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    My Father as I Recall Him
    My Father as I Recall Him
    My Father as I Recall Him
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    My Father as I Recall Him

    By Mamie Dickens

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateMay 1, 1974

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    • 4/5
      This wholly laudatory memoir by Dickens's elder daughter is a good example of the mythologisation of the great author's life and the expunging of any aspect which would contradict the public image he and his family wished to preserve, as detailed by Claire Tomalin in her book on Nelly Ternan that I have just read. The memoir centres on uncontroversial, homely aspects such as celebration of Christmas at Gad's Hill and the family's many pets (including the raven Grip that features in Barnaby Rudge). Read with the knowledge of the much murkier reality taken as read, though, it is nevertheless a good and quite moving piece of writing.

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    My Father as I Recall Him - Mamie Dickens

    My Father as I Recall Him, by Mamie Dickens

    The Project Gutenberg eBook, My Father as I Recall Him, by Mamie Dickens

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: My Father as I Recall Him

    Author: Mamie Dickens

    Release Date: November 11, 2008 [eBook #27234]

    Language: English

    Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

    ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FATHER AS I RECALL HIM***

    Transcribed from the Roxburghe Press edition by David Price, ccx074@pglaf.org

    The pages of this little book were in type and about to be sent for correction to my sister—who had been for some months in very delicate health—when she suddenly became still more gravely ill.  The hand which had traced the words of love and veneration dedicated to our father’s memory grew too feeble to hold a pen, and before the proofs of her little volume could be submitted to her for revision, my dear sister died.

    K. P.

    MY FATHER AS I RECALL HIM.

    by

    MAMIE DICKENS.

    the

    ROXBURGHE PRESS,

    fifteen, victoria street,

    westminster.

    this work, and all the publications of the roxburghe press, are supplied to the trade by messrs. simpkin, marshall, hamilton, kent & company, limited, and can be obtained through any bookseller.

    CONTENTS.

    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

    CHAPTER I.

    Seeing Gad’s Hill as a child.—His domestic side and home-love.—His love of children.—His neatness and punctuality.—At the table, and as host.—The original of Little Nell.

    If, in these pages, written in remembrance of my father, I should tell you my dear friends, nothing new of him, I can, at least, promise you that what I shall tell will be told faithfully, if simply, and perhaps there may be some things not familiar to you.

    A great many writers have taken it upon themselves to write lives of my father, to tell anecdotes of him, and to print all manner of things about him.  Of all these published books I have read but one, the only genuine Life thus far written of him, the one sanctioned by my father himself, namely: The Life of Charles Dickens, by John Forster.

    But in what I write about my father I shall depend chiefly upon my own memory of him, for I wish no other or dearer remembrance.  My love for my father has never been touched or approached by any other love.  I hold him in my heart of hearts as a man apart from all other men, as one apart from all other beings.

    Of my father’s childhood it is but natural that I should know very little more than the knowledge possessed by the great public.  But I never remember hearing him allude at any time, or under any circumstances, to those unhappy days in his life except in the one instance of his childish love and admiration for Gad’s Hill, which was destined to become so closely associated with his name and works.

    He had a very strong and faithful attachment for places: Chatham, I think, being his first love in this respect.  For it was here, when a child, and a very sickly child, poor little fellow, that he found in an old spare room a store of books, among which were Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Robinson Crusoe, The Arabian Nights, and other volumes.  They were, as Mr. Forster wrote, a host of friends when he had no single friend.  And it was while living at Chatham that he first saw Gad’s Hill.

    As a very queer small boy he used to walk up to the house—it stood on the summit of a high hill—on holidays, or when his heart ached for a great treat.  He would stand and look at it, for as a little fellow he had a wonderful liking and admiration for the house, and it was, to him, like no other house he had ever seen.  He would walk up and down before it with his father, gazing at it with delight, and the latter would tell him that perhaps if he worked hard, was industrious, and grew up to be a good man, he might some day come to live in that very house.  His love for this place went through his whole life, and was with him until his death.  He takes Mr. Pickwick and his friends from Rochester to Cobham by the beautiful back road, and I remember one day when we were driving that way he showed me the exact spot where Mr. Pickwick called out: Whoa, I have dropped my whip!  After his marriage he took his wife for the honeymoon to a village called Chalk, between Gravesend and Rochester.

    Many years after, when he was living with his family in a villa near Lausanne, he wrote to a friend: The green woods and green shades about here are more like Cobham, in Kent, than anything we dream of at the foot of the Alpine passes.  And again, in still later years, one of his favorite walks from Gad’s Hill was to a village called Shorne, where there was a quaint old church and graveyard.  He often said that he would like to be buried there, the peace and quiet of the homely little place

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