The reasons for the unhappy state of things were of a much more complicated nature than this. Only the most intimate of his friends ever knew them in full, and of course they were debarred from making them public. But Professor Ward of Cambridge University, who has written a very kind and appreciative Life of Dickens, and one which gives a far more pleasing idea of his character than the bulky and egotistical Life by Forster, gives a clue to the whole trouble in the following statement. He says:—
"If he ever loved his wife with that affection before which so-called incompatibilities of habits, temper, or disposition fade into nothingness, there is no indication of it in any of the numerous letters addressed to her. Neither has it ever been pretended that he strove in the direction of that resignation which love and duty made possible to David Copperfield, or even that he remained in every way master of himself, as many men have known how to remain, the story of whose wedded life and its disappointments has never been written in history or figured in fiction."
And this troublous condition of things was very much intensified by Dickens having fallen violently in love with Mary Hogarth, Mrs. Dickens's youngest sister. This beautiful girl died at their house at the early age of seventeen. No sorrow seems ever to have touched the heart and possessed the imagination of Charles Dickens like that for the loss of this dearly loved girl. "I can solemnly say," he wrote to her mother a few months after her death, "that waking or sleeping I have never lost the recollection of our hard sorrow, and I never shall." "If," he writes in his diary at the beginning of a new year, "she was with me now,—the same winning, happy, amiable companion, sympathizing with all my thoughts and feelings more than any one I ever knew did or will,—I think I should have nothing to wish but a continuance of such happiness." Throughout life her memory haunted him with great vividness. After her death he wrote: "I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and always with a kind of quiet happiness, which became so pleasant to me that I never lay down without a hope of the vision returning." The year before he died he wrote to a friend: "She is so much in my thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful, that the recollection of her is an essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as the beating of my heart is." In a word, she was the one great imaginative passion of his life. He is said to have pictured her in Little Nell, and he writes after finishing that book, "Dear Mary died yesterday when I think of it."
Have we not in this the key to all the sorrows of his domestic life? Could he have married the woman he loved in this manner, he would doubtless have been one of the tenderest and most devoted of husbands, and a family life as beautiful as any of the ideal ones he has depicted would have resulted. It is probable that he did not know Mary Hogarth until after his marriage, when she came to live in his house, and when his youthful fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth died instantly of heart-disease, without even a premonitory warning.
All accounts agree in calling Mrs. Dickens a very pretty, amiable, and well-bred woman; and even if she was as infinitely incapable as represented, that alone would seem to be insufficient cause for so serious a trouble. Miss Georgina Hogarth, whom all describe as a very lovely and superior person, possessed the executive ability Mrs. Dickens lacked, it would seem; for all visitors both to Tavistock House and Gad's Hill describe with enthusiasm the perfect order which prevailed in the large establishments, attributing this in part at least to Dickens's own intense love of method and passion for neatness. But no man without the aid of feminine head and hands would have succeeded in attaining to this perfect housekeeping, especially where the family consisted of nine children, as in this case.
Hans Christian Andersen thus describes a visit to Gad's Hill:—
"It was a fine new house, with red walls and four bow-windows, and a jutting entrance supported by pillars; in the gable a large window. A dense hedge of cherry-laurel surrounded the house, in front of which extended a neat lawn, and on the opposite side rose two mighty cedars of Lebanon, whose crooked branches spread their green far over another large lawn surrounded by ivy and wild vines, the hedge being so dense and dark that no sunbeam could penetrate it.
"As soon as I stepped into the house, Dickens came to meet me kindly and cordially. He was now in the prime of life, still so youthful, so active, so eloquent, so rich in the most pleasant humor, through which his sterling kind-heartedness always beamed forth. As he stood before me in the first hour, so he was and remained during all the weeks I passed in his company,—merry, good-natured, and full of charming sympathy. Dickens at home seems to be perpetually jolly, and enters into the interests of games with all the ardor of a boy. My bedroom was the perfection of a sleeping-apartment; the view across the Kentish hills, with a distant peep of the Thames, charming. In every room I found a table covered with writing-materials, headed notepaper, envelopes, cut quill-pens, wax, matches, sealing-wax, and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named Bumble, seems to be a favorite with Dickens."
Mr. Mackenzie writes:—
"Eminently social and domestic, he exercised a liberal hospitality, and though he lived well as his means allowed, avoided excesses. It is said of him that he never lost a friend, never made an enemy."
From all sources comes the same report of his geniality, of his devotion to his children and their devotion to him, of his constant generosity and good-humor. Byron's old servant said that Lady Byron was the only woman he ever saw who could not manage his master. Was this also true of Mrs. Dickens? Was she the only one who found him "ill to live with"? It may be; and yet one can easily imagine him to have been a man of moods, and that in some of these moods it would be best to give him a wide berth. The very excess of his animal spirits may have been wearying to one who could not share them; and that he was egotistical to a degree, and vain, and fond of flattery, goes without saying. A lady in the "English-woman's Magazine" tells this story of his wild and reckless fun, and it is matched by many others. They were down on the seashore in the moonlight, and had been dancing there.