DICKENS'S OWN STORY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 61, 15 March 1924, Page 17

DICKENS'S OWN STORY

ESSAYS BY "CLAUDIUS CLEAR."

The late Sir William Robertson Nicoll, as "Claudius Clear," contributed to the "British Weekly" over a prolonged period .many- essays devoted to Charles Dickens. Just before the war, as the London "Daily Telegraph" reviewer gathers from a prefatory note, Dr. Nicoll had decided to publish a collection of these, and was engaged in preparing them for revision when the war came with interruptive force, and later death prevented completion. "A. St. John A.," who writes the introduction, has something to say of the character of the author of these articles, which are now given to Dickensians in a form of handy compilation. Perhaps no other man wrote so much of another. Yet, while he was insistent on essential detail, he was ever careful to refrain from narrative, or even circumstance, that entailed pain to others. He once wrote:

There must 'be reticences. It is not decent or. right to tell in print all you now of a man—you may easily misrepresent him by doing so. But it is right and necessary that before you say anything you should know all you can possibly about him, otherwise you cannot fully appreciate his opinions, motives, actions, and will be in constant danger ot misjudging him. I hate to see anyone using such knowledge merely for the purpose ot betraying a good or a great man's weak-

After such words we come to the first chapter,. in which_Chesterton's loook on Dickens is considered, and we find the following quotation given:

Dickens s father-in-law had several daughters. A very young man, lighting his way and excessively poor, with no memories lor years past that were not monotonous and mean, and with his-strongest and most personal memories quite ignominious and unendurable, was suddenly thrown into the society of a whole family of girls. I think it does not overstate his weakness, and I think it partly constitutes his excuse, to say that he ell ,n love with all of them. As sometimes happens in the undeveloped youth, an abstract S^yftS'^^nf^ci^tT'^ hold of the wrong sister. In what came afterwards ho was enormously to blimp Hut r do. not think that his U , acase of cold division from a woman whom he had once seriously and singly loved. He had been bewildered in a burning haze, I will not «¥y even of first love, but of first flirtations His wifes sisters stimulated him before he fell in love with his wife; and they continued to stimulate him long after he had quarrelled with her for ever. The final word has been

So we proceed to the puzzling question of Dickens s alleged antipathy to Nonconformists. Yet everybody knows that he was educated by a Baptist minister, for whom in later years he expressed much regard, that his parents were Nonconformists, and that his own convictions at the end were Unitarian:

When, in 1821 John Dickens removed with his family to-18, St. Mary's place Chatham their new home stood next to a Baptist rS lng;h-?,U Ke,, called Pr°™lence Chapel. It is now a drill-hall of the Salvation Army. The S lster. of the chapel was the itev. William Giles, who lived in Clover lane nm 5 to have been a good scholar and teacher Tlip relations between himself and Mr Giles' were quite happy, and when, fifteen years later Si^'had achieved fame as the author of" vmn nf. ' S °, d s<*ool m astcr sent the joung author a silyer snuff-box, the lid of Boi°" who like'd nSthiPti9fl' "li°. the inimit»ble made^ucl, iSSVbot?" "°d tb*. n»me.J™»

We read again the oft-told tale of work in an attorney's office, engagement as a reporter in the Law Courts and in the House of Commons, all of which helped him to close knowledge of human nature. Once more there is "The True <™' y ?-!• ora Copperfield," incidents of o i i JC^", 5 Cirele>" in the bchool of Dickens," "Dickens and Wilkie Collins, ' Fannie Dickens .and her Husband, Swinburne on Dickens," lire Rehabilitation of Mr. Squeers," "Dickens as Editor," and a score of other topics close to the hearts of all who love a great writer whoso fame, world-wide will endure as long as thought exists.