Michael Allen. Charles Dickens and the Blacking Factory

Michael Allen. Charles and Blacking Factory: Oxford-Stockley Publications: St. Leonards, 2011. Pp. 310. [pounds sterling]24.95. For novