‘MUCKHEAP OF OLD SLANDERS”

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 292, 10 September 1928, Page 12

‘MUCKHEAP OF OLD SLANDERS”

SLUR ON MEMORY OF

DICKENS KEYNOTE OF RECENTLY-PUB-LISHED BOOK SIR HENRY DICKENS TO REPLY (Australian Press Assn. —United Service.) London, September 7. The Rev. Frank Johnson, a member of the Council of the Dickens Fellow ship, says the keynote of "This Side Idolatry” is an attempt to construe the facts in the worst possible way by raking over the muckheap of old slanders. A typical instance of Mr. Roberts s methods is his statement that Dickens clandestinely met his old love. Maria Beadnell, the original Dora in “David Copperfield.” “The truth is that Mrs. Dickens arranged the meeting. Dickens was so disgusted with her attempted coquetry that he caricatured her as Flora Finching in ‘Lit tle Dorritt.’ So far as the trouble between Dickens and his wife is concerned. Sir Henry Dickens Is only holding back letters in regard to this because he does not want the subject raked up. When they are eventually published it will be seen that the whole thing is quite innocent.” Sir Henry Dickens, commenting on the subject, expresses indignation at the attacks on his father’s character but desires to say no more at present. He will reply fully in a few days. While compelled to regretfully give further publicity to Mr. Roberts’s book. Sir Henry Dickens says that it is better to stamp out the allegations now and vindicate his father’s memory, as did Viscount Gladstone. CHARLES DICKENS EVERY INCH OF HIM AN HONEST MAN” (By Charles Wilson.) It is a somewhat curious coincidence that when, on Saturday last, the “Do-

minion” should have published a cablegram concerning the literary sensation caused iu London by the publication of a novel by “Ephesian” (otherwise Carl Eric Bechhofer Roberts), dealing very

largely with the personality of Charles Dickens, there should have appeared, in tile Magazine Section of that journal. an article from the pen of the present writer on “Boz and His Earlier Loves,” written a good fortnight ago. I am not aware of the exact nationality of "Carl Eric Bechhofer Roberts, but I trust he is not. an Englishman, and as an old admirer of Dickens. I fancy not a few New Zealanders will, with me. warmly applaud the views of Mr. L’ett Ridge concerning the appearance of the “muck-raking book." Already the only surviving son of the famous novelist. Sir Henry Feilding Dickens, K.C.. Common Sergeant in the City of London, has expressed indignation, and will reply in a few days. Sir Henry, who is now in his eightieth year, was twenty-one when his father died, and what he will say as to the charges or insinuations made against the character of a writer who is a national hero will be awaited with much interest. Meanwhile from an article in the London "Daily Chronicle,” and from a prominent member of the Dickens fellowship, it would seem that Mr. Roberts who, in his novel. “This Side Idolatry” (originally planned as a bio grnphy) has resurrected the—to all Dickensians- -stale and quite absurd old story about Dickens’s first lovewhile he was still a law clerk, and later a reporter on the “Morning Chronicle”—for Maria Beadnell. In my “Arm-Chair Essay” last Saturday I ’told at length the story of the Maria Beadnell attachment: how she “turned Dickens down” for a Mr Henry Winter, and how "Boz” made use of some at least of her traits when drawing the portraits of silly little Dora Spenlow (David Copper field’s first wife), and the full-blown peony-faced and utterly stupid Flora Finching (not Flush as named in Sat-, urday morning’s cable message), who figures as one of the many Dickens “grotesques.” in “Little Dorrit. May I add to what was written in my article on “Boz and his Early Loves”? An extract from that novel which shows the later Maria, whom Dickens must have been so glad he did not marry, and with whom Mr Roberts would have us believe Dickens had clandestine meetings. As a matter of fact, it has long been known that the Maria Beadnell of the earlier days, when Mrs. Henry Winter of the Flora Finching portrait, tried hard to borrow money from her old admirer It may be. perhaps, that they may have had meetings, but Mr. Roberts’s inference that these implied immoral

