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Charles Dickens
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Letters, writings, quotes, etc. ABOUT Charles Dickens
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
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https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-thi...
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https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-thi...
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https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-thi...
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"What tremendously high spirits ran riot in those early Victorian Days! The men seem to have been just jolly grown up boys, overflowing with animal spirits. There was no morbidity of decadence then! The flowers were always blooming in the spring, save when holly and mistletoe, good will and good cheer, ruled the roast at winter-tide. Charles Dickens was one of the brightest of them all, a splendidly handsome young fellow, a good forehead above a nose with somewhat full nostrils; eyes of quite extraordinary brilliancy, a characteristic to the day of his death; a somewhat prominent, sensitive mouth. Equally true then was what Sergeant Ballantine wrote at a later period; "There was a brightness and geniality about him," says the Sergeant, "that greatly fascinated his companions. His laugh was so cheery, and he seemed so thoroughly to enter into the feelings of those around him. He told a story well and never prosily; he was a capital listener; and in conversation was not in the slightest degree dictatorial."
With all his vivacity and apparent boyishness he was extremely methodical in all his ways.
"No writer never lived," says an American friend; in a somewhat sweeping way, "whose method was more exact, whose industry was more constant, and whose punctuality was more marked", and his daughter "Mamie" wrote of him, "There never existed, I think, in all the world, a more thoroughly tidy or methodical creature in all the world than my father. He was tidy in every way - in his mind, in his handsome and graceful person, in his work, in keeping his writing-table drawers, in his large correspondence, in fact in his whole life." He could be a fidget, too, as for example with regards for the furniture of a room in a hotel, at which he might be spending only a single night - rearranging it all, and turning the bed north and south - to meet the views of the electrical currents of the earth!
What astonishing vitality he had; his way of resting a tired brain was to indulge in violent bodily exercise; a "fifteen-mile ride out", with a friend, "ditto in, and a lunch on the road," topping up with dinner at six o'clock in Doughty Street. He would write to Forster, "you don't feel disposed, do you, to muffle yourself up, and start off with me for a good brisk walk over Hampstead Heath? I know a good 'ous there where we can have a red- hot chop there for dinner, and a glass of good wine," the "'ous" being the far famed Jack's Straw Castle."
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It would require a camera with panoramic function because of all the stuff on side tables next to it.
The more I hear about Dickens, the more I believe he had something..... OCD, bipolar disease, or something on the autism spectrum. At the very least, he's a control freak. It exhausts me just reading about his constant activity. Honestly, except for the way he trashed her and took her children away, Catherine may well have been relieved to be done with him. Her stomach must have been perpetually in knots.
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I agree with you. I have no idea how anyone could churn out so many words in so little time. Novels, letters, journal articles, coupled with travel, social events, theatricals and in later life his readings.
Have you read The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth? This biography tells Catherine’s story with both fairness and sympathy.
Peter wrote: "Have you read The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth? ..."I haven't, Peter, but I think I'll add it to my to-read list. Thanks for reminding me about it.
I couldn't find The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth at any library in my state (shocking!) except in an electronic format, so based on Peter and John's excellent reviews, I headed to Amazon and have purchased a nice hardback copy for my personal Dickens bookshelves. :-)
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Mary Lou
I’m sure you will enjoy the biography, but good grief, poor Catherine is somewhat inaccessible to the public. One could see that even in the 21C Catherine is seen as being unimportant.
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https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/...
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https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/..."
Oh Kim, this link and the information about Van Gogh is wonderful. Thanks for posting it for us.
Really interesting, Kim. Who knew van Gogh painted Stephen Blackpool?
Kim wrote: "How Vincent Van Gosh was inspired by the works of Charles Dickens:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/..."
Oh wow.
Now I have to go to that museum this summer, obviously xD
https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/..."
Oh wow.
Now I have to go to that museum this summer, obviously xD
Jantine wrote: "Oh wow.Now I have to go to that museum this summer..."
My kids were supposed to have met in Amsterdam last spring and this was on their list of places to go. Sadly, Covid.
That is so sad indeed :-(
I have been to the Kröller Möller once, about twenty years ago. Obviously I did not appreciate it as much back then as I would now. Still it's way too easy to go for other places. Still have not been to the Rijksmuseum in my whole life, I might want to make use of the lack of tourists while that lasts xD
I have been to the Kröller Möller once, about twenty years ago. Obviously I did not appreciate it as much back then as I would now. Still it's way too easy to go for other places. Still have not been to the Rijksmuseum in my whole life, I might want to make use of the lack of tourists while that lasts xD
First, apologies if this isn't the correct forum for such a question. I am currently in deep research on a number of Dickens's early associations on the legal reporting circuit. Although I have a grounding in law studies of the current era and a fair knowledge of the patois/legal practices of the early Victorian era, I'm still finding this large stack of legal reports to be fairly impenetrable. Don't laugh - but is anyone able to recommend a book on Victorian law which was published in the last 50 years? I'm only finding contemporaneous resources (equally opaque) and nothing that answers.
Sorry, Sarah. I'm not familiar with any. Perhaps a librarian could help you track down something?
