There is something about Charles
Dickens' imaginative power that defies explanation in purely biographical
terms. Nevertheless, his biography shows the source of that power and is the
best place to begin to define it.
The second child of John and Elizabeth
Dickens, Charles was born on February 7, 1812, near Portsmouth on England's
south coast. At that time John Dickens was stationed in Portsmouth as a clerk
in the Navy Pay Office. The family was of lower-middle-class origins, John
having come from servants and Elizabeth from minor bureaucrats. Dickens' father
was vivacious and generous but had an unfortunate tendency to live beyond his
means. his mother was affectionate and rather inept in practical matters.
Dickens later used his father as the basis for Mr. Micawber and portrayed is
mother as Mrs. Nickleby in A Tale of Two Cities.
After a transfer to London in 1814, the
family moved to Chatham, near Rochester, three years later. Dickens was about
five at the time, and for the next five years his life was pleasant. Taught to
read by his mother, he devoured his fathers' small collection of classics,
which included Shakespeare, Cervantes, Defoe, Smollet, Fielding, and Goldsmith.
These left a permanent mark on his imagination; their effect on his art was
quite important. dickens also went to some performances of Shakespeare and
formed a lifelong attachment to the theater. He attended school during this
period and showed himself to be a rather solitary, observant, good-natured
child with some talent for comic routines, which his father encouraged. In
retrospect Dickens looked upon these years as a kind of golden age. His first
novel, The Pickwick Papers, is in part an attempt to recreate their idyllic
nature: it rejoices in innocence and the youthful spirit, and its happiest
scenes take place in that precise geographical area.
In the light of the family's move back to
London, where financial difficulties overtook the Dickens's, the time in
Chatham must have seemed glorious indeed. The family moved into the shabby
suburb of Camden Town, and Dickens was taken out of school and set to menial
jobs about the household. In time, to help augment the family income, Dickens
was given a job in a blacking factory among rough companions. At the time his father
was imprisoned for debt, but was released three months later by a small legacy.
Dickens related to his friend, John Forster, long afterward, that he felt a
deep sense of abandonment at this time; the major themes of his novels can be
traced to this period. His sympathy for the victimized, his fascination with
prisons and money, the desire to vindicate his heroes' status as gentlemen, and
the idea of London as an awesome, lively, and rather threatening environment
all reflect these experiences. No doubt this temporary collapse of his parents'
ability to protect him made a vivid expression
on him. Out on his own for a time at twelve
years of age, Dickens acquired a lasting self-reliance, a driving ambition, and
a boundless energy that went into everything he did.
At thirteen Dickens went back to school
for two years and then took a job in a lawyers office. Dissatisfied with the
work, he learned shorthand and became a freelance court reporter in 1828. The
job was seasonal and allowed him to do a good deal of reading in the British
Museum. At the age of twenty he became a full-fledged journalist, working for
three papers in succession. In the next four or five years he acquired the
reputation of being the fastest and most accurate parliamentary reporter in
London. The value of this period was that Dickens gained a sound, firsthand
knowledge of London and the provinces.
Dickens was very active physically. He
loved taking long walks, riding horses, making journeys, entertaining friends,
dining well, playing practical jokes. He enjoyed games of charades with his
family, was an excellent amateur magician, and practiced hypnotism. One tends
to share Shaw's opinion that Dickens, in his social life, was always on stage.
He was like an eternal Master of Ceremonies, for the most part: flamboyant,
observant, quick, dynamic, full of zest. Yet he was also restless, subject to
fits of depression, and hot tempered, so that at times he must have been nearly
intolerable to live with, however agreeable he was as a companion.
In view of his very strenuous life it was
not surprising that he died at fifty-eight from a stroke. At his death on June
9, 1870, Dickens was wealthy, immensely popular, and the best novelist the
Victorian age produced. He was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster
Abbey, and people mourned his death the world over.
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