April talk - The Life of Charles Dickens

April Talk - Jacqueline and Brian Sutton – The Life of Charles Dickens

After the formal business of our AGM was completed, we were treated to an entertaining yomp through the life of the inventor of Christmas as we know it, Charles Dickens.

Through anecdotes, readings and performances, Jacqueline and Brian Sutton regaled his life, death and everything in between, from the lows of enforced child labour, through the years of chequered romantic pursuits, to the highs of social acclaim and literary success, interspersed with plentiful references to the literary works he penned and the characters he created.

His writings revealed to the Victorian middle-classes life in England’s workhouses, making readers laugh and cry in equal measure, rendering him a great social reformer of the day.

Life of performing started with his father taking him to the pub and being placed on the bar to recite poems. From childhood Charles experienced dark times due to his father’s inability to live within his means leading to imprisonment captured in Little Dorrit. As a boy he was sent to work in a shoe polish factory to support his impoverished family, and here both he and we met Bob Fagin, a key figure in his second novel, Oliver Twist. A low point in his personal life, but a high one in his literary journey.

By age 18 he was a rising star, moving in wealthy social circles and seeking a wife. This led to various relationships, plentiful fictional personalities and marriage to ‘sturdy and sensible’ Catherine Hogarth, ‘who would do’. And ‘do’ she did, with her own professional success as a cookbook author and marital obedience in the form of ten children.

The custom for a wife’s unmarried sisters to live with newlyweds led to Charles’ extramarital relationships with two younger Hogarths.  Mary’s untimely death at age 17 left him distraught but left us with Little Nell of The Old Curiosity Shop, whilst a lifelong affair with and eventually marriage to Georgina inspired Agnes Wickfield, the second wife of David Copperfield.

Later on, through his friendship with contemporary Wilkie Collins, he began an affair with Ellen Ternan, a vivacious 18-year-old who we encounter as Lucie Marrette in A Tale of Two Cities. Whether loyal wife Catherine inspired any characters is unclear, but readers are invited to draw their own conclusions!

A showman who loved to entertain, the public queued in their droves to see Charles perform his works, but a life of excess plus unchecked workaholism took its toll in 1870 when at age 58 after a series of strokes, chronic gout and a brain haemorrhage he died, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood his final novel.

His success combined unique talent, fantastic imagination, compelling storytelling, memorable characters and prolific output, and even though his homelife may have been far from admirable, there is no doubting his creative genius and literary legacy.