Colourised, from the B&W version (the original was in colour but only the B&W copy survives). Charles Dickens' rise from poverty to prosperity is traced and reflected in the publication of his writings. Starring Michael Jayston, Amanda Reiss, Isla Blair, Ciaran Madden, Sheila Grant, Maureen Beck, Ken Wynne, Johnny Butler, James Grout, Colin Jeavons, Dorothea Phillips, Joan Haythorne. Directed by Michael Darlow.
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00When you're a married man, Sammy Bell, you'll understand a good many things as you don't
00:00:22understand now, but whether it's worthwhile going through so much to learn so little is
00:00:28a matter of taste. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.
00:00:36Accidents will happen in the best regulated families. Whether I shall turn out to be the
00:00:45hero of my own life, nor whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must
00:00:50show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born, as I have
00:00:56been informed and believe, on a Friday at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock
00:01:02began to strike and I began to cry simultaneously.
00:01:26Charles Dickens was born on February the 7th, 1812, at Portsmouth, into the elegant England of the Prince Regent.
00:01:46When he was five, his parents moved to the Medway towns of Rochester and Chatham. There,
00:01:59he spent the most formative years of his childhood. The Dickens family lived in a
00:02:22small house in the genteel part of Chatham. Charles was the eldest son and worshipped his
00:02:29father. As kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived in the world. His father was a clerk in the
00:02:36Navy pay office in Chatham. Jovial, energetic, and more flamboyant than his small income and
00:02:43minor position would allow, he was continually running up debts. Together, father and son used
00:02:59to explore the old cathedral city and the surrounding countryside. And it was with his
00:03:04father, rather than his mother, that Charles found stimulating adult companionship. Walking
00:03:12up from the valley of the River Medway, they would stop at the top of Gad's Hill to gaze
00:03:16admiringly at the big house. If you were to work hard and be persevering, one day you might come
00:03:23to own it. For long periods, he was left to amuse himself. He was, as he said later, a very small
00:03:34and not over-particularly-taken-care-of boy. My father had a small collection of books in a little
00:03:49room upstairs, to which I had access. And from that blessed room, Tom Jones, Roderick Random,
00:03:55the Vicar of Wakefield, and Robinson Crusoe came out, a glorious host to keep me company. They
00:04:00kept alive my fancy and my hope of something beyond that place and time, they and the Arabian
00:04:07Nights. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind of a summer evening, the boys
00:04:13at play, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every place in the neighbourhood, every
00:04:26stone in the castle, every foot of the churchyard had some association of its own in my mind,
00:04:30connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. All my early
00:04:47readings and early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away, full of innocent
00:04:52construction and guileless belief. The carefree days of his Kentish childhood were to seem the
00:05:05happiest of his life, particularly days spent with his childhood sweethearts, Lucy Strugill,
00:05:11the girl who lived next door. In his novels, Dickens was to hark back to these days, over and over again.
00:05:42Rochester was dominated by its cathedral. Venturing alone into its eerie vastness was like looking down the throat of old time himself.
00:06:04The crypt, especially with its gloomy shadows and echoes of ghosts, called to mind all too
00:06:10vividly the books he read, and the hair-raising stories he was told at bedtime.
00:06:26Then said the lovely bride, dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat. And the Captain humorously retorted,
00:06:37look in the glass. So she looked in the glass, but she still could see no meat. So she rolled out the crust, dropping great tears on it all the time, because he was so cross.
00:06:57Then the Captain called, I see the meat in the glass. And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see him, cutting her head off.
00:07:14And he cut her in pieces, and peppered and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker, and ate it, and bit the bones.
00:07:32December 1822. His father was transferred to Somerset House in London, and Charles, after staying behind to finish his school term, was sent to join his family.
00:07:43I remember the smell of the damp straw in which I was packed like game, and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys Wood Street Keepside.
00:07:52There was no other inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way.
00:08:00And I thought that life was sloppier than I'd expected to find it. I lay more than half asleep, and less than half awake, revolving a thousand matters in my wandering imagination.
00:08:13Christmas at the family's cheerless new London home in Camden Town. At the age of ten, Dickens came face to face with the economic facts of life.
00:08:24His father, who had continued to live beyond his means, was deep in debt. This was the first of many blows that were to alter Dickens' life.
00:08:33Twenty-two lamb chops, fourteen pig's trotters, and a succulent cow's udder.
00:08:38With three dozen loaves of bread, and a score of penny puddings.
00:08:41In a row, for three weeks, making six shillings and eight pence farthing.
00:08:44Unpaid.
00:08:45Which I cannot wait for.
00:08:47Call a customer.
00:08:48Fetch the bailiff.
00:08:49Arrest them.
00:09:03The shock of his father's arrest was the start of Charles' determination to be a success.
00:09:15He never forgot his father clinging to his dignity in the debtor's prison, and pointing the model of his own failure.
00:09:23Take warning, that if a man has twenty pound a year, and spends nineteen pound nineteen and six, he will be happy.
00:09:30But a shilling spent the other way will make him miserable.
00:09:35In an evil hour for me, it was proposed that I should go into Warren's blacking factory, Thirty Strand, to be useful as I could, at a salary of six shillings a week.
00:09:53The offer was accepted very willingly by my father and mother, and on a Monday morning, I went down to the blacking warehouse to begin my business life.
00:10:01Oh, it's the new coat.
00:10:05Come over here.
00:10:10My work was to cover the pots of paste blacking.
00:10:15Put it down over the top.
00:10:19One of the boys in ragged apron and paper cap showed me the trick of using the string and tying the knot.
00:10:29His name was Bob Fagin, and I took the liberty of using his name long afterwards in Oliver Twist.
00:10:38But no words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship, compared these everyday associates with those of my happier childhood.
00:10:49My whole nature was penetrated with grief and humiliation.
00:10:54Even now it is a matter of some surprise to me that I can so easily have been thrown away at such an age.
00:11:00A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation, quick, eager, delicate, and so soon hurt, bodily and mentally.
00:11:09It seems wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign on my behalf.
00:11:13But none was made, and I became at ten years old a little laboring hind.
00:11:19I felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man crushed in my bosom.
00:11:25But for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.
00:11:41As insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed, I lounged about the streets.
00:11:47So he was turned loose on a new world, and quickly, eagerly, his strong powers of observation took in the scenes he was to describe in his books.
00:12:03Covent Garden, thronged with carts of all sizes and descriptions.
00:12:07The pavement strewed with decayed cabbage leaves, broken hay bans, and all the indescribable litter of a market.
00:12:14Men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket women talking, donkeys braying.
00:12:21My usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge and down into Blackfriars Road, past the pawn shop, one of the numerous receptacles for misery and distress with which the streets of London unhappily abound.
00:12:34The policemen at the street corner, the baked potato man, the kidney pie man, the pineapples and the raisin puddings.
00:12:40Flatfish, oyster and fruit vendors linger hopelessly in the gutter, in vain endeavour to attract customers.
