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The History of Literature
714 The Real Charles Dickens (with Stephen Browning and Simon Thomas) | Dickens and the Theatre
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Jack Wilson
The History of Literature podcast is a.
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Simon Thomas
Member of the Podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.
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Stephen Browning
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Narrator
The summer is heating up with Marvel Studios.
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Simon Thomas
The Fantastic Four. Light them up, Johnny.
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Stephen Browning
On July 25th. Time to save the planet. What's the plan?
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Jack Wilson
Trust me, I hate that.
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Simon Thomas
Bad plan.
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Stephen Browning
Come on. Terrible.
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Jack Wilson
That's a stupid plan.
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Simon Thomas
Prepare for fantastic.
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Advertiser
We will face this together as a family.
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Stephen Browning
Marvel Studios the Fantastic Four First Steps.
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Narrator
Only in theaters July 25th.
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Stephen Browning
Get tickets now.
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Narrator
This film is not yet rated.
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Simon Thomas
Hello. My head is spinning, people, and my heart is heavy. I'm at a loss because of a loss. We were planning to run this episode in a few weeks, but we're moving it up because of a sad development. One of the guests whom you will hear today, Steven Browning, passed away suddenly last week. I wanted to put this episode up, this conversation for anyone who knew Steve and for his co author, Simon Thomas, who tells us that Steve would have absolutely wanted us to go forward with the episode. Stephen Browning and Simon Thomas were not just co authors, as you will hear in this discussion. They were friends, good friends, and I'm very sorry for the loss and my condolences to Simon and to all of Steve's loved ones. It's a sad day at the History of Literature podcast, but our topic is not a sad one. Charles Dickens, Life and works and Legacy. He knew sadness too, but he also seized life with both hands. His was a candle. I wouldn't even say it was burning at both ends. It was more like one that exploded into flame, on fire all over, all the time, for 58 years. Maybe like one of those spontaneous combustions that so fascinated him. His birth was a spontaneous combustion. His youth was an accelerant. And by the end, his fire was one that could be seen from space. Dickens is a great testament to living life to its fullest, every single moment, which is a good reminder for those of us who are experiencing loss. Our time is short and time is precious. We mourn the loss of those who've left, though, we can celebrate their time here on Earth, too. Their contributions, the way they lived, the books they wrote, the friendships we were lucky to share, and the acts of kindness we were lucky to receive. Stephen Browning and Simon Thomas for a conversation about Charles Dickens today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. I'm glad you're here today. So, Charles Dickens. We are still planning to go to London, and the Charles Dickens Museum is a stop on that tour and you can be part of it. Spots are still available. We're also planning to visit Dr. Johnson's house at Shakespeare's Globe Theater and have lunch where Dickens and Johnson ate. It's a place that's still open. These are wonderful, wonderful spots in London. We'll be traveling through the centuries, really, if you give Shakespeare the 16th and 17th centuries, because he bridges the two. And of course, Dr. Johnson is from the 18th century, and Jane Austen and Dickens are in the 19th and the Inklings, because we're going to Oxford, too. Tolkien, C.S. lewis, they're from the 20th century. And now we are in the 21st. That one's easy. We'll be checking that one off just by being there ourselves.
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Jack Wilson
Well, if you add all those up.
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Simon Thomas
We'Re really talking about 400, almost 450 years of literary history. And we might have a little bit of Chaucer thrown into the mix, which makes it even, even stretching further back, all that on one tour. But the truth is, the tour isn't really just about seeing things, although that will be a fun part of it. It's about us having an experience together, a chance to connect with some fellow travelers, real human beings. That's why I agreed to do this. And it's why I'm looking forward to meeting some of you and spending some quality time together. Our partners at John Shores Travel do this for a living. They put together these tours and they make things as easy as possible for the guests, giving us a chance to relax and enjoy. And we'll have a few surprises along the way. Friends of the podcast experts in all areas are planning to join us. And won't that be fun to meet up with them, too? You can find out more by going to John Shores Travel. Shores is spelled like shore with no E, S, H, O, R, s. Or I suppose you could think of it as shoes with an R instead of an E if you'd rather remember it that way. Or you can go to historyofliterature.com where we have a Link to the itinerary and sign up page and all of that. It's May of 2026. Put something on your calendar that you'll be looking forward to in 2026. It's a commitment to sign up for that now, but it will make the rest of 2025 and the first part of 2026 better to know that you've got this waiting for you. Like a gift you will get to open. Okay, we start today with an article from the Guardian about a what if in the life of Charles Dickens. The headline is Charles Dickens Sliding Doors. How a Cold Turned an Aspiring Thespian into a Writer. The article is all about an exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum. Well, I can't promise you the exhibit because it sounds like it's won't still be there in May 2026, but I can say that we're planning to go to the museum and hopefully they will have another exhibit in place by then. My guess is that they will. But the one currently at the museum sounds Very interesting. 200 years of performances of Dickens stories. Dickens is in many ways a theatrical writer. The characters are broad, quickly defined. They have recognizable speech patterns and mannerisms. You can almost imagine Dickens as he sits down to write, thinking, okay, now today is the day that I have to introduce so and so. I have to put so and so on stage, bring them out for the audience, knowing, of course, that the stage was in the mind's eye of his reader, but helped along perhaps by what Dickens knew from going to the theater. He loved the theater. And you can almost see that in his prose, where, as he sort of says, here's an entrance of a character who this is going to be a comic character. I'll make him, when he comes on stage immediately, people are going to start to laugh. They will know. I'll signal to the readers what this character is going to do. So do I give his backstory, his parents, his schooling? Or the Christmas when his father gave him a puppy that ran away and how that carried through for the rest of his life? You know what I mean, all of that? No, no. In other words, do I give the reader something internal that can't be seen, or do I present what can be seen and heard? The way you might meet someone in real life, or even more pronounced, the way an actor walks onto the stage and immediately captures the audience's attention in a very broad sense, projecting to the back row an entrance with maximum impact. The clothes, the size of the person, their body language, the way they talk. So I thought this was the case. So I thought, let's do a little experiment. Let's take an author who maybe we don't think of as so theatrical, which is ironic because the author I chose for that is Chekhov, who's also. He might be the most successful fiction writer, playwright we've ever had, but his fiction is not theatrical. Like Dickens. I didn't think. So I chose a few passages so we could compare. Here's. Here's how Chekhov introduces his character Gurav in the famous short story the lady with the Little Dog. I'm going to read for you three paragraphs here. I want you to listen for something that you would see if this man appeared before you on stage. Okay, Begins. He was under 40, but he had a daughter already 12 years old and two sons at school. Okay, I'm going to pause there. You see what I mean? Daughter already 12 years old and two sons at school. That's not theatrical. How would we know that if we were introduced to a character who popped onto the stage in front of us? We wouldn't. Unless there was dialogue or in a film, maybe a voiceover. There would need to be something to tell us that the daughter was 12 and already 12. That gives us a little something, right? Tells us a person is thinking about how fast the kids are growing up and how being under 40, he's not a 40 year old who's waited until late in life to have kids. He's. He's growing up fast, he's aging quickly, Midlife crisis kind of feeling to say his daughter's already 12 years old. Two sons at school. Let's keep going. He had been married young when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband not Dimitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago, had been unfaithful to her often and probably on that account, almost always. Spoke ill of women and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them the lower race. It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that he might call them what he liked. And yet he could not get on for two days together without the lower race in the society of men. He was bored and not himself. With them, he was cold and uncommunicative. But when he was in the company of women, he felt free and knew what to say to them and how to behave. And he was at ease with them, even when he was silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favor. He knew that, and some force seemed to draw him, too, to them. Okay, that's paragraph two. We know a lot about him, right? We are deep inside the character of this man, Gurav. We know his history, his wants, his fears, his desires, his relationship with his wife and how he's been unfaithful to her for years, why he feels alienated from his wife and why he feels drawn to women, even though he's kind of speaks ill about them as a category. But he's not good with men, so he's been having these affairs. Paragraph three. Experience, often repeated. Truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow, people always slow to move and irresolute. Every intimacy which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy. And in the long run, the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman, this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing. Okay, end paragraph three. There we go. That's it for our introduction to Guravos. We know him, right? We know this guy. Or if this isn't familiar to us, we haven't thought about a person like this before, as maybe a lot of young people maybe haven't. By the time you're my age, either you've been this person or you've known this person. This rings true, you know, people who have come to this stage in their life, in their relationship, where they're stuck and they're looking for that excitement, looking for. Just trying to be someone else, and they're using infidelity to get them there, right? But we know.
