The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-05-16
GENIUS AT HOME.
The Singularly Unhappy Married Life of
Charles Dickens, the Novelist.


has painted no historic picture, but he has dealt
mostly in interiors-beautiful bits Of home-ife
full OF domestic feeling Indeed, may say that
his background is always the home, and here he
paints his portraits often like those of Hogarth
for his strength and erotesque effect Here, too
he limns the scenes of his comedy tragedy and
depicts the changing fashions of the time. The
color is sometimes q little crude, laid on occa-
sionally with too coarse brush; but the effect
is always lifelike and interest in it is never
known to flag
Nowhere else in all the range of literature have
we such tender description of home-life and love-
such intuitive knowledge of child-life, such won
derful sympathy with every form of domestic
wrong and suffering, such delicate appreciation
of the shyest and most unobtrusive of social vir
tues Nowhere else such indignation at any
neglect or dissertation of the home, as in Mrs
Jellyby with her mission, in Mrs. Pardiggle with
her charities, Mr. Pecksniff with his hypocrisy
and Mr. Dombey with his unfeeling sefshness
In short, Dickens is pre- eminently the prophet
and the poet of the home.
Now, can it be possible that we must say of
such a man this that in his life he was
the opposite of all that which he so feelingly
describess That he desecrated the very home
he so apostrophizes? That he put all his
warmth, geniality and tenderness into his books
and kept for his own freside his sour humors
and unhappy moods? That he was gill to live
with" as Mrs Carlyle puts it. l cannot believe
it in so bald form, but am forced to admit
that his married life seems to have been in
every way unhappy and unfortunate. No one
could state this more strongly than Dickens
himself in the letter he wrote at the time OF the
separation. He said
Mrs. Dickens and have lived unhappily for
many years. Hardly any one who has known
us intimately can fail to have known that we are
in all respects of character and temperament
wonderfully unsuited to each other. l suppose
that no two people, not vicious in themselves,
were ever joined together who had greater diff
fcultv in understanding one another or who had
less In common. An attached woman servant
more friend to both of us than servant) who
lived with us sixteen years and had the closest
in London, in the country, in France
in Italy, wherever have been
year af ter year, month after month, week after
week, day after day, will bear testimony to this
and separation but Mrs. Dickenss sister,
Georgina Hogarth From the age of fifteen she
has devoted herself to home and our chill
dren. She has been their playmate, nurse, in
ion In the manly consideration towards Mrs
Dickens, which l owe to my wife, l will only
remark of her that the popularity of
her character has thrown all the children
cannot by any stretch of fancy imagine, what
would have become of them but for this aunt
who has grown up with Them to whom they are
devoted. and who has sacrificed the best part of
her youth and life to them. She has remon-
strated reasoned, suffered and toiled and come
again to prevent separation between Mrs.
Dickens and me- Mrs. Dickens has often ex-
pressed to her her sense of affectopate care and
devotion in the house-never more strongly than
in the last twelve months"
Again. in the public statement which he pre-
pared for Household Words he said abiding
to the rumors that the trouble had arisen
through his devotion to Miss Hogarth: "By
some means, arising out OF wickedness, or out OF
folly. or out of inconceivable wild chance, out
of all three, this trouble has been made the oc-
casion of Misrepresentation most grossly false,
most monstrOus and most cruel--lnvolving not
only me, but innocent persons dear to my heart,
and innocent persons of whom have no knowl
edge, if, indeed they have any existence-and so
widely spread that / doubt if reader in
thousand will peruse these lines by whom some
touch of the breath of these slanderers will not
have passed like an unwholesome air.
"Those who know me and my nature need no
assurance under my hand that such calumnies
as irreconciable with me as they are in their
frantic incoherence with one another. But
there is a great multitude who know me
through my writ things and who do not know me
otherwise, and cannot bear that one of them
should be left in doubt hazard of doubt through
my poorly shrinking from taking the unusual
means to which now resort of circulating the
truth. most solemnly declare then-and this l
do both in my own name and my wifes name
that all lately whispered rumorS touching the
trouble at which have glanced are abominably
false. And that whatsoever repeats one Of them,
after this denial, will lie wlfully and as foul
ly as it is possible for any false witness to lie
before heaven and EARTH Which denial must,
once for ALL coming from a man of truth and
honor like Charles Dickens. dispose of that con-
venent way of accounting for the sad estrange-
ment.
The reasons for the unhappy state of things
were of much more complicated nature than
this. Only the most intimate of his friends
ever knew them in full, and of course they were
debarred from making them public. But Prof.
Ward, of Cambridge University, who has writ
ten very kind and apprecative life of Dickens.
lyohp farr yIn I6nnn f
his character than the bulky aud egotistical life
by Foster, gives clew to the whole trouble in
the following statement. He says
eff he ever loved his wife with that affection
before which socalled incompatibilities of hab-
its, temper or disposition fade into nothingness,
there is no indication of it in any of the numer-
Gus letters addressed to her. Neither has it ever
been pretended that he strove in the direction of
that resignation, which love and study made
possible to David Copperfeld, or even that he
remained in every way master of himself, as
many men have known how to remain, the story
of whose welded life and its disappointment
has never been written in history or figured in
fiction"
And all this troublous condition of things was
very much intensified by Dickens having fallen
violently in love with Mary Hogarth-Mrs.
Dickenss youngest sister. This beautiful girl
died at their house at the early age of seventeen
No sorrow seems ever to have touched the heart
and possessed the imagination of Charles Dick
ens like that for the loss of this dearlylov girl
Il can solemnly say he wrote to her mother
few months after her DEATH ''that waking or
sleeping have never lost the recollection of one
hard sorrow and never SMALL IT," he writes
in his diary at the beginning of new year,
''she was with me now-the same winning,
happy, amiable companion, sympathizing with
all my thoughts and feelings more than any one
] ever knew did or will think should have
nothing to wish but continuance of such hap
pness."
Through life and in death her memory haunt
ed him with great vividness After her death
he wrote: 81 dreamed of her every night for
many weeks and always with kind of quiet
| happiness, which became so pleasant to me that
l never lay down without hope of the vision
returning" The year before he died he wrote
| to friend: She is much in my thoughts,
| at all times, especially when am successful,
that the recollection of her is an essential part
| of my being and is as nseparable from nv ex-