00:12:47The noise of shouting and quarrelling issues from the public houses. Wretched houses with broken windows, patched with rags, offer gin and sweet stuffs manufactured on the premises.
00:13:03Filth everywhere, starvation in the attics, men and women in every variety of scanty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting and swearing.
00:13:21Dickens was rescued from the blacking factory when his father's debts were paid off by a legacy. He returned to school and was then placed in a solicitor's office, but his identification with the suffering of others never left him.
00:13:33The sudden moving of a taper across the window of a public hospital denotes the chamber where so many forms are writhing with pain or wasting with disease.
00:13:43A feverish slumber, a low moan of pain, the long forgotten prayer of a dying man.
00:13:50By the age of twenty, Dickens was fighting his way up in the world and was an accepted guest in middle class drawing rooms. He'd even fallen in love with a banker's daughter, Maria Biedno. His past was buried forever.
00:14:16In the solicitor's office, he had taught himself shorthand in his spare time. He made himself into a reporter, first of court cases, then of election meetings and parliamentary debates. His ambition was boundless.
00:14:32Quiet, you naughty little thing. Mr. Dickens is not a bird. There, for your favorite color.
00:14:56Sweet lady.
00:14:58Sweet boy.
00:15:01I was not merely overhead and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in it, and yet there would have remained enough within me and all over me to purvey my entire existence.
00:15:29Dickens' work as a reporter earned him five guineas a week, not nearly enough to be an acceptable suitor for Maria.
00:15:39I, the moonstruck slave, perambulated round and round the garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting my chin by dint of violent exertion above the rusty nails on the top, blowing kisses at the lights in the windows, and romantically calling on the night at intervals to shield my love.
00:16:04I don't know exactly what from, I suppose from fire, but perhaps from mice, to which he had a great exception.
00:16:12Oh, I do so admire the scent of geraniums.
00:16:22Kind sir?
00:16:25Yes.
00:16:27There, my little parrot.
00:16:33Jove knows I love but who. Lips do not move, no man must know.
00:16:38No, no, no, with command of the audience as soon as you enter. And the pens, they're not fish, they're to be used thus. No, no, no, no, from the wrist right through to the tips of the fingers, that's it, wrist, fingers, wrist, fingers.
00:16:59Dickens was determined somehow to get on in the world. He even considered becoming an actor.
00:17:05Tis but fortune, all is fortune. You see, with Garrick, the whole man, the whole body was slaved to his imagination.
00:17:12His drive and energy were phenomenal. He worked as a reporter for two papers at once, went to the theatre, wrote his first short stories, read in the British Museum, and took acting lessons.
00:17:23I practiced industriously, even such things as walking in and out, sitting down in a chair, often four, five, six hours a day, shut up in my own room, or walking about in the fields, or with my acting master.
00:17:35I prescribed myself to a special system for learning parts and learned a great many.
00:17:40No, no, stop, it's impossible, you cannot sit like that. Now look, one foot behind the other, bend the knee and flow.
00:17:49Oh, Charlie.
00:17:56I can barely bring myself to say it, but our meetings of late have been little more than so many displays of heartless indifference on the one hand, while on the other they have never failed to prove a fertile source of wretchedness and misery to me.
00:18:11I would feel it mean and contemptible of me to keep by me one gift of yours, or to preserve one single line or word of remembrance of affection from you.
00:18:20I therefore return them, and only wish that I could as easily forget that I ever received them.
00:18:26Then in December 1833, he picked up the monthly magazine from a bookstall. The magazine helped unknown authors by presenting their work without payment.
00:18:35Dickens had submitted his first short story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk.
00:18:39It was there, in all the glory of print. My eyes were so dimmed with pride that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there.
00:18:50They sent me a polite and flattering communication, requesting more.
00:18:55Perhaps now Maria, whom he had courted for four years, would be impressed enough to accept him.
00:19:01No, Mr. Dickens, no.
00:19:04I will.
00:19:07Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?
00:19:10I do.
00:19:16Say after me, I, Charles Dickens.
00:19:19I, Charles Dickens.
00:19:21Take thee, Catherine Hogarth.
00:19:23Take thee, Catherine Hogarth.
00:19:24Catherine Hogarth was the daughter of a newspaper colleague.
00:19:27Dickens married her on the 2nd of April, 1836, after Maria had refused him.
00:19:32Compared with Maria, Catherine was rather dull.
00:19:35Nevertheless, Dickens loved her sincerely, and aimed to bring the same determination to marriage as to everything else.
00:19:41Instead of the moping solitude of chambers, there will always be the warm companionship of our own fireside, where we will sit.
00:19:47And I will tell her rationally what I've been doing through a day, whose pursuits and labours will all have for their mainspring, her advancement and happiness.
00:20:03But by marrying Catherine, he married the entire Hogarth family.
00:20:06Her father, her mother, her brother, her baby sisters, her sister Georgina, and her sister Mary, who was to live in the house with him.
00:20:19Most certainly, my dear Catherine, I am of the opinion that turkey carpets are a necessity for people of our...
00:20:24Even in the first crowded months of marriage, Dickens continued to work.
00:20:28Out of the hack job of writing the text to a series of sporting illustrations, he created a comic novel to be issued in monthly instalments.
00:20:35It was to be called, The Pickwick Papers.
00:20:41Dickens worked through all distractions, encouraged by the sympathetic understanding of his admiring young sister-in-law, Mary.
00:20:48But I really must determine the opinion of Charles.
00:20:50Ow!
00:20:51Darling! Naughty puss! Go away!
00:20:55From the start, it was in Mary, not his wife Catherine, that he found the warmth and calm that he so deeply needed.
00:21:02She became the grace and life of our home. So perfect a creature never breathed.
00:21:11And in order to illustrate your taste to your husband's friends, I insist that everything should be chosen to match.
00:21:17My friend, Mr. Snodgrass, has a great taste for poetry, replied Mr. Pickwick.
00:21:22So has Mrs. Leo Hunter, sir. She has produced some delightful pieces herself, sir.
00:21:27But I dislike brown.
00:21:29You may have met with her ode to an expiring frog, sir.
00:21:32I don't think I have, said Mr. Pickwick.
00:21:34But, maman, cream is so much prettier.
00:21:39Charles, brown.
00:21:42Do you not think brown for the curtains? Or cream bouquet?
00:21:46Such poetry, such passion.
00:21:48Pray be serious, Mr. Dickens.
00:21:50Then neither to offend my new wife nor my new mother I'll hazard amphibious green.
00:21:56On a log, expiring frog.
00:22:03Beautiful, said Mr. Pickwick. Fine, so simple.
00:22:06The next verse is still more touching, said Mr. Leo Hunter.
00:22:09It runs thus.
00:22:10Say have friends, fiends.
00:22:13Say have fiends in shape of boys with wild halloo and brutal noise
00:22:18hunted thee from marshy joys with a dog, expiring frog.
00:22:28With the publication of the fifth installment of Pickwick Papers, in which Mr. Pickwick first meets Sam Weller,
00:22:33the book seized the imagination of the public.
