Short History Of... - Charles Dickens

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Charles Dickens is considered one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian Age. His works shone a light on prevalent issues of his era, such as poverty, disease, and inequality, and called for widespread social change. Since Dickens’ time, his books have been translated into 150 languages, and have never been out of print. But how did a boy from Portsmouth turn into one of the world’s most celebrated literary figures? Why were his words so effective in sparking real societal change? And, as a pillar of Victorian society, did his private life align with his famous public image? This is A Short History Of Charles Dickens. Written by Dan Smith. With thanks to Lucinda Hawksley, author of ‘Dickens and Travel’, and great great great granddaughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens.  For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com. It's a warm early May evening in 1824. In Southwark, South London, a 12-year-old boy tramps down the street after a 10-hour shift labeling bottles at a factory a mile or two along the River Thames.

The streets here throng with life. A cart rattles down the road, its horse whinnying as the driver cracks the whip. Outside a public house, a group of men descend into a fistfight over some drunken slight. The boy keeps his gaze low, not breaking stride. Before long, he turns a corner and sees his destination, a building with high brick walls stretching imposingly into the sky. He has come to visit his parents and five siblings here, to have tea with them, as he does every evening,

before he returns to his own lodgings a few minutes away. He walks up to the heavy wooden door and hammers upon it until a face appears at the grill. It is a stern-looking warder, or a turnkey as they are known, responsible for regulating exactly who comes in and out of this building. Recognizing the boy, he selects a heavy key from a ring and unlocks the door, which creaks open. He nods the boy key from a ring and unlocks the door, which creaks open. He nods the boy through with a grunt. This is the Marshallsea, London's infamous debtor's prison.

The boy despises this place. His father has been here these last three months on account of a debt he owes to a local merchant. And a few weeks ago, when they finally ran out of things to pawn for rent money, most of the family joined him. Only the boy's job at the factory prevents him from being locked up too. His older sister, a talented musician, is also free, but his other siblings are all too young to earn a living. Now he passes through a narrow courtyard, its walls topped with spikes. A rat scuttles over his foot, and an unpleasant odor fills his nostrils, a sickening stench of rot and disease.

Some children are playing a game of catch, whooping as they dodge past him, somehow keeping their spirits up, despite their wretched home. their spirits up despite their wretched home. He climbs the steps of the barrack building to a cell no more than 10 feet square with a single barred window, one small bed, and a fireplace. His parents greet him with a warm hug, but even his father, normally so ebullient, cannot hide his misery. Caught in a cruel paradox, he's unable to leave until he has paid his debt, but is locked up without any means of making money. The family rely on every shilling the boy can bring in to pay for the meagre sustenance the prison provides. But tonight he has a treat too. From his ragged coat, he brings out a small cake and some cheese that he's managed to buy. Eagerly, his family share it out, grateful for anything to supplement their rations of

bread and water. After a while, the boy says his goodbyes and seeks out the turnkey. He needs to get back to his lodgings before the streets become too dangerous to walk. As the marshalsea door slams shut behind him, he vows that, somehow, his life will be different from his father's. And it will be. Although he does not yet know it, he has a talent that will bring him fame, fortune, and the means to travel the world. Because this boy's name is Charles Dickens. And, though one day he'll be rich beyond imagining,

he will never forget the suffering and humiliation of being poor. By the time he's in his mid-twenties, Dickens will be the most celebrated author of his age, a literary superstar with a global reputation. Beloved by critics and readers of all classes, he taps into the cultural zeitgeist, with characters like Oliver Twist and Little Nell becoming totems of social injustice. Not merely a spinner of great yarns, Dickens was also a campaigner for those less fortunate than himself. One of the few writers who could genuinely claim not only to

have redefined the literary landscape, but to have altered the world. So how did a boy from such a lowly background find his place among the most celebrated literary figures in history? Why were his words so effective in sparking tangible social change? And as a pillar of Victorian society, did his private life live up to his public image? I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is a short history of Charles Dickens. Charles John Huffam Dickens is born on the 7th of February 1812,

just outside the naval town of Portsmouth on England's south coast. Two years younger than his sister Fanny, he's the first son of 22-year-old Elizabeth Dickens and her husband John, who works at the Naval Pay Office. John's is a steady job, but requires the family to move regularly, and soon they find themselves in Chatham in Kent, where young Charles delights in easy access to the sea and the countryside.

