Portraits in Print; 10; Charles Dickens

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ineffectual Mrs. McCobber in Dickens' novel, David Copperfield, Mrs. Dickens, was helpless in the emergency. A family friend suggested that Charles, then only 12 years old, be put to work at a warehouse located in a hunger-frid market. The boy was paid a pittance to put labels on bottles of boot-blacking, but the pittance could not prevent his father's arrest for debt and subsequent imprisonment.

Charles Dickens never forgot those terrible months in Warren's blacking factory, and they became the basis for David Copperfield's experiences in the warehouse of Merge Stone and Grinby. No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship. Compare these henceforth everyday associates with those of my happier childhood. He felt the hopes of my becoming a learned and distinguished man crushed in my bosom. The deep remembrance of the sense I had of being utterly without hope now, the shame I felt in my position, of the misery it was to my young heart, to know that day by day, what I had studied, thought, delighted in, raised my hopes, my emulation up by, would

pass away from me now, little by little, never to be brought back anymore, cannot be written. As often as Mick Walker went away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with the water in which I was washing the bottles, and sobbed as if there were a flaw in my own rest, and it were in danger of bursting. From Monday morning until Saturday night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support of any kind from anyone that I can call to mind as I hope to go to heaven. I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously or unintentionally, the scatiness of my resources

or the difficulties of my life. I know that I worked from morning to night with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the streets insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know but that for the mercy of God. I might easily have been for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond. Yet I held some station at Birdstone in Grinby's tomb. I never said to man or boy how it was that I came to be there, or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there, that I suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew, but I. How much I suffered it is as I have said already beyond my power to tell, that I kept my own counsel, and

that I did my work. I knew from the first that if I could not do my work as well as any of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon became at least as expeditious and skillful as either of the other boys. And though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct in manner were different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They and the men commonly spoke of me as the little gent. My rescue from this kind of existence, I considered quite hopeless and abandoned as such altogether. I am solemnly convinced that I never, for one hour, was reconciled to it, or otherwise then miserably unhappy, but I bore it and never revealed the truth.

An unexpected legacy permitted John Dickens to pay his debts, and he was then released from prison. Charles was sent to the Wellington House Academy, where, according to his report, the boys trained their white mice better than the master trained the boys. At fifteen Dickens left school to become an office boy for Ellis and Blackmore attorneys, Gray's Inn, at the very modest salary of thirteen shillings and six pence. He compensated for his lack of formal schooling by obtaining a reader's ticket at the British Museum on February 7, 1830. Shakespeare and Goldsmith became the companions of his leisure hours, at least that portion of them which were not spent trampling through the streets of London. His fellow clerk at Gray's Inn, George Lear, marveled at Dickens' mastery of the city. I thought

I knew something of the town, but after a little talk with Dickens, I found that I knew nothing. At eighteen Dickens established himself in business as a freelance shorthand writer and posed for his first portrait. Soon afterward he became a newspaper reporter, assigned to cover the speeches in Parliament, and his performance was so credible that he modestly admitted he made a great splash. In addition, his sketches of London life written for the newspapers attracted the attention of William Harrison Ainsworth, a young novelist. Ainsworth encouraged Dickens to collect his essays and publish them as a book. At Ainsworth's dinner table Dickens furthered his acquaintance with George Crookshank, the brilliant artist whose pen was later to illuminate the pages of Oliver Twist. Crookshank offered to illustrate Dickens' London vignettes and sketches by Bose, Bose being Dickens' pseudonym, was published in two volumes in 1836. Crookshank

could not resist using the author as a model, and Dickens can be seen in the centre of the sketch, illustrating his essay on public dinners. During this period Dickens lodged at Fernival's Inn, a large building used as chambers by London lawyers. A young American journalist who visited Dickens there described his apartment as an uncoffited bleak-looking room with a deal table, two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and Mr. Dickens for the contents. However, Dickens had just moved in, and it is small wonder that everything appeared so dreary. His engagement to Catherine Hogarth had been announced by her father, the editor of the evening chronicle, the paper in which many of the sketches by Bose had first appeared. On April 2nd, 1836, when Dickens was twenty-four years old, he and his

dearest Kate were married at St. Luke's Church Chelsea. After a brief honeymoon in Kent near Chatham Dickens' boyhood home, the young couple returned to London. Catherine's younger sister, Mary, went to live with him, and it was to the affectionate sixteen-year-old Mary that Dickens inscribed the monthly parts of his newest story, the posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club. As to how the idea for this most immortal of his characters came to him, Dickens could only say, and I thought of Pickwick, and there he was. An eloquent figure, with one hand gracefully concealed behind his coat-tails, and the other waving an air to assist his glowing declamation. Most of the fun in Pickwick papers occur as when the delightful bachelor is tried for breach of promise by his husband hunting and conniving landlady, the widow Bardel. Dickens' memories of his days in the law firm were humorously revived in the address made by the widow Bardel's lawyer to the jury.

