Chapter 21 (one)

Charles Dickens was short in stature, but elegant in manner and amiable in appearance.There is also a portrait of him in the National Portrait Gallery, painted by Macleese when he was twenty-seven.He was sitting in a fine chair, close to the writing table, with a delicate little hand resting lightly on the manuscript.He was richly dressed, with a large satin tie round his neck, and his brown hair fell in curls below his ears on either side of his face.He had good eyes and the brooding look on his face that an admiring public expected so much from a successful young writer.What this portrait fails to show is the freshness, the freshness of his spirit, and the great vitality of his heart and mind, which is seen in his demeanor to anyone who comes in contact with him.He has always been a bit of a boy, and in his youth he liked velvet coats, bright waistcoats, colorful ties and white hats, but he never achieved the effect he expected: people were surprised and even shocked by his attire, described as It was slovenly and gaudy.

His grandfather William Dickens was an early servant, married a maid, and eventually became butler at the Crewe House.Crewe House is the home of Chester MP John Crewe.William Dickens had two sons, William and John, but we only care about John, partly because he is the father of England's greatest novelist, and partly because he served as the model for his son's most famous image, Mr. Micawber .After William Dickens' death, his widow continued to stay at Crewe House to take care of the house.Thirty-five years later, she retired with a pension and moved to London, perhaps to be closer to her two sons.The Crewes educated their fatherless sons and paid for their living expenses.They got John a job in the Navy cashier's office.There he met a colleague and soon married his sister, Elizabeth Barlow.John seems to have been nervous about money from the beginning of his marriage, and whenever he encountered a fool who would borrow money, he opened his mouth to borrow it.But he was kind and generous, not stupid, and hardworking, but only in fits and starts.Obviously, this man likes good wine, because he was arrested for being in debt for the second time because he was accused by a wine merchant.John was later portrayed as a well-dressed old man, always fiddling with a large string of stamps attached to his watch.

John and Elizabeth's eldest son, Charles, was born in Portsea in 1812.Two years later my father was transferred to London, and three years later to Chatham.It was there that Charles started school as a child.His father did collect a few books, like Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Gil Blass, Don Quixote, Landon, Pickle Er Biography".These books, Charles read and read.From his later novels, we can see how huge and lasting the influence of these books on him was. In 1882, John Dickens, who had already had five children, was recalled to London, while Charles stayed in Chatham to continue his schooling and was not reunited with his family until several months later.At this time, the Dickens family settled in a house in Camden Town, a suburb of London, which was later described by Charles as the residence of the Micawbers.Although John Dickens earned more than three hundred pounds a year, which would be worth at least twelve hundred pounds today, he was extremely poor and unable to send young Charles to school.Much to the boy's distaste, he himself was sent off to watch the children, shine boots, dust clothes, and help with housework to the maid Mrs. Dickens had brought from Juchanson.Between intervals he wandered about Camden, "a deserted place, surrounded by crops and ditches," and the neighboring towns of Summers and Kent, and sometimes he went further afield, looking at Looked at Soho and Limehouse.