He is a bright boy, his learning encouraged by his mother. When he is nine, his parents pay to send him to school, an experience he loves. He is an avid reader, especially of the tales of the Arabian Nights. Under its eastern influence, he makes his first boyish attempt at writing a story of his own, entitled Mizna, the Sultan of India. Charles' parents are gregarious and fun, often putting on theatrical events to entertain family and friends. But there is a problem. Their love of the finer things in life, wining and dining, attending cultural events, hosting parties,

comes at a cost that John's salary can't support. Now, with five children, each passing month sees them edging further into debt. Soon the eldest children must help the family pay its way. Lucinda Hawksley is an art historian,

author, and great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens. Her latest book is Dickens and Travel. Well, John Dickens had a good job as a clerk. However, he could never live within his means. And from a very young age, Charles and his older sister, Frances, known in the family as Fanny, who would go on to become a professional musician, they were sent out to perform in the local pubs. So as little children, Charles and Frances would be taken to the pub by their dad. He'd put them on the table and they'd dance and sing and, you know, like buskers really that you might see around the

city today. And they would go and, you know, go into the pub and hope to earn a bit of money for the family. But this was money that was really needed. The Navy requires John and his family to move to London in 1822, but the increased living costs there are not reflected in his pay. Elizabeth does her best to help out, opening a school despite no qualifications or prior experience. But it fails to attract any paying pupils and soon folds. experience, but it fails to attract any paying pupils and soon folds. And at Charles' new school, the master is a bully, and the experience is miserable compared

to the education he enjoyed in Kent. So precarious are the family finances that he soon has to leave school anyway to take a job in a factory labelling bottles of distinctive polish called blacking. Ten hours a day, six days a week, for just six or seven shillings' pay. This at a time when a loaf of bread might set you back a good part of a shilling. Then, in early 1824, when Charles has just turned twelve, his father is arrested for his debts. It seems like he'll never escape the factory, an experience made all the worse by the fact that he's forced to work beside a large picture window where he

can be viewed by passers-by. Victorians, or Georgians as they were then, liked to see children working. It was a bit like, this child is close to God because he's working hard. So it was a deep humiliation for young Charles Dickens to have been taken out of school, to be set to work in a rather publicly humiliating environment with people watching him as they went past. So from a very young age, Charles Dickens suffered from possibly childhood depression, definitely stress-induced illnesses. He'd get a lot of pains in his stomach and his back. And this seems to have been caused by stress. After a few months, John is released from the Marshall Sea when he comes

into an inheritance. Dickens hopes that he'll now be able to quit the factory. His mother, though, needs the money. With six children already, the youngest of whom is just two, she's terrified of returning to the prison. In his unfinished autobiography, he wrote that he never would forget, and he never could forget, that his mother had been, as he put it, warm for sending him back to that place, which was the Blacking Factory. She had wanted him to stay working because, not surprisingly, she had lived with tiny children in a rat-infested prison cell. And suddenly, she was expected to go back out and trust her husband yet again. While John will in due course be immortalized in the character of the endearingly optimistic

Mr. McCorber in David Copperfield, always convinced that something will turn up, Mr. McCorber in David Copperfield, always convinced that something will turn up. His mother is never depicted with similar empathy. Eventually Dickens does leave the factory and returns to school, but his father's profligacy continues, and in 1827, when Dickens is 15, the family are evicted from their home. Now Dickens leaves education for good and finds work as a clerk at a firm in Gray's Inn, in the heart of legal London. Witnessing the legal profession close up, Dickens discovers a system that is slow-moving and seemingly more motivated by lining the pockets of lawyers than securing justice for all. for all. Despite developing a cynical disregard for the law, he makes good use of his time at the firm, educating himself in shorthand, which opens a new door for him. His maternal uncle has recently established a newspaper called the Mirror of Parliament, and he needs journalists. Dickens sets himself up as a freelance court reporter, assured that he will have steady work.

He turns out to be rather good at the job and builds a roster of clients. up as a freelance court reporter, assured that he will have steady work. He turns out to be rather good at the job and builds a roster of clients. He also had this incredible energy, this wonderful zest for life, and he would just set off all over the country, from anywhere from kind of Exeter up to Scotland, and he would travel around, get the copy, and go back to London as fast as he could, writing his copy in carriages, writing his copy at great speed. This was what Dickens loved doing, this competition to be the first back and break the story. His ultimate dream though is to be an actor, an ambition no doubt triggered by his theatrical family. In early 1832, it looks like he might get his big break when he secures an audition at the Covent Garden Theatre.

On the day, though, he is stricken with a heavy cold and doesn't attend. But as one creative pursuit drops away, another is gaining momentum. One evening in 1833, he makes his way to Johnson's Court, where the offices of a small circulation magazine called Monthly are to be found. He takes a deep breath and drops a short story he has written through the letterbox. A few weeks later, he picks up a copy of the magazine from a shop on the Strand. To his utter joy, he finds his work inside. Though the story appears anonymously, he can now call himself a published author. He provides another eight of these so-called sketches of everyday life for no

fee, but they go down well with critics and readers alike. It is a start. The following year, he takes a job as a parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle. But it is not long before he is asked to write a series of fictionalized sketches, again on the theme of everyday life. He adopts the pseudonym Boz, a family nickname for his younger brother, Augustus, and is soon producing them for the Evening Chronicle, too. In February 1836, his pieces are collected into a single volume entitled Sketches by Boss, with distinctive illustrations by George Cruikshank.

It is an instant hit, a breath of fresh air in a literary landscape that tends to be obsessed with the lives of the aristocracy. literary landscape that tends to be obsessed with the lives of the aristocracy. And what Dickens did was a little bit like observational comedy today. He would look at a scenario or perhaps a person who was a wonderful observer of people and places and atmosphere, and he would write about it. And then people were thinking, why has he written this about this lower middle class person? But yet it's so real. What is it that makes this readable? I don't know what it is, but it works. His star is on the rise. And there are developments in his personal life too. Dickens had fallen in love for the first time when he was a callow 17-year-old. She was a glamorous banker's daughter,

two years his senior, and in every way his social superior. Though Dickens sent her impassioned letters, there's no evidence that she reciprocated his feelings. Her name was Maria Biednall, and she became this kind of, almost like a talisman of the unattainable. became this kind of, almost like a talisman of the unattainable. When she was 21, he told her that he loved her, and she called him a boy, which, if you've read Great Expectations, you'll know that that's what Estella calls Pip when she wants to put him down. And so he was quite heartbroken at a young age. But around now, he is introduced to Catherine Hogarth, his editor's daughter.

Though Catherine takes a while to warm to him, just over a year later, they marry in Chelsea's spectacular St. Luke's Church. This new chapter coincides with the publication of Dickens' new work, The Pickwick Papers, a series of loosely linked adventures connected by the central, joyous figure of Samuel Pickwick. Published in 20 monthly installments, it keeps readers waiting with bated breath for each new chapter, creating a pattern that Dickens will repeat throughout his career. All of his major novels were serialized, a bit like a soap opera on TV. So people were left on a cliffhanger. Every week or every month,

the latest installment would come out and they would be waiting eagerly for the next chapter. And it wasn't that Dickens wrote these books and then serialized them. He had that deadline every week or every month, alongside everything else he did, which was a huge amount of extra work on top of his novel writing. So every time the new Dickens installment came out, you knew there was going to be this incredible cliffhanger at the end that was going to keep you guessing. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands

of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. In January 1837, Catherine gives birth to their first child, John. Shortly afterwards, and accompanied by Catherine's younger sister, Mary, the family moves to a new place in upmarket Bloomsbury. But a few months later, tragedy strikes. Dickens, Catherine, and Mary return from a night at the theater watching an operetta that Dickens has co-written. Mary takes herself to bed, but then cries are heard from her room.

She is found dead, a victim of an inherent heart complaint, at just seventeen. Both Charles and Catherine are devastated. Catherine, already pregnant again, miscarries, and Charles falls into a depression. Catherine, already pregnant again, miscarries, and Charles falls into a depression. Yet, despite all this personal turmoil, his writing career goes from strength to strength. He follows up Pickwick with Oliver Twist, which appears between 1837 and 1839, depicting London and its underbelly like never before. Drawing on his personal experiences of poverty, Dickens creates a host of characters, not merely memorable, but destined to become cultural touchstones, from Oliver himself to Fagin, Bill Sykes and Nancy.

