Biography

[b]CHARLES DICKENS [/b][br /]
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The life of Charles Dickens was as crammed with color and movement as his novels. The world that he lived in was not much different from the world of his novels. He felt the joys and sorrows of the people around him as deeply as his characters did. His own adventures were just as painful and as funny as those of Pip or of Mr Pickwick.[br /]
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[b]Birth[/b][br /]
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This greatest of English novelists was born on February 7, 1812, at Portsea, Portsmouth. Just a few hours before his birth, his mother Elizabeth attended, with his father John Dickens, a ball in the Rope Walk. It was when they returned in the wee hours of the morning that Charles was born. The happy little family lived at 387, Mile End Terrace, Portsea. But after a while John Dickens got into the first of the many financial troubles that would blight him for the rest of his life. The family moved to 18, Hawke Street in 1812, in an attempt to make ends meet. They had a respectable and comfortable lodgings but the family had to move again, this time to a house on Wish Street. He was only two when his father had to return to London. The family moved their lodgings to 10, Norfolk Street, near Middlesex Hospital. The war against Napoleon had ended and there was no work to be secured at Portsmouth Dockyard. John Dickens had got employment with the Pay Office at Somerset House.[br /]
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[b]Traveling Through Rough Weather[/b][br /]
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Those were rough times. The prices were rising and money was tight. There were riots and agitations in the country. The War had hastened the process of change that was taking place in English society because of the capitalism. Some men had become rich and many had become poor. For people like the Dickenses, social collapse was just a step away from solvency.[br /]
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They somehow managed to ride through. In the beginning of 1817, John Dickens was ordered to move to Chatham where there was a large government Dockyard. The Dickens family was larger now, with Albert born in 1813 and Letitia
born in 1816. His mother’s sister also came to live with them after her husband, a Naval Lieutenant had drowned at Rio de Janeiro. But the family was more prosperous now. John Dickens had been given a raise in his salary and was earning nearly £ 300 a year. They were now living at 2, Ordnance Terrace. It was a three-storey brick house that they rented. There were gardens in the front and the back and some trees. The time he spent here was perhaps the most pleasant of his childhood. The house was cheerful for John Dickens was a jovial man who encouraged his children to enjoy themselves when times were good. There were parties for all occasions and there were circuses and pantomimes to attend. As Charles grew older his father would take him for walks into the countryside, telling him stories all the way. There were stories from Mary Weller also, who was the children’s nursemaid. Though, these were more often than not frightening narratives of ghosts and haunting. As Charles grew up he would spin tales for himself and tell them to his sisters and friends.[br /]
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[b]The Early Traits[/b][br /]
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He had inherited his father’s love for theatre and his mother’s talent for music and mimicry. He soon developed a whole set of comic songs and recitations with his sister Fanny who played the piano. His father encouraged them in their performances and often asked them to perform before guests or took them to the Mitre Inn where, with a table as an impromptu stage, they sang and performed. They were awarded with a tip and given snacks. The Theatre Royal was nearby too. After he was eight he was taken frequently to the theatre by James Lambert, the son of Dr Lambert who had married his widowed aunt. The Lamberts, who were interested in amateur performances, also put up plays at the Ordnance Hospital and make-believe world and the glamour of costumers became familiar for the Dickens’ children.[br /]
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[b]Once Again On Move[/b][br /]
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After four years of such a life at Ordnance Terrace, the pretense of prosperity was wearing thin. Each passing year had decreased the gap between the manner in which the Dickens family lived and the manner in which they aspired to live. With an increased salary John Dickens should have been able to manage despite the birth of two more children. But, the family had to move again this time to a smaller establishment to 18, St Mary’s Place. There was a huge difference between Ordnance Terrace and St Mary’s Place. 20 years ago it had been a good address but it was not so any more with the taverns all around and the beef shops and lodging-houses.[br /]
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[b]Lonely Childhood[/b][br /]
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Charles spent much of his time in his attic room, reading. He was also sent to school with his sister Fanny who later took a scholarship to the Royal School of Music and escaped much of the hardship that the family had to face. William Giles, an intelligent graduate from Oxford, ran the school. His father was the minister of the Baptist Church that stood near the Dickens’ place. Charles liked school though he was not robust enough to play rough games with his comrades.[br /]
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He would watch the boys play in the churchyard and read, as he said later, as if for life. It was the host of books – Roderick Random, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones and other classics that John Dickens had ordered in one of his impulsive moods that according to him, "Kept alive his fancy and hope of something beyond that place and time."[br /]
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John Dickens was called back to work at Somerset House again and the family moved to 16, Bayham Street in Camden Town, leaving Charles behind to finish his term with Mr Giles.[br /]
