Re: Hello Mr.Dickens!

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Thu, 31 Jul 1997 12:04:26 -0100 

My dear Miss Tavakoli,

  Your message gave me great pleasure, not only because of the flattering
things you say about "Great Expectations," but also because of the
sprightliness and intelligence with which you write.
  You must understand that I still find it difficult to speak of those dark
days when my father languished in the Marshalsea, and I languished in
durance scarcely less vile at Warren's Blacking Warehouse.  It was not only
the lack of hope for the future I felt so keenly, and the sense of
degradation.  I felt betrayed and abandoned.  While I toiled at Warren's, my
sister Fanny was being educated as a boarder at the Royal Academy of Music.
I still wonder that no such provision was found for me.  Sometimes I tell
myself that my parents, in their troubles, did their best for me, devoted to
my welfare such thought and care as they could.  Perhaps they hoped I would
work my way to the top of the blacking business!  But at other times the
sense of betrayal returns.
  From the age of ten or so, my town was London, and there was someone in
London like Miss Havisham, in certain outward respects at least, during the
years that preceded my writing of "Great Expectations" - an unfortunate
creature who had lost her wits, it's believed because of a man's
faithlessness, and who wandered the town, dressed all in shabby white.  Her
doings and her fate were recorded in the "Household Narrative," a
current-affairs supplement to "Household Words," the weekly magazine I
edited during the 1850's.  But I think Miss Havisham was my own creature
too.  Her self-regarding eccentricity, her manipulation of others, were
characteristics which always fascinated me, and which had little to do with
the poor mad creature who wandered the streets of London.
  Pip's childhood differs from mine in important ways.  An orphan, looked
after by his sister, wife of a blacksmith, he was not born to such hope as I
was, but greater hope than I dared acknowledge was delusively offered him.
As a child I expected, as of right, to claim title later in life as a
gentleman.  Pip hoped against hope to become a gentleman, but did, and found
it not all he'd expected. In Pip, I suppose I could say, I explored a kind
of reverse image of my own childhood.
  I did have some experience of convicts, and of prisons, naturally.  Not
only did I know the Marshalsea.  I had seen the hulks moored off Upnor
Castle in Chatham Dockyard Basin, when I was a child.  But more than that,
as a young journalist and writer, and as a court reporter before that, I
grew to know the courts and the prisons and their denizens.
  I linked all these ideas with Pip's expectations, my dear Miss Tavakoli,
because I am a practioner of the noble art of fiction.  That is what a
novelist does.  He blends his disparate experiences to create a world that
readers such as you can see and hear and touch and smell.

Faithfully yours,



Charles Dickens
____________________________________________________________________________
____

>Dear Mr. Dickens,
>      I am a 14 year old girl from California.  I am very interested in your
>literary works.  Right now, I am near the end of Great Expectations.  I am
>enjoying the book greatly.    I have learned a lot about your life from
>videos and lectures I've had in summer school.
>     I was wondering what it was like for you when you were a child and your
>father was in prison?  I was also curious about what motivates you to write
>your stories and think up those characters.  I was particularly interested in
>Miss Havisham.  She was such a mysterious character that I was attracted to
>her personality almost instantly.  Was there really someone like that in your
>town?  How did you think her up?  Does the storie of Pip's childhood
>correspond with yours in some ways?  I was also wondering if you have ever
>met a convict?  How did you get the idea to link all those ideas with Pip's
>expectations in the book?  I look forward to reading more of your books.
> Thank you very much for your time.
>
>
>                                                    Sincerely,
>                                                          Shaden Tavakoli
>
>

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