It's very interesting to me how Dickens had such an empathy for the poor, and he really understood what it was like to be poor. He never ever forgot what it was like to be a poor child and he wasn't one of those people that when he made it big he kind of forgot his roots. He never really admitted to them. Very few people ever knew about his impoverished childhood but he always empathised and he spent much of his adult life trying to improve the lot of those who were poor. Even Queen Victoria reads it against the advice of her Prime Minister Lord Melbourne who fears she isn't ready for its gritty subject matter. In fact she notes in her diary that she finds it riveting. By now Dickens is well on the

way to the financial security he craves. It is a good thing, too, because he already has three children and there will be another seven, all of whom make it to adulthood apart from the ninth, Dora, who dies aged just eight months after suffering convulsions. But even as he builds an independent life with his wife and young family, he remains close to his parents and siblings, whom he'll support financially for years to come. Oliver Twist is followed in quick succession by Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop with its beloved young heroine, Little Nell.

By now, Dickens is a household name in England. While he continues to produce his journalism at a prodigious rate, it is as a fiction writer that he is most valued. Proof of his international superstar status comes when a ship carrying the latest installment of the old Curiosity Shop steams into New York's docks. There have been worries that Nell is to be killed off in this new chapter, and crowds have gathered at the dockside, seeking news of her fate.

They stand, reading together, and when they learn she is indeed dead, there is a bout of collective weeping. Elsewhere, the Irish politician Daniel O'Connell is said to have flung the offending section of text from a train window, shouting, he should not have killed her. Very quickly, within a couple of years, he went from being a fairly well-known journalist to being not just a nationally, but an internationally famous novelist. When the word celebrity came into the Oxford English Dictionary, it was 1851, and Charles Dickens was one of the first people to whom it was applied. There was almost no

precedent. You'd had stage stars who'd become famous, but then they probably wouldn't be known around the world like Dickens. And from very, very early on, Dickens' works were being translated into other languages, Russian, French, Croatian. And that was in the 1830s, shortly after being written. And of course, the British Empire helped because the English-speaking language had been spread across the world. But the books don't merely engage the emotions. They deal with serious social issues, with poverty, domestic abuse and illegitimacy.

When Dickens addresses abuse in the private boarding school system in Nicholas Nickleby, newspapers follow up on the concerns raised, and as a result, several real-life institutions are closed. His writing is capable of affecting real change, and when it comes to research, he doesn't shy away from the horror. It's just before 8 a.m. on the 6th of July, 1840. Dickens rose hours ago to come from Bloomsbury up Snow Hill towards London's notorious Newgate Prison. He now stands amid a crowd of maybe 30,000 people, who fill the wide streets around the prison

in the shadow of the Old Bailey, London's famous court. Just visible over the sea of heads is the wooden gallows on a raised platform, jutting out from the jail walls. Workmen are still hammering away to make the crossbeam secure. But despite the deadly serious occasion, there's a buzz about the place a constant thrum of chatter and laughter rarely has the writer heard accents from all classes of society

in such close proximity street peddlers tout their drinks and snacks and dickens spots several pick pockets too deftly dipping for purses and watches. Prostitutes mill around, advertising their business, and every now and again, whole sections of the crowd burst into raucous song. But Dickens doesn't join in the merriment. It makes him uneasy. Because the performance this crowd is gathered to see is the hanging of a Belgian man, François Corvoisier, a servant convicted of murdering his employer.

Dickens has come on impulse, as much to people watch as to spectate an execution. He wants to understand what draws them to such a macabre spectacle, sure that such occasions serve no good purpose for anyone. Eventually the chatter starts to subside. It's nearly time. The church bells of St. Sepulchre without Newgate announce eight o'clock, and all attention turns to the gallows. The onlookers surge forward. The slight figure of the prisoner emerges from a gate in the prison walls, guards in front and behind him. Dressed in the new suit, he nervously clasps and unclasps his bound hands. There are shouts of recognition, and a wave of excitement rolls through the crowd.

