Dickens, Saint and Sinner

After reading Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold about Charles Dickens' wife, I decided to read a Dickens biography to learn whether he truly was as merciless as he was portrayed in the novel. He was, but..

Dickens was a driven man - he literally worked himself to death by insisting on grueling trips around England at the end of his life to give personal readings of excerpts of his books - even to America - despite very serious health problems. He could be very generous to people who reminded him of himself at a young age - trapped by circumstances into a life of destitution and/or drudgery. A few lucky breaks and a tremendous will to advance himself got him out of the blacking factory, back in school, and on the road to acting and writing. The thought of his father's careless behavior that put the family in misery, and the fear that he, too, might end up a financial failure, dogged him all his life.

Once he was established as a successful author, he found that the pretty, sweet wife he had married when they were young was now the dull mother of 10 who suffered from lengthy post-partum depression and spoiled his dinner parties. His only solution was to insist that Catherine move out of the family home, leaving her children, including a four-year-old son, in the process. She was given a small house and a modest personal allowance, and was excluded from family weddings, holiday and birthday celebrations. This I cannot understand - why didn't he move out?

Aren't we all a strange mix of good and evil, talents and foibles? I still love Dickens the writer, but have no more illusions that he could write a wonderful book like David Copperfield because he was such a compassionate person who understood human nature. What a mystery!