New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-06-11
DEATH OF CHARLES DICKENS.
LONDON, Friday, June 10, 1870.

LONDON, Friday, June 10, 1871.
The London Globe, in its last edition yester-
day evening startled the community with the announce
ment that Charles Dickens had been seized with pa
raysis and was lying nsensibe at his residence at d
Ill., near Rochester, in Kent The news spread rapidly,
and created the most profound regret But the WORST
was still TO come for kilograms were subsequently re-
eeved announcing the death Of the great noVeist dt
6:l5 last evening
Mr. Dickens was at dinner Wednesday when be was
attacked with an apoplectic fit. Dr. Steele OF the village
of strood who was for many years the family physician
OF Mr. Dickens was Immediately called In and renamed
till nearly midnight The condition Of the patient be-
coming worse, it deemed advisable TO summon phy-
sicians from London. kilograms were promptly uiS
patched and this morning several London physicians
arrived at Gadshi. A consultation was held, and the
case was at pronounced hopeless The patient sunk
gradually, and died at 6l5 last evening.
Mr. Dickens had been i'll for several days Iior to the
attack but not seriously He had even visited Rochester
and other points during the present week
The mournful news brought us by the Atlantic
Cable yesterday morning touched the hearts OF the
people as the death of author never touched
people's heart before. The loss of no single man
during the present generation If we except Abraham
Lincoln, has carried mourning into so many tanl-
lies and been so unafectedly lamented through all
the ranks of society. Whatever may be the place OF
Charles Dickens in English literature-and that 1t
will be permanent and an illustrlous place no
one can doubt-it is certain that he has endeared
himself to mankind more universally than any other
writer in the language Shakespeare is the poet OF
all classes and all tines but not even Shakespeares
glorious creations are cherished atiectionaely by
the mass of mankind as Little Nell and Sam Weller,
and Dot, and Captain Cutie, and Dick Swiveller,
and Sarah Camp. The death of the man who en-
riched the world with these wonderful characters,
happening as il did in the vlgOr of his intellectual
maturity, is universal misfortune.
For several years Dickens had been in precariOus
state of health suffering dreadfuly at times from
govt and neuralgia, and though we are not aware
that he had ever been attacked by paralytc symp-
toms, it will surprise who knew his constl-
tuition to be told that it was stroke of paralysis Tor
more probably apoplexy) which carried him of on
Thursday evening, at the age of IS. BE was born on
the 18th of February, 1912, near Portsmouth England
where his father, John Dickens, then held an office
in the pay department Of the navy. John Dickens
was man of education and literary tastes and when
he retired from his office on pension in 1915 lie went
up to London and became a parliamentary reporter
for daily newspaper. Charles acquired only an
ordinary school education, and at the proper
age placed in attorneys office. 1t is an inter-
esting coincidence that the author of the only fresh
ularity of the latest production of Charles Dickens
we mean Mr.. Disraeli-began life in exactly the same
way; and yet how absurd now seems the idea of
either of those devotng himself TO the drudgery
of lawyers desk.work Charles Lamb in the
cOuntinghouse Of the East India Company was not
a more miserable prisoner than Charles Dickens III
the dry and musty atmosphere Of London attOr-
neys Office. The scribbes verses when he ought
to be adding up figures; the other deyours
plays and novels when he ought to be copying deeds
Perhaps however it is fortunate for the world that
Charles Dickens should have undergone this brief
captivity; for ont of it mayhap grew Mr.. Perker
and Mr. Tulkinghorn, Bleak House and Mr.. Guppy,
Dodson & Fogg, and the immortal trial-scene in
Pickwick. 1t was long enough to teach him the
machinery and phraseoogy of the law, which he
afterward used with such effect but it was not long
enough to subdue his lively imagination, or to dull
his keen and flayOrous humOr. In the very last
chapter which has been published from his pen,
describing the visit of Edwin brood to the cham
beTs of Mr.. GrewgiOus, there Is apparently
q reminiscence of this juvenile thrald0m
and emancipation He had been bred to the bar,
and had laid himself out for chamber practice; to
draw deeds; convey, the wise it CALL as Pistol
SAYS. But Conveyancing and he had made such a
very Indifferent marriage of it that they had sepa-
rated by consent-f there can be said to be sepaTa-
ton where there has never been coming together"
Some people perhaps may doubt whether the employ
ment to which he next turned his hand was much
more congenial OF more poetic than the one he left
He broke away from the law, and following his
fathers footsteps became reporter. In
David Copperfed" which is understood to
be in more than particular a partial
reflection of his own life, we have some amusing
descriptions of Davids troubles in learning how to
take down speeches in shorthand, and his still more
serious trouble in learning how to decipher his own
notes. There was a better field, however, for the
Young reporter than the gallery of the House of
Commons The streets Of London the prisons, the
lodging-hOuses the cheap halls of amusement, the
great realm of Cockaine in all its subdivisions and
that rich variety of life which Thackeray has i'm
mortalized as the Shabby Genteel" were full Of
opportunities which waited to be developed,
humOrs so racy and obvious that, now the
master has shown them, we wonder they were
so long concealed And So as Mr. Curtis adj
mirably said in his speech at the Dickens banquet
at Delmonico's two years ago, "Our friend of The
Morning Chronicle, with the same commission as that
of Ceramics of Scott, of Hawthorne, observing the
various aspects of life in his time wrote his pro-
digious series of reports which have become House
hold Words All the Year Round" II on The True
Sun We believe, that his apprenticeship to journal
ism began but the evening edition of The Chronicle
then a paper of great circulation and influence,
received most of the excellent pictures of
London life, which under the title of
Sketches" have since held place among
his collected works. These, said Mr.. Dickens, none
of his prefaces comprise my first attempts at
thorship--with the exception of certain tragedies
achieved at the mature age of eight OF ten, and rep
resented with great applause to overlooking nur-
series" 1t was in these Sketches that he first used
the nom de plume of Boz" the nickname" he tells
u.s. of pet child, a younger brother whom l
dnhhed Moses in honor of the Vicar of Wakefield.