A Boy Called Dickens - Deborah Hopkinson [2]
What careless parents to neglect their boy this way!
Then one day his father visits the factory. He sees Charles on his stool, working, fast, fast, fast—so fast that people outside stop and watch through the window.
At last Mr. Dickens opens his eyes. Most likely his own pride is hurt—he is ashamed to see his son on display.
We cannot hear exactly what is said, but Mr. Dickens quarrels with the factory owner.
Charles is sent home.
His mother—and Charles never can forgive her for this—tries to patch up the quarrel so that he can return to work.
But his father, thank goodness, says no.
Now, once again, let us follow the boy. It’s a clear, sunny morning. He is walking briskly; his eyes are bright. And what’s that he’s carrying?
Yes, a book. Today Dickens is going to Camden Town, to school. At last!
There are piles of books here, and boys full of fun. There are also mice. The schoolboys love to keep white mice as pets—in desks, in drawers, and even in hatboxes.
Charles doesn’t mind the mice.
THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING TO OUR TALE. The boy called Dickens grew up to stride through the streets of London, a well-known and beloved figure. (Though even years later, he couldn’t bear to go near the spot where Warren’s blacking factory once stood.)
Charles Dickens did become a writer, one of the most famous of all time. He created characters like Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Pip and Miss Havisham, Oliver Twist and Bob Fagin, and, of course, David Copperfield and Aunt Betsey Trotwood. People all over the world still read and treasure his tales.
For years Dickens kept the story of his own childhood a secret. Yet it is a story worth telling. For it helps us remember how much we all might lose when a child’s dreams don’t come true.
A Boy Called Dickens is based on incidents in the life of the novelist Charles Dickens (1812 to 1870). Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, one of eight children. (Two had died before this story takes place, and the youngest had not yet been born.)
Charles Dickens loved books and reading, and in Portsmouth, his parents could afford to send him to school. But when Dickens was ten, the family moved to London and began to struggle financially. Shortly after his twelfth birthday, when this story takes place, he was sent to work in a factory. Dickens kept this period of his life a secret for many years. It wasn’t until 1847 that he wrote about this time in an autobiographical piece that he shared with his friend and biographer John Forster.
Dickens never published a full account of his life, but we can see traces of his childhood in many of his works, especially David Copperfield. Like Dickens, young David is neglected and sent to work in a factory; David also visits Marshalsea Prison, where the novelist’s father was jailed. Eventually David escapes his factory life and is taken in by his aunt, Betsey Trotwood.
Besides playing a part in his novels, Dickens’s boyhood experiences helped to shape his interest in social reform. He wrote articles about child neglect and gave money to hospitals and charities for the poor.
While much of A Boy Called Dickens is drawn closely from the fragments about his life that Dickens wrote, this story is fiction. I added dialogue and imagined the part where Dickens begins writing David Copperfield. (Dickens really did work with a boy named Bob Fagin, though. You might recognize Fagin as a character in Oliver Twist.)
Writing this story was a special pleasure, as Dickens has been one of my favorite authors since I was a girl. Every Christmas Eve, I stay up late reading A Christmas Carol. I hope you get as lost in Dickens’s world as I do.
—Deborah Hopkinson