00:22:36It was hailed as a triumph.
00:22:38Judges on the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the young and old,
00:22:43those who are entering life and those who are quitting it, alike find it to be irresistible.
00:22:51The comic adventures of the members of the Pickwick Club became the greatest success story in publishing history.
00:22:57Dickens received over three thousand pounds for his work and was able to give up reporting.
00:23:02Mr. Pickwick and his friends became national heroes.
00:23:06By Christmas 1836, Dickens, still only 24, was famous.
00:23:11Well done, Charles.
00:23:13Oh, Charles.
00:23:15You're even more of a child than the rest of them.
00:23:20Charles, give us the Pickwick carols.
00:23:24Oh, yes, sir.
00:23:25Yes!
00:23:28But my song I fall out for Christmas now.
00:23:33Sing it, Charles!
00:23:35Sing it, Charles!
00:23:37Sing it, Charles!
00:23:39All right, if you'll all sing with me.
00:23:42Yes!
00:23:44My song I fall out for Christmas now, for heartbeats, you and I.
00:23:50A bumper I frame with light, I make it bigger for big Christmas shows.
00:23:55A bumper I frame with light, I make it bigger for big Christmas shows.
00:24:00Merry Christmas, everybody.
00:24:08A happy Christmas to us all, my dear.
00:24:11God bless us, everyone.
00:24:13Merry Christmas.
00:24:14Happy Christmas.
00:24:31Mary.
00:24:33Mary.
00:24:35Catherine.
00:24:37A doctor.
00:24:39Quickly!
00:24:52Mary Hogarth suddenly became ill and died.
00:25:01No one can conceive the misery in which this dreadful event has plunged us.
00:25:06Since our marriage, she has been the peace and life of our home.
00:25:10She admired of all for her beauty and excellence.
00:25:14I could have better spared a much nearer relation or an older friend,
00:25:18for she has sympathized with all my thoughts and feelings more than anyone I ever knew.
00:25:25It's left a blank which I never can replace.
00:25:28The shock of Mary's sudden death, like so many other emotional events in Dickens' life,
00:25:34was buried deep in his mind, never to be disclosed.
00:25:38Unknown even to his wife, he was to dream of Mary every night for five years.
00:25:43Years later, his stored up emotions reappeared when he wrote
00:25:49Years later, his stored up emotions reappeared when he wrote
00:25:53The Death of Little Nell.
00:25:56For she was dead.
00:25:59There upon her little bed she lay at rest.
00:26:02The solemn stillness was no marvel now.
00:26:06She was dead.
00:26:08No sleep so beautiful and calm.
00:26:10So free from trace of pain.
00:26:13So fair to look upon.
00:26:15She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God and waiting for breath of life.
00:26:20Not one who had lived and suffered death.
00:26:26Mary Scott Hogarth died 7th May 1837.
00:26:32Young, beautiful and good.
00:26:35God in his mercy numbered her with his angels at the early age of 17.
00:27:15Dickens was so overcome with grief that for a while he couldn't write.
00:27:22He was so overwhelmed with grief that for a while he couldn't write.
00:27:27He was so overwhelmed with grief that for a while he couldn't write.
00:27:32He was so overwhelmed with grief that for a while he couldn't write.
00:27:37He was so overwhelmed with grief that for a while he couldn't write.
00:27:42He was so overcome with grief that for a while he couldn't write.
00:27:45He left London and tried to forget his sorrow in exercise.
00:27:49He spent whole days out riding with a new companion, John Forster,
00:27:53the drama critic of a London paper,
00:27:55who was to become a trusted friend and advisor and his first biographer.
00:27:59Forster encouraged Dickens to throw his energy back into his work,
00:28:03into his first great blow for the oppressed.
00:28:06I have faith and I wish to diffuse faith in the existence of beautiful things.
00:28:11Even in those conditions of society it was so degenerate, degraded and forlorn
00:28:16that at first sight it would seem as though they could not be described
00:28:19but by a strange and terrible reversal of scripture.
00:28:22God said let there be light and there was none.
00:28:27The Industrial Revolution had brought an age of unprecedented brutality.
00:28:32Young children were forced to work up to 14 hours or more each day
00:28:36in mines and factories under the most appalling conditions.
00:28:41Dickens threw himself into campaigns for new laws to protect children at work.
00:28:46He took up his pen on behalf of those who couldn't fend for themselves.
00:29:02He attacked the Poor Law, a law that forced orphans, the old, the sick and the destitute
00:29:08into workhouses where life was deliberately made cruel and inhuman
00:29:12so that people wouldn't live off the rates.
00:29:17The children in the jails are common sights to me,
00:29:20but these are worse for they have not yet arrived there
00:29:23but are as plainly and as certainly travelling there as they are to their graves.
00:29:29Thousands of immortal creatures who cannot in their present state
00:29:33be held responsible for what they do.
00:29:36We have come to this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass
00:29:40that the dishonest felon is in respect of cleanliness, order, diet and accommodation
00:29:45better provided for and taken care of than the honest pauper.
00:29:50Poverty bred violence.
00:29:52The authorities fought the violence with oppressive laws and harsh punishments
00:29:56but about the poverty from which it sprang, they did nothing.
00:29:59In honour of a twist of Nicholas Nickleby,
00:30:01Dickens wove into his stories a great cry of compassion and reproach.
00:30:05With every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its birth,
00:30:09with every young and healthy feeling flogged and starved down,
00:30:13with every revengeful passion that confessed it in swollen hearts
00:30:16eating its evil way to their core in silence,
00:30:19what an incipient hell was breeding here.
00:30:26The Summer of 1842.
00:30:28Dickens at Broadstairs on holiday.
00:30:30At 30 he was so famous that part of the promenade had to be roped off
00:30:34to give him some privacy.
00:30:36Catherine's second sister, Georgina Hogarth,
00:30:38had become a permanent member of the family
00:30:40and helped with the growing number of children.
00:30:42But the success of the summer was undoubtedly Miss Eleanor Peake,
00:30:46one of Dickens' numerous women admirers.
00:30:50I fear, Mr. Dickens, you have a great deal more energy than I.
00:30:53No, fair charmer.
00:30:54Just a combination of my intoxicating beauty and the sea air.
00:30:57Oh! Oh, no, faster.
00:31:00Faster, tell me what's wrong.
00:31:02Oh, nothing.
00:31:03Oh, dear.
00:31:04Oh, dear.
00:31:05Oh, dear.
00:31:06Oh, dear.
00:31:07Oh, dear.
00:31:08Oh, dear.
00:31:09Oh, dear.
00:31:10Oh, dear.
00:31:11Oh, dear.
00:31:12Oh, dear.
00:31:13Oh, dear.
00:31:14Oh, dear.
00:31:15Oh, dear.
00:31:16Oh, dear.
00:31:17Oh, dear.
00:31:18Faster, tell me what's wrong.
00:31:20Or I shall die.
00:31:27Fair enslaved of fame would I
00:31:29thread the mazes of this Sarabande with thee.