Things got worse, and Mrs. Dickens decided to start a school for the children of the British in India; she borrowed money (probably from her mother-in-law), and printed leaflets to distribute, which her own children stuffed in the In a mailbox nearby.Of course, no students were recruited, and at the same time, the debt situation was becoming more and more pressing.Charles was sent off to the pawnshop, pawning everything that could be exchanged for money, and all his literature, which meant so much to him, was sold.Later Mrs. Dickens's distant in-law James Lamott found Charles a job in a charcoal mill (of which he was himself a partner) at a salary of shillings a Saturday.His parents had gratefully accepted the job, but it hurt the boy deeply for them to walk away with such relief.He is only twelve years old.Shortly thereafter, John Dickens was arrested for debt and taken to Marshal; his wife pawned what little was left, and followed with her children.The prison is filthy and overcrowded, for not only the prisoners live in it, but also the families they bring with them (if they choose); whether they are allowed to do so to alleviate the suffering of prison life, or because of these misfortunes The people have nowhere to go, and I don't know it.If a debtor has no money, the greatest trouble is loss of liberty, and this trouble can be alleviated in some cases: some prisoners are allowed to live outside the high walls under certain conditions.In the past, the guards used to blackmail prisoners with savagery and often cruelty; but by the time John Dickens was in prison, the worst forms of torture had been abolished, and he could live in relative comfort.The loyal little maid lives outside and comes every day to help with babysitting and cooking.He still enjoyed a salary of six pounds a week, but he had no intention of paying his debts; and, as one might expect, he cared little about his release, being happy to be free from his creditors.Soon he regained his strength.The other debtors "pick him up as chairman of the committee that manages the internal economy of the prison," and within a short time he gets to know everyone, from the warders to the lowest inmates.One thing that has never been understood by his biographers is that John Dickens was still receiving his salary during this period.The only explanation may be that since government employees are appointed by powerful people, accidents such as debts and imprisonment are not serious enough to lead to drastic measures to stop salary.

Charles boarded at Camden Town during the early days of his father's imprisonment; however, John Dickens found him a lodging in Rant Street, Southwark, as this was too far from the charring factory (at Hagford Bridge, Charing Cross Road). Room, near Massar Prison.So he can have breakfast and dinner with his family.What he was asked to do was not too tiring, which was to wash the bottles, label them, and tie them up. In April 1824, Mrs. William Dickens, the old housekeeper of the Crewe House, died, leaving her savings to her two sons.John Dickens' debt was paid (by his brother) and he was free again.He made his home again in Camden Town, and he himself returned to his post in the Royal Navy Quartermaster.Charles continued washing bottles at the factory for some time, but then John Dickens quarreled with James Lamott, "by letter," Charles later wrote, "because I brought letters from my father to him, by This led to a breakdown in the relationship." James Lamotte told Charles that his father had insulted him, so he had to go. "So I went home with a strange relief, like a sense of oppression." His mother tried to calm the matter down, so Charles had to keep the job, and keep earning what had already risen to a weekly salary. Seven shillings' wages, which she desperately needed at the time; and for that he could never forgive her. "I never forgot after this, didn't want to forget, couldn't forget: my mother was so keen to send me back to work," he added.John Dickens, however, would not listen to this, and sent his son to a school with the pompous name of "Wellington Council College," on the Hampstead Road.He stayed there for a total of two and a half years.

It is difficult for us to know how long this child has been in the carbon powder factory: he went there in early February and returned home in June, so he will not stay in the factory for more than four months at most.But these days seem to have left a deep impression on him. He thinks this experience is very shameful, and he doesn't want to mention it at all.When his close friend and first biographer John Foster happened to touch the clue, Dickens told him that he mentioned a topic that made him deeply painful, "even at this moment", which is already twenty years old. Five years later, "he is still unforgettable."

We are so used to hearing eminent politicians and industrial tycoons bragging about their early experience of washing dishes and selling newspapers that we do not understand why Dickens insisted that his parents had done him serious harm by sending him to a charcoal factory , and the secret is really embarrassing, it must be covered up.He is a happy, mischievous, alert kid who already knows the dark side of life.From an early age he had seen how his father's profligacy had thrown the family into trouble.Their family is very poor, so naturally they live a poor life.In Camden Town, he had cleaning and scrubbing jobs, and was sent to pawn coats and other sundries for money to pay for; like other boys, he had to play in the streets with the same kind of kids. .While other children of his class were going to school, he was out working, and earning a decent amount of money.The six shillings he earned a week (soon to be seven shillings) were equivalent to twenty-five to thirty shillings today.For a brief period, he had to support himself with this money, and later when he lived near the Massar prison and ate breakfast and dinner with his family, he only had to buy lunch.The kids he worked with were friendly and it was hard to understand why he felt so ashamed to hang out with them.From time to time, he was taken to visit his grandmother who lived in Oxford Street, and found helplessly that his grandmother had been "serving people" all her life.Perhaps John Dickens was a bit of a snobby, unwarranted bombast, but a twelve-year-old certainly has no conception of social status.We might expect that if Charles was old enough to feel superior to the other kids, he would be smart enough to understand how important the money he earned was to the family.We might expect that, for him, earning money for the family was a great source of pride.

