The Ordeal of Young Charles Dickens (1824)
An excerpt from “Writers Gone Wild 2: The Sequel” a work in progress
One of the great novelists of his time, Charles Dickens wrote with feeling and even rage about abandonment, poverty, and the hard life of orphans. That’s because he learned about the hard life of Victorian Britain firsthand, courtesy of his feckless father and unfeeling mother.
His father, a clerk in the Naval Pay Office, was a cheerful, optimistic man capable of rebounding like a cork pushed under water. He had several serious faults, however: His snobbery was as large as his sense of entitlement, and he had no self-control when it came to money. Small wonder that Dickens would later immortalize him as Mr. Micawber in “David Copperfield,” who always hoped “something will turn up.”
The good times for Charlie ended in 1822. His father was transferred to London. The oldest sister, Fanny, studied at the Royal Academy of Music. Two years later, as his family’s debts grew, Charlie was given a job at Warren’s Blacking, pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish for six shillings a week.
The job entailed long hours and harsh working conditions. In the house overlooking the Thames, Charlie carefully picked his way across the rotten floors to his workbench. As he worked, he could hear the rats in the water-logged basement squeaking and scuffling at all hours.
This part of his life left a permanent mark on him. “Even now, famous and caressed and happy,” he wrote in an autobiographical fragment, “I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolately back to that time of my life.”
Worse was to come. Two weeks into his job, John Dickens was arrested for debt. He was thrown into debtor’s prison, where he was joined by his family. Two children stayed out of prison: Fanny, who stayed at the Academy, and Charlie, who had a job. He was moved to a lodging house in Camden Town, three miles away. “It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age.”
For three months, his routine stayed the same. He would rise early at the lodging house, walk three miles to the blacking factory, and work his 12-hour shift. On weekends, he would visit his family in prison, where he would listen to his father’s stories about life in prison. He would also recall with the vivid detail that he would use in his books about life in prison and what confinement did to the prisoners and guards.
In late May, John Dickens was released from prison, but Charlie continued working at the factory. Even more humiliating, the boys were moved to a window alcove where passers-by could judge the quality of their work.
Even thought Charlie desperately wished to stay with his family, it seemed as if fate was determined to keep him at his stool in the blacking factory. When his father quarreled with the factory’s owner and took Charlie home, his dream of freedom was dashed by his mother. She ordered Charlie back to work, a decision which haunted him for the rest of his life.
“I do not write resentfully or angrily: for I know all these things have worked together to make me what I am: I but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back.”
He would draw on his experiences for the rest of his life. From it, he created his orphans and abandoned children such as Oliver Twist and Little Nell, and a memorable villain he named for a fellow worker at the factory, whose kindness to him he never forgot: Bob Fagin.