSHIRE TERRACE (Dickens’s Residence from 1839 to 1850) 22
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1859 (after the Painting by W. P. Frith, A.R.A.) 23
CHARLES DICKENS GIVING A READING, 1861 24
CHARLES DICKENS DRIVING WITH MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY 25
GAD’S HILL PLACE, NEAR ROCHESTER, KENT 26
MRS. CHARLES DICKENS 27
RESTORATION HOUSE (THE “SATIS HOUSE” OF “GREAT EXPECTATIONS”) 28
THE BULL HOTEL, ROCHESTER 28
A PORTRAIT OF CHARLES DICKENS ABOUT THE AGE OF 50 29
CHARLES DICKENS, _circa_ 1864 30
CHARLES DICKENS, _circa_ 1864 31
A PORTION OF DICKENS’S MS. TAKEN FROM “THE CHRISTMAS CAROL” 32
CHARLES DICKENS (from a Photograph) 33
THE GATEHOUSE, ROCHESTER 34
THE HOUSE OF THE SIX POOR TRAVELLERS AT ROCHESTER 35
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1861 37
THE GRAVE OF CHARLES DICKENS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY (from a Water-colour
Drawing by S. Luke Fildes, R.A.) 38
CHARLES DICKENS
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Walter Dexter_
THE CORN EXCHANGE, ROCHESTER HIGH STREET
Showing the “Moon-faced” Clock]
Considered merely as literary fashions, romanticism and realism are both
tricks, and tricks alone. The only advantage lies with romanticism,
which is a little less artificial and technical than realism. For the
great majority of people here and now do naturally write romanticism, as
we see it in a love-letter, or a diary, or a quarrel, and nobody on
earth naturally writes realism as we see it in a description by
Flaubert. But both are technical dodges and realism only the more
eccentric. It is a trick to make things happen harmoniously always, and
it is a trick to make them always happen discordantly. It is a trick to
make a heroine, in the act of accepting a lover, suddenly aureoled by a
chance burst of sunshine, and then to call it romance. But it is quite
as much of a trick to make her, in the act of accepting a lover, drop
her umbrella, or trip over a hassock, and then call it the bold plain
realism of life. If any one wishes to satisfy himself as to how
excessively little this technical realism has to do, I do not say with
profound reality, but even with casual truth to life, let him make a
simple experiment offered to him by the history of literature. Let him
ask what is of all English books the book most full of this masterly
technical realism, most full of all these arresting details, all these
convincing irrelevancies, all these impedimenta of prosaic life; and
then as far as truth to life is concerned he will find that it is a
story about men as big as houses and men as small as dandelions, about
horses with human souls and an island that flew like a balloon.
[Illustration:
“BOZ”
(CHARLES DICKENS)
_From a drawing
by S. Laurence, in the
possession of Horace N. Pym_
Rischgitz Collection]
[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF DICKENS: No. 387, COMMERCIAL ROAD,
LANDPORT, PORTSEA
(From “Rambles in Dickens-Land,” by R. Allbut. Reproduced by kind
permission of Messrs. S. T. Freemantle & Co.)]
We can never understand a writer of the old romantic school, even if he
is as great and splendid as Dickens is great and splendid, until we
realise this preliminary fact to which I have drawn attention. The fact
that these merely technical changes are merely technical, and have
nothing whatever to do with the force and truth behind. We are bound to
find a considerable amount of Dickens’s work, especially the pathetic
and heroic passages, artificial and pompous. But that is only because we
are far enough off his trick or device to see that it is such. Our own
trick and device we believe to be as natural as the eternal hills. It is
no more natural, even when compared with the Dickens devices, than a
rockery is natural, even when compared with a Dutch flower bed. The time
will come when the wildest upheaval of Zolaism, when the most abrupt and
colloquial dialogue of Norwegian drama, will appear a fine old piece of
[Illustration: No. 15, FURNIVAL’S INN, HOLBORN
Charles Dickens lived in 1836
(Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Methuen & Co.)]
charming affectation, a stilted minuet of literature, like little Nell
in the churchyard, or the repentance of the white-haired Dombey. All
their catchwords will have become catchwords; the professor’s
[Illustration: THE “LEATHER BOTTLE,” COBHAM
(Reproduced from the “Pickwick Papers,” by kind permission of Messrs.
