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Charles Dickens: An Authentic Account of His Life & Times
Book by Fido, Martin
140 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
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October 4, 2012
This is a short biography with no pretensions of being comprehensive or scholarly (there isn't a hint of a bibliography), but it has lots and lots of pictures (hooray!) and is written rather charmingly. I don't have anything particularly intelligent to say about the book itself, so what follows are some impressions, new to me since I've not read any previous biography of Dickens.
I liked learning about the influence of popular theater on Dickens' writing: "If, for our taste, Dickens' serious moments are too crudely melodramatic, we are appropriately compensated by the rich entertainment from the comic illegitimate drama which he has preserved for us." (31)
The one instance in which Martin Fido frames an action by Dickens in a way I find troubling: as an example of Dickens' "taste for ... elaborate horseplay": "A young lady at Broadstairs was distressed when Dickens jokingly professed a passion for her, and held her under the pier while the tide came in, ruining her dress." (53) I don't think Fido agrees with Dickens that this was a good joke, but -- horseplay? I'd be distressed too.
Dickens on his first tour of the United States in 1842: "To a [pro-slavery] southerner who asked if he believed in the Bible, '"Yes," I said, "but if any man could prove to me that it sanctions slavery, I would place no further credence on it."'" (56)
Fido thinks that Dickens' best work for society, undertaken with Angela Burdett Coutts ("the only woman whom Dickens treated with respect as an intellectual equal, without romantic idealisation"), was a home for "fallen women." I'd have to learn a lot more about this project to decide what I think about it, but it does seem like Dickens' involvement made it a nicer place than it would otherwise have been: "He advised [Coutts] not to lay too heavy a stress on reform as a matter of penitence and recompense to society; reform was a way by which the girls could find happier lives for themselves." It sounds like the best work the home did was in giving women who were forced into sex work by poverty, security and a sense of self-respect and autonomy while they learned new skills.
Horrible things Dickens said about women he had crushes on:
1. About Christiana Weller, whom Dickens inaccurately predicted would die young simply because she was shy and innocent: "I could better bear her passing from my arms to Heaven than I could endure the thought of coldly passing into the world again to see her no more." He was writing to his friend J.J. Thompson, who married Christiana. Dickens had been married when he met her.
2. About Maria Beadnell, whom Dickens had loved when he was as young man, but didn't marry, upon meeting her again 20 years later. The really horrible thing is not what he wrote about her to his friends (at least not that Fido quotes) but his caricature of her as Flora in Little Dorrit.
When Maria first re-entered Dickens' life, it was by letter. Although they were both married, Dickens waxed very romantic and hopeful about the return of lost youthful love. Maria's letter warned him that she had become "toothless, fat, old and ugly," but Dickens ignored this, so they continued to exchange letters. Dickens then arranged for Maria to visit him at a time when his wife was away. But as soon as he saw the actually middle-aged Maria in person, his interest in her disappeared. It seems that she tried to maintain her renewed friendship with him, but he avoided her until she gave up.
This is the encounter that inspired the character Flora, whom I enjoyed reading about but whose memory is now sour to me as I imagine what pain Little Dorrit must have given Maria. In that novel, unmarried Arthur Clennam returns from twenty years in China to find that the woman he wasn't allowed to marry in his youth is now a widow. He goes to visit her, vaguely optimistic, but finds that she is now unattractive to him and very silly. She understands perfectly well that she isn't as pretty and young as she once was, but still harbors romantic hopes of Arthur and enjoys a fantasy in which they still have to court each other in secret. In other words, not only has Dickens exaggerated Maria's ridiculous-to-him appearance and behavior, but he's given Flora all of Dickens' romantic idealization of youthful love, which the real Maria was sensible enough to avoid.
3. About his wife, Kate -- there are endless horrible things that Dickens wrote about Kate. Regarding her depression: "It is her misery to live in some fatal atmosphere which slays everyone to whom she should be dearest."