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Jack Wilson
But think about this.
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Simon Thomas
If this were on stage, if. If you were staging this production, how would you get this information in? You'd have to invent a monologue, right? The character would have to tell you this, or you'd have to have a dialogue where he and another character would be talking. He'd be saying, you know, I tell you. I tell you, doctor, I've never felt the same since I started feeling alienated from my wife. I'm afraid of her, et cetera, et cetera. Or you'd have a voiceover some way. You'd have to get this in. We'd probably see this person on stage having some kind of conversation, and then it would deepen over time. Chekhov doesn't have to do any of that because he's not staging this as a play and it's not how he even really thinks. Now here's Dickens introducing one of his most famous characters, Uriah Heap, in David Copperfield. I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor in a little round tower that formed one side of the house and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red haired people. It belonged to a red haired person, a youth of 15, as I take it now, but looking much older, whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble, who had hardly any eyebrows and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red brown so unsheltered and unshaded that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high shouldered and bony, dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth buttoned up to the throat, and had a long, lank skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention as he stood at the pony's head rubbing his chin with it and looking up at us in the chaise. Is Mr. Wickfield at home? Uriah Heep, said my aunt. Mr. Wickfield's at home, ma', am, said Uriah Heep, if you'll please to walk in there. Pointing with his long hand to the room he meant. We got out and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low parlor, looking towards the street from the window of which I caught a glimpse as I went in of Uriah Heap breathing into the pony's nostrils and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him. Okay, you hear the difference? There's nothing about Uriah Hebe's past history, his. His relationships. We see his cadaverous body, we see his hair, his dress, his skeletal long hands, the high shoulders, the bonyness. We see him doing something, we see him talk, we hear him talk, we see him breathe into a pony's nostrils. All this is something that a theater could see on a stage. Right. That's how Dickens is introducing his characters. Now, I can hear you objecting. You might Be saying, well, Jack, that's all well and good, but there's a difference, isn't there, between a narrator like the one in Chekhov, a third person narrator who can dip into people's thoughts, and a first person narrator like David Copperfield? Wouldn't we expect that a character like Uriah Heap is presented externally because that's how he would have appeared to David Copperfield, who's not an omniscient narrator, but a character in the story? Well, yes and no. Yes, yes. In the sense that if we're meeting people as David Copperfield meets them, that's how we get it. You can also, with the first person, talk about things that aren't necessarily things you would see on the stage. Right. Things that David Copperfield might know or think or assume. But in any case, let's make our experiment a little closer. We'll control for the variables. Let's look at Dickens in a third person novel. Here's how we meet Oliver Twist. The narrator here is the first person. But he's omniscient. Right. He's going to introduce us to Oliver Twist. Although I am not disposed to maintain that being born in a workhouse is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a human being. Being, I do mean to say that in this particular instance it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility have occurred. The fact is that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration, a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence. And for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next, the balance being decidedly in favor of the latter. Now, if during this brief period Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old woman who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract. Oliver and nature fought out the point between them. The result was that after a few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage of a voice for a much longer space of time than three minutes. And a quarter. As Oliver gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the iron bedstead rustled. The pale face of a young woman was raised feebly from the pillow, and a faint voice imperfectly articulated the words, let me see the child and die. The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire, giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately. As the young woman spoke, he rose and, advancing to the bed's head, said with more kindness than might have been expected of him, oh, you must not talk about dying yet. Lor, bless her dear heart. No, interposed the nurse, hastily depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction. Lor bless her dear heart. When she has lived as long as I have, sir, and had 13 children of her own, and all on em dead except two and them in the workus with me, she'll know better than to take on in that way. Bless her dear heart, think what it is to be a mother. There's a dear young lamb do. Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother's prospects failed in producing its due effect. The patient shook her head and stretched out her hand towards the child. The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold white lips passionately on its forehead, passed her hands over her face, gazed wildly around, shuddered, fell back, and died. They chafed her breast, hands, and temples, but the blood had stopped forever. They talked of hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long. It's all over, Mrs. Thingamy, said the surgeon at last. Ah, poor dear. So it is, said the nurse, picking up the cork of the green bottle which had fallen out on the pillow as she stooped to take up the child. Poor dear. You needn't mind sending up to me if the child cries, Nurse, said the surgeon, putting on his gloves with great deliberation, it's very likely it will be troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it is. He put on his hat and pausing by the bedside on his way to the door, added, she was a good looking girl, too. Where did she come from? She was brought here last night, replied the old woman, by the overseer's order. She was found lying in the street. She had walked some distance, for her shoes were worn to pieces, but where she came from or where she was going to, nobody knows. The surgeon leaned over the body and raised the left hand. The old story, he said, shaking his head. No Wedding ring, I see. Ah. Good night. The medical gentleman walked away to dinner, and the nurse, having once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair before the fire and proceeded to dress the infant. What an excellent example of the power of dress. Young Oliver Twist was wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering. He might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar. It would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed and fell into his place at once a parish child, the orphan of a workhouse, the humble, half starved drudge to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all and pitied by none. Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder. Okay, you hear that? There's no reason why we need that scene as a scene. We want it. We love it. It's Dickens. It's enjoyable. It's what makes Dickens so wonderful. But the narrator here has the freedom to move across space and time and go into people's minds. He can summarize things for us. He could easily say Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, a fact that was to haunt his dreams and change the course of his childhood even more. His mother didn't survive the birth, and so he grew up with a kind of hole inside him, an absence that gnawed at him. So even in his darkest nights, there was something still dark, you know? Etc. Etc. I'm just inventing all this, but you could see even talking about the mother, right? How do we hear the mother's story? The doctor says she was a good looking girl, but he says it in dialogue. And the old woman responds, the nurse responds, she was brought here last night and talks about her that way. And he says, ah, no wedding ring, I see. He says that out loud, right? This is not a narrator who wants to summarize all this for us and present it that way. This is a narrator who wants to put people on stage to tell us things we should know, as if they are characters delivering dialogue. Okay. Such a different way of creating a character than what we saw in the Chekov with Gurov. We get the information we needed. Somehow we need to know that Oliver Twist is not starting out life with advantages. In fact, it's the opposite of that. But instead of diving inside and giving us psychology of different people, we stay on the surface. They present facts and appearances and words that are spoken to one another aloud. And through that, we imagine our way into the psychology. We know what it's like to grow up without a mother, a mother who wasn't married. We see that from the outside in, as we would if we were sitting in a theater watching characters in action. The stage. So let's go back to the article which is talking about Dickens and his relationship to the stage. It begins as a sliding doors moment. It leads to arguably one of the greatest what if questions in literary history. Passionate about the theater, Charles Dickens, then just 20, wrote to the famous Covent Garden theater actor manager George Bartley, seeking an audition, saying he believed he had a strong perception of character and oddity and a natural power of reproducing in my own person what I observed in others. And Bartley responded, saying they were producing the Hunchback. And he arranged an appointment and Dickens planned to take his sister Fanny to accompany him, singing on the piano. And then Dickens fell ill with a terrible bad cold and missed the audition. By the time the next season came around, he had embarked on the parliamentary reporter job that would firmly set him on his path to novelist. Would the world have been deprived of his literary canon but for the timing of that cold? Hmm, very interesting. He wanted to be an actor. He applied. He had an audition scheduled. He was all set, ready to go.
