Re: Childhood
Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Fri, 20 Nov 1998 10:38:20 -0100
My dear Mr Lazaro,
A writer has no first-hand experience but his own to draw upon, and
therefore must be expected to rely upon it when writing about such matters
as childhood. I suppose there is something of myself in Pip, though our
childhoods were very different. Both my parents survived my childhood. My
father was an educated man, and a gentleman - a servant of the government,
and later a distinguished newspaperman. He did, to be sure, have problems
with money - severe ones, and ones which tried me very much - but, like Mrs
Gamp, he bore up. Pip's childhood is transformed by what seems, at first at
any rate, to be an immensely good stroke of fortune. Mine was transformed
by deep misfortune - my father's imprisonment for debt, my own incarceration
withing the dismal walls of Warren's Blacking Warehouse. In many ways Pip's
childhood was the contrary of mine.
Yet we both yearned for prosperity, esteem and gentlemanly status.
Perhaps we both learned that to achieve all that is not enough. There are
better things to strive for.
Faithfully yours,
Charles Dickens
____________________________________________________________________________
____________
>Dear Sir,
>
>Does your most enthralling story Great Expectations have any thing to do
>with your childhood?
>
>
>yours faithfully,
>
>Luke Lazaro
>
>
>
>
======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author