00:31:31The Sarabande is slow, Mr. Dickens.
00:31:35Oh.
00:31:36Oh, now.
00:31:37Now.
00:31:42Oh, no.
00:31:43She's gone now.
00:31:44Oh.
00:31:45Oh, gosh.
00:31:46Oh.
00:31:47Oh, no! No, Mr. Dickens!
00:31:51Oh, no! Oh, no! No! No!
00:31:59Do not struggle, poor bird. You are powerless in the claw of such a kite as this.
00:32:03Oh, my dress! Oh, my best dress! My only silk dress will be ruined!
00:32:07Oh, Mrs. Dickens, help me! Make Mr. Dickens let me go!
00:32:11Charles! How can you be so silly?
00:32:14You'll both be carried off by the waves and you'll ruin the poor girl's dress.
00:32:18Dress? Talk not to me of dress!
00:32:20Am I not immolating a brand new pair of patent leathers, as yet unpaid for?
00:32:25Oh, I shall drown!
00:32:27Then, oh, beloved of my soul, as we stand on the brink of the great mystery,
00:32:31let your mind dwell on the column in the times wherein will be vividly described
00:32:35the fate of the lovely Eleanor P., drowned by D. in a fit of dementia.
00:32:39Oh!
00:32:45Well, Charles?
00:32:56And even the seagulls repented of their early marriages, like men and women.
00:33:03Now, for my next diabolical deception, I have here a canister, empty,
00:33:08which I fill with common ore garden, bran.
00:33:13As a father, Dickens reveled in performing ingenious conjuring tricks at nursery parties,
00:33:18but he resented the inconvenience of his growing family and the responsibility.
00:33:23Aldi Baronte Fosfico Formio.
00:33:27This is Hubert, the soldier. He's going on a long journey, so he needs his cloak.
00:33:31By the late 1840s, the sheer number of their children,
00:33:34they had eight and another on the way, were driving him and Catherine apart.
00:33:38The task of bearing them and bringing them up left poor Catherine
00:33:42with little energy or enthusiasm for the task.
00:33:45She had no idea what to do.
00:33:47She had no idea what to do.
00:33:49She had no idea what to do.
00:33:51The task of bearing them and bringing them up left poor Catherine
00:33:54with little energy or enthusiasm for her role as the wife of a celebrity.
00:34:05Running the household fell more and more onto his sister-in-law, Georgina,
00:34:09as Catherine became less capable with each successive child.
00:34:14Flower.
00:34:17Outwardly, Dickens was a self-confident and respectable public figure,
00:34:21a friend of the great, an upholder of the Victorian ideals of happy family life,
00:34:26the author of jolly Christmas stories, the life and soul of every party.
00:34:30Mr. Foster, the magic.
00:34:32Taper, if you please.
00:34:43But he faced growing disillusion.
00:34:45The public applauded, but nothing was done about the reforms he urged.
00:34:51With such a large family to support, he still didn't feel financially secure,
00:34:55and now the miseries of his childhood came back to haunt him.
00:35:01Foster heard of an elderly gentleman who recognised the great Mr. Dickens
00:35:05as the miserable little boy who once worked in Warren's blacking factory.
00:35:14Parts of his past he had told to no one, not even to his wife.
00:35:23Foster persuaded him to begin an autobiography, but the truth was too painful.
00:35:27Only in the guise of a novel could he make his confessional to himself and the world.
00:35:35Only by transforming him into Mr. Macorber
00:35:38could he accept the shame of his father in the debtor's prison.
00:35:44Annual income £20, annual expenditure £19, 19 and 6 result happiness.
00:35:51Annual income £20, annual expenditure £20 ought and 6 result misery.
00:36:00The full title of the novel is
00:36:02The Personal History and Observations of David Copperfield the Younger,
00:36:06which he never meant to be published on any account.
00:36:09In most respects, it was Dickens' own story,
00:36:12more autobiographical than even his closest friends suspected.
00:36:16Of course I was in love with little Emily.
00:36:20I'm sure I loved that baby, quite as truly, quite as tenderly,
00:36:23with greater purity and more disinterestedness
00:36:26than can enter into the best love of a greater time of life,
00:36:29high and ennobling as it is.
00:36:32I'm sure my fancy raised up something around that blue-eyed might of a child,
00:36:36which etherealised and made a very angel of her.
00:36:39The days sported by us as if time had not grown up himself yet,
00:36:43but were a child too and always at play.
00:36:48As to the sense of inequality or youthfulness or other difficulty in our way,
00:36:53little Emily and I had no such trouble because we had no future.
00:36:57We made no more provision for growing older than we did for growing younger.
00:37:10Music
00:37:21It was all over in a moment.
00:37:23I had fulfilled my destiny.
00:37:25I was captive and a slave.
00:37:27I loved Doris Penlow to distraction.
00:37:31Music
00:37:39Music
00:37:59We loitered alone in front of the geraniums
00:38:02and Dora often stopped to admire this one and that one
00:38:05and I stopped to admire the same one.
00:38:07And Dora, laughing, held the dog up childishly to smell the flowers.
00:38:12And if we were not all three in fairyland, certainly I was.
00:38:17In the novel, David Copperfield marries his beloved Dora
00:38:21and the desperate desire that Dickens had to marry Maria in the world of fact
00:38:25was consummated in the world of fiction.
00:38:28But with marriage, Dora changes.
00:38:30She is transmuted into a woman very similar to the inept Catherine Hogarth.
00:38:35She ceases to be the ideal.
00:38:37Her attractive silliness becomes a bore.
00:38:40Dickens, through the novel, faced the unhappiness of his own marriage.
00:38:44Sickness and in health to love and to cherish.
00:38:53In fulfillment of the compact I have made with myself
00:38:56to reflect my mind on this paper,
00:38:58I again examine it closely and bring its secrets to the light.
00:39:03What I missed, I still regarded, I always regarded,
00:39:07as something that had been a dream of my youthful fancy
00:39:10that was incapable of realization.
00:39:14That I was now discovering to be so with some natural pain, as all men did,
00:39:18but that it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped more
00:39:23and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner.
00:39:26There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.
00:39:32In the novel, Dickens didn't have to face the logical outcome of an unhappy marriage.
00:39:37Dora Spenlow was made to fade consumptively away,
00:39:40allowing David Copperfield to find true happiness
00:39:43with a romantic ideal of womanhood called Agnes Wickfield.
00:39:47When all else fades, one face remains.
00:39:51One face shining on me like a heavenly light by which I see all other objects.
00:39:57I turn my head and see it in its beautiful serenity beside me.
00:40:01My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night,
00:40:05but the dear presence without which I am nothing bears me company.
00:40:10O Agnes of my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed.
00:40:16So may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss,
00:40:22still find thee near me, pointing upward.
00:40:321854. War in Crimea.
00:40:40So the people are to be made fools of again,
00:40:43made to sing their own death song in rural Britannia
00:40:46and allow their own wrongs and sufferings to be obscured by cannon smoke and blood mists.