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Jack Wilson
And.
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Simon Thomas
We know he probably would have gotten the part, or some part. That's how it seems from what we know. The actor Simon Callow observes that Dickens had a theatrical upbringing. The article says the actor Simon Callow, who has played many Dickensian characters on stage and screen, said performing was central to Dickens life from a very early age. His father used to take him as a five year old to the local pub where he would recite and sing. But Dickens never stopped writing, directing and performing plays, said Callow, a patron of the museum. All this came to a head in the public readings which he performed for massive and astounded audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. One such astounded spectator was Mark Twain, who wrote of one Dickens reading of a spry, if I may say it, thin legged old gentleman gotten up regardless of expense, especially as to shirt front and diamonds. The very Dickens came, he did not emerge upon the stage. That is rather too deliberate a word. He strode. The article notes that his stories, published as weekly serials with a cliffhanger, are kind of theatrical and that in public readings he'd physically act out episodes. And they note that there surely must have been something theatrical in the stories. As evidence, you can look at the two centuries of success that theatrical and film and television adaptations of Dickens works have had. And listen to this. His daughter Mamie watched him work and then later she wrote about it. She, quote, describes how he jumps up from his desk, goes towards the nearest mirror, and he acts out what he's just written. He does all the faces, the voices, and then he rushes back to the desk to write it back down again so to check that his description matches what he wants his audience to experience. End quote. Well, doesn't that make sense? Doesn't that make sense now? You can see him almost crying out like little Oliver Twist, the baby. You can see him being the mother reaching out and saying aloud, let me see him and die. You can see the author, the doctor and the nurse exchanging their dialogue. That was Dickens. He was seeing these characters and people in his mind. He would even run and act it out in front of a mirror and then he would run back and write it down. That's a theatrical writer. He says, see how near I may have been to another sort of life? Dickens once said to a friend, meaning the theater. If he hadn't caught that cold. He talked about being a theater manager. If only the success of writing novels hadn't been quite so lucrative and time consuming. So, yes, perfect idea for an exhibition. The works that grew out of Dickens passion for the theater, which were themselves theatrical, and the adaptations that reflect the theatricality of the finished product. We owe a lot to Dickens love for the theater. We can understand his works better knowing more about that love. The theater unlocks certain problems and in Dickens and shows us in some cases.
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Jack Wilson
That what we might think of as.
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Simon Thomas
Flaws aren't exactly flaws, they're just differences. What might seem like to some, like being too broad can be viewed as being generous. Implausibilities aren't necessarily that. They're crowd pleasers. Dickens wasn't just trying to sell books, he was filling seats. He wasn't just writing a novel, he was putting on a show, which I guess is what we're doing here too, putting on a show. So it's time to get back to work doing that. We will have our interview with Simon Thomas and the late Stephen Browning after this. Foreign this is an ad by BetterHelp. Hey, it's Summer. But that can come with a lot of stress, especially for those of us who work.
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Jack Wilson
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- [32:35]
Simon Thomas
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Narrator
If you went on a road trip.
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Stephen Browning
And you didn't stop for a Big.
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Narrator
Mac or drop a crispy fry between the car seats or use your McDonald's bag as a placemat, then that wasn't the road trip. It was just a really long drive.
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Listener
At participating McDonald's.
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Jack Wilson
Okay. Joining me now is Stephen Browning, who's the author of Walking Literary London and.
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Simon Thomas
On the Trail of Sherlock Holmes, among numerous other books.
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Jack Wilson
I'm also joined by Simon Thomas, who's been writing about theater, opera and literature for 20 years.
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Simon Thomas
They're here today to talk about the.
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Jack Wilson
Highly acclaimed study the Real Charles Dickens.
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Simon Thomas
Which they co authored.
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Jack Wilson
Stephen Browning and Simon Thomas, welcome to the history of literature.
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Listener
Thank you.
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Narrator
Thank you very much.
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Jack Wilson
So you write in the introduction that Dickens once said that he was more gratified to hear people praise the reality of his work than its literary merits. Stephen, could you explain that for us a bit more? What do you think that tells us about Dickens?
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Narrator
Yes, it's very interesting that Dickens started out, of course, as a factually based writer being a reporter in the House of Commons. And his first collection of stories, from which Pickwick came, were a collection of stories about the people of London. And this quote comes from Forster, his biographer and lifelong friend, who noticed that Dickens was much more gratified by people praising the reality of his work in Pickwick than any literary merits it might have. Simon and I have discussed this ourselves and we're not quite sure how far this goes into the future when he was writing his later work. But certainly at the start he was a factually based reporter and an excellent one and a hard working one too. So for him the reality of the work was more important than any literary merits.
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Jack Wilson
Right, right. It seems like it kind of exemplifies almost an obligation he seems to have had to recreate the world as it was and rather than impress people with himself and his vocabulary or his style or anything like that, but to, to kind of present a world and maybe talk about what it would mean to make it better.
