The ‘failed’ expectations of Charles Dickens

Dickens does seem to have been truly fond of his children when they were small. But it’s hard not to feel sorry for the kids, living with a genius who was obsessed with order and neatness, who never spoke their mother’s name, who kept up a secret life with a woman young enough to be his daughter. The boys, moreover, were doubly burdened, being named after famous writers: Charley after his father, Walter after the poet Walter Savage Landor, Frank after Francis Jeffrey (editor of the Edinburgh Review), Alfred after Tennyson, Sydney after the legendary wit Sydney Smith, Henry after Henry Fielding and Edward, nicknamed “Plorn,” after Edward Bulwer-Lytton (author of the immortal line “It was a dark and stormy night”). Who could live up to such implied expectations?

Gottlieb, quite reasonably, finds Dickens’s judgment of his sons and daughters over-harsh. They were born into a privileged existence, with all its attendant advantages and disadvantages, but they also inherited poor health and a tendency to die young. (Dickens died at just 58, admittedly having worked himself into that early grave.) An almost innate penchant for drink and gambling, combined with a certain fecklessness, seem equally part of the Dickens heritage — just think of the writer’s own Mr. Micawber-like father.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS/ASSOCIATED PRESS) - Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Landport, Hampshire, S. England, and died in 1870.

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Yet Kate became an admired painter of children and seems to have been a confidant to half the leading lights of Edwardian London. (Her best friend, from childhood on, was the gifted Anne Thackeray Ritchie, daughter of the other Great Victorian Novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray, author of “Vanity Fair.”) Eldest son Charley made a life for himself as a literary editor and kept the magazine All the Year Round going after Dickens’s death. For a long while Alfred ran a sheep station in Australia, bounced back from bankruptcy and later became a successful lecturer (his topic being, of course, Life With Father, accompanied by readings from the novels). More impressive still, Henry, a distinguished jurist, ended his career as Sir Henry Dickens.

Even Frank, perhaps the most dubious of the boys, served honorably as a member of the North-West Mounted Police (and later inspired — though it’s not mentioned by Gottlieb — a clever Flashman-like historical novel by Eric Nicol, “Dickens of the Mounted”).

What’s particularly surprising, though, is the mystifying alternation of sentimentality and callousness in Dickens’s treatment of his sons. Only Henry ever went to a university, after considerable pleading. The others, while still young, were sent soldiering in India, to Australia to manage sheep stations or into the navy at the age of 14. The girls, of course, were kept at home to flutter adoringly around The Inimitable, Mamie never marrying. Surprisingly, all the children learned to bend docilely to the wishes of their domineering father, who subtly, perhaps unknowingly, warped their lives. Of course, all parents do that to some extent. Yet none of Dickens’s children rebelled against him; indeed, they all revered him and were proud to share his name.

Even if you haven’t read any Dickens since high school, when you waded through the sentences and beheadings of “A Tale of Two Cities,” Gottlieb’s book is one you might want to try. “Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens” makes clear that not even the most prodigious creator of fictional characters since Shakespeare could always be understanding or sympathetic to the people closest to him.

Dirda reviews books for The Washington Post every Thursday.