NEW LIGHT ON DICKENS

Evening Star, Issue 21638, 6 February 1934, Page 11

NEW LIGHT ON DICKENS

WAS HE A ‘ TIMES ’ REPORTER ? New light appears to be thrown upon the early career of Charles Dickens by four extracts from its files of 1833 which the ‘ London Times has reprinted. Each of those passages is anonymous, but bears every mark of Dickens’s characteristic style, and the idea is canvassed that Dickens himself. acted as a reporter for ‘The Times.’ On August 20, 1833, according to a reprint of exactly 100 years later, there appeared a report of the speech of one Simpson on the occasion of his benefit at Vauxhall. Simpson is recorded to have said, “Excuse me, raj' illustrious, distinguished, noble, and other respectable patrons; my grateful feelings—God Almighty bless you—many thanks—heart overflowing—and the Royal Gardens, too—the ever-to-be-remembered twelfth of April, 1782 huge, red-sided ship—gilt lion—Count de Grasse.” The resemblance of this to the style of Mr Jingle is pointed out by a writer in ‘ The Times.’ On February 11, 1833, an account of a scene in the Justice Room in Hatton Garden closely recalls the incidents in ‘Pickwick Papers’ in which Mr Nupkins, Mayor of Ipswich, brought a charge against a special constable. On Julj' 29. 1833, in a case at Marlborough street reference is made to “a little personage, with a prodigiously luxuriant crop of hair, having the warlike ‘nomenclature or Nelson Augustus Wellington prefixed to the more peaceful patronymic of Jones.” On August 14 in the same vear a Mr John Downes defended him-"s-elf for stealing trousers with the, Dickensian plea that he is “quite hinnocent, your worship.” He is reported to have alleged that as he was looking at them dangling outside a shop he was “ blessed if they didn t all of a sudden drop naturally slapbang ” into his arms. All these passages were quoted in ‘ The Times ’ on the appropriate dates last year, and their similarity to the ordinary comic style of Charles Dickens is noted. There is no extant record of Dickens ever having been connected with ‘ The Times,’ but his mother’s brother, John Barrow, tvas on the staff of that paper. In 1833 Dickens himself worked for the ‘ True Sun’ and the ‘ Mirror of Parliament,’ but it is thought likely that he may have occasionally done relief work for his uncle. On the other hand, some people suggest that the explanation of the close similarity between Dickens’s acknowledged work ami the passages in question is that Dickens kept a notebook in which he. set down journalistic extracts that might come in useful later in his novels. This view' is supported by the circumstance that the files of ‘ The Times ’ for 1850 contain a passage very similar to that in 1 Bleak House’ in which a character is crossexamined. Dickens was in 1853, when ‘ Bleak House’ was written, one of the most famous authors in the world. He could not then have been writing anonymously for ‘The Times,” but it is suggested that he might easily have borrowed incidents and characters from it.