Great Britons
On the 150th anniversary of the writer’s death, Stephen Roberts looks back on the life of one of our most famous writers
Charles Dickens by Stephen Roberts
happy marriage ended badly. Dickens even wrote that Catherine was lucky he did not have her put in an asylum (a shockingly common misdeed of Victorian husbands) though he never attempted to do this.
Although we associate him with London, he actually travelled quite widely both around this country and to Europe, visiting places such as Genoa, Lausanne and Boulogne. Once established as a famous writer, he headed to America (in 1842 then 186768), the latter being the more satisfactory of the two trips from Dickens’s perspective. He lectured, complained about his work being pirated and gave public readings of his prose. He was appalled by the slavery he witnessed in 1842 condemning it in his first travelogue American Notes.
Dickens was a driving force behind the International Copyright Law and though the law didn’t pass until after his death, he fought for it his whole life. Sketches by Boz (a collection of short pieces written by Dickens), was published early in 1836, with Charles receiving £150 for the copyright. He’d later buy it back for 11 times that figure.
There are plaques on buildings around the country recording that Dickens gave his readings there (Liverpool has one, for example). He was as far removed from a one-trick pony as it is possible to be. Add into the mix private theatricals (his early ambitions had also been towards acting), speeches, numerous letters, pamphlets, plays and running a periodical (firstly Household Words, then All the Year Round).
Dickens was certainly taken from us prematurely. He died in June 1870 from a stroke, when he was aged just 58 on the fifth anniversary of the
Staplehurst rail crash, in which he was a passenger. Seven carriages fell from a cast-iron bridge that was under repair and ten passengers died in the disaster.
Although he used the railways in his subsequent writing (for example The Signal-Man), he was always a nervous passenger after the crash. He was also a workaholic and wouldn’t slow up. The Mystery of Edwin
Drood was left unfinished and published posthumously.
The author is buried at Westminster Abbey in Poet’s Corner. He had requested a simple funeral at a Kent cathedral, but as the cemetery was full, a vault was dug in the Lady Chapel of Rochester Cathedral. However, in a twist worthy of one of his own literary works, by the time the grave was ready, Dickens’s remains had already been whisked off to Westminster to boost the Abbey’s standing. It leaves us with the sad fact that our national treasure rests in a place he did not wish to.
In more recent times while Dickens’s regard as a great writer remains intact, his reputation as a great man has come under fire with accusations of cruelty towards Catherine, anti-Semitism and, more recently, racism. All of which can be weighed against the values and attitudes of the time and a lifetime of radical campaigning for social justice on such issues as poverty, homelessness, child exploitation, education and the abolition of slavery.