Dickens cannot take his eyes off the man as he ascends the gallows where a black hood followed by a noose is placed over his head. A clergyman reads the word of God and then mere seconds later, the deed is done. The crowd falls silent for a moment, save for a collective intake of breath and a few horrified shrieks. Dickens spots a young child quiver, unprepared for the horror her parents have exposed her

to. Slowly the mass of people begins to disperse, but the depraved excitement, the drunkenness and levity, the debauchery, and most of all, the absence of empathetic sorrow, lingers with Dickens and sits heavily on his heart. He explores some of the rights and wrongs of capital punishment in his next novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. Over the coming years, he writes a series of letters to the press on the subject, triggering widespread debate. So Dickens' social campaigning was absolutely his passion. It wasn't just something he did because it made for a good plot twist. He started out as a campaigning journalist.

He continued to write journalism right to the end of his career. And many of those articles were really hard-hitting social campaigning work. He often said that he wasn't always the first person to know about something, that he would really try to publicise it. As well as taking up causes in his books and articles, he is also a prodigious letter writer, personally advocating for individuals in need. Since the 1830s, he has been a close friend of Angela Burdett-Coutts too, the fabulously wealthy heiress-granddaughter of Thomas Coutts of the famous banking dynasty.

Together, she and Charles spearhead many charitable projects, including a home for homeless women in Shepherd's Bush in West London. He's also a driving force for fundraising for Great Ormond Street, London's proposed hospital for sick children. A cause close to his heart after the loss of his own beloved baby Dora. But he knows that to carry on his good works, he must keep his shoulder to the literary wheel. It is January 1842, and Dickens and his wife are aboard the SS Britannia, somewhere in the Atlantic, destined for Boston. It has been a dismal voyage, marked by their violent seasickness.

Catherine sits in her cabin, staring at a picture of the four children that she has left behind in England, along with their beloved pet raven, Grip. She looks ahead to their six-month tour of North America, with something approaching dread. But once they land, they are showered with adulation. The extent of her husband's popularity takes her by surprise. They travel from city to city across the continent, Dickens interspersing his public appearances with fact-finding trips to prisons and campaigning work against slavery. It is an extraordinary visit.

Nonetheless, when their ship docks back in Liverpool in late June, they are exhausted and delighted to return home. and delighted to return home. Dickens' next book is non-fiction and reflects on his adventure. Entitled American Notes, it fails to dazzle, and its criticisms of aspects of American life play particularly badly across the ocean. Having shown him such reverence, many are disappointed to hear his sometimes unflattering impressions of their country and his savaging of their use of slavery. Inevitably, poor sales start to hurt him in the pocket. He was overdrawn at the bank and this was an absolutely terrifying thing for him.

He was so frightened of ending up like his father and his children, ending up in the same position he'd been in. Salvation, however, comes in short order. In December 1843, he publishes the first of what will become a series of five Christmas-themed novellas. But this first one, A Christmas Carol, shines brightest, restoring his fortunes and helping to redefine the institution of the British Christmas. He is back, more popular than ever. Over the next couple of years, he takes his family for extended stays abroad in Italy and Switzerland, intent on recharging and finding new inspiration. A ball of fizzing energy, he becomes editor of two new periodicals, The Daily News and House household words. More importantly, his novels are hitting the mark

again. First, Dombey and Son, then David Copperfield, his most autobiographical work. Next, Bleak House and Hard Times. And though the first chapters of his next book, Little Dorrit, are maligned by critics, the story still overshadows even the stellar success of his previous serials. Any lingering concerns about his finances or his enduring popularity are put firmly aside. The year also sees a different sort of personal triumph. When he was a boy living in Kent, Dickens would often gaze with his father at a spectacular property called Gad's Hill, set in acres of land, an estate mentioned in Shakespeare's Henry IV, no less. John Dickens would say to his young son that if he worked hard and made something of himself,

Gad's Hill might one day be his. And this year, Dickens buys it for the princely sum of £1,790, equivalent to about 25 years' salary of a skilled craftsman. Behind the scenes, however, all is not well in the Dickens' home. Already disillusioned with his marriage, out of the blue he hears from his old flame, Maria Biednop. She tells him, in a series of letters, that she is changed from the youthful beauty he once knew, herself having married and had children. But he assures her he does not believe it for a moment. He said she would always be beautiful, and then he met her and realised that it was true. He wrote one of the cruelest lines, I think, when he said, Flora, because he based Flora Finching in Little Dorrit on her,

