CHARLES DICKENS
was
born at Landport, in Portsea, England, February 7, 1812, and on the 9th of June, 1870, he passed away. His remains repose in
Westminster Abbey.
His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, stationed at Portsmouth, when Charles was born, but subsequently served in the same capacity at Chatham and London. The father was industrious, but failed to accumulate money very rapidly. Mrs. Dickens was a lady of energy and culture, and from her the boy received the rudiments of Latin. The father became embarrassed and was imprisoned in Marshalsea for debt. Charles was set to work in a blacking warehouse, for six shillings per week. In that establishment, it was the boy's duty to tie blue covers on pots of paste blacking. This uncongenial work he followed for about two years.
In after life Dickens never complained of unkind treatment while thus employed, but he looked back over that period as the dark hour in his life. It was dark because uncongenial both in work and associates. The lad was quick to learn, sensitive, and ambitious to be "a learned and distinguished man." Thus constituted, the chains of his bondage must have been very galling to him. "And perhaps he was right in after-life to wonder at the thoughtlessness of his parents in subjecting him to such a humiliation. His sufferings were so acute, and made such an impression on him, that years afterward he could not think of them without crying; and there were certain quarters of the town through which he used to pass to his daily work, and where he used to loiter with less than enough to eat, that he habitually shunned for their painful memories." In his wretched condition there were numerous chances for him to become a rogue or a vagabond, but he survived these dangers and became a great novelist. Instead of sinking into the depth of the thronging atoms, he arose above them, or kept apart from them, observed them, and became their describer.
It is difficult to tell how much of his success in after life was due to his severe schooling in the blacking warehouse. He did not learn the classics, but he did learn of the many varieties of life, odd and sad, laughter-moving and pitiful, that swarmed in the streets and inhabited the poorer houses of London. In this respect it was an instructive school. It was the true road to the knowledge which he used in his writings. Before his father's misfortunes, the boy had devoured the contents of the paternal library, which consisted of "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle," "Humphrey Clinker," "Tom Jones," "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Don Quixote," "Gil Blas," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian Knights," "Mrs. Inchbald's Farees," and "Tales of the Genii." He was an attentive student and so far absorbed what he read as to live the life of his favorite characters. In that early period of his life, he tried to imitate what he read, wrote a tragedy founded upon one of the "Tales of the Genii," and acquired great fame among his associates as a story teller.
A new period soon commenced in the life of Charles. His father's affairs improved so far as to enable him to send the lad to school. At the age of fifteen, he was placed in an attorney's office among the younger clerks, but poor chances for advancement induced him to abandon the office and take to shorthand as a business for life. In the law office he was a close observer, as may be seen in "Pickwick" and "Nickleby." In the meantime, the father had become a newspaper parliamentary reporter; and the boy, after having mastered the difficulties of shorthand, "spent two years in reporting law cases, practicing in Doctors' Commons and other law courts." It would be difficult to conceive a more perfect way of completing the education of the future novelist, giving him an insight into the strange by-paths of that higher stratum of which he had before had but little experience.
At the age of nineteen he entered the parliamentary gallery to enlarge his knowledge still further. He was a reporter of political speeches in and out of parliament for five years, from 1831 to 1836. First he reported for the
"True Sun," then for the "Mirror of Parliament," and finally for the "Morning Chronicle." In his excursions into the country and back again with his "copy," he saw the last of the old coach days and of the old inns that were a part of them; but it will be long, as Mr. Forster remarks, "before the readers of his living page see the last of the life
of either." As a newspaper reporter Dickens distinguished himself; out of eighty or ninety he was acknowledged as the best.
Dickens' life as an author commenced in 1834. He sent to the "Old Monthly Magazine" a series of nine sketches under the title of "A Dinner at Poplar;" and later he was engaged to write some for an evening off-shoot of the "Morning Chronicle." In the above he wrote under the nom de plume of "Boz," a name which he adopted from the nickname of one of his brothers. In 1836 the first series of "Sketches by Boz" was collected and published in two volumes. So popular did the "Sketches" at once become, that the first edition was exhausted in a few months and another called for. "No wonder, for in them we find already in full swing the unflagging delight in pursuing the humorous side of a character, and the inexhaustible fertility in inventing ludicrous incidents, which had only to be displayed on a large scale to place him at once on a pinnacle of fame. There are many of them, such as `The Parish,' `The Boarding House,' `Mr. Minns and his Cousin,' and `The Misplaced Attachment of Mr. John Dounce,' which show Dickens' humor at its very richest.
