THE REAL DICKENS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 54, 12 September 1928, Page 11

THE REAL DICKENS

PUBLISHER'S PORTRAIT DOMESTIC UNHAPPIMESS NEW LIFE NEEDED United Tress Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. Australian Press Association- United Sorvlco. LONDON, 11th September. Tho publication by Ralph Straus of a book on Charles Dickens has given fresh impetus to tho Dickens controversy. Mr. Straus, who is a director of Messrs. Chapman and Hall, publishers of Dickens's works from the start, describes "This Side Idolatry" as an odious, cowardly novel. Nevertheless, Mr. Straus himself presents a far from agreeable portrait. "The truth," says Mr. Straus, "lies between Forster's picture of a saint and 'EphesianV grotesque caricature, Forster being nearer the truth." Mr. Straus in his book describes Dickens ns a man of flambuoyant and theatrical temperament, with a full share of egoism, and what in his own age would be called frailties, but which people to-day regard with more tolerant eyes. Victorian public opinion forced upon Dickons a saintly character ho was ill-fitted to bear, Kate Dickens got on her husband's nerves. She had borne ten children, and her good looks had gone. About this timo a letter came from Maria Beadncll, Dickens's first love, but in twenty-two years the little dark beauty had grown into a plump matron. As a result of a meeting there was no romance and Dickens a second time went his way. Meanwhile the domestic itnhnppincss continued, and was so great that tho novelist told Wilkie Collins, "1 cannot write.'' Reviewers consider that Mr. Strauss book emphasises tho necessity for a complete authorised biography.