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of circumstances which should link Lord Byron and Charles Dickens with the late George Manville Fenn. But there is such a link in existence, and one of a very interesting character. Among the curiosities treasured up for years by Mr. Fenn is a letter in Dickens’s autograph upon a sheet of old-fashioned, blue, wire-woven notepaper. It remained for years before Mr. Fenn received it upon the bill- file of the tradesman to whom it was sent, with the result that it is pierced by three rough holes where the wore passed through the original folds of the time-stained paper. The letter relates to Lord Byron’s flute.
Dated in the older novelist’s characteristic way, “ Devonshire
Terrace, Twentieth June, 1848,” the document reads :
“ Mr. Charles Dickens is much obliged to Mr. Claridge for the offer
of Lord Byron’s flute. But, as Mr. Dickens cannot play that
instrument himself, and has nobody in his house who can, he begs
to decline the purchase, with thanks.”
As Mr. Fenn used to say, in showing the relic to his friends,
“ You cannot see a smile upon the paper, but there seems to be
one playing among the words.”
One thinks of the melancholy young gentleman at Todgers’s and the flute serenade, and of Dick Swiveller’s mournful nocturnal performances on the same instrument when Sophy Wackles had been lost to him for ever. — Westminster Gazette , September 6, 1900.
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Of the personal esteem, the affection even, that was felt for Dickens in his lifetime by people who were strangers to him, here is an anecdote told by his son, Mr. Henry Fielding Dickens, the distinguished K.C. As readers of Forster’s biography know, Dickens used to take an interest in the sports of the young men in the neighbourhood of his Kentish home, played cricket with them, and acted as president of their club. As he was sitting in the tent one afternoon keeping the score, a sergeant of the line came in and, making a bow, said —
“ Is Mr. Charles Dickens here ? ”
“ Yes,” said Dickens, “ here I am.”
The soldier waited a moment and said, “ I ask your pardon,
sir, but may I look at you for a little while so as to get your features
in my mind ? ”
“ Oh, certainly,” replied Dickens; “I will go on with my score.”
The soldier waited a minute or two and then said, “ It would
be a great honour, sir, if I might shake your hand.”
“ There's my hand,” said Dickens, “ and all the luck in the world
to you.”
“ Good-bye, sir, and God bless you,” was the reply ; “I’m going
to India this week.”
Dickens said that no other compliment ever touched him as
that did.
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Bret Harte told me the little history of that ever-green poem
[Dickens in Camp], of how it was written on the day that the news
of the death of Dickens reached him at San Rafael, California, while the last sheets of the July Overland , already edited by him, were going to press. After stifling the emotion that he felt (for he dearly loved his “ Boz ”), he hurriedly sent his first and only draft of the verses, which were destined to live so long, to the office at San Francisco. They were written in two or three hours, and at his urgent request the publication of the magazine was held back until they could appear.
On the day when, amidst “ a rain of tears and flowers ” — many
flowers brought by unknown hands, many tears shed from unknown eyes — Charles Dickens was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, a letter in his handwriting (the magic handwriting that brought and still brings merriment and comfort to millions), addressed to Bret Harte, was on its way across the Atlantic. It was a letter in his usual hearty, breezy style, telling the young author how highly he thought of his work, asking him to contribute to All the Year Round (of which he was then editor), and bidding him, when he came to England, which he was “ certain soon to do,” to visit him at his delightful home at Gad’s Hill — “ a spot with which you are no doubt already familiar in connection with one William Shakespeare and a certain Sir John Falstaff.”
Bret Harte’ s first visit to London was perforce a short one. There
he found his old friend Joaquin Miller, who concerning it made this record :
“ He came to me in London late in the seventies, on his way to
the Consulate at Crefeld. He could not rest until he stood by
the grave of Dickens. But I drove him here and I drove him there
to see the living. The dead would keep. But at last, one twilight,
I led him by the hand to where some plain letters, in a broad, flat
stone, just below' the bust of Thackeray, read ‘ Charles Dickens.’
“ Bret Harte is dead now, and it will not hurt him in politics,
where they seem to want hard and heartless men for high places not hurt him in politics or in anything anywhere — to tell the plain truth, how he tried to speak, but choked up, how tears ran down
and fell on the stone as he bowed his bare head very low ; how his hand trembled as I led him away.”
Bret Harte was, indeed, a true believer in the genius of Charles
Dickens. His knowledge of his books was unrivalled, and he could
not only enjoy his humor, but appreciate to the utmost his pathos.
He could have passed Charles Calverley’s famous Pickwick Examination Paper with honors .
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Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;
Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew;
And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of "Little Nell."
Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,—for the reader
Was youngest of them all,—
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;
The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows,
Wandered and lost their way.
And so in mountain solitudes—o'ertaken
As by some spell divine—
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire:
And he who wrought that spell?—
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths intwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,—
This spray of Western pine!
Thanks for this detailed material. I enjoy learning about Dickens from all perspectives. The Lemon - Dickens friendship was a long one, and it was Dickens who asked Lemon to help Catherine Dickens during the marital separation. Lemon did too good of a job, and Dickens became angry.
The more I read the more I believe that Dickens had two lives. The first was his youth and life with Catherine. The second was Dickens’s later years spent with Ellen Turnan.