Methuen & Co.)]
explanations of heredity will have the mellow, foolish sound of the
villain’s curses against destiny. And in that time men will for the
first time become aware of the real truth and magnificence of Zola and
Ibsen, just as we, if we are wise, are now becoming aware of the real
truth and magnificence of Dickens.
This is even more true if we look first at that fundamental optimistic
feeling about life, which as it has been often and truly said is the
main essence of Dickens. If Dickens’s optimism had merely been a matter
of happy endings, reconciliations, and orange flowers, it would be a
mere superficial art or craft. But it would not, as in the case
discussed above, be in any way more superficial than the pessimism of
the modern episode, or short story, which is an affair of bad endings,
disillusionments, and arsenic. The truth about life is that joy and
sorrow are mingled in an almost rhythmical alternation like day and
night. The whole of optimistic technique consists in the dodge of
breaking off the story at dawn, and the whole of pessimistic technique
in the art of breaking off the story at dusk. But wherever and whenever
mere artists choose to consider the matter ended, the matter is never
ended, and trouble and exultation go on in a design larger than any of
ours, neither vanishing at all. Beyond our greatest happiness there lie
dangers, and after our greatest dangers there remaineth a rest.
But the element in Dickens which we are forced to call by the foolish
and unmanageable word optimism is a very much deeper and more real
matter than any question of plot and conclusion. If Mr. Pickwick had
been drowned when he fell through the ice; if Mr. Dick Swiveller had
never recovered from the fever, these catastrophes might have been
artistically inappropriate, but they would not have sufficed to make the
stories sad. If Sam Weller had committed suicide from religious
difficulties, if Florence Dombey had been murdered (most justly
murdered) by Captain Cuttle, the stories would still be the happiest
stories in the world. For their happiness is a state of the soul; a
state in which our natures are full of the wine of an ancient youth, in
which banquets last for ever, and roads lead everywhere, where all
things are under the exuberant leadership of faith, hope, and charity,
the three gayest of the virtues.
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS IN 1839
From the picture by Daniel Maclise, R.A. Exhibited at the Royal Academy
in 1840, and now in the National Portrait Gallery
Rischgitz Collection]
[Illustration: _From a drawing by G. Cattermole in the South Kensington
Museum_
THE GRAVE OF LITTLE NELL
Rischgitz Collection]
There is, of course, an optimism which is evil and debasing, and to this
it must be confessed that Dickens sometimes descends. The worst optimism
is that which, in making things comfortable, prevents them from becoming
joyful; it bears the same relation to an essential and true optimism
that the pleasure of sitting in an arm-chair bears to the pleasure of
sitting on a galloping horse. It is the optimism which denies that
burning hurts a martyr. More profoundly considered, it may be called the
optimism which, in order to give a being more life, denies him his
individual life; in order to give him more pleasure, denies him his
especial pleasure. It offers the hunter repose, and the student
pleasure, and the poet an explanation. Dickens, as I have said,
sometimes fell into this. Nothing could be more atrocious, for instance,
than his course of action in concluding “David Copperfield” with an
account of the great Micawber at last finding wealth and success as a
mayor in Australia. Micawber would never succeed; never ought to
succeed; his kingdom was not of this world. His mind to him a kingdom
was; he was one of those splendid and triumphant poor, who have the
faculty of capturing, without a coin of money or a stroke of work, that
ultimate sense of possessing wealth and luxury, which is the only reward
of the toils and crimes of the rich. It is but a sentiment after all,
this idea of money, and a poor man who is also a poet, like Micawber,
may find a short end to it. To make such a man, after a million mental
triumphs over material circumstances, become the mere pauper and
dependent of material success, is something more than an artistic
blunder: it is a moral lapse; it is a wicked and blasphemous thing to
have done. The end of “David Copperfield” is not a happy ending; it is a
very miserable ending. To make Micawber a mayor is about as satisfying a
termination as it would be to make Sir Lancelot after Arthur’s death
become a pork butcher or a millionaire, or to make Enoch Arden grow fat
and marry an heiress. There is a satisfaction that is far more
depressing than any tragedy. And the essence of it, as I have said, lies
in the fact that it violates the real and profound philosophical
optimism of the universe, which has given to each thing its
incommunicable air and its strange reason for living. It offers instead,
another joy or peace which is alien and nauseous; it offers grass to the
dog and fire to the fishes. It is, indeed, in the same tradition as that
cruel and detestable kindness to animals, which has been one of the
disgraces of humanity: from the modern lady who pulls a fat dog on a
chain through a crowded highway, back to the Roman Cæsar who fed his
horse on wine, and made it a political magistrate.
