The life of Charles Dickens

Leaving out the women in Dickens's life made appreciation easier.

Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life

Charles Dickens was an extraordinary man, but he had one ordinary fault: He always thought he was right and everybody else was wrong. He could be blind to his own failings, and as Claire Tomalin suggests near the end of her biography of the great Victorian writer, those failings often had to do with women.

He kept his wife, Catherine, almost constantly pregnant, and after she had given birth to 10 children, most of whom (especially the sons) he didn't want, he abandoned her and took up with an actress, Ellen Ternan. Even while still living with Catherine he preferred the company of her sisters, one of whom managed his household affairs for the rest of his life. When another sister died young, he was so heartbroken he openly declared he wanted someday to be buried beside her.

Dickens had other failings as well. He would break contracts and friendships while blaming the other party. If a friend stayed friends with his former friends (or his wife) he no longer considered them his friends. He sent his sons, at a young age, to faraway places, including India and Australia, seemingly just to be rid of them. Yet he was not altogether blind to his sins, for he once said he saw himself in all of his characters, the bad ones as well as the noble ones.

For all his weaknesses, Dickens worked for good to an amazing degree. In his fiction he campaigned on behalf of orphans, child workers, fallen women, the poor and the sick. Social betterment was also his goal as a journalist and as a citizen. For several years, with the help of a wealthy donor, he ran a home to rehabilitate young prostitutes.

Except for his youngest son, who became a successful lawyer, his many sons proved to be failures. For all his impatience with them, Dickens paid their debts and tried to find jobs for them. He also supported his wife and her sisters, his daughters, Ellen Ternan and her sisters and various servants besides. That he worked so hard as a novelist, as a journalist and as a public speaker, giving readings of his work, had to do not just with his personality but also with his need to pay his bills.

Tomalin's book, published in 2011 in time for the bicentennial of Dickens's birth in 2012, covers in detail each of the author's major books, most of which were serialized in magazines, including his own magazines. She writes of his extraordinary friendships, including with Wilkie Collins and many other major literary figures of the time, his love of the theater (he could have been a successful actor had not writing proved more lucrative), his annual Christmas stories, his travels (including two trips to the United States) and the many other aspects of his short but full life.

Clearly, Tomalin admires him greatly, especially when she can ignore the women.