00:40:52The government advanced this war without giving a thought
00:40:55to the wretchedness engendered by cholera.
00:40:58The people are to be made fools of again,
00:41:01made to sing their own death song in rural Britannia
00:41:04and allow their own wrongs and sufferings to be obscured by cannon smoke and blood mists.
00:41:22Of which in London alone, an infinitely larger number of English people
00:41:26than are likely to be slain in the whole Russian war,
00:41:29have miserably and needlessly died.
00:41:32Dickens saw the government using the war as a further excuse to delay reform.
00:41:36In his mature novels, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Hard Times,
00:41:40he returned to the battle for the oppressed.
00:41:42He attacked the heartlessness of the factory owners.
00:41:44They were ruined when they were required to send labouring children to school.
00:41:48They were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their work.
00:41:51They were ruined when such inspectors considered it doubtful
00:41:54whether they were justified in chopping people up with their machinery.
00:41:57It was hinted that they need not always make quite so much smoke.
00:42:01Smoke? That's meat and drink to us.
00:42:04It's the healthiest thing in all the world in all respects,
00:42:06and particularly for the lungs.
00:42:08The work in our mills is the pleasantest work there is,
00:42:11and it's the best paid work there is.
00:42:13Besides that, we couldn't improve the mills themselves
00:42:15unless we laid down turkey carpets on the floors,
00:42:18which we're not going to do.
00:42:20As to our hands, there's not a hand in this town, sir,
00:42:23man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life.
00:42:26That object is to be fed turtle soup and venison on a golden spoon.
00:42:30But none of them's going to be
00:42:32for all the humbugging sentiment in Great Britain and Ireland.
00:42:44Another target was the pulpits and the hypocrites who preached there.
00:42:47It is because you know nothing, my young friend,
00:42:50that you are to us a gem and jewel.
00:42:52For what are you, my young friend?
00:42:54You are a human boy, my young friend, a human boy.
00:42:58Oh, glorious to be a human boy.
00:43:01And why glorious, my young friend?
00:43:03Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom.
00:43:06Because you are capable of profiting from this discourse,
00:43:09which I now deliver for your good.
00:43:11Because you are not a stick or a star,
00:43:13or a stalk or a stone, or a post or a pillar,
00:43:15or a running stream of sparkling joy,
00:43:18to be a soaring human boy.
00:43:20So let us be joyful.
00:43:22Joyful, let us be joyful.
00:43:25And, my young friend, I wish for peace upon you and yours.
00:43:29And another obstacle to change, the law.
00:43:32Repeal this statute, my good sir.
00:43:35Repeal it, my dear sir.
00:43:37Never with my consent.
00:43:39Alter the law.
00:43:45The same disillusion which coloured his novels pervaded Dickens' private life.
00:43:49The happiness of his past seemed to recede into another world.
00:43:53Then, on Saturday, February the 10th, 1855,
00:43:57a figure from the past returned to call on him.
00:44:00Her married name was Maria Winter.
00:44:05Maria Winter was a young woman,
00:44:07a young woman who had been in love for a long time.
00:44:11Her name was Maria Winter.
00:44:17It is impossible to overstate the feeling of 25 years ago.
00:44:20If you will only think what the desperate intensity of my nature is,
00:44:24and that it excluded every other idea from my mind for four years,
00:44:27at a time of life when four years was equal to four times four,
00:44:30and that I went at it with a determination to overcome all the difficulties
00:44:34which lifted me up and floated me away over a hundred men's heads.
00:44:37Nothing can exaggerate that.
00:44:39And to see the mere cause of it all now loosens my hold upon myself.
00:44:43Charlie, my sweet boy.
00:44:49Madam.
00:44:52Is that all you have to say to me after we've been so fond of one another?
00:44:59Madam, I hardly know what to say.
00:45:01Then say nothing.
00:45:03Just plant a kiss on my cheek for the sake of memory.
00:45:10Tossing her head with a caricature of her girlish manner,
00:45:14this grotesque revival of what once had been prettily natural to her
00:45:18was like trying to resuscitate an old play when the stage was dusty,
00:45:22when the scenery was faded, when the youthful actors were dead,
00:45:25when the orchestra was empty, when the lights were out.
00:45:28Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought,
00:45:32was diffuse and silly. That was much.
00:45:35Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago,
00:45:38was determined to be spoiled and artless now.
00:45:41That was a fatal blow.
00:45:43Mr. F. was so devoted to me he could never bear me out of his sight, said Flora.
00:45:47Maria was turned into Flora Finching in Little Dorrit and offered to the public.
00:45:55Dickens had begun reading his stories in public almost by accident for charity.
00:46:00The performances were extremely popular and profitable.
00:46:03He continued them for his own benefit.
00:46:06Romance, however, Flora went on,
00:46:08as I openly said to Mr. F. when he proposed to me,
00:46:11and you'll be surprised to hear he proposed seven times,
00:46:13once in a hackney coach, once in a boat, once in a pew,
00:46:16once on a donkey at Tunbridge Wells and the rest on his knees.
00:46:19Romance has fled.
00:46:24It must have been very strange to you, coming here again.
00:46:27Dickens' regular companion was Georgina.
00:46:29He relied on her completely to manage his home.
00:46:32His wife Catherine, after ten children and four miscarriages in 15 years,
00:46:36was now totally incapacitated.
00:46:39And it was with Georgina that Dickens returned to the countryside of his childhood.
00:46:46The same places he once explored with his father.
00:46:49If you were to work hard and be persevering,
00:46:52one day you might come to own it.
00:46:56The golden gates of sleep and wonder...
00:47:05Dickens bought Gadshill in 1856,
00:47:08the same year that he met an 18-year-old actress called Ellen Ternan.
00:47:12She was the leading lady in a play Dickens was rehearsing for a charity performance.
00:47:17Sing me together
00:47:20To kindle their image like a star
00:47:29Star
00:47:35The rest of the cast were literary friends,
00:47:38notably the novelist Wilkie Collins.
00:47:41Moon on a castle floor
00:47:49Ellen Ternan was younger even than Dickens' two grown-up daughters.
00:47:53The house, they were to say later, seemed to be full of them.
00:47:57Let eyes not see their own delight
00:48:05Be wise
00:48:10Oh, sweet woman!
00:48:12My dear friend!
00:48:14Oh, no, no, I'm not to be your dear friend now.
00:48:16The play was called Uncle John.
00:48:18Dickens took the part of an old man infatuated with his young ward.
00:48:22Dear uncle...
00:48:23John!
00:48:24John!
00:48:25Oh, you are so kind.
00:48:27It's no trouble to fall in love.
00:48:29It's trouble enough to fall out of it once you're in it.
00:48:32So I keep out of it altogether.
00:48:34It were better that you were to do the same.
00:48:36That's impossible.
00:48:38A little whim of mine.
00:48:41Presents for my little wife.
00:48:43Bridal presents.
00:48:44Oh, sir, you are too generous.
00:48:46I know not what to say.
00:48:48Say nothing.