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Walter Dexter_
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP]
The same error in an even more irreverent form occurs, of course, in the
same book. The essence of the Dickens genius was
[Illustration:
_From an engraving by C. H. Jeens, after the original sketch by
Daniel Maclise, R.A._
CHARLES DICKENS READING “THE CHIMES” TO HIS FRIENDS AT 58, LINCOLN’S INN
FIELDS, MONDAY, THE 2nd OF DECEMBER, 1844
Rischgitz Collection]
exaggeration, and in that general sense Dora, in “David Copperfield,”
may be called an exaggerated character; but she is an extremely real and
an extremely agreeable character for all that. She is supposed to be
very weak and ineffectual, but she has about a hundred times more
personal character than all Dickens’s waxwork heroines put together, the
unendurable Agnes by no means excluded. It almost passes comprehension
how a man who could conceive such a character should so insult it, as
Dickens does, in making Dora recommend her husband’s second marriage
with Agnes. Dora, who stands for the profound and exquisite
irrationality of simple affection, is made the author of a piece of
priggish and dehumanised rationalism which is worthy of Miss Agnes
herself. One could easily respect such a husband when he married again,
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS, HIS WIFE, AND HER SISTER
_From an engraving by C. H. Jeens after the original sketch by Daniel
Maclise, R.A., in 1843_
Rischgitz Collection]
but surely not such a wife when she desired it. The truth is, of course,
that here again Dickens is following his evil genius which bade him make
those he loved comfortable instead of happy. It may seem at first sight
a paradox to say that the special fault of optimism is a lack of faith
in God: but so it is. There are some whom we should not seek to make
comfortable: their appeasement is in more awful hands. There are
conflicts, the reconciliation of which lies beyond the powers not only
of human effort but of human rational conception. One of them is the
reconciliation between good and evil themselves in the scheme of nature;
another is the reconciliation of Dora and Agnes. To say that we know
they will be reconciled is faith; to say that we see that they will be
reconciled is blasphemy.
[Illustration: _From a drawing by Miss Ryland, in the South Kensington
Museum_
DOTHEBOYS HALL, 1841
Rischgitz Collection]
[Illustration: _From the painting by C. R. Leslie, R.A. Exhibited in the
Royal Academy in 1846_
CHARLES DICKENS AS CAPTAIN BOBADIL IN “EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR”
(Reproduced from _The Sketch_, by kind permission of the London
Electrotype Agency)]
Dickens was, of course, as is repeated _ad nauseam_, a caricaturist, and
when we have understood this word we have understood the whole matter;
but in truth the word, caricaturist, is commonly misunderstood; it is
even, in the case of men like Dickens, used as implying a reproach.
Whereas it has no more reproach in it than the word organist. Caricature
is not merely an important form of art; it is a form of art which is
often most useful for purposes of profound philosophy and powerful
symbolism. The age of scepticism put caricature into ephemeral
feuilletons; but the ages of faith built
[Illustration: _From a lithograph, after the drawing by Alfred Count
D’Orsay_
A PORTRAIT OF CHARLES DICKENS IN 1842
Reproduced from _The Magazine of Art_, by kind permission of Messrs.
Cassell & Co., Ltd.]
caricatures into their churches of everlasting stone. One extraordinary
idea has been constantly repeated, the idea that it is very easy to make
a mere caricature of anything. As a matter of fact it is
[Illustration:
_From an etching after a daguerreotype by Mayall_
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1851]
[Illustration: DICKENS’S FAVOURITE RAVEN
The original of “Grip” in “Barnaby Rudge.” After death the famous bird
was stuffed, and when sold at the Dickens Sale it realised £126
(Reproduced by kind permission of the London Stereoscopic Co.)]