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Narrator
I think that's absolutely right. He never lost that throughout his life. But especially at the beginning when he was designing Pickwick, so to speak, he was very concerned that it should actually reflect the life around him. Because originally, of course, Pickwick was proposed, has stories about people in the Nimrod Club Sporting Club and it was meant to be quite funny. The publishers thought it would be amusing piece. But Dickens didn't know anything about sport at all. He knew a lot about people. And so he changed the, the whole content of it very successfully, of course, especially when it had been out for a few times and he really got into his stride on it, became quite a sensation.
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Jack Wilson
Right, so let's back up a little bit and talk about the two of you and your relationship with Dickens. Simon, why don't we start with you? Do you remember the first time you read or heard about Charles Dickens?
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Listener
Not specifically the first time, but I mean, certainly I can't really remember not being aware of Dickens. I suppose for a lot of people from our generation, Steve and I are of a similar age.
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Narrator
That's kind of your son.
- [38:02]
Listener
We grew up with Sunday afternoon serials on the television which were often classics like Dickens. So I think probably that was my introduction. Probably a lot of people of our age, and probably actually today, I mean, still a lot of people get introduced to Dickens through the adaptations have continued, haven't they? It's never really stopped. So a lot of people I think would be introduced in that way. And I can certainly remember back in the late 60s, early 70s, you had, I can remember Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield and those were the first ones. And the other thing of course that was, was very big was the Oliver musical and that, you know, you knew the story of Oliver, whether you read a word of Dickens now, I think it was really through that popularization of his works. That one first got to know them and it was only later that started reading the novels themselves.
- [38:58]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [38:59]
Jack Wilson
Now, would they have been assigned in school?
- [39:01]
Listener
I guess they are. I'm not sure about curriculum, but, I mean, when I was at school, I didn't study Dickens. I didn't study Shakespeare either. People tend to think that if you're at school in England, you will have studied Shakespeare. But I never did. I did A level for English and I remember we did Webster rather than Shakespeare. We didn't do Dickens. So I guess they are done in schools and probably still always have been. But I personally didn't encounter them that way.
- [39:31]
Jack Wilson
Right. Stephen, were there any books that resonated with you in particular when you were younger?
- [39:37]
Narrator
Not really. I think it's the same of Simon, really. Certainly Shakespeare. We did Shakespeare at school. I've got Othello and Macbeth etched into my brain whether I like it or not. 24 7. I just love them. But we largely concentrated on Shakespeare. We might have done some excerpts from Great Expectations or something like that. But as Simon said, I think that the main thing in British culture at that time for us, for ordinary people, were Sunday afternoons. There was always a. A Dickens or generally a Dickens adaptation on a Sunday afternoon. And these were the days when Sundays were really quite boring. The pubs didn't open till 7. You weren't expected to enjoy yourself because it was a Sunday. And I seem to remember some of the Dickens adaptations being very long for me as a young boy. I remember Little Dorrit seemed to go on forever on the television. And I think recently the standards of production and excitement that are given to Dickens productions are fantastic, but they weren't them. I wouldn't like to suggest it was seen as something you had to get through, but certainly the imaginative use of television for Dickens wasn't great in those days.
- [40:52]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [40:53]
Narrator
When I was a child, which is, I must add, a bit before. Silence.
- [40:57]
Simon Thomas
Right.
- [40:58]
Jack Wilson
So, Simon, was there a moment when you decided that you wanted to write about Dickens? Do you remember what it was that drew you toward him as a figure or as an author?
- [41:09]
Listener
I think actually a major influence on me that is Mr. Steve Browning. We've known each other for a long time and Steve drew me into a number of things. I mean, Sherlock Holmes, as you say, he's written about. And I ended up reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories and Dickens as well. I think I was interested anyway, and I have read them over the years. But I'd say that my focus for it came from Steve, really. And. And then when the opportunity of the book came along. It was great to collaborate with him on it.
- [41:42]
Narrator
That's really nice to hear actually. But yeah, I know we used to share a house when we were considerably younger and it used to be a house in the West End of London and we would go out on Dickens excursions, Simon and I and the, the housemates and Simon and I, every Christmas Eve if we didn't get to go home on Christmas Eve we would sit around and we would read aloud A Christmas Carol.
- [42:08]
Simon Thomas
Oh yeah.
- [42:08]
Narrator
For several years in a row, didn't we? And it was really moving.
- [42:12]
Listener
Yeah, we did and that was a very special experience. It is great just to sit around as a group and just take turns reading it and it's just ideal for Christmas Eve.
- [42:24]
Narrator
Yeah. And we, we had this, this flatmate who was very gruff. He knows if he's listening to this you'll know who he is. And he was a wonderful Scrooge. He invariably used to fall asleep just before midnight which rather let the side down. But no, I suppose what I'm trying to say is we had a lot of fun with Dickens as a household and Simon and I in particular.
- [42:49]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [42:49]
Jack Wilson
So what did Dickens excursion entail? Were you going to see houses where he lived or places where he worked and that kind of thing?
- [42:57]
Narrator
Yeah, absolutely. And you might have seen in this book that we're talking about now the real Charles Dickens. We do have some walks, a couple of walks. So we were plan little walks. Yeah. Where Dickens lived perhaps where he went to work, where he rushed along the Strand up to Wellington street to his offices, Covent Garden market, where he would come back to after his walking all night and get breakfast in the cafe. We go and look at all that and try and work out where the cafe was. And there's almost nowhere in London that you can go where there isn't something to do with Charles Dickens, either himself or he's not in his books. So we had a wonderful time doing that.
- [43:37]
Jack Wilson
He himself was an incredible walker.
- [43:40]
Narrator
Right. 20 or 30 miles was nothing.
- [43:44]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [43:45]
Jack Wilson
And he would go out and walk all over London.
- [43:49]
Narrator
He would indeed, he'd swim in the Thames as well. And he'd take Forster, who we referred to already, his great friend and biographer. He'd take him on 15 mile horse rides probably starting in central London, going out to Spaniards Inn on Hampstead Heath and they come back to Doughty street where Dickens lived for dinner at about 6. I should imagine his companions weren't always false. So there are other people too of course, were quite exhausted by those. But he loved horse riding. He loved walking, as you just said.
- [44:21]
Listener
There's a famous example of him getting up in the middle of the night when he was, I think, living in Tavistock House, wasn't it? And he walked all the way to Rochester, about 30 miles.
- [44:34]
Narrator
Hadn't he just had a row with Catherine?
- [44:37]
Listener
Yeah, yeah, that's right. They'd fallen out. He went off in a half and ended up walking the whole of the way to Rochester in North Kent, which is about 30 miles overnight, and. And then no doubt got up the next day and wrote a good deal of a story or an article, because he never seemed to be. Not working.
- [44:57]
Simon Thomas
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:58]
Listener
Extraordinary stamina.
- [45:00]
Narrator
He didn't seem to have normal hours of sleep either, did he? He would often work all night and some of his novels were finished in the middle of the night.
- [45:10]
Listener
He would also tramp the streets of London as well. The Uncommercial Traveller, in which he wrote a lot of stories about London and London folk, various different aspects of Victorian London that absolutely fascinating for us to read.