00:48:53Fairy sprites
00:48:56In the play, to show his affection,
00:48:59the old man lavishes expensive gifts on the beautiful young girl.
00:49:03In real life, Dickens couldn't help doing the same.
00:49:09But a package from the jeweller was delivered into the wrong hands.
00:49:21My dearest Ellen,
00:49:23I know you will know not what to say,
00:49:26so say nothing.
00:49:32My dear Catherine,
00:49:34it is perfectly customary
00:49:36for a producer of a play to give a token of his gratitude to his leading lady.
00:49:40An expensive bracelet I take to be more than a token.
00:49:43I see you are determined to take it to mean exactly what you like.
00:49:46Where else can I interpret your innocent gesture?
00:49:49I've never been so humiliated in my life.
00:49:53Here, my own home,
00:49:55rounded by my children.
00:49:57I find your suspicions hideous and degrading.
00:50:00Humiliating.
00:50:01Not only hideous and degrading to me,
00:50:03but to one who is as innocent and pure of any of the motives
00:50:06which you are imputing to her as virgin snow.
00:50:08I can't bear it.
00:50:10And I trust when you've come to your senses,
00:50:12you will think differently of the matter
00:50:14and order from your mind all that is base and suspicious and ugly.
00:50:17And pay a respectful visit to Miss Turnham's mother.
00:50:20I thought better of you, Catherine.
00:50:23I thought better.
00:50:29Well, my, you shall not go.
00:50:31But your father insists, child, that I must.
00:50:37Mr. Dickens is a wicked, wicked man.
00:50:40Mr. Dickens is not wicked.
00:50:42Mr. Dickens is a genius.
00:50:44For the whole world must know that this woman
00:50:46who claims to be an actress is Mr. Dickens' mistress.
00:50:50The marriage was over.
00:50:52It broke up into a long-drawn-out family row
00:50:54about money and the terms of the separation.
00:50:57Only Georgina stayed loyal to Dickens.
00:50:59Neither you nor anyone else can lay the fiction at my door
00:51:02that Mr. Dickens is of my flesh and blood.
00:51:04The rumours about his relationship with Ellen Turnham
00:51:07were fanned into scandal
00:51:09when a letter he wrote about Catherine
00:51:11fell into the hands of the American press
00:51:13and was published across the world.
00:51:15Mrs. Dickens and I have lived unhappily together for many years.
00:51:19Hardly anyone who knows us intimately
00:51:21can fail to know that we are, in all respects of character,
00:51:24wonderfully unsuited to each other.
00:51:26In the manly consideration which I owe my wife,
00:51:29I will remark of her that the peculiarity of her character
00:51:32has thrown all our children onto someone else
00:51:34and that a mental disorder under which she sometimes labours
00:51:37was such that she felt herself unfit
00:51:39for the life she has to lead as my wife.
00:51:42Wicked persons have coupled this separation
00:51:44with the name of a young lady
00:51:46for whom I have a great attachment and regard.
00:51:48I will not repeat her name,
00:51:50for whom I have a great attachment and regard.
00:51:52I will not repeat her name.
00:51:54I honour it too much.
00:51:56This was too much for conventional Victorian society.
00:52:00The newspapers, after publishing the letter,
00:52:02bitterly attacked him.
00:52:04This favourite of the public
00:52:06informs some thousands of readers
00:52:08that his wife, whom he has vowed to love and cherish,
00:52:11has utterly failed to discharge the duties of a mother
00:52:14and further hints that her mind is disordered.
00:52:17If this be manly consideration,
00:52:20we should like to be favoured with a definition
00:52:22of unmanly selfishness and heartlessness.
00:52:27Dickens' private life, it seemed,
00:52:29would bring his public life to an end.
00:52:47June 17, 1858. Dickens was 46.
00:53:16The audience waited for him to give his first public reading
00:53:19since the scandal of separation from his wife.
00:53:22His friends feared he would be booed off the stage,
00:53:24but he went on despite their advice.
00:53:26I know, sir.
00:53:28I remember your advice and acknowledge it with thanks.
00:53:30Whenever I was wrong, I was obliged to anyone
00:53:32who would tell me of it.
00:53:34But up to the present, I have never been wrong.
00:53:46June 18, 1858.
00:54:10Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life
00:54:13or whether that station will be held by anybody else,
00:54:16these pages must show.
00:54:19To begin my life with the beginning of my life,
00:54:21I record that I was born, as I have been informed...
00:54:27Would to God every letter I had ever written were that vile.
00:54:31In the garden of his new home at Gad's Hill,
00:54:33Dickens made a bonfire of his letters,
00:54:35a symbolic burning of his past
00:54:37before he built himself a new life.
00:54:39A princess I adore.
00:54:41But Ellen Ternan and he would never be really happy together.
00:54:45After the separation from his wife,
00:54:47Dickens lived at Gad's Hill with Georgina as his hostess.
00:54:50Ellen visited him there, but convention made it impossible
00:54:53for her to live openly with him as his mistress.
00:54:56More important, being so much younger,
00:54:58she could never satisfy his emotional needs,
00:55:00fill the void he had felt all his life.
00:55:03Disappointed, Dickens immersed himself in a new book,
00:55:07Great Expectations.
00:55:12Great Expectations
00:55:17Hang still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat.
00:55:19Oh, don't cut my throat, sir, I pray you, no.
00:55:21Tell us your name, quick.
00:55:23Pipsa.
00:55:24Once more, give it mouth.
00:55:26Pipsa.
00:55:27Tell us where you live. Point out a place.
00:55:29Over there, sir.
00:55:31You young devil, what fat cheeks you have got.
00:55:33Darn me if I couldn't eat them if I hadn't half a mind to it.
00:55:36I pray you, no, sir.
00:55:38The question is whether you ought to be let live.
00:55:41In Great Expectations, Magwitch,
00:55:43a fearsome and misunderstood convict, an outcast,
00:55:46eventually emerges as perhaps the most admirable character.
00:55:50The central figure is Pip,
00:55:52a village boy with ambitions to be rich, respectable and a gentleman,
00:55:55ambitions once Dickens' own.
00:55:58In this harsh fantasy,
00:56:00Dickens faces himself and his disappointment with Ellen Turner.
00:56:04A crazed old lady, Miss Havisham,
00:56:07insulted on her wedding day,
00:56:09ensnares Pip into loving the beautiful but unattainable Estella.
00:56:13He is made to feel all the pain of love,
00:56:16but none of its rewards.
00:56:19Your own one day, my dear.
00:56:23And you'll use it well.
00:56:29Let me see you play cards with this boy.
00:56:33With this boy?
00:56:35Why, he's a common labouring boy.
00:56:38Well, you couldn't break his heart.
00:56:41What do you play, boy?
00:56:43Nothing but beggar my neighbour, Miss.
00:56:46Beggar him.
00:56:56He portrayed the boy Pip growing up to worldly success
00:56:59as Dickens had done himself,
00:57:02but he discovered too late that material values are false
00:57:05because they deaden the heart.