extraordinarily difficult, for it implies a knowledge of what part of a
thing to caricature. To reproduce the proportions of a face, exactly as
they are, is a comparatively safe adventure; to arrange those features
in an entirely new proportion, and yet retain a resemblance, argues a
very delicate instinct for what features are really the characteristic
and essential ones. Caricature is only easy when it so happens that the
people depicted, like Cyrano de Bergerac, are more or less caricatures
themselves. In other words caricature is only easy when it does not
caricature very much. But to see an ordinary intelligent face in the
street, and to know that, with the nose three times as long and the head
twice as broad, it will still be a startling likeness, argues a profound
insight into truth. “Caricature,” said Sir Willoughby Patterne, in his
fatuous way, “is rough truth.” It is not; it is subtle truth. This is
what gives Dickens his unquestionable place among artists. He realised
thoroughly a certain phase or atmosphere of existence, and he knew the
precise strokes and touches that would bring it home to the reader. That
Dickens phase or atmosphere may be roughly defined as the phase of a
vivid sociability in which every
[Illustration:
_From the painting by Ary Scheller, in the National Portrait
Gallery_
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1855
Rischgitz Collection]
[Illustration: TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE
Where Dickens resided for nearly nine years, dating from November,
1851.
(From “Rambles in Dickens-Land,” by R. Allbut. Reproduced by kind
permission of Messrs. S. T. Freemantle & Co.)]
man becomes unusually and startlingly himself. A good caricature will
sometimes seem more like the original than the original: so it is in the
greatest moments of social life. He is an unfortunate man; a man
unfitted to value life and certainly unfitted to value Dickens, who has
not sat at some table or talked in some company in which every one was
in character, each a beautiful caricature of himself.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
[Illustration: EASTGATE HOUSE, ROCHESTER (THE ORIGINAL OF THE NUNS’
HOUSE IN “THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD”)
(From “Rambles in Dickens-Land,” by R. Allbut. Reproduced by kind
permission of Messrs. S. T. Freemantle & Co.)]
CHARLES DICKENS
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
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.
[Illustration: 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
[Illustration:
_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.
[Illustration:
_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
[Illustration:
_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.”
[Illustration: 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, phœnix-like, both emerged
triumphantly from the ashes of what to them appeared to be a cruel
conflagration of their desires and aspirations.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: GAD’S HILL PLACE, NEAR ROCHESTER, KENT.
The last residence of Charles Dickens
(From “Rambles in Dickens-Land,” by R. Allbut. Reproduced by kind
permission of Messrs. S. T. Freemantle & Co.)]
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.
[Illustration:
_From a photo by C. Watkins_
MRS. CHARLES DICKENS
The Novelist’s widow died in 1879]
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.”
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Walter Dexter_
RESTORATION HOUSE (THE “SATIS HOUSE” OF “GREAT EXPECTATIONS”)]
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Walter Dexter_
THE BULL HOTEL, ROCHESTER
“Good house--nice beds....” _Vide_ “Pickwick”]
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
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Mason & Co._
A PORTRAIT OF CHARLES DICKENS AT ABOUT THE AGE OF 50
Rischgitz Collection]
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.
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS, _circa_ 1864
(Reproduced from _The Favourite Magazine_, by kind permission of Messrs.
Paul Naumann, Ltd.)]
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.
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS, _circa_ 1864
(Reproduced from _The Favourite Magazine_, by kind permission of Messrs.
Paul Naumann, Ltd.)]
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!”
[Illustration: A PORTION OF DICKENS’S MS. TAKEN FROM “THE CHRISTMAS
CAROL”]
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_:
Who the _dickens_ “Boz” could be
Puzzled many a learned elf,
Till time revealed the mystery,
And “Boz” appeared as _Dickens_’ self.
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Fradelle & Young_
CHARLES DICKENS]
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Walter Dexter_
THE GATEHOUSE, ROCHESTER
Where Jasper lived with the Verger Tope (“Edwin Drood”)]
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.”
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Walter Dexter_
THE HOUSE OF THE SIX POOR TRAVELLERS AT ROCHESTER]
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
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS IN 1861
_From a Photograph by J. Watkins_
Rischgitz Collection]
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.
[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF CHARLES DICKENS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
_From a water-colour drawing, by S. Luke Fildes, R.A._
Reproduced by special permission of the Artist.]
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.
NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
[Sidenote: =The Birthplace of Charles Dickens, No. 387, Commercial Road,
Landport, Portsea=
_see page 3_]
[Sidenote: =Rochester High Street, showing the “moon-faced” clock=
_see page 1_]
Charles Dickens was born at No. 387, Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea,
on Friday, February 7th, 1812. He was the second son of John Dickens, a
clerk in the Navy Pay office, who married Miss Elizabeth Barrow, and had
a family of eight children, two of whom died in childhood. Of his very
earliest days Charles Dickens retained many distinct and durable
impressions. He even recollected the small front garden of the house at
Portsea, from which he was taken away at the age of two years, and where
he played with his elder sister whilst watched by a nurse through the
kitchen window on a level with the gravel walk. Referring to these early
memories, he described “how he thought the Rochester High Street must be
at least as wide as Regent Street, which he afterwards discovered to be
little better than a lane, how the public clock in it, supposed to be
the finest clock in the world, turned out to be as moon-faced and weak a
clock as a man’s eyes ever saw; and how, in its town hall, which had
appeared to him once so glorious a structure that he had set it up in
his mind as the model on which the genie of the lamp built the palace
for Aladdin, he had painfully to recognise a mere mean little heap of
bricks, like a chapel gone demented.” In “The Seven Poor Travellers”
Dickens gave another picture of the same spot. “The silent High Street
of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into
strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that
projects over the pavement out of a grave red brick building as if Time
carried on business there and hung out his sign.”
[Sidenote: =No. 15, Furnival’s Inn, Holborn=
_see page 4_]
In 1836 Charles Dickens lived at 15, Furnival’s Inn, and it was here
that he “thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number,” which was
published March 31st, 1837. Two days later the author married Miss
Catherine Hogarth, and after spending their honeymoon in the village of
Chalk, near Gad’s Hill, the young couple continued to reside for some
time in apartments on the top floor of this house.
[Sidenote: =“The Leather Bottle,” Cobham=
_see page 5_]
“The Leather Bottle,” immortalised in “The Pickwick Papers,” is situated
at Cobham, opposite the church. “‘And really,’ added Mr. Pickwick, after
half an hour’s walking had brought them to the village, ‘really, for a
misanthrope’s choice, this is one of the prettiest and most desirable
places of residence I ever met with.’
“In this opinion also both Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass expressed their
concurrence; and, having been directed to the ‘Leather Bottle,’ a clean
and commodious village ale-house, the three travellers entered, and at
once inquired for a gentleman of the name of Tupman.”
[Sidenote: =The Old Curiosity Shop=
_see page 9_]
The Old Curiosity Shop in Portugal Street, said to be the house assigned
by the novelist for the residence of Little Nell and her grandfather,
was “one of those receptacles for old and curious things, which seem to
crouch in odd corners of this town, and to hide their musty treasure
from the public eye in jealousy and distrust.” It is possibly the best
known among the landmarks of places made famous by Dickens.
[Sidenote: =The Grave of Little Nell=
_see page 8_]
“They saw the vault covered and the stone fixed down. Then, when the
dusk of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred
stillness of the place when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb
and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it seemed to
them) upon her quiet grave in that calm time, when all outward things
and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality, and worldly
hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them--then, with tranquil
and submissive hearts, they turned away, and left the child with God.”
Dotheboys Hall, in “Nicholas Nickleby,” is said to have borne a close
resemblance to Shaw’s Academy at Bowes, Yorkshire; but Dickens in his
[Sidenote: =Dotheboys Hall at Bowes, Yorkshire=
_see page 12_]
preface to the book disclaimed his intention of identifying the infamous
Mr. Squeers with the master of any particular school by his words, “Mr.
Squeers is the representative of a class and not of an individual.”
“‘The fact is it ain’t a Hall,’ observed Squeers, drily.... ‘We call it
a hall up in London because it sounds better, but they don’t know it by
that name in these parts. A man may call his house an island if he
likes; there’s no Act of Parliament against that, I believe.’ ... The
school was a long cold-looking house, one storey high, with a few
straggling outbuildings behind and a barn and stable adjoining.”
[Sidenote: =Dickens’s Favourite Raven=
_see page 15_]
This raven was the original of “Grip” in “Barnaby Budge.” To the great
grief of Dickens the bird died, after it had been ailing only a few
days, on March 12th, 1841. After death the famous raven was stuffed, and
when sold at the Dickens sale realised £126.
“‘I make _him_ come?’ cried Barnaby, pointing to the bird. ‘Him, who
never goes to sleep, or so much as winks! Why, any time of night, you
may see his eyes in my dark room, shining like two sparks. And every
night, and all night too, he’s broad awake, talking to himself, thinking
what he shall do to-morrow, where we shall go, and what he shall steal,
and hide, and bury. _I_ make _him_ come! Ha, ha, ha!’”