relations is absurd. Now for the quotation. "Who could have Imagined (Mrs. I'inching) when I cau’t imagine it myself.” "Is that your married name? asked Clenmar, struck, in the midst of all this, by a certain warmth of heart that expressed itself in her tone when she referred, however oddly, to the youthful relation in which they had stood to one another. ‘Finching?’” “ 'Finching,’ oh, yes, isn t it a dreadlul name, hut as Mr. F. said when he proposed to me, which he did seven times, and handsomely consented. I must say, to be what he used to call on, liking twelve months after all, he wasn’t answerable for it, and couldn’t help it, could he? Excellent man, not at all like you, but excellent man I” This, I may say, is not the first time Sir Henry has come forward to denounce those who, stupidly or through sheer slander-mongering, have chosen to pry into his father’s life as it married man. The present writer who for many years has made a hobby of collecting Dickensiana, and possesses a large collection of magazine and newspaper cuttings on Dickens, has among these two numbers of a long-slnce defunct London daily, ' the short-lived “Tribune,” which published several letters written, after a reading tour visit to Liverpool by Dickens, to a young and beautiful woman, who it is now no indiscretion to say, was named Weller, and a warmly attached friend of his who fell in love with and eventually married her. Dickens, it is true, grew almost hysterical in his praise of

the lady and was somewhat indiscreet in his letters, but the “Tribune's” sud den printing of the correspondence moved “Boz’s” son to write a very warm letter to its editor. In his introduction, the editor had inferred that. Dickens had written letters to Catherine Hogarth, whom ho married, and had “resumed ownership of them,” and “doubtlessly destroyed them.” As to this we find Henry Dickens writing, in 1906. the year of the “Tribune’s” remarks : — The observations as to the letter! and my mother are wholly inaccurate. It is not true that my father’s letters to her were destroyed; it is not true that “they died before she died’’; it is not true that “her husband regained possession of them and destroyed them.”. On the contrary, my dear mother prized the possession of them to the.last day of her life; they are still in existence, and in safe keeping. Henry Dickens rightfully remarks that the editor had no right to publish any of his father’s letters without the consent of his executrix, and hinted that lie only refrained from legal action lest “our motives might very possibly be misunderstood, or misconstrued.” We may now leave all this ancient history. Perhaps Dickens was “fop pish.” So, too, were his literary contemporaries. Lytton, Harrison Ainsworth, and others. Those were the days of rather garish dress, and great display of jewellery, etc., which would lie rightly derided in these times. Perhaps, too, Boz was a little vain. But that he spitefully caricatured his parents is ' untrue. 1 Dickens senior, as Frederick Kitton. Forster, and others have written, no doubt posessed characteristics used in Micawber, and Mrs. D. unquestionably figured as Mrs. Mikleby. But Dickens's personal kindness and generosity to his parents are well known, and he wrote of his father: “This well-intentioned, honest, truly good man.” Glancing through the vast bulk of eulogistic testimony I have collected as to Dickens’s personal character, I have been struck by the remarkable absence of aught like carping criticism to the novelist’s love for, and his constant attention to, the educational, religious and worldly advancement of his children. Let it not be forgotten also that to each of his boys as they went forth into life he gave a copy of the New Testament, his testimony as to the value of which as a profitable counsel throughout all personal and worldly as well as spiritual troubles has often been published. As to the much-discussed separation from Mrs. Dickens, when she had born him ten children, I will not say much. She may not have been a woman of full intellectual equality with her noted husband, but we all know the old say ing as to a genius being “gey ill to live wi’.” One who knew husband and wife well (Mrs. Christian) records her impressions (in “Temple Bar of 1888) of the Dickens family, whom she met at Broadstairs in the earlier stages of their married life. She pictures Mrs. D. as “a pretty little woman, plump and fresh-coloured, with the large. heavy-lidded blue eyes so much admired by men, the nose slightly retrousse, the forehead good, mouth small, round, and red-lipped, with a genial, smiling expression of countenance, notwithstand ing the sleepy look of the slow-moving eyes.” Dickens’s conduct in regard to the separation undoubtedly left much to be bettered. He behaved with the worst of bad taste in publishing alleged rea sons or excuses for the separation but be it rembcred that only one of his children, Charles Dickens, junior, seems to have espoused his mother’s cause, and. too. that she corresponded with her husband up to his death, and unquestionably mourned his loss. As for Georgiana Hogarth, the "energetic person” who Mr. Roberts seems to have dragged into his story, she died but a very few years ago. loved and respected by all who knew her. But no more. For me, as for -the great British public, the private life of Dickens has little real interest. To his slanderers, let me reply by quoting in conclusion, the opinions of a notable contemporary who knew Dickens and his family well, and who would be th< hist to admire aught that was evil in the man’s character - “No death sine* Mrs Carlyle’s 11866) has fallen npoi me with such a stroke No literary man’s hitherto did. The good, tin gentle. high gifted. ever-friendly, noble Dickens -every inch of him an Honest Man.”