- [45:24]
Simon Thomas
Now.
- [45:24]
Listener
He would often be. At night, would be walking, meeting all sorts of strange people and no doubt getting himself into bits of danger.
- [45:35]
Narrator
I don't know, it sounds terribly unsafe, doesn't it?
- [45:38]
Listener
Yeah.
- [45:39]
Narrator
But he never actually came to any grief, as far as we know, on those walks.
- [45:44]
Jack Wilson
And he used that material. I mean, he was a great observer and he would import the things that he saw and the neighborhoods he learned about and the people he encountered and so on into his books. Did he go out on walks for that purpose or was walking sort of more of something else was compelling him to take these long walks? And then it just was a. A happy coincidence that he. It gave him a lot of stuff for his novels.
- [46:13]
Listener
I think he was always looking for material and this extraordinary imagination that he had that, you know, these stories just flowed out of him. But there was input as well, you know, so he was going and observing. I mean, I think when he was out in the country walking, that. That was maybe different. But when he was walking around town, he was looking for material to write about and. Yeah, I think he was actively seeking excitement and unusual aspects of life, of his time.
- [46:44]
Narrator
Yeah, he particularly liked the seedy side of London, of which there was an awful lot. And I think when he first came up to London from Chatham, Rochester area, he was living in terrible conditions in a horrible house. And one thing that really cheered him up is if he could get somebody to take him for a walk, he wouldn't go on his own. In Those days, around St. Giles and the slums. And he said, oh, how wonderful this is. I just love this.
- [47:16]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [47:17]
Narrator
So very early he learned about London, led by knowledge of the. The worst possible areas, which in those days were absolutely dreadful.
- [47:29]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [47:30]
Narrator
So, yes, that most certainly would have. As your question, Jack. It most certainly would have fed into his books, wouldn't it?
- [47:36]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [47:36]
Jack Wilson
How unusual was it for him to be a writer who also had come from the circumstances he had come from and who was interested in conditions of poverty and so on? Was this an era where his fellow writers tended to be to the manner born and Oxbridge educated and so on, and kind of writing from a position of privilege and he kind of changed the game? Or did he have peers when he was getting started who also kind of shared a similar background and had come.
- [48:15]
Simon Thomas
Up from the streets, so to speak?
- [48:17]
Listener
I think you're probably right that most writers were. Well to. Do you think of his contemporaries, Thackeray, Trollope, they came from well to do backgrounds and went to Oxford or Cambridge. And it's difficult to think actually of writers who, like Dickens, came from an impoverished background. Although it's quite possible that if. If Dickens father had been better with money, they wouldn't have been as impoverished as. As they were.
- [48:43]
Jack Wilson
Right, right.
- [48:44]
Listener
It wasn't so much the social media that he came from, it was the fact that his father blew his money, basically. But thinking of writers who do come from impoverished backgrounds, it's difficult to think of them from the 19th century, maybe in the 20th century, a bit more. But one that comes to mind is Gorky in Russia, who had the most awful childhood. And he wrote, I'm sure, you know, a book called My Childhood, which he writes incredibly sensitively about these appalling conditions that he grew up in. But I think that was a rarity, that he was something of an exception. There probably are other examples, but. No, most. Most, I think. Can you think of any, Steve?
- [49:30]
Narrator
Not really. I just thinking when you were talking that Thackeray found him incredibly vulgar. He called him, when he met him once with. With his bright waistcoats and his friends, he called him vulgar. Incredibly vulgar. And happy. Because of course, Thackeray came from. He was Oxbridge man, wasn't he?
- [49:50]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [49:52]
Jack Wilson
Would Dickens have viewed that as an insult or kind of worn it as a badge of honor?
- [49:56]
Narrator
I think he rather liked it. I think it's quite funny because he liked winding Thackeray up, didn't he? Because he. He hated pretension.
- [50:05]
Simon Thomas
Right.
- [50:06]
Narrator
They had huge rows in their relationship, didn't they? And they broke off from talking to each other completely for a while, Thackeray and Dickens. But I think it's a nice contrast between. To illustrate what. What we're saying now, what the question you're asking is. I think probably Thackeray was more typical of the writers of the day. I can't really think of anybody comparable in any way to Dickens writing of the horrors of the City and of just London in general.
- [50:36]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [50:37]
Jack Wilson
Is it an oversimplification, do you think, to trace his experiences as a child to his kind of what seems to be boundless energy as an adult? Was it a fear of returning to poverty or an ambition that came out of those circumstances, working in the black ink factory and so on that you think made him such a tireless worker?
- [51:03]
Listener
Yes.
- [51:03]
Narrator
Simon and I were talking about this the other day, actually. Of course, when he was young, he was a very sickly boy. In direct contrast to his phenomenal health and energy. When he was older, he was very sickly and he thought this was a blessing because it made him read and put on lantern shows, his imagination like that. And according to Forster, again his main biographer, or his first biographer, it gave him what Forster saw as a false sense of being able to overcome anything which he overcame the most extraordinary things. But Forster thought he had an unrealistic view of his own strength and abilities because he came from such unprepossessing beginnings.
- [51:52]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [51:52]
Listener
And to some extent that was true, wasn't it, because he died early, I mean, prematurely, the age of 58. He wore himself out just through incredible hard work.
- [52:02]
Narrator
Yeah, he burnt it all out. And so he was never happy, or he never had enough money, did he? He was never relaxed about money, largely due to his father's. His father would always spend a little bit more than he had, and they were always impoverished, they were always porning bits of furniture, or on one occasion, Dickens had to take his little library of books to be pawned just by dinner or something like that. So he. He was never happy with his financial position, no matter how famous and how rich he became. Even after he bought Gads Hill Place, which I think. Simon, you did that bit. I think it was 1490 pounds he paid for. This is a 26 acre estate, wasn't it? And it's now a school, I believe. But he couldn't even relax after buying that, thinking he'd made it. He's still overworked and in fact, he went on to work more and more. He went on to give public readings, didn't he?
- [53:08]
Listener
So he.
- [53:09]
Narrator
He seemed to speed up and speed up and speed up until he just died, right. Even on the very. The day before he died, he'd done a full day's work on Edwin Drood and he just got to dinner and he. Then he had an attack.
- [53:24]
Listener
A lot of successful people are like that, aren't they, that they. They make a fortune, but they never stop. Because that fear, I mean, particularly if they come from a background like that, that fear that it's all going to be taken away. And I think that was very much what drove his work ethic, wasn't it? That. That fear that somehow he'd return to those dreadful days that he experienced as a child.
- [53:47]
Jack Wilson
When we talk about the things he overcame, I was really struck by his relationship with his parents. Everybody, I think, kind of knows at least a little bit about his father and the way that he. He ran into problems with debt and so on. But I didn't really realize until recently just how much Dickens felt that his parents overlooked him and had. Had not prioritized his education and had favored a sibling, I think. And I feel like he wanted his parents to have. Have recognized more about what he could accomplish. And I wonder if that was maybe.
