Charles Dickens - A Biographical Sketch
Table of Contents 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.
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 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.
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 which the novelist afterwards vividly recalled, and which will be found duly set forth in "David Copperfield."
It was at this awkward juncture that some relatives of the family, named Lambert, realising that an opportunity should he 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, phoenix-like, both emerged triumphantly from the ashes of what to them appeared to be a cruel conflagration of their desires and aspirations.
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.
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 fathers 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.
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 Johnsons 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,...
