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.”
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!”