- [54:25]
Simon Thomas
Part of what was driving him to succeed as well.
- [54:29]
Narrator
Yes, that's undoubtedly true. He wanted to be a gentleman. And he was put to work in this blacking factory. Absolute misery. Terrible, terrible conditions. He earns six shillings a week. And he was utterly miserable and utterly ashamed. And we tell the story in the book about one time he. He worked with a. With a guy called Fagin, and he was his friend. And one day when Dickens had been ill, he, His. His friend insisted on accompanying him home to make sure he got home safely. And Dickens was so ashamed of where he lived that he went to a rather nice house, absolutely nothing to do with him at all, and rang the doorbell. And it was only after he'd had a chat to the somewhat surprised person who answered the door. I'm sure he saw his Bob Fagin turn around and go.
- [55:25]
Simon Thomas
Go away.
- [55:26]
Narrator
It was only then that he went home to where he really lived. So there was great shame. Yes, and I think you referred to Fanny, his sister, who was actually allowed to go and study in the Royal College of Music. And money was found for somewhere for that. But Paul Dickens had to carry on laboring at this most appalling blacking factory, which he said was overrun with rats. And one day he actually left it. We're not quite sure the circumstances, how he came to leave it, but his mother got him back into it, yeah. Apologized to the owner, she went and talked to him, said, please take my son back. And he never forgave his mother for doing that. All his life.
- [56:13]
Listener
As he became successful, his parents became a burden on him, as did the rest of his family. I mean, his siblings and his children, they all looked at. Well, obviously when they were young, his children did. But when they were adults, he wanted to get rid of them because they all became a burden and a drain not only in his finances, but on his emotions and his time. And he eventually he sent his parents off to Exeter, wasn't it, Steve?
- [56:38]
Narrator
Yeah. Yeah.
- [56:39]
Listener
To kind of get rid of them, have a bit of respite from them.
- [56:42]
Narrator
But it didn't work, did it? Because his father used to write letters to people Dickens knew asking for money, didn't he? He was a total embarrassment. But, but even despite that, Dickens loved his father, really did. He thought he was a wonderful man. And the older he got, the more he loved him. He thought it was a bit like Mr. McCorber. Mr. McCorber may in fact be based on his father. He was always upbeat.
- [57:06]
Simon Thomas
Right.
- [57:07]
Jack Wilson
Okay, let's take a quick break and come back with more about Charles Dicketts.
- [57:25]
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- [58:38]
Jack Wilson
Okay, we're back with Stephen Browning and Simon Thomas. Let's talk a little bit about the circumstances in which Dickens succeeded. I think about a playwright like Shakespeare who obviously was a genius but also benefited from the Elizabethan theater and that it was kind of a perfect environment for his gifts. And Dickens seems to have come along at just the right time when someone writing serialized novels could find a fast path to Fame and fortune. Do you think he could have succeeded at being a reporter or essayist or poet or playwright in another era? Or were his gifts kind of uniquely matched to this particular time where people were buying the kind of stories that he was writing?
- [59:32]
Listener
Well, as Steve said earlier, he was a very successful reporter. He was very good at it. He taught himself shorthand, and he took it very seriously and was very professional at it. And he went on to do a lot with the magazines, with the Uncommercial Traveler. It was a mix of reportage and imagination, but it was still the same basic discipline. So he was very good at that. In terms of playwriting, I mean, he did write some adaptations. No, not adaptations of his own works, but he wrote some plays, some of which were successful but are not remembered today. So we kind of think, well, Dickens probably, like a lot of writers in other disciplines, like poetry or literature, don't write plays. There are very few, actually, that people who succeed in both those disciplines, one can think of. I mean, Samuel Beckett did it, Oscar Wilde, to some extent, Chekhov. Ibsen was a poet before he was a playwright. And he kind of regretted towards the end of his life that he'd given up poetry. But there's very few people who excel in all those different areas. You can think of lots of examples. Shelley, Byron, you know, various people who had a go at playwriting. And to an extent, Dickens had a go at playwriting, and it wasn't really him. So he did find his niche early on, once he got past the reporting stage of his life and started to write fiction. And it absolutely fit. It fit his personality, it fit his skills.
- [61:06]
Narrator
So what about the acting bit, though, Simon, do you think he could have been an actor?
- [61:11]
Listener
Well, as far as we can see, yes. We don't know how good an actor he was, but certainly at the time people said he was this wonderful actor. He had an audition early in his life, when he was 18 or something, wasn't it? At Drury Lane Theatre? The only reason he didn't go was because he had a cold at the time. But he might have been dragged into that world instead. I rather suspect if he had been an actor, he'd have ended up writing anyway, because actors often do to diversify. And obviously that was in his makeup, the ability to tell stories. But, yes, you're right, acting was a very important part of his life. And we have a section in the book which details that about his relationship with the theater and with acting in particular. But, I mean, he would take on all aspects of a production he would direct, he'd do the scenery with his usual verve and sort of incredible energy. So, yes, I mean, he was very drawn to that world, but his livelihood and his real genius was in. In fictional writing.
- [62:18]
Narrator
He loved the theater, too. Didn't he love going to the theater? Not least to see the plagiarized versions of his own novels, some of which were more appalling than others. But I think in one. One case, the production he saw, I think it might have been a Nicholas Nickleby. Before he'd even finished writing it, somebody had put on a production in the West End of Nicholas Nickleby which said. I think he said something like hacked, garbled and cobbled together. And it was so bad he actually lay down in the box and refused to get up until it finished other times. So he'd go to see his own plays performed. And he wasn't too scathing about it. The copyright was dreadful situation, of course, but he wasn't always appalled, not always what he saw people do with his own plays.
- [63:08]
Jack Wilson
Did he ever go through any periods of. Of lack of success? Were there. Were there times where the public or the critics had had kind of turned away from him? Or was his just a comet that was continually on the rise?
- [63:21]
Narrator
No, it's amazing. It was a comet that wouldn't slow down. Yeah, he was very worried at some stages, especially when he was. He determined he was going to divorce his wife. And he was very concerned about his reputation and the effect that might have upon his. His reputation. And so he tried to put a piece in Punch justifying his divorce, feelings towards his wife, but they refused to publish it. So that led to the demise of Household Words, which is his first very successful magazine. So the end result was, of course, few people might have known about it, but by doing that, it became headlines. So he was concerned that his success may not last.
- [64:12]
Listener
Certainly some of the books sold a lot better than others, didn't they? But I don't think he had any real duds, you know, and there was never a period where they said, Dickens is finished. You know, right to the end, he was. As you. As you said earlier, Steve, the day before he died, he was writing a bit more of Edwin Drood, which he sadly never finished. But, yeah, there was never a period when he either lost his direction or the public turned completely away. They might not have bought, you know, serializations in quite the numbers they had on the previous book, but that's very true. Especially.