Predictably, because of Forster's discovery, Dickens wrote part of his autobiography and gave it to Forster, so we can know the details of this period of his life.I suspect that when he used his imagination to write his memoirs, he was filled with sympathy for his own childhood; famous, rich and popular, if he were in this child's shoes, he would still feel the pain of it. , disgust and humiliation.He wrote that when the poor child was betrayed by the person he trusted most and felt extremely lonely and miserable, everything in front of him was so vivid, his generous heart was bleeding, and his eyes were blurred with tears.I don't think he was exaggerating on purpose, but because he had to: his genius (or rather his genius) was exaggeration.It is by detailing and emphasizing the comic elements of Mr. Micawber's character that he makes the reader laugh; it is by emphasizing the tragic effect of little Nellie's decay that he makes the reader cry.He would not be such a great novelist if he had not described his four months in the toner factory so movingly (and only he knows how); Using this past event, it achieved a tear-jerking effect.Personally, I don't believe that the pain caused by this experience is really what he thought he was when he became famous and a public figure in the future; I don't believe what the biographers and critics say , saying that this experience had a decisive impact on his life and works.

When he was still in Marshal Prison, fearing that he, as an insolvent debtor, would lose his job in the Royal Navy Quartermaster Service, John Dickens pleaded with the department superiors to recommend him to receive a severance payment on the grounds of poor health; His twelve years of service, with his six children, allowed him to receive a pension of £140 a year "on compassionate grounds".That was not much money for a breadwinner like John Dickens, and he had to find other ways to supplement his income.He had some shorthand, and with the help of his brother-in-law (who was connected with the press), he got a job as a parliamentary reporter.Charles stayed at school until he was fifteen, and then went to work as a footman in a law firm.He didn't seem to find the job less than dignified.He had joined what we would call today's white-collar class.A few weeks later my father managed to get him a clerkship in another law firm, at ten shillings a week, which was later raised to fifteen.He found life dull, and in the hope of improving himself, he learned shorthand - and after eighteen months he was good enough to be a reporter for the Permanent Court.By the time he was twenty, he was covering debates in the House of Commons, and he soon gained a reputation as "the fastest and most accurate man on the press bench".

At the same time, he fell in love with Maria Bidner, the beautiful daughter of a bank clerk.Charles was only seventeen when the two first met.Maria is a flirtatious girl.She seemed to have given him many encouraging hints, and they might even have had a secret engagement.There was a lover, she felt very beautiful and happy, but Charles was penniless, and she had no intention of marrying him at all.Two years later, their relationship ended, but the two continued to exchange gifts and letters romantically, leaving Charles feeling like his heart would break.It was not until many years later that they were able to meet again.Maria Bidner, who had been married for many years, dined with the famous Mr. and Mrs. Dickens, and she was fat and stupid at this time.She immediately became the prototype of Flora Funchin in "Little Dorrit", and had already been the prototype of Middle Dora before that.

In order to be closer to the newspaper office where he worked, Dickens lived in a dark street not far from the Strand, but felt unsatisfactory, and soon rented an unfurnished room at the Furnival Hotel.But just before he made arrangements, his father was arrested again due to debts, and he had to provide him with living expenses in the detention center. "We can only assume that John Dickens will not be able to see his family for a while," said Charles, who arranged cheap accommodation for his family and stayed away with his brother Frederick, who he took to the Furnival Hotel Live together in the "back room on the fourth floor".In his readable biography of Charles Dickens, the late Yona Pope Hennig wrote: "Just because he was open-minded, generous, and seemed able to solve such difficulties with ease, the family (including later People in his wife's family) have formed the habit of counting on him to find money and jobs for these spineless people, but all the pillars of the family have to bear the burden for such people."