00:57:07Love her.
00:57:09Love her.
00:57:11Love her.
00:57:13I'll tell you what true love is.
00:57:17It's blind devotion,
00:57:20unquestioning self-humiliation,
00:57:23utter submission.
00:57:26Trust and believe against yourself,
00:57:30against the whole world,
00:57:33giving up your heart and soul to the smiter.
00:57:39You must know that I have no heart.
00:57:42Oh, I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt.
00:57:45And of course, if it ceased to beat, I should cease to be.
00:57:49But you know what I mean.
00:57:51I have no softness there.
00:57:54No sympathy, sentiment.
00:57:57Nonsense.
00:58:01The next novel paints London as a city of despair.
00:58:05A grey, dusty, withered city which has not a hopeful aspect.
00:58:09The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them,
00:58:13and the national dread of colour has an air of mourning.
00:58:17A hopeless city with no rent in the leaden canopy of its sky,
00:58:21steeped in a general gloom, like a dismal and enormous jail.
00:58:26In Our Mutual Friend,
00:58:28Dickens derided the members of the new self-made ruling class,
00:58:32the Podsnaps,
00:58:34whose careful respectability
00:58:36shut out any concern for the poverty that surrounds them.
00:58:40I don't want to know about it.
00:58:42I don't choose to discuss it.
00:58:44I don't admit it.
00:58:45The subject is a very disagreeable one.
00:58:48I'll go as far as to say it is an odious one.
00:58:51It is not to be introduced among our wives and young persons,
00:58:54and I'll remove it from the earth.
00:58:58After 30 years, Dickens now saw less hope of real reform than ever.
00:59:02One character dares to warn the Podsnaps of what may happen if nothing is done.
00:59:06For when we have got things to the pass,
00:59:08that with an enormous treasure at our disposal to relieve the poor,
00:59:11the best of the poor detest our mercies, hide their heads from us,
00:59:15shame us by starving to death in the midst of us,
00:59:17it is a pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance.
00:59:21We must mend it, or in its own evil hour it will mar every one of us.
00:59:35So, in his fifties,
00:59:37Dickens escaped more and more into the only secure emotional world he had left,
00:59:41his readings.
00:59:43Increasingly, he seemed fully alive only in the affection of his audience
00:59:47and behind the jolly facade of his early books.
00:59:51Sam Vela, my lord, replied the gentleman.
00:59:54Do you spell it with a V or a W, inquired the judge.
00:59:59Well, that depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord, replied Sam.
01:00:03I never had occasion to spell it more than once or twice, but I spelled it with a V.
01:00:07Here, a voice from the gallery exclaimed aloud,
01:00:10Quite right too, Sammyville, quite right.
01:00:12Put it down a V, my lord, put it down a V.
01:00:15Who is that who dare address the court, said the judge.
01:00:19You know who that was, sir.
01:00:21I rather suspect he was my father, my lord.
01:00:24No, Mr. Weller, said Sergeant Fuzzfuzz.
01:00:27No, sir, replied Sam.
01:00:29I believe you are in the service of Mr. Pickwick, the defendant in this case.
01:00:33Speak up, if you please, Mr. Weller.
01:00:36I mean to speak up, sir, replied Sam.
01:00:38I am in the service of that dear gentleman, and a very good service it is.
01:00:42Little to do and plenty to get, I suppose, said Sergeant Fuzzfuzz with jocularity.
01:00:47Oh, quite enough to get, sir, as the soldier said when they ordered him 350 lashes, replied Sam.
01:00:52You must not tell us what the soldier or any other man said, sir, interposed the judge.
01:00:59It's not evident.
01:01:11C-L-E-A-N, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour.
01:01:16W-I-N, wind, D-E-R, der, winder, a casement.
01:01:20When the boy knows this out of the book, he goes and does it.
01:01:27The word father is rather vulgar, my dear.
01:01:30The word papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips.
01:01:34Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms are all very good words for the lips.
01:01:42Especially prunes and prisms.
01:01:46My life, said Mr. Mantolini, is a one of damned horrid grind.
01:01:53I positively adore Miss Dombey. I'm perfectly sore with loving her.
01:02:06When you're a married man, Miss Hammyville, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now.
01:02:13But whether it's worthwhile going through so much to learn so little is a matter of taste.
01:02:21Kent, sir. Everybody knows Kent. Apples, cherries, hops and women.
01:02:28If the law supposes that, said Mr. Bumble, the law is a ass, the law is a idiot.
01:02:36Here's the rule for bargains. Do other men, for they would do you.
01:02:42That's the true business precept.
01:02:44The profit from the tours was enormous. Six months in America alone earned him 20,000 pounds.
01:02:50But so was the cost to his health. Distorted eyesight, continuous tiredness, hoarseness and nausea.
01:02:56Georgina and his doctor warned him that the readings were shortening his life, but he wouldn't relax.
01:03:01He undertook a new tour of a hundred appearances and planned to include a new reading which he'd been secretly practicing for a long time.
01:03:08Sykes' Murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist.
01:03:11I'd like you to watch this particularly, as I'm very doubtful of it myself.
01:03:31Without one pause or moment's consideration, but looking straight before him with savage resolution,
01:03:51the robber held on his headlong course until he reached his own door.
01:03:55He opened it softly with a key, strode lightly up the stairs, and entering his own rooms,
01:04:00double-locked the door and lifting a heavy table against it, drew back the curtain of the bed.
01:04:05The girl was lying, half-dressed upon it.
01:04:08He had roused her from her sleep, for she raised herself with a hurried and startled look.
01:04:12Get up, said the man.
01:04:14It is you, Bill, said the girl, with an expression of pleasure at his return.
01:04:18It is. Get up.
01:04:21Taking the candle that was burning in the candlestick, hurled it under the grate.
01:04:26Seeing the faint light of early day without, the girl rose to undraw the curtain.
01:04:30Let it be, said Sykes, thrusting his hand before her.
01:04:33There's light enough for what I've to do.
01:04:35Bill, said the girl, in the low voice of alarm.
01:04:38Why do you look like that at me?
01:04:40The robber sat regarding her for a few seconds, then, grasping her by the head and throat,
01:04:45dragged her into the middle of the room and placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.
01:04:49After a successful try-out, the murder reading was included in the tour,
01:04:54but a doctor had to travel with him to keep him going.
01:04:57Bill, Bill, gasped the girl, wrestling with a strength of mortal fear.
01:05:01I won't scream or cry, not once.
01:05:05Hear me. Speak to me.
01:05:08Tell me what I've done.
01:05:10The readings took so much out of him that Georgina and the doctor feared that Dickens might actually die on the stage.
01:05:16Then spare my life for the love of heaven.
01:05:19Bill, dear Bill, you cannot have the heart to kill me,
01:05:23but we must have time, a little, little time.
01:05:27His reading of the murder became an obsession.
01:05:31He included it in three performances out of every four.
01:05:34Think of all I've given up, only this night, for you.
01:05:37Stop before you spill my blood.
