Re: questions for charles dickens

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Mon, 6 Jan 1997 14:39:41 -0100 

My dear Miss Godbey,

  It can be said, I suppose, that I based characters in my books
upon real people, but to say as much, without qualification, is
surely to diminish the writer's work.  I know I said at the
time, when someone declared that no such woman as Mrs Nickleby
could exist, that the mother of the hero of "Nicholas Nickleby"
was standing before me as I wrote.  I was alluding, God forgive
me, to my own mother, who frequently tested my patience.
  "Bleak House" is the book that probably caused the greatest
excitement about such matters.  Many detected in Harold Skimpole
aspects of the character of Mr Leigh Hunt, the poet and essayist.
To be frank with you, Mr Hunt did sit unknowingly for his
portrait, when I was shaping Harold Skimpole, but Harold
Skimpole is not Leigh Hunt.  It is true that Mr Hunt was not the
most provident of men, and did look to his friends for help
from time to time, but he received it, unstintingly, because he was
the man he was - brave, selfless, lovable.  No monster of
selfishness lurked beneath his affable front, such as lurked
beneath Harold Skimpole's.
  The fact is that the writer of fiction must pluck behaviour and
appearance where he finds it, but only rarely does he pick the
whole man or woman.  My error with Harold Skimpole - and in
retrospect I believe it was an error - was in using too many of
Mr Hunts superficial traits, for a character at bottom quite
unlike him.  Still, I believe Mr Hunt never held my clumsiness
against me.
  My interest in the lives of the poor grew out of experiences
that, even now, it distresses me to speak of.  When I was scarcely
more than an infant, my poor father fell into financial embrarrassment.
For a while he was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea Gaol.  For
a somewhat longer while I toiled as a boy labourer in Warren's
Blacking Warehouse, sealing the tops of bottles of shoe blacking.  It
was then I learned what it is to be poor, what it is to be anxious,
what it is to be without hope of a better future.  Alas, in my day
the numbers in such a condition were the majority, not a minority
the more prosperous could forget.
  I believe it was through my writing that I struck the heaviest
blows on behalf of the poor, but I worked for them in other ways to.
I assisted many charitable enterprises by showing myself to be
associated with them, and making speeches on their behalf.  With
my dear - and very wealthy - friend, Angela Burdett Coutts, I
worked on practical projects - housing for the poor, a home for
reformed women of the street.  I like to think, too, that I played
a proper part, for a man of my wealth and station, in charitable
giving, but I do not wish further to touch upon this.
  I am obliged to you for communicating with me, my dear Miss
Godbey.


Fathfully yours,


Charles Dickens

======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author