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The house in Camden Town was a sharp decline in style, from Chatham. Charles, expecting that his parents would continue his schooling, left Mr Giles. But no such move was made. The only solace he had were the books that were lent to him by his uncle Thomas Barrow’s landlady. He often went to see his uncle who had broken his leg and had taken lodgings at Soho. He was also taken to see Charles Huffam, his godfather who used to show off his comic singing to his friends.[br /]
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Charles had been brought up to believe that if he worked hard enough he would some day be able to live in Gad’s Hill place, the majestic house that he was sometimes taken to see. But his dreams and fancies seemed to have come to an end as misfortune befell them again. John Dickens made a deed with his creditors to pay his debts. His wife, in a frantic effort to make some money decided to open a school called 'Mrs Dickens’ Establishment’, which no one ever came to and the money that was put into it, went down the drain. The family did not have much to eat and they were driven steadily into an even more hopeless state. He did not attend school but he was learning about the darker side of life.[br /]
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[b]The Doomed Lad[/b][br /]
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Worse things were to come. Charles, just two days after his 12th birthday, was sent to work at Warren’s Blacking House, through the kindly intentions of James Lambert. At six shillings a week, he worked from 8 in the morning to 8 in the night, with half an hour for dinner and another half hour break for tea inbetween. He had always had a desire to learn and to be distinguished but this seemed to be the end of that hope. Charles was in agony. He felt neglected and hopeless. And just 11 days after he had started to work, his father was taken to Marshal Sea, the debtor’s prison. It was at the Blacking factory that he met a boy called Bob Fagin who was to later appear as the artful dodger in Oliver Twist. Throughout his days he observed the people he met and most of them appeared somewhere or the other in his works.[br /]
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The family now moved to Marshal Sea and lived there. This left Charles lonelier than ever, for he did not move in with them. He did go and meet them and spend his holidays with them. But this did nothing to make him feel better.[br /]
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On April 26, 1824, John Dickens’ mother died, leaving him £ 450 with which he settled his debts.[br /]
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The family returned to Camden Town and John Dickens decided that Charles should attend school again. [br /]
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The time that he spent at the Blacking warehouse could not have been more than four months but it made a very painful and lasting impression on him. He identified with the homeless, the orphans, and the downtrodden. His whole life became a journey for the search of the things that he had left behind with his childhood.[br /]
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[b]Trying The Horizons[/b][br /]
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In May 1825, he worked as an office boy for Ellis and Blackmore, a firm of attorneys. He had also been going to school for the past three years. He attended the Wellington House Academy where he was now a senior student. He also made rapid progress with the firm and his salary rose from 10 shillings to 13 and six, and then to 15 shillings. But he found the work dull and turned towards journalism, which was what his father had been engaged in for the past two years.[br /]
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John Dickens had retired from the Naval Office with an allowance of £ 145 per year, which was not enough. He learned shorthand and in a year was one of the Parliamentary Corps of the British Press. Charles relentlessly tried to learn shorthand and explored London. He knew London thoroughly. He knew its streets and more, he knew its people.[br /]
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[b]Step Into The World Of Journalism[/b][br /]
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He went out to dinner and to the theatre but never lost sight of his goal. He became a freelance reporter on the Doctors Common. At 18 he applied for a reader’s ticket at the British Museum. For the next three years he read industriously. He grew tired of reporting law in shorthand and took up acting, which he learned and studied with vigor. The very day on which he was to report for an audition at the Mathews’ theatre he had a bad inflammation and cold so he wrote to inform that he would renew his application the coming year. He never did that because at that time he got the opportunity to be a reporter for the Parliament, a chance that he had been waiting for. Sometime in 1832, he was taken on the newspaper that his uncle John Henry Barrow had started. Not only this, he also joined the reporting staff of the True Sun that was started on March 5, 1832. He rose rapidly to a prominent position among the reporters. He resigned from True Sun as his position at The Mirror Of Parliament; his uncle’s paper was now very high. He had become a sort of sub-editor.[br /]
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[b]The Heart-break [/b][br /]

It was in 1829 that he met his first love Maria Beadnell, whose father George Beadnell was connected with the banking establishment of Smith, Paye and Smith. He later became the manager.[br /]
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She enraptured Charles and she had nothing against a flirtation with a good-looking boy. But her parents did not think he was fit to marry Maria and on March 20, 1831, she was married to Daniel Lloyd. He was caught between pride and anguished passion. The rest of his life he was under the shadow of his lost love, which made so deep an impression on him that he was always wary of showing his affection to anybody, even to his own children. It left scars so deep that they could not be healed even by a lifetime of triumph that was to dawn upon him.[br /]
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[b]Life In Publication[/b][br /]
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The Mirror could not pay its staff well except during the parliamentary season and so Dickens applied to the Morning Chronicle but did not get a post.[br /]