Flora, who had once been a lily, was now a peony. Which, peony is a beautiful flower, but if you think of the shape of one, that is what he was really saying. Catherine must have been relieved, her husband having been so openly flirting with his unrequited first love. But the cracks in their marriage grow. I think they both became very lonely within the marriage and Dickens fell out of love with Catherine. Sadly, I don't believe she fell out of love with him. And that was the real tragedy in their marriage. But so within 15 years,

she was pregnant 12 times and gave birth 10 times and miscarried twice. And every time she had a baby, she suffered a great deal in the birth. Quite understandably, she wanted a comfortable middle class existence with a husband who took care of her and her children. And instead, she got a celebrity who was courted by people from all over the world. And of course, with every pregnancy, Catherine put on weight. And Charles Dickens became very mean about that. He couldn't understand why Catherine was continually pregnant. He thought it was her fault. He described it once as that uninteresting condition and that Catherine's perpetually getting herself pregnant.

getting herself pregnant. Events take a decisive turn in August of 1857. Dickens, who has never quite rid himself of his theatrical itch, is in Manchester preparing to put on a production of The Frozen Deep, a play by his old friend, the author Wilkie Collins. He is at a reading for new cast members. Among them is a small, graceful 18-year-old called Ellen Ternan. He immediately takes a shine to her, and despite the 27-year age difference,

within weeks they are lovers. It's not a secret for long. After ordering a bracelet for Ellen at his usual jeweler's, a miscommunication sees the piece delivered to Catherine at the family home. Catherine's heartbroken, but Dickens' response is one of anger. He puts pressure on his wife to make a social call on Ellen in the hope of crushing any rumors of infidelity before they start. The genie, however, is out of the bottle. Ellen was the same age as the younger of his two daughters. So it was a very, very horrible situation for the whole family. And really, then Dickens became really unpleasant to live with. He was nasty, not only to Catherine, but to so many people in his life. He fell out with most of his friends.

His great friend John Forster and his friend Wilkie Collins, the novelist, they pretty much stuck by him. But he fell out with almost everybody else who'd been important in his life. And many of his female friends were appalled. They were so shocked by the way he treated Catherine. It is the beginning of the end for the Dickens' marriage. In 1858, they agree to a legal separation for catherine it is a devastating blow not least because dickens with the law on his side keeps their children from

her their relationship has for several years been marked by dickens cruelty and now he twists the knife suggesting that she drinks too much and is not a fit mother. But it need not have come to this. Most Victorian men had affairs. They had a girlfriend who was known as a mistress, and they would often live between two residences, and people just turned a blind eye to it. Couples who didn't get on, often they could afford to have a place in the country and a place in London, and they would spend time at each without each other. So they might say, my wife is in the country for her health. Or he could have said, my wife is in London for the season and I need to be in the country to write. They could have managed it like that and Catherine wouldn't have lost her social position. You'll still hear people

today say she was an alcoholic. No, she wasn't. It was just a rumour that was begun because they had to blame someone and they couldn't blame Dickens. So poor Catherine, in addition to losing her home, losing her position in society, barely seeing her children until they were adults and could choose to come and see her themselves. She was kind of derided as this terrible wife, this terrible mother and an alcoholic. If all this were not enough, Catherine's younger sister, Georgina, who had lived in the household for many years and was regarded as a second mother to the children, stays with Dickens. It causes a great rift in Catherine's side of the family, who cut ties with her. But,

as an unmarried, childless woman in her thirties, she has seemingly calculated that staying with the famous author gives her better prospects than siding with her sister. Of all the key figures in the Dickens marriage breakup, it is Ellen who reaps the most obvious benefit. He was, as a sensible young woman would have realized at that time, her meal ticket. I mean, she was a young actress. Her reviews for acting weren't great. Her family were worried that she wasn't going to be able to make a career on the stage. She made a very intelligent business decision to be in a relationship with Charles Dickens. He supported her and her family financially, and one can completely understand Ellen Ternan's position. Catherine lives in London for the sad remainder of her life, having narrowly dodged an