- [64:45]
Narrator
I'm thinking of Barnaby Rudge, I think wasn't as successful as he would have liked. And wasn't it after Barnaby Rudge that he proposed to his publishers to take a sabbatical because he was concerned about his image and he didn't want to get tired of him and he accepted. Fifteen hundred pounds. Was it to not write for a little while? So in answer to your question, yeah, I. He was always a meteor in the sky. It never stopped. But he was careful and he did get worried that one day everything might fall apart.
- [65:18]
Listener
But you point to something very interesting there, Steve, that he voluntarily took time out to recharge his batteries and to rest. Rest his brand, I think describe it in the book as being he rested his brand rather than overexposed himself. So he was a very astute businessman, unlike his father, who was so bad with money. He was very, very careful, probably as a result of what he experienced in youth. And he controlled his own career very carefully indeed. And he was ruthless as well. He wouldn't think twice about getting rid of a publisher or an agent or an editor if they weren't giving what he wanted. So he was a very good businessman. And that's something that you. You don't kind of link up with that sort of imagination and creativity. But yes, he. He controlled what he did very carefully.
- [66:15]
Narrator
Do you think he could have been a businessman? We talked about. Could he been an actor?
- [66:20]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [66:20]
Narrator
Could have been a playwright. He was a writer.
- [66:23]
Listener
Yeah. He certainly had the skills for it. Whether he would have wanted to go into commerce rather than, you know, the creative industries, which he did. Probably. Probably not. But he certainly had the skills to do it. And combining the two meant that he had, you know, a very successful career, not just because of his genius at telling stories, but also because he handled it very well.
- [66:46]
Jack Wilson
What was the issue with his marriage and what led to its breakdown?
- [66:52]
Narrator
Over to you, Simon. This is a complex one, isn't it? We've spent hours talking about this. Yeah.
- [66:57]
Listener
I mean, obviously there was the case of Ellen Turnan, the young actress that he pursued and who led to the end of his marriage. But it was by no means the beginning of the end. Things had deteriorated. You know, he and his wife had been together for 20 years. They had 10 children together. She never quite fitted in with his lifestyle or his way of seeing things. Of course, we have to bear in mind this was Victorian England, where men held sway and the women had to do what they were told. So it was very unfair on her as it was, you know, with women generally in those days. But somehow the marriage just deteriorated he, of course, was obsessive in terms of his work and his other activities, whether it's his theater or walking or whatever. And he didn't allow her to fit into his life as much as I think she would have liked. She was always sort of several steps behind. And so inevitably there was a deterioration. She was never able to be fully herself again, like so many women of the era. And he got to the stage where Dickens started to build a case against her. In fact, he literally built a case against her because he built a bookcase dividing their bedroom. But he was also building in his mind a case that. That kind of represented emotional barriers that. And, and he, he was sort of willing it to end. And then Ellen Turnham came along. They. They did a play together. She was a young actress, she was 18, he was 45. So not very appropriate by today's standards. And he pursued her. The nature of that relationship is kind of fuzzy. We don't know for sure exactly what the nature of the relationship was because there's no real documentation of it there. Tomlin wrote a very, very good biography of her called the Invisible Woman, in which she makes a very convincing case that they not only were sexual partners, but there was a child as a result. Other biographers have sort of poo pooed that idea and said, no, they don't think there was a physical relationship between them, but it seems unlikely that that was the case. And that went on to the end of his life. You know, he was reputedly at Ellen's house in Peckham, I think, the day before he died. And allegedly, one theory has it that he actually died at her house and had to be taken back to Gad's Hill, though that is a theory rather than anything documented. But it was a natural sort of deterioration of the marriage and then his kind of yearning for something new, something different, which then precipitated a divorce.
- [69:54]
Narrator
Right, yeah. No, I'd say. Didn't she also, Simon. Simon's more expert in this area than my. Than I am, as you can tell. But didn't you also, Catherine suffer from depression? And she wasn't seen by Dickens. She was seen as a bit of a nuisance, a bit of a drag, and he was never sharp enough for his mind. Imagine him coming home and for breakfast, having walked all night and being absolutely full of enthusiasm of what he'd seen and she just didn't really want to listen. And so I think he found her increasingly burdensome. And also he did express a view to, to his friends that he had missed out the one thing on the one thing in his life that would have made him happy, that was a true, true love. He never had that. He believed, and he certainly never had that in Catherine.
- [70:48]
Listener
But, of course, it has to be said that he was very unfair towards Catherine. You know, I mean, she was very faithful to him in terms of following him around. When he went to America, she was always a few steps behind. She was always there supporting him. She didn't really want the marriage to end. He precipitated it. It was hardly his finest hour, the way he treated her as a wife. And yes, it's sad for her. It was sad for him, but his behavior wasn't above reproach, certainly, in terms of how that all turned out.
- [71:23]
Narrator
She also always supported him, didn't she? To the rest of his life, I think. And one of the most ironic things, a very little thing. But she also published her own book, which is still a best seller today, when she was divorced from him, called Lady Clutterbucks. What should we have for dinner? It's a Kumbhu, and you're still available on Amazon, I understand, so.
- [71:43]
Listener
And that makes you wonder what she might have achieved had she not been burdened with him. You know. Yeah, that he may have felt that she was a burden to him, but it was. It worked both ways. And she could have, you know, maybe achieved a good deal more. You know, women writers were emerging then. George Eliot was around, and Dickens was an admirer of hers, and he actually was very supportive of other women writers, but maybe not of his wife. A little too close to home.
- [72:12]
Jack Wilson
Well, something that I've learned over the years is that once your kids start to outnumber you, it starts to get exponentially more difficult. And so if she had been raising two children by her, you know, essentially by herself, it might have been hard enough, but to have 10. I'm sure it took a lot of her strength and energy. So one of my questions was going to be if you thought Dickens was happy. I mean, we have the quote by Thackeray saying that he was vulgar and happy. And we have what you've just described as him saying that maybe he never had the true happiness of being in love, of finding his true love. But do you think he was, deep down, do you think he was happy? Did he present as happy? And do you think he truly was happy?
- [73:00]
Listener
I wouldn't have said happy was the word. He was driven, he was ambitious, and he was fulfilled. Perhaps happy is another category, isn't it, of experience? I'd say probably he wasn't. He was too driven by. There were demons, I guess, from the past and that need to just keep working and at the exclusion of relationships. So he wasn't as a desperately unhappy person, but yeah, in the areas that could have brought him contentment or whatever, I think he. He was always looking for something else. So, yeah, there was a void maybe that. That he was trying to fill, like. Like so many great artists. So I just said happy wasn't the right word for him, but I think he was fulfilled in terms of that. He did almost all that he wanted to do and he had led a very, very full life.
- [73:57]
Narrator
He was incredibly famous too, wasn't he? In a way. A novelist had never been this famous before. He was famous for. Almost immediately. He wrote the Pickwick Papers to the end of his life.
- [74:07]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [74:07]
Narrator
And he had innumerable dinners given in his honor. Funnily enough, he only met Queen Victoria once. She quite liked him. But I found that strange. That was when he was in the latter part of his. His life, when he wasn't well. But the public adored him. So he had public adoration by the bucket.