4. About Ellen Ternan: "I wish an Ogre with seven heads (and no particular evidence of brains in the whole of them) had taken the Princess whom I adore--you have no idea how intensely I adore her!--to this stronghold on the top of a high series of mountains, and there tied her up by the hair. Nothing would suit me half as well this day, as climbing after her, sword in hand, and either winning her or being killed."
I liked learning about the influence of popular theater on Dickens' writing: "If, for our taste, Dickens' serious moments are too crudely melodramatic, we are appropriately compensated by the rich entertainment from the comic illegitimate drama which he has preserved for us." (31)
The one instance in which Martin Fido frames an action by Dickens in a way I find troubling: as an example of Dickens' "taste for ... elaborate horseplay": "A young lady at Broadstairs was distressed when Dickens jokingly professed a passion for her, and held her under the pier while the tide came in, ruining her dress." (53) I don't think Fido agrees with Dickens that this was a good joke, but -- horseplay? I'd be distressed too.
Dickens on his first tour of the United States in 1842: "To a [pro-slavery] southerner who asked if he believed in the Bible, '"Yes," I said, "but if any man could prove to me that it sanctions slavery, I would place no further credence on it."'" (56)
Fido thinks that Dickens' best work for society, undertaken with Angela Burdett Coutts ("the only woman whom Dickens treated with respect as an intellectual equal, without romantic idealisation"), was a home for "fallen women." I'd have to learn a lot more about this project to decide what I think about it, but it does seem like Dickens' involvement made it a nicer place than it would otherwise have been: "He advised [Coutts] not to lay too heavy a stress on reform as a matter of penitence and recompense to society; reform was a way by which the girls could find happier lives for themselves." It sounds like the best work the home did was in giving women who were forced into sex work by poverty, security and a sense of self-respect and autonomy while they learned new skills.
Horrible things Dickens said about women he had crushes on:
1. About Christiana Weller, whom Dickens inaccurately predicted would die young simply because she was shy and innocent: "I could better bear her passing from my arms to Heaven than I could endure the thought of coldly passing into the world again to see her no more." He was writing to his friend J.J. Thompson, who married Christiana. Dickens had been married when he met her.
2. About Maria Beadnell, whom Dickens had loved when he was as young man, but didn't marry, upon meeting her again 20 years later. The really horrible thing is not what he wrote about her to his friends (at least not that Fido quotes) but his caricature of her as Flora in Little Dorrit.
When Maria first re-entered Dickens' life, it was by letter. Although they were both married, Dickens waxed very romantic and hopeful about the return of lost youthful love. Maria's letter warned him that she had become "toothless, fat, old and ugly," but Dickens ignored this, so they continued to exchange letters. Dickens then arranged for Maria to visit him at a time when his wife was away. But as soon as he saw the actually middle-aged Maria in person, his interest in her disappeared. It seems that she tried to maintain her renewed friendship with him, but he avoided her until she gave up.
This is the encounter that inspired the character Flora, whom I enjoyed reading about but whose memory is now sour to me as I imagine what pain Little Dorrit must have given Maria. In that novel, unmarried Arthur Clennam returns from twenty years in China to find that the woman he wasn't allowed to marry in his youth is now a widow. He goes to visit her, vaguely optimistic, but finds that she is now unattractive to him and very silly. She understands perfectly well that she isn't as pretty and young as she once was, but still harbors romantic hopes of Arthur and enjoys a fantasy in which they still have to court each other in secret. In other words, not only has Dickens exaggerated Maria's ridiculous-to-him appearance and behavior, but he's given Flora all of Dickens' romantic idealization of youthful love, which the real Maria was sensible enough to avoid.
3. About his wife, Kate -- there are endless horrible things that Dickens wrote about Kate. Regarding her depression: "It is her misery to live in some fatal atmosphere which slays everyone to whom she should be dearest."
4. About Ellen Ternan: "I wish an Ogre with seven heads (and no particular evidence of brains in the whole of them) had taken the Princess whom I adore--you have no idea how intensely I adore her!--to this stronghold on the top of a high series of mountains, and there tied her up by the hair. Nothing would suit me half as well this day, as climbing after her, sword in hand, and either winning her or being killed."
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