attempt by Dickens to have her admitted to an asylum. As she lies on her deathbed in 1879, she asks for her husband's letters written in happier days to be given to the British Museum, in the hope that history would judge her more kindly than Dickens has latterly encouraged. in the hope that history would judge her more kindly than Dickens has latterly encouraged. In the meantime, life rolls on for Dickens in this new set-up. In May 1859, he begins a new periodical all the year round. It begins in sensational style with the serialization of his latest novel, A Tale of Two Cities, a high-octane story set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. It is widely suspected that Ellen Ternan is the inspiration for its young heroine, Lucie Manette. It is followed a year later

by Great Expectations, a devastating masterpiece of social commentary on themes including class, poverty, law, abuse, and the triumph of love over tragedy. As ever, Dickens magics up instantly memorable characters who immediately seep into the wider culture. Figures like the spectral Miss Havisham, jilted long ago at the altar and seeing out her days wearing her now ragged wedding dress. Whatever personal angst envelops him, Dickens' creative output seems irrepressible, but a new terrible shock awaits him. It is Friday the 9th of June, 1865, a few minutes after three in the afternoon. Charles Dickens is in a first-class carriage on the Folkestone to London train.

Ellen is with him, as is her mother. They are returning from a holiday in France. Dickens leans back, content but weary, as the train speeds along at 50 miles an hour. Tent but weary as the train speeds along at 50 miles an hour. In his luggage is the recently completed manuscript of his latest novel, Our Mutual Friend. He gazes out of the window as the small village station of Headcorn in Kent flashes past. But then, a little further up the line, he glimpses a man standing at the trackside, frantically waving a red flag. The driver slams on the brakes and blows the engine's whistle as the train screeches along the rails.

A group of workers are undertaking repairs on the bridge over the river Bult at Staplehurst, just a little further on. But the chief engineer has misread the timetable. He is not expecting a train to pass along here for another two hours. The train slows, but not quickly enough to avert catastrophe. The locomotive, guards van and two carriages, including the one in which Dickens sits, make it across the gap in the tracks on the bridge. But the next six carriages are not so lucky. They career off the track, ten feet down to the water below, with an enormous crash. Dickens has been thrown from his seat. The End He quickly prizes open a window and sets about getting his two companions out. Only when they are safely outside does he begin to take in the carnage around him.

As the smoke clears, there is a deathly silence, only occasionally broken by the cries of the injured. Scrabbling along the track and down over the stricken carriages, he joins other survivors in looking for casualties and freeing them from the wreckage. He has to catch his breath as he is confronted by all manner of terrifying injuries. To those well enough, he offers a slug of brandy from the flask in his pocket. For others, he fills his hat with water from the river so they can have their wounds washed. He realizes there are people still trapped up above in the carriages that did not derail. Approaching a guard who is frantically rushing around, he persuades him to hand over his keys. Then, after scrambling back up the bridge, he moves from door to door, unlocking them so that those trapped inside can breathe fresh air again. so that those trapped inside can breathe fresh air again.

Dickens stays to tend to those down below for the next several hours. He acts efficiently, but he barely knows what he is doing, his own thoughts and emotions buried deep while others are in more immediate need. Of a hundred or so people on board, ten die and another forty-nine are injured. After what feels like an age, a train arrives with an emergency relief of doctors rushed from London. Dickens' useful work is done, but before he goes, he remembers his manuscript of Our Mutual Friend, which he retrieves from his carriage. Removed from the immediate crisis, Dickens begins to feel the trauma. He's barely able to speak for two weeks, and his handwriting shakes as he relates his experiences in letters to friends.

