“His novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels” - Jane Smiley: Charles Dickens (Penguin Lives)
Chapter One: A Child’s Christmas in London
Timeline: 1812 - 1822
It’s probably no real surprise that Dickens would identify so readily with the poor and the downtrodden, and the ordinary folk of England, as he came from a family of servants. His grandfather, William Dickens (d. 1785) was a butler to a wealthy family, the Crewes, who had several properties in London, the northwest and Midlands, and his wife, Elizabeth (nee. Ball) had been in service with Lady Blandford of Grosvenor Square, later finding employment with her new husband at the Crewes. Popular with her new employers, she was kept on after her husband’s death, a gesture that shows how valued she was, especially considering she had two small children to care for. She was even elevated to the position of housekeeper, a post which carried with it great responsibility and trust.
It’s also clear where the young Charles inherited his love of stories and the English language, as his grandmother would be remembered by “Lady Houghton, [who] used to tell that when she was a child the greatest treat that could be given to her brother and herself and sister was an afternoon in the housekeeper's room at Crewe, for Mrs. Dickens was an inimitable story-teller, and she loved to have the children around her, and to beguile them, not only with fairy tales, but with reminiscences of her own, and stories from the pages of history.” Elizabeth was not short of cash, having been left £450 in her husband’s will, but it had been invested (I don’t know whether as a condition of the will, or whether she had this done, but I suspect the former) in what were known as consols, bonds issued by the Bank of England, so I assume they would be untouchable, more a nest egg than money she could draw on.
When her second son, John, was born, he grew up in the environs of the Crewe household and was more than likely put into service there alongside his mother, but at age nineteen he joined the Royal Navy Treasury Office in 1805 as a clerk, and it’s even been suggested (though never proven) that the young man’s appointment was sponsored by Lord Crewe himself, who was a friend of George Canning, the Navy Treasurer. An interesting premise laid out by Clare Tomalin in her
Dickens: A Life is that John may in fact not have been the son of William. The grandfather of Charles Dickens had been in the ground when John was born; only a few months, it’s true, but given what was known to go on in the houses of the landed gentry, and Elizabeth Dickens’ beauty and indeed vulnerability (a woman just widowed, with a young child to care for could hardly refuse the advances of someone who could have her sacked on trumped-up charges) it is possible - again, no way to prove it - that she could have attracted the romantic, or just sexual attentions of other, higher-placed servants in the Crewe household, even Lord Crewe himself.
John is said to have certainly carried on as if he was the son of a nobleman and not that of a servant, lazy and indolent, rude and feckless, leading to his mother “grumbling about ‘that lazy fellow John … who used to come hanging about the house’ and how she had given him ‘many a sound cuff on the ear’. So perhaps John was headed for a bad end, in which case the job at the Navy came just in time. He did well, rising through the ranks and in 1805 he met the sister of his friend and workmate Thomas Barrow, Elizabeth, and though stationed in Portsmouth was sufficiently enamoured of her to carry on a long-distance relationship with her in London. They married in 1809, and she then became essentially the second Mrs. Dickens, the first, his mother, passing away in 1824. John had been a spendthrift, a gambler and a man who lived way beyond his means, possibly due to as intimated above, his belief (real or imagined) that he was a cut above the servants, and had of course got into serious debt. The bequest his mother left him did help to deal with that, but financial troubles of his own making would dog him through the rest of his life, even when his son became rich and famous.
Money problems would dog the Dickens family from the start. Elizabeth’s father, now John’s father-in-law, was forced to flee to France when it became obvious that he had been embezzling from the Navy for seven years. Elizabeth’s second son would be named after her troubled father, whom he would never meet, growing up without a grandfather on either side. After the marriage ceremony, Elizabeth moved to Portsmouth with her new husband, where they rented a house in Mile End Terrace, and just over a year later Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, a girl, whom she and her husband named Frances Elizabeth (the Frances possibly, though not provable, for her mother’s employer, Frances Crewe) who would become known as Fanny. Her brothers, all good men and quite artistic, helped the young family out and would be regular figures in the lives of their children. John was a poet and writer, and his brother Edward a musician who had married an artist; in addition to this he was a reporter for parliament.
Charles was born on February 7 1812, his mother quoted as saying she was out dancing the previous night, and her son’s birth was triumphantly announced by his father in the local newspapers:
BIRTHS - On Friday, at Mile-end Terrace, the Lady of John Dickens, Esq. a son. No doubt John was relieved; at that time a female offspring was of little use to a man, as she could inherit no property, had few rights and could only hold certain jobs. And of course, when she married she would take the name of her husband. For a man’s legacy and name to be carried on, he needed a son. His high living was catching up with him though, and with the money left to him by his mother running out, John found that he had occasion to move from the house to a smaller one in a poorer area. The announcement in the
Hampshire Courier trumpeted:
MILE END TERRACE
FOR SALE, with immediate Possession, all that
modem well built DWELLING-HOUSE, situate as
above, late in the occupation of Mr. John Dickens. The
House comprises, in the basement, a good kitchen and cellar;
ground floor, two excellent parlours; first floor, two good
bed chambers, and two garrets in the attic. The whole replete
with fixtures. The Premises are 18 feet in width, and
120 feet in depth.
For further Particulars apply to Mr. WM. PEARCE,
Mile End.
Their new house in Hawke Street, Portsea, and the proximity to the Royal Docks, where “there were superior lodging-houses for naval officers who desired to be within easy reach of their ships in the royal dockyard, distant about five minutes walk” may have begun the young Charles’ fascination with ships and the sea, brought to life in many of his books, and often used in his imagery when describing towns and cities. By Christmas of 1813 they were on the move again though, this time to the more well-to-do area of Southsea, and the appropriately-named Wish Street, where their third child, Alfred, was born in March of 1814, and where, too, Elizabeth’s sister, Mary Allen, recently widowed, came to stay and help with the care of the baby. But she would not be pressed into service for long, as tragedy struck only six months later, and before baby Alfred could see out his first year, he was dead. Wish Street may have given John Dickens his wish for a second heir, but like the capricious and malevolent djinn in the tales of the
Arabian Nights which would so enthrall and influence his eldest son years later, that wish had been snatched away almost before he could even appreciate its having been granted.
On the first day of the following year John was called to London and, leaving painful memories of the loss of his second son behind, took his family with him. Charles is reported to have noted that it was snowing as they left. It would be his last sight of Portsmouth, as he would spend the rest of his childhood in the capital.