A Dickens Marries

Southland Times, Issue 22074, 22 July 1933, Page 17

A Dickens Marries

A SHY BRIDE. (By A Londoner.) At Brompton Oratory on June 3 twenty members of the family of the famous novelist, Charles Dickens attended the quiet wedding of his greatgrandson, Mr Robin Dickens Bourchier Hawksley, grandson of Sir Henry Dickens, formerly Common Serjeant of London, and of the late Bourchier Hawksley, who was solicitor to Cecil Rhodes.

His bride was Miss Dorothy North, an orphan, whom he had met at a dance in the Fulham Town Hall last January. She was then in domestic service, and refused to leave a mistress she had faithfully served for six years until a long notice had been given. That notice expired only on the Tuesday before the wedding, and the wedding was arranged for the day before the Whitsuntide holidays began. The wedding took place at noon, two hours before the time publicly announced. The courage of the bride had failed her when she heard that great public interest was being taken in her marriage, and the morning before she had gone to the Oratory to ask that the wedding should take place earlier. Immediate preparations were made for the ceremony, and when the Press photographers and reporters arrived shortly before two, they were told that the wedding was over. On the bride’s arrival at the Oratory for the wedding the presence of a young man who, as she said, “looked like a photographer,” caused her to slip into the church by a side entrance. She left with her bridegroom by the same door. Mr Hawksley is a Roman Catholic, and his bride, who was a member of the Church of England, has been received into the Roman Catholic Church. Lady Dickens and Mrs Hawksley attended the wedding. At the time her son’s engagement was announced Mrs Hawksley had said: “I have no old-fashioned ideas about my future daughter-in-law’s position. The fact that she is a girl of strong character and a hard worker gives me every reason to welcome her in my family. Such a girl must make a good wife.”

There was no reception, and almost immediately the bride and bridegroom left for Brighton, where the honeymoon was to be spent. Among the wedding gifts were a few first editions of Dickens’s works, a present from Mrs Hawksley, to her son’s wife.