[Sidenote: =No. 1, Devonshire Terrace=
_see page 22_]
In 1839 Dickens removed from Doughty Street to No. 1, Devonshire
Terrace, a handsome house with a garden of considerable size, shut out
from the New Road by a high brick wall facing the York Gate into
Regent’s Park. The house is entered at the side, and the front looks
into Marylebone Road. The windows of the lower and first-floor rooms are
largely bowed, and Dickens described it as “a house of great promise
(and great premium), undeniable situation, and excessive splendour.” He
lived here until 1850, and in these years much of his best work was
done, including “Master Humphrey’s Clock,” “The Old Curiosity Shop.”
“Barnaby Budge,” “American Notes,” “Martin Chuzzlewit,” “A Christmas
Carol,” “The Cricket on the Hearth,” “Dombey and Son,” “The Haunted
Man,” and “David Copperfield.”
[Sidenote: =Tavistock House, Tavistock Square=
_see page 17_]
After leaving Devonshire Terrace, Dickens resided for nearly nine years,
dating from November 1851, at Tavistock House, which has of late been
demolished. During this period he wrote “Bleak House,” “Hard Times,” a
part of “Little Dorrit,” and “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Hans Christian Andersen, after visiting Dickens in Tavistock House, gave
the following description of his home:--
“In Tavistock Square stands Tavistock House. This and the strip of
garden in front of it are shut out from the thoroughfare by an iron
railing. A large garden, with a grass plat and high trees, stretches
behind the house, and gives it a countrified look in the midst of this
coal and gas steaming London. In the passage from street to garden hung
pictures and engravings. On the first floor was a rich library, with a
fireplace and a writing-table, looking out on the garden; and here it
was that in winter Dickens and his friends acted plays to the
satisfaction of all parties.”
[Sidenote: =Eastgate House, Rochester=
_see page 18_]
Eastgate House, the original of the Nuns’ House in “The Mystery of Edwin
Drood,” forms one of the most picturesque bits of the Rochester High
Street, one side of the old building being half hidden from the roadway
by overhanging trees. “Cloisterham” in “Edwin Drood,” of course,
represents Rochester.
“In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns’ House: a veritable brick
edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from the legends
of its conventual uses. On the trim gate enclosing its courtyard is a
resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend: ‘Seminary for Young
Ladies. Miss Twinkleton.’ The house front is so old and worn, and the
brass plate is so shining and staring, that the general result has
reminded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau with a large
modern eyeglass stuck in his blind eye.”
[Sidenote: =Gad’s Hill Place, near Rochester=
_see page 26_]
Gad’s Hill Place was the novelist’s last residence, where he wrote “The
Uncommercial Traveller,” “Great Expectations,” “Our Mutual Friend,” and
“The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
On this house Dickens had fixed his choice in his boyish days. It had
always held a prominent place amid the recollections connected with his
childhood. Forster wrote of Dickens that “upon first seeing it as he
came from Chatham with his father, and looking up at it with admiration,
he had been promised that he might live in it himself, or some such
house, when he came to be a man, if he would only work hard enough.” It
is pleasant to record that this ambition was gratified in after life,
when the dream of his boyhood was realised.
[Sidenote: =Restoration House, Rochester=
_see page 28_]
Restoration House, Rochester, is of interest as being the “Satis House”
of “Great Expectations,” in which Miss Havisham lived. Restoration House
must not, however, be confused with Satis House, Rochester, from which
Dickens took the name.
“‘Enough House!’ said I. ‘That’s a curious name, miss.’
“‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it
was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They
must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think.’
“To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the
brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high
wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there
had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But there were no pigeons
in the dovecot, no horses in the stables, no pigs in the sty....”
[Sidenote: =The Bull Hotel, Rochester=
_see page 28_]
The Bull Hotel is a commodious establishment of ancient and respectable
repute, and the principal posting-house of Rochester. It is the
celebrated inn where the Pickwickians stayed on the occasion of their
first visit to Rochester, and which Mr. Jingle so laconically summed up
in the phrase, “good house--nice beds.”
The house itself has changed very little. A fine oak staircase leads up
to the ball-room, where Mr. Jingle masqueraded in Mr. Winkle’s
dress-suit with extraordinary results.
