Charles Dickens’s Son Decides Not to Traverse Charges Made

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 455, 10 September 1928, Page 9

Charles Dickens’s Son Decides Not to Traverse Charges Made

“BOOK A GROSS TRAVESTY”

(United P.A. —By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) (United Service)

Reed. 9.20 a.m. LONDON, Sunday. Sir Henry Dickens has reconsidered his intention to traverse the charges made about his father, Charles Dickens, the novelist, in Mi". Carl B. Roberts’s novel, “This Side Idolatry.” He says: “Having read as much of them as is necessary, I have come to the conclusion that the book is so utterly unworthy of the slightest consideration, and is such a gross travesty that I must decline to sei-ve the author’s purpose by affording it publicity. “1 only desire to add that if any-

one had dared to ( publish such a hook 58 years ago, when my father died, hundreds of people would have given it the lie. Unhappily they are dead, and their evidence is not forthcoming. Luckily, having regard to the nature

of this book, such " evidence is notsir Henry Dickens needed.” To this Mr. Roberts replies that he is not surprised that Sir Henry Dickens has abandoned his previous intention, because he had already rebutted every charge of inaccuracy. When the existing material was released from the family ban, his interpretation of Charles Dickens’s chai--acter would be found correct. He was accused of bad taste iu writing a novel around the dead, but it was a legitimate form of historical novel. Moreover, Dickens caricatured Leigh Hunt in Skimpole, his own father in Micawber, his mother as Mrs. Niekleby, and Maria Beadnell as Flora FinchIng, when they were alive. » “EVERY ILL-NATURED THING” Writing in the “Observer,” the editor, Mr. J. L. Garvin, says: “The

author of ‘This Side Idolatry’ has collected every ill-natured thing ever whispered about Dickens. Using his own defamatory method he has presented a picture of a hypocrite and a cad. Nevertheless, although it is offensive the book will be useful if it compels the publication of letters too long withheld. Attacks are bound to come In the absence of a new, franker -”1x1 more moving biography. There is something to be explained in connection with the deep tragedy of incompatible temperaments. It was the fault of neither Dickens nor his wife. The marriage of fervent genius with solid prose can be a terrible thing. “Dickens was not the first man who at the age of 24 fell In love with a family of sisters and married the wrong one. Compared with most historic and imaginative geniuses, Dickens was almost a monster of innocence. He showed it in every book he wrote.”