He had formed, too, by this time, his characteristic likes and dislikes, and plays them off upon his butts and favorites with the utmost frankness. The delight in homely sociability and cheerfulness, in the innocent efforts of simple people to make merry, the kindly satire of their little vanities and ambitions, the hearty ridicule of dry fogies who shut themselves up in selfish cares and reserves, and of sour mischief-makers who take pleasure in conspiring against the enjoyments of their neighbors,--these tendencies, which remained with Dickens to the last, are strongly marked in the `Sketches,' though lighter-hearted in their expression than in his later works. The mark and indispensable condition of all great work is there, that which Mr. Carlyle calls veracity--the description of what the writer has himself seen, heard, felt, the fearless utterance of his own sentiments in his own way."
In 1836 also appeared the first number of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club." These "Papers" were the outgrowth of a suggestion from the publishers, Messrs. Chapman & Hall. These gentlemen, together with the artist, Mr. Seymour, had agreed to issue a monthly serial to be illustrated. Dickens' "Sketches" having attracted their attention, they proposed to him that he should furnish a series of articles descriptive of the adventures of a Nimrod Club, the members of which should go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and get themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity. Dickens undertook the work, but he obtained the diverting incidents for the artist through different machinery, namely, the Pickwick Club. The "Pickwick Papers" went off slowly till the fifth number, when Sam Weller was introduced. With this number the sales improved. Seeing the merit of Dickens' writings Mr. Bentley contracted with him to edit a monthly magazine and to write a serial story for it, and also to write two other tales at an early date. But the "Pickwick Papers" were progressing and in a very few weeks the author stood at the very pinnacle of fame. One writer refers to him as standing beyond the reach of critics. The monthly sales reached 40,000 copies. Sam Weller's sayings were catchwords in the streets and the household wherever the English language was spoken. In 1837, while the "Pickwick Papers" were appearing in monthly installments, he doubled his work by commencing "Oliver Twist." The two progressed steadily side by side. In addition to the above, the "Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" appeared between April, 1838, and October, 1839.
He resigned his editorship of "Bentley's Miscellany," and started a new publication entitled "Master Humphrey's Clock," the first number of which appeared in April, 1840. This number reached a sale of 70,000 copies. "Master Humphrey" was soon expanded into "The Old Curiosity Shop," which appeared in weekly installments. The completion of "Barnaby Rudge," in 1841, also completed "Master Humphrey's Clock."
In January, 1842, he set out for America. In this country he was accorded a reception greater than Americans usually give to royal visitors. He returned in June to write "American Notes." The people of the United States complained, and justly too, of the treatment they received at his hands. In his "Notes," he was frequently unjust, but all was apparently forgotten before his second visit.
In 1843 he commenced "Martin Chuzzlewit," but this did not sell to meet his expectations. In the same year he wrote the "Christmas Carols." Quitting England again, he settled in Genoa, where he finished "Chuzzlewit," and wrote the "Chimes," his Christmas tale for 1844. He visited various parts of Italy, and then returned to England in 1845, by way of Switzerland. A fortnight's experience as editor of the "Daily News," convinced him that he was out of his place, hence he resigned and again started abroad and wrote a novel in shilling monthly numbers. "Dombey and Son" was the result. A series of letters published in the "Daily News," he afterward collected into a volume, entitled "Pictures from Italy." "David Copperfield" appeared in 1849, and 1850, perhaps the most perfect, natural and agreeable of his novels. "Bleak House" appeared in 1852-'53; "Hard Times," 1854; "Little Dorrit," 1855-'57; "A Tale of Two Cities," 1859; "Great Expectations," 1860-'61; "The Uncommercial Traveller," 1860; "Our Mutual Friend," 1864-'65, An interval of five years between this and the first number of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," was broken only by contributions to three Christmas numbers of "All the Year Round," and "A Holiday Romance," and "George Silverman's Explanation," written for an American publisher.
For the purpose of establishing closer relations between himself and the people he had started a weekly publication, but in 1858 he decided to draw still closer to the people by a series of popular public readings from his works. Having visited various parts of the United Kingdom, he renewed his acquaintance with the Americans. In 1867-68 he crossed the ocean and visited some of the principal cities of the United States. The success of these readings was enormous from every point of view. Mr. Forster mentions that Dickens remitted from America #10,000 as the result of thirty-four readings. Returning to England, he commenced his work upon "Edwin Drood," but died before its completion. In his will he had desired that he should be buried in "an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner, without any announcement of the time and place of his burial." These conditions were observed, but his executors did not consider them in-consistent with his receiving the honor of interment in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried on the 14th of June, 1870, by the side of the honored scholars, statesmen, and warriors of England.
The novels of Dickens will live because they take hold of the permanent and universal sentiments of the race,-sentiments which pervade all classes, and which no culture can ever eradicate. His fun may be too boisterous for the refined tastes of his own time, or for the matter of that, of posterity; his pathos may appear maudlin; but they carried everything before them when they first burst upon our literature, because, however much exaggerated, they were exaggerations of what our race feels in its inner heart; and unless culture in the future works a miracle, and carries its changes beneath the surface, we may be certain that Dickens will keep his hold. The best critics unite in ranking Dickens among the greatest novelists of all time.
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