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He then began to write short fictional sketches about London life and the people he had observed. They were printed in the Monthly Magazine. In August he started signing these sketches with the signature ‘Boz’. At the same time the Morning Chronicle hired him.[br /]
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Here, he led an exciting and varied life under its editor, John Easthope who was an irascible man known to his subordinates as ‘Blasthope’. He published more of his essays, writing under the name of ‘Boz’ and those were widely acclaimed. He was even paid the compliment of them being stolen by popular dramatists. By 1834, the fact that Dickens was Boz had become an open secret. After the series of sketches that he was contributing to the Evening Chronicle drew to a close, he began a new series for Bell’s Life in London under the pseudonym ‘Tibbs’. He worked all the time and life was never dull. There were always things to report. He even wrote a libretto for an operetta that John Hullah, a young composer was writing. Sketches by Boz was published on his 24th birthday. He also had an agreement with Macrone, the man who had published it.[br /]
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[b]Marriage[/b][br /]
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Three days after his birthday he was commissioned to write Pickwick Papers in episodes by the publishing firm of Chapman and Hall. On the crest of this wave of success, he was married to Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of a fellow editor, George Hogarth. She was quite unlike his first love whom he had stopped seeing three years ago. Before his marriage he worked feverishly to clear his desk so that he would be free for the honeymoon. They were married on April 2, 1836. Catherine had moods of ill humor and was unreasonable in her inability to see that he could not neglect his work.[br /]
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[b]The First Novel And The Fame[/b][br /]
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Meanwhile, Pickwick Papers, which was appearing in serial form, had received a much colder reception than the sketches. He had to finish the numerous projects he had taken up. Thankfully, Pickwick Papers turned the corner. He was now getting many offers to write, most of which he took up. Just past 25, Dickens had become world famous.[br /]
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At this point of time, he was asked by Richard Bentley to be editor of Bentley’s Miscellany, a magazine that he was planning to establish. He made arrangements with Bentley and resigned from the Morning Chronicle. He got into a conflict with Macrone who had published sketches, over his new work with Bentley’s Miscellany. With Bentley he met many of the magazine’s contributors and deepened his acquaintances. During these days he also met John Forster who later became his best friend.[br /]
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ckens family was growing larger with new entrants into the family in form of Charles Gulliford Boz D born on 6th January 1837. Their second child, a baby-girl, Mary was born on 6th March 1838. The Dickenses now lived in Doughty Street with Mary, Catherine’s younger sister and Charles’ younger brother, Frederick, who was 16. He was also writing Oliver Twist, that was to appear in Miscellany and he was also its editor. While he was writing Oliver Twist, his first novel, the family moved to 48, Doughty Street, from their first home at Furnival’s Inn.[br /]
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[b]The Highs And Lows Of Life[/b][br /]
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His sister-in-law, Mary died suddenly a few days after the celebration of the 1st Anniversary of Pickwick’s appearance. Her death left him devastated. Mary held a special place in his heart and her death left a void in family that could not be filled. Images of her are reflected in his later work in the portraits of Little Dorrit and Little Nell. In 1838, Nicholas Nickleby made its appearance and the family moved again, this time to 1, Devonshire Terrace. Dickens moved from triumph to triumph. But troubles never left him. He got into another conflict about finances, this time with Bentley regarding the magazine and the work he put into it.[br /]
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He then established Master Humphrey’s Clock, a weekly magazine in 1840-41. Keeping in mind the mistakes that he had made with financial agreements before, this time he worked out a better arrangement. It was in this magazine that Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop appeared in a serial form in over two years.[br /]
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[b]The Social Cause[/b][br /]
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It was at 2 o’clock in the afternoon on September 20, 1840, that he wrote the last lines of Nicholas Nickleby over which he had worked quite hard. On the 29th of October Dickens’ third child, Kate Macready was born. Barnaby Rudge kept him occupied; so did his other writings but he somehow found time to read the works that aspiring authors sent him and wrote to them with his comments. Wherever he looked, his mind ran in every direction. He read with anger a report of the Children’s Employment Commission that stated that even small children were ruthlessly made to work in the mines. He arranged to write an article in the Edinburgh Review with a number of scathing comments. He also wrote some angry rhymed squibs on the opponents of the factory regulation, in the Examiner during the summer of 1841. He was offered a seat in the parliament that he refused. He would not compromise his independence by putting himself under any obligation. It was his concern for public welfare that made him refuse a seat in the parliament and it was this same concern, which was the motivating factor for all his works.[br /]
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In June 1841, the Dickenses went to Scotland, where he was lionized. They had reached Edinburgh on the 22nd and on 25th, there was a public dinner held in his honor. After rounds of lunches, dinners and tours around Scotland, they returned to London in Mid-July. In 1841, Catherine gave birth to Walter Dickens.[br /]
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[b]Visit To America[/b][br /]