[Sidenote: =The Gatehouse, Rochester=
_see page 34_]
In “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” Dickens described the Old Gatehouse at
Rochester, facing Pump Lane, with its archway, which stands angle-wise
in the street. There is a small postern at the back of the gate. This
building was the residence of Mr. Tope, “chief verger and showman” of
the Cathedral, with whom lodged Mr. John Jaspar, the uncle of Edwin
Drood. The house is a gabled wooden structure, two storeys high, built
over the stone gateway. Dickens pictured it as “an old stone gatehouse
crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it.”
[Sidenote: =Watts’s Charity, The House of the Six Poor Travellers,
Rochester=
_see page 35_]
This house formed the basis for a short story called, “The Seven Poor
Travellers,” which appeared in the Christmas number of _Household Words_
for 1854. The inscription over the doorway of this striking-looking
building runs as follows:--
RICHARD WATTS, ESQ.,
BY HIS WILL DATED 22 AUGUST, 1579,
FOUNDED THIS CHARITY
FOR SIX POOR TRAVELLERS.
WHO NOT BEING ROGUES, OR PROCTORS,
MAY RECEIVE GRATIS FOR ONE NIGHT,
LODGING, ENTERTAINMENT,
AND FOUR-PENCE EACH.
Dickens called it “a clean white house of a staid and venerable air,
with a quaint old door (an arched door), choice, little, long, low
lattice windows, and a roof of three gables.”
[Sidenote: =The Grave of Dickens in Westminster Abbey. From a painting by
S. Luke Fildes, R.A.=
_see page 38_]
Charles Dickens died on the 9th of June, 1870. Five days later he was
buried in Westminster Abbey, with, according to Forster, only such
ceremonial as would strictly obey all injunctions of privacy. The
solemnity lost nothing by its simplicity. “All day long,” wrote Dean
Stanley, two days after the funeral, “there was a constant pressure to
the spot, and many flowers were strewn upon it by unknown hands, many
tears shed by unknown eyes.” On the stone are inscribed the words:
CHARLES DICKENS,
BORN FEBRUARY THE SEVENTH, 1812. DIED JUNE THE NINTH, 1870.
SOME PORTRAITS OF CHARLES DICKENS
[Sidenote: =“Boz” (Charles Dickens). From a drawing by S. Laurence; in
the possession of Mr. Horace N. Pym=
_see page 2_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1839. From the picture by Daniel Maclise,
R.A.=
_see page 7_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens reading “The Chimes” to his friends at 58,
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Monday, the 2nd of Dec., 1844=
_see page 10_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens, his wife, and her sister=
_see page 11_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens as Captain Bobadil, in “Every Man in his
Humour.” From a painting by C. R. Leslie, R.A.=
_see page 12_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1842. From a drawing by Alfred Count
D’Orsay=
_see page 13_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1851. From an etching after a
daguerreotype by Mayall=
_see page 14_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1855. From the painting by Ary Scheffer=
_see page 16_]
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.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1844. From a miniature by Miss Margaret
Gillies=
_see page 19_]
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.
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1859. After the painting by W. P. Frith,
A.R.A.=
_see page 23_]
Mr. Frith’s painting was exhibited in the Royal Academy in the spring of
1860, and afterwards included in the Forster Collection at South
Kensington, where it now finds a worthy resting-place. Dickens wrote of
this picture in a letter from Tavistock House, dated May 31st, 1859: “It
has received every conceivable pains at Frith’s hands, and ought, on his
account, to be good. It is a little too much (to my thinking) as if my
next-door neighbour were my deadly foe, uninsured, and had just received
tidings of his house being afire; otherwise very good.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens giving a Reading, 1861=
_see page 24_]
Dickens gave his paid public Readings successively, with brief
intervals, at four several periods--viz., in 1858-9, in 1861-3, in
1866-7, and in 1868-70.
“I must say [he wrote] that the intelligence and warmth of the audience
are an immense sustainment, and one that always sets me up. Sometimes,
before I go down to read (especially when it is in the day) I am so
oppressed by having to do it that I feel perfectly unequal to the task.
But the people lift me out of this directly, and I find that I have
quite forgotten everything but them and the book, in a quarter of an
hour.”
[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1861. From a photograph by J. Watkins=
_see page 37_]
A full-face likeness of the novelist by Watkins has attained deservedly
a large degree of popularity. The best remembered copy is a beautiful
lithographic drawing by R. J. Lane which was exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1864. It is said to have been an especial favourite with
Charles Lever.
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