01:05:39I've been true to you, for my guilty soul I have.
01:05:43At the intervals he collapsed, unable even to speak until the performance continued.
01:05:48The housebreaker freed one arm and grasped his pistol.
01:05:51The certainty of immediate detection, if he fired, flashed across his mind, even in his fury.
01:05:56And he beat it, twice, with all the force that he could summon,
01:06:00upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.
01:06:03Lame, bleeding from the bowels, partly paralysed, he still refused to stop.
01:06:09He had to be kept going on alcohol and sedatives.
01:06:12She staggered and fell, nearly blinded with the blood
01:06:15that rained down from a deep gash in her forehead.
01:06:17But raising herself with difficulty upon her knees,
01:06:20drew from her bosom a white handkerchief,
01:06:22and holding it up in her folded hands,
01:06:24as high toward heaven as her feeble strength would allow,
01:06:27breathed one prayer for mercy to her maker.
01:06:31There is a fixed expression of horror of me all over the theatre,
01:06:35as if I were going to be hanged.
01:06:37It was a ghastly figure to look upon.
01:06:40The murderer staggered backward to the wall,
01:06:43and, shutting out the sight with his hand,
01:06:46seized a heavy club and struck her down.
01:06:51It is a new sensation for me to be execrated with such unanimity,
01:06:55and I hope it will remain so.
01:06:58And then, grasping her by the head and throat,
01:07:01dragged her into the middle of the room and placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.
01:07:05I have a vague sensation of being wanted by the police.
01:07:08I have a murderous instinct.
01:07:10And beat it, twice, with all the force that he could summon,
01:07:15upon the upturned face that almost touched his own,
01:07:19twice, with all the force that he could summon.
01:07:22Leave me. Leave me. Tell me what I've done.
01:07:27Grasped her by the head and throat, dragged her into the middle of the room.
01:07:31Oh, think of all I have given up only this night for you.
01:07:34Stop before you spill my blood.
01:07:37I have been true to you upon my guilty soul, I have.
01:07:42Seized a heavy club and struck her down.
01:07:45Spare my life for the love of heaven.
01:07:47Bill, dear Bill, you cannot have the heart to kill me.
01:07:51And he beat it, twice, with all the force that he could summon,
01:07:56upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.
01:08:05The murder should be saved,
01:08:07and kept for occasional readings in the large towns.
01:08:14For occasional readings in the large towns.
01:08:28I am not old.
01:08:31I am not sick.
01:08:36I shall continue to do as I like.
01:08:41It's much better to die doing.
01:09:01But he stopped.
01:09:03On the night of the 15th of March, 1870, he gave his final reading, from Pickwick.
01:09:09Georgina thought he never looked more handsome in his life.
01:09:18Ladies and gentlemen,
01:09:21it would be worse than idle,
01:09:24for it would be hypocritical and unfeeling
01:09:28if I were to disguise that I close this episode of my life
01:09:32with feeling a very considerable pain.
01:09:37For some 15 years,
01:09:39I have had the honor of presenting my own cherished ideas for your recognition,
01:09:46and have been uniformly cheered by the readiest response,
01:09:50the most generous sympathy,
01:09:52and the most stimulating support.
01:09:55Nevertheless, I have thought it well, henceforth,
01:09:58to devote myself exclusively to the art
01:10:02that first brought us together.
01:10:07And so, from these garish lights,
01:10:11I now vanish forevermore,
01:10:14to the heartfelt,
01:10:17grateful,
01:10:20respectful,
01:10:23affectionate...
01:10:29Farewell.
01:10:47But even now, Dickens found himself pursued by that same love,
01:10:51Dickens found himself pursued by that same restlessness
01:10:54that had driven him all his life.
01:10:56He poured himself into another book,
01:10:58The Mystery of Edwin Drood, set in the scenes of his childhood.
01:11:01A few strange faces in the streets,
01:11:04a few other faces, half strange, half familiar.
01:11:08Once the faces of children,
01:11:10now the faces of men and women who have come back from the outer world,
01:11:14at long intervals to find the city wonderfully shrunk in size.
01:11:18To read the striking of the cathedral clock and the cawing of the rooks
01:11:22are like voices of their nursery time.
01:11:41To such as these, it has happened in their dying hours afar off,
01:11:45that they have imagined their chamber floor strewn with the autumn leaves
01:11:48fallen from the elm trees in the close.
01:11:51So have the rustling sounds and fresh scents of their earliest impressions revived,
01:11:56and the circle of their lives was very nearly traced,
01:11:59and the beginning and the end were drawn close together.
01:12:06Again, Dickens, in his writing, asks himself
01:12:09why he had never found the elusive happiness he had missed.
01:12:13And still he found the answer in the harshly interrupted idyll of his childhood.
01:12:18So, from my earliest remembrance,
01:12:21I have had to suppress a deadly and bitter hatred.
01:12:25This has made me secret and revengeful.
01:12:28It has given me in my weakness to the resource of being false.
01:12:33I have been stinted of education, liberty, the very necessaries of life,
01:12:38the commonest pleasures of childhood, the commonest possessions of youth.
01:13:03This has caused me to be utterly wanting in I don't know what emotions,
01:13:07or remembrances, or good instincts.
01:13:20The mystery of Edwin Drood can be seen as Dickens' last desperate judgment of himself.
01:13:26The central character, John Jasper, is an almost uncanny projection of Dickens himself.
01:13:31He is the leader of the cathedral choir.
01:13:34Like Dickens, he commands influence and respect,
01:13:37a man who seems to the public to be a pillar of virtue.
01:13:50But like Dickens, John Jasper leads a double life.
01:13:56Behind the respectable exterior, John Jasper conceals a passion,
01:14:00a jealous and unbearable love for a girl who is engaged to someone else.
01:14:09In the soaring cathedral music, which is his gift,
01:14:12he hears not the pieties of religious devotion,
01:14:15but the reiteration of his own guilt.
01:14:31In this novel, Dickens' self-destructive nature seems to find a final outlet.
01:14:46On Christmas Eve, the very season of jollity and goodwill
01:14:50associated in the public mind with Dickens' writing,
01:14:53John Jasper plans to strangle his young rival.
01:14:57And Dickens, pressing ahead with his novel despite his failing health,
01:15:01prepared to reject all that he had stood for as a popular novelist.
01:15:11On the banks of the river where Dickens walked as a child,
01:15:15the murderer creeps up on the figure that dogs his life.
01:15:19I am mocked by the echoes of my own voice.
01:15:23I am a man carving demons out of my heart.
01:15:37Dickens never completed Edwin Drood.
01:15:40He died suddenly of a heart attack,
01:15:43killed by persistent and deliberate overwork at the age of 18.
01:15:47He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
01:15:50I direct that my name be inscribed in plain English letters on my tomb
01:15:54without the addition of Mr. or Esquire,
01:15:57and I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject
01:16:00of any monument, memorial or whatsoever.
01:16:03I rest my claim to the remembrance of my country upon my published works.
01:17:17THE END