In the years to come, railway travel, which he is unable to avoid entirely, fills him with dread. In truth, he suffers with what we would now recognize as post-traumatic stress, and his health begins a permanent downturn. Dickens counts himself among the lucky ones, but survival comes at a cost. In 1867, aged 55, Dickens embarks on another tour of North America, bigger and better than his first one 25 years ago. It's a marathon, some 400 engagements in six months, for which he earns £19,000, over a million pounds today. His star status has never been higher. People would kind of follow him down the street,

trying to cut off locks of his hair. He just was so famous, he was mobbed. It's been compared to when the Beatles visited America. And he just was incredibly famous. Crowds flocked to his performances, which are more than mere readings. Stood at a wood and crimson velvet lectern of his own design, he assumes his character's voices, inhabits their very beings. The murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist is a particular tour de force, one that takes such a physical toll that his children fear it might kill him. Not everyone is a fan, though. A certain Mark Twain is in the audience in New York, and he declares,

How the great do tumble from their high pedestals when we see them in common human flesh. The tour takes it out of Dickens. He had wanted to bring Ellen with him, but his friends convinced him that the American public were not ready for such scandal. Her absence pains him. He is only in his mid-fifties, but since the rail crash he has aged quickly and suffers from many aches and ailments. Moreover, memories of the accident make the necessary rail travel across the continent

a torture. And his daily diet is hardly what the doctor ordered. As a rule, he takes a tumbler of cream with rum at 7am, a sherry cobbler and a biscuit at midday, a pint of champagne at three, a glass of sherry with a beaten egg just before eight, and for supper, some soup and whatever he can find to drink. Back in England, Dickens may be ailing, but he refuses to let up. In October 1869, he begins work on a crime novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, its atmosphere dripping with menace and melancholia. The next summer, 58-year-old Charles Dickens is at his desk in the Swiss-style chalet he has had built

in the garden at Gad's Hill. It is five years to the day since the Staplehurst rail crash. He is working on chapter 23 of Edwin Drood, the anticipated halfway mark of the book roughly, when he begins to feel unwell. He makes it back to the main house, but his condition is deteriorating. It is a little after six o'clock in the evening. Georgina is there and chats with him, but she can see he is struggling. Come and lie down, she tells him. Yes, he responds. On the ground. And with that, he claps his unconscious. He has a massive stroke, never to regain consciousness, and dies the next day, leaving his last novel incomplete. He had wished to be buried in Rochester Cathedral,

where a plot had already been prepared. But on hearing of his passing, Queen Victoria has other ideas. She insists he is laid to rest in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. A private ceremony is held with just 14 mourners. In accordance with Dickens' wishes, the family are adamant that it should be a small, personal affair. His seven surviving and now grown-up children are represented, and there are a few close personal friends, including Wilkie Collins. The Times newspaper, however, reports only 13 attendees, delicately overlooking the presence of Ellen Turner, his secret lover of 13 years and the chief beneficiary of his will.

His grave is left open for the next two days, and thousands come to pay their respects. On his orders, his gravestone bears the simplest of inscriptions, just his name and dates, not even an esquire. A writer for the ages, his ability to conjure up unforgettable characters, weave exciting narratives and depict a world of complex social interactions has had an incalculable influence on the novelists that followed him. Never out of print for the best part of two centuries, his total sales are at least in

the hundreds of millions. A Tale of Two Cities is believed to be the best-selling English language novel of all time, alone racking up sales in excess of 200 million. And when, in 2015, the BBC polled to find the 25 greatest British novels of all time, three of the top eight were his. Yet perhaps his greatest legacy is not his literature at all, but the fact that he continues to be a driver for social change 150 years after his death. I think we should consider Dickens' incredible achievement to be the fact that he still keeps poverty on the agenda, even today.

You can guarantee that pretty much every December, somebody will write in a newspaper around the world, you know, Dickens wrote about this in 1843 and we still have child poverty with us today. That to me is one of his enduring legacies. Also the fact that he just wrote such incredible stories that people still want to adapt them. There's constantly new Dickens adaptations. And through that, that keeps his social campaigning on the agenda because every time somebody does a new version of whatever Dickens novel or novella it might be, it brings the issues back up again. And that is amazing. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the abolition of the British slave trade.

There were a large number of important people who got a lot of money from slavery. There were a large number of people who felt that abolishing slavery would have adverse social effects in all sorts of ways. And this is very true among the upper classes. One of the things which is remarkable about abolitionism is that it was from the start a mass-based political movement. It attracted all sorts of people, people who weren't part of the political nation at all, who very quickly came to see this as a massive area of social reform. And I think we can hardly underestimate just how big it was in the 1780s. So in many ways,

abolitionism should have succeeded quite early on, from the late 1780s, early 1790s. The mood in the public was ready for it. That's next time. you