- [74:27]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [74:28]
Narrator
And fame, almost unprecedented fame. Well, is still the same today. I don't think any. Any novelist is more famous than Dickens is, are they?
- [74:37]
Simon Thomas
Yeah.
- [74:38]
Narrator
I think there's even been a book out recently asking if Dickens was greater than Shakespeare, which I personally do not think this case. But his trajectory. That's the word. Hardly say it. Trajectory seems to be on the up still, really.
- [74:52]
Jack Wilson
Right. So your title, the Real Charles Dickens, implies, at least to me, that you're setting things straight a bit, maybe separating the man from the myth, that kind of thing. Do you think the public generally has the right conception of Dickens? Are there things that they might misunderstand about him or tend not to know?
- [75:14]
Listener
I think there are things that maybe are less well known about him. I mean, we've been talking quite a lot about the breakdown of the marriage and this going off with this actress. You know, some people might be surprised about that if they've not sort of read a biography before. We haven't set out to try and bust myths or be controversial in any way. We try to tell it how it was. And I think myth busting is an interesting subject, really, because it's. It's common these days, isn't it, to take a hero and deliberately find their clay feet. And I think that's. That's a good thing. We are surrounded by myths. History is myth, isn't it? A lot of the time and we grew up with all these myths about famous people. And I think it is important to try and see people as real people rather than just as good stories. And an example I can give is when he arrived in America the first time. Newspaper stories at the time told how there were cheering crowds on the harbor side and they hoisted him up onto their shoulders and cheered and carried him off. And those stories have kind of persisted in quite a few, even high quality biographies, they sort of tell that story. But if you read American Notes, which is his account of his time in America, he doesn't mention any of that. What he was interested in was the people and the land. And he describes traveling on all different sorts of transport, often in situations of danger, on steamboats and going through rapids and all sorts and the conditions that they were living in. And he was visiting factories and insane asylums and workhouses. He was interested in the people. So I think that's kind of the real Charles Dickens in a way. That's what he went to America for, and it's what he wrote about. And that, to me appeals more than the hyperbolic sort of myths of how fated he was and how he was spending his time at gala dinners and so on. So those things no doubt occurred. But the emphasis, I think any life, any celebrity, famous person, they may have moments of glamour in their lives, but basically their lives are mundane, like all our lives. And Dickens, with the output he had, the incredible amount of work he did, he must have spent an awful lot of time sitting at his desk with a quill in his hand. And that's the kind of the mundane reality. And so, yeah, I think it's important to see people as real people rather than just as, you know, the subject of good hyperbolic stories.
- [78:01]
Narrator
I think the title also first, doesn't it, Simon? To the real people that he used in his novels, he liked nothing better than to actually present real people. And when he first started, he'd present them a little bit unfairly. I think a very famous one is Lee Hunt, who was presented with all his negative aspects as Harold Skimpole. And Dickens was chastised for this by people who knew the person concerned that it just was unfair. It was over the top. He had no right to do that. And similarly with. There's a judge called Lang, upon whom he based. A terrible judge in Oliver Twist and the one who used to have sort of gin in his desk. And he had a flushed face and would always send everybody down. But later on, and in fact, the public recognized Lang and Lang was forced to resign as a result of these. What went on after Dickens wrote about him. But then as he went on, he would sometimes take an aspect of somebody. He learned to be more subtle in his presentation of real people. And he'd take a characteristic or two and mix it up with other ones, imaginary ones, you could say the same base father and his mother. You know, when he started out, they presented maybe quite literally, almost as Mr. McCorber and possibly Mrs. McCorber. But then later on he. He became more subtle in his approach, I think. And sometimes you just take a name like Fagin. Fagin was a name of. We've referred to him earlier, just now as a boy, Bob Fagin. He used to labor with in the blacking factory. Sometimes you take a place, as in Coram's Field, which is in West London, which is a place for children. And Tati Coram, the second part of her name, came from a sort of celebration of this. This place and this man.
- [79:58]
Listener
And we point those things out in the book, don't we, you know, parallel, you know, where characters have been drawn from real life.
- [80:06]
Narrator
Yeah. One of the most interesting ones, I think, is Ebenezer Scrooge. Where did he come from? We do propose that they may. He may have come from a couple of people. But let me give a brief details of those people. But nobody's quite sure. Nobody's quite sure. Especially as he hit his stride, never quite sure how much was real people and how much of his fantastic imagination. Obviously best when it's a combination, I guess, than both.
- [80:32]
Jack Wilson
Right. Okay. Well, I'm afraid we're out of time, so let's stop there. The book is called the Real Charles Dickens, Stephen Browning and Simon Thomas. Thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.
- [80:43]
Listener
Thank you for having us.
- [80:44]
Narrator
Thank you very much for having us. It's been a great pleasure.
- [80:49]
Simon Thomas
And Stephen Browning, may you rest in peace. Okay, that's going to do it for.
- [81:02]
Jack Wilson
This episode of the History of Literature.
- [81:04]
Simon Thomas
My thanks to Simon Thomas and Stephen Browning, the dearly departed Stephen Browning. And my condolences to Simon and to Stephen's friends and family. You can find Stephen and Simon's book, the Real Charles Dickens, at bookstores everywhere. And don't forget your chance to sign up for an experience with Emma and me and a dozen or so other literature fans by going to John Shore's Travel and looking for the literary tour with Jack Wilson. The Tour of England. We'll be back soon with some Mark Twain, some Mike Palindrome and F. Scott Fitzgerald. A story about Einstein and Kafka, Charlotte Bronte, Icelandic folk tales that's coming up soon and more. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. SA Foreign.
- [82:32]
Zibby Owens
Hi, this is Zibby Owens, host of Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books in my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know. Get insider insights and connect with guests like Grammy Award winning singer Alicia Keys, critically acclaimed author Judy Blume, and Academy Award winning screenwriter John Irving every single day. With Totally Booked, you aren't just listening, you're part of the story. So don't miss out. Follow Totally Booked with Zibby on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now.
- [83:20]
Courtney Act
Courtney Act I'm Courtney Act. Many of you may know me from RuPaul's Drag Race, celebrity Big Brother, Dancing with the Stars, or probably my hit album Kaleidoscope. Well, guess what? I have got a brand new show called R and R with Courtney act and I want you to check it out. You know I hate small talk. I want to go deep and I want to go quickly. And on my show we do just that. In today's, today's world, it feels really polarized and we're more connected than ever, but really we can feel isolated and I don't like that. I want the story shared here on RR to make us realize that our similarities are greater than our differences. So join me and my fabulous guests like Nicole Byer, Tom Daly, Margaret Cho, Katia Adore Delano, Jackie Beat, and many more. If you're looking for some rest and relaxation, you've come to the wrong place because we are here. Back the layers of superficiality and we're getting down to the real stuff. Follow R and R with Courtney act on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you're listening now.