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In 1842, He took America by storm. He had decided to do an American notebook, the idea delighted Chapman and Hall as well. He was stormed with invitations and was lionized till it swelled into embarrassing proportions. He received so many letters that he had to employ a secretary to take care of them. His mention, in a speech about the need for international copyright law, led to severe criticism from the newspapers. It was not till 50 years later that America got into an agreement on international copyright law with England. He visited hospitals for the insane, prisons, schools for blind, deaf and dumb children and reform schools. He also visited factories and mills. While in Washington he met President Tyler and attended Parliament sessions.[br /]
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He wanted to visit the south and see what slavery was like first hand. In Richmond, he was appalled by the conditions of the slaves and the attitudes of their masters towards them. Dickens returned from America with a sense of disappointment. He wrote to his friend William Macready :[br /]
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"…this is not the republic I came to see, this is not the republic of my imagination."[br /]
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Four months after returning, he had written American Notes, where he not only attacked slavery but also blamed America’s lack of general information on its press. In his next novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, he sent Martin to America and continued to write about his feeling towards it. The American response to both these books was naturally quite negative. But eventually, the hostility lessened and his popularity was restored.[br /]
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[b]The Social Concern[/b][br /]
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In 1843, he again took up the cause of international copyright law. He wrote A Christmas Carol, which became immensely popular. Another Capri boy, Francis Jeffery was born on January 15, 1844. In the next few years the Dickens family traveled in Europe. Sometimes they were in Italy, at times in Switzerland or in Paris. The rest of the time they spent in London. During 1846, he published Pictures of Italy. Dombey and Son and then the semi-autobiographical David Copperfield followed. He also carried out his many philanthropic activities and established a ‘Home for Homeless Women.’[br /]
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[b]The Later Years[/b][br /]
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The next few years were trying times. His marriage was becoming increasingly troublesome. He was going to be permanently separated from Catherine. He divorced her in 1858. He was taking interest in the theatre again and met actress Ellen Ternan with whom he developed a relationship, which he maintained for the rest of his life. He was paying increasing attention to social concerns and turned to journalism again. In 1850, he launched Household Words, a periodical that he later merged with All Year Round.[br /]
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[b]Few More Masterpieces[/b][br /]
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In the next few years he wrote Bleak House, Hard Times and Little Dorrit. It was as a result of all this writing that he could buy ‘Gad’s Hill Place’, the house of his dreams. It was after this, in 1859 that he made his detour into historical fiction and wrote A Tale Of Two Cities.[br /]
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It was in 1858 that he began giving his popular readings. He loved the theatre and put himself, heart and soul into the part he was playing. The readings that he had been giving in England and in America proved to be a strain and led to a breakdown in 1869.[br /]
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In 1860, he published more of his journalistic writings in The Commercial Traveler. Great Expectations appeared in serial form during 1860-61.[br /]
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[b]Personal Loss[/b][br /]
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Around 1860 spring, Elizabeth Dickens saw the sings of senility, probably incontinent and in need of constant attention. Charles continued to take responsibility of her care and support. During her last years she had become dependent on Charles. The young boy who had so keenly felt the want of mothering was forced to become his mother’s keeper. On September 12, 1863, Elizabeth Dickens died. For her grave stone he wrote the cold words Here also lie the remains of Elizabeth Dickens who died on September 12th 1863 Aged 73 years.[br /]
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Walter, who had been hospitalized for more than six years was heard talking to another patient on New Year’s Day, 1864 about his arrangements for going home.[br /]
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He was too excited and coughed violently. With a great gush of blood from his mouth, he fell down and died in a few seconds. He was suffering from an extensive and perfectly incurable Aneurysm of the Aorta, which had busted. The child suffered for too long and even Charles had reasons to believe that the boy would rather die than suffer.[br /]
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[b]The Mortal End[/b][br /]
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He wrote his last novel to appear in 20 parts after that. This was Our Mutual Friend. In 1870, after a series of readings, he started writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He never completed it. He died on 9th June 1870 and was buried with honor at the Westminster Abbey. Thomas Carlyle in a letter of condolence to his friend Forster wrote:[br /]
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"I am profoundly sorry for you and indeed for myself and for us all. It is an event worldwide; a unique of talents suddenly extinct; and has "eclipsed", we too may say "the harmless gaiety of nations". No death since 1866 [which was the year in which Carlyle’s wife died] has fallen on me with such a stroke. No literary man’s hitherto ever did. The good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickens - every inch of him an Honest Man."[br /]
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