And now gentlemen but one word more, two letters have passed between these parties, letters which are admitted to be in the handwriting of the defendant, and which be volumes indeed. They are not open, fervent, eloquent epistles, breathing nothing but the language of affectionate attachment. They are covert, sly, underhand communications, but fortunately, far more conclusive than if couched in the most glowing language. Letters that were evidently intended at the time by Pickwick to mislead and delude any third parties into whose hands they might

fall. Let me read the first. The arrow is twelve o'clock, the hour misses B, chops and tomato sauce, yours, Pickwick. Gentlemen, what does this mean? Chops and tomato sauce, chops gracious heavens and tomato sauce. Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away by such shallow artifices as these? The next has no date whatever, which is in itself suspicious. Dear Mrs. B, I shall not be at home till tomorrow, slow cook. And then follows this very, very remarkable expression. Don't trouble yourself about the

warming pan. The warming pan? Why is Mrs. Bardo so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about the warming pan unless there is no doubt the case? It is a mere cover for hidden fire, a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise. Artfully conserved by Pickwick with a view to his contemplated desertion and which I am not in a condition to explain. Pickwick, the ruthless destroyer of this domestic oasis in the desert of God's will, Street, Pickwick who came before you today with his heartless tomato sauce in warming pans. Pickwick

gauges without a sigh on the ruin he has made. Tammages, gentlemen, heavy damages, is the only punishment with which you can visit him, the only recompense you can award to my client. And for those damages she now appeals to an enlightened, a high-minded, a right feeling, a conscientious, a sympathizing, a dispassionate, a contemplative jury of her civilized countrymen. It was to a lawyer Thomas Noon Talford that Dickens later dedicated the Pickwick papers and Talford as well as the rest of England enjoyed Dickens' spoof

of the law. At 25 Dickens was beginning to be recognized as a celebrity. What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room wrote Lee Hunt the Poet. It has the life and soul in it of 50 human beings. The rising young man now moved into more pleasant quarters at number 48 Doughty Street, and in the upstairs study Dickens was eventually to write Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickelbee. But a few weeks after the move into the new house Dickens was stunned by the sudden death of Mary Hogarth, his 17-year-old sister-in-law. Thank God he wrote she died in my arms and the very last word she whispered were of me. I solemnly believe that so perfect a creature never breathed. I knew her inmost heart and her real worth and values. She had not a fault. Her ring Dickens wore on his finger until the day he died, and he never lost the little

letter opener which resembled a bean pod and the pen tray that she once had given him. The summer following Mary's death was spent by Dickens, his wife and baby son at broad stares, a seaside resort which became a favorite vacation spot for him. I have walked upon the sands at low water, wrote Dickens, till I have been flayed with the cold. It was at broad stares in 1839 that Dickens, then 27 years old, finished Nicholas Nickelbee, a novel dealing with a scandalous administration of some Yorkshire schools. The book was dedicated to the distinguished Shakespearean actor William McCreedy, and in October of the same year McCreedy returned the compliment by serving as Godfather for Dickens' third child, a daughter, christened Kate McCreedy Dickens. Mary's death continued to plague Dickens, and he immortalized her as Little Nell in the Old Curiosity Shop, which was finished in 1841. The shop where

Nell was thought to have lived became a literary landmark. America, too, read the Old Curiosity Shop. At the next year Dickens set sail on the SS Britannia for a triumphant tour of the New World, Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Richmond, Cincinnati. These were the cities that toasted Charles Dickens' guests of the nation. To his friend and confidant John Forster, Dickens wrote many letters, and these became the basis of his American notes published in 1842. On Dickens' return to London, he received a visit from an American friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whom he humorously called the Flegmatic Poet. Dickens escorted Longfellow on a trip to the scenes of his own childhood, including the famous leather bottle N, to which Mr. Pickwick had once retreated. In contrast to this trip, Dickens also introduced Longfellow to the London slums. Daniel McLeese, the

artist who accompanied them, was so sickened by the sight and stench of the worst of London's crowded tenements that he was forced to remain outside when Dickens and Longfellow entered. Following Longfellow's visit, Dickens secluded himself in his London residence at Debencher Terrace to concentrate on a new novel, Martin Schuzzlewitt. Martin's journey to America enabled Dickens to use some of his own reminiscences, but the novel was best remembered for the characterization of Sarah Gamp and her imaginary friend Mrs. Harris. She was a fattled woman, Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had the remarkable power of turning up and only showing the white of it. The face of Mrs. Gamp, the nose in particular, was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy

her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. Now like most persons who have attained great eminence in their profession, she took very kindly to hers. In so much that setting aside her natural predilections as a woman, she went to a lying in or laying out with equal zest and relish. Ah, repeated Mrs. Gamp, for it was always a safe sentiment in cases of mourning. Ah, dear, when Gamp was summoned to his long home and I see him lying in guys' hospital with a penny piece on each eye, and his wooden leg tucked under his left arm, I thought I should have fainted away, but I bore up. Oh, if it wasn't for the nerve, a little sip of liquor gives me, I never could do more than taste it. I never could go through with what I sometimes has to do. This is aerosy

says, leave the bottle on the chimney-tease, and don't ask me to take none, but let me put my lips toward when I'm so disposed, and then I'll be able to do what I'm expected to do. Mrs. Gamp, she says, if ever there was a sober creder to be guarded 18 pence a day for working people in three and six for gentlefolk at night watching being an extra charge, you are that inwallable person. Mrs. Aras says to her, don't name the charge, or if I could afford to lay all my feller creeders out for nothing, I would gladly do it, such as the love I bear them. But what I always says to them is it has the management of matters, Mrs. Aras. These agents, sir, be they ladies is. Don't

ask me whether I won't take none or whether I will. Just leave the bottle on the chimney-tease and let me put my lips toward when I'm so disposed. When Martin Schuzzlewitt was published in 1844, it was dedicated to Angela Bredette Cuts, a humanitarian and philanthropist whose great wealth enabled Dickens to carry out many charitable enterprises for the London poor. In the same year Dickens moved with his wife and family to Italy, residing in Genoa at the Palazzo Pacheri, the palace of the fish ponds. Here he began to write the second of his famous Christmas books, The Chimes, All the Files, The Bells of Genoa were ringing in his ears. His first Christmas book of Christmas Carol had received great praise, even from his novel-writing rival William Thackeray, who can listen to

Zachary to objections regarding such a book as this. It seems to me a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness. In 1845 Dickens returned to England and began to work on his third great Christmas story, The Cricket on the Harth. Later, when he was called upon to give readings from his novels, he chose passages from The Cricket, and meticulously marked his copy even to an appropriate sound effect such as a sigh. His sense of the dramatic prompted him to become actor, and the following year he took part with a group of his friends in a production of Ben Johnson's Every Man in his humor. As forced to put it, Dickens was stage director, stage carpenter, scene arranger, property man, prompter, and bandmaster. In the farce, used up, Dickens played the role of Sir Charles Coldstream. The money derived from the performances of his troupe was later given to aging literary figures such as the playwright Sheridan Knowles and Lee Hunt. In 1851, Dickens moved to Tabestock

House. After the great success of David Copperfield, he was in his own words wild to begin a new book, but the house needed considerable renovation, and Dickens was plagued by workmen, scooping, grooving, chiseling, sawing, planning, dabbing, putting, cleaning, hammering. His childhood ambition was realized only a few years later when he purchased Gads Hill Place, and for a while he maintained two residences until Tabestock House was sold in 1860. As a homeowner, Dickens was always making alterations, new staircase, a conservatory, more shrubbery, and each time he would gravely announce to his children that this was positively the last improvement. The superb reader, Dickens held his daughters and thralled and fascinated all of England with his rendition of his own works. For props, he needed only a book, and a small reading table, and the income from these performances

made possible many of the improvements at Gads Hill. In 1867, his compass pointed again to America, but the small Percy carried in no way indicated the happy state of his finances. Dickens was one writer who enjoyed the rewards of his talent during his lifetime. In America, he delivered a lengthy series of readings, but he confessed to Forster I am nearly used up. Climate, distance, guitar, traveling, and hard work have begun to tell heavily upon me, and on his return to England, Forster noted that the wonderful brightness of his eye was dimmed at times. In 1870, he began the last series of readings, the dressed in audience in London, from these garish lights I've vanished now forever more, with a heartfelt grateful respectful and affectionate farewell. To his study at Gads Hill, he retired to write his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Blue, but on June 9th,

when the flowers and new shrubs were in bloom, Charles Dickens suddenly died at the age of 58. Dickens had wished that he'd be buried in a little graveyard at the foot of Rochester Castle and had loved Kent of his youth, but the nation afforded him a place of honor in Westminster Ave, facing the monument to Shakespeare. England, indeed the world, and bad hymn, a heartfelt grateful respectful and affectionate farewell. To his study at Gads Hill, he retired to write his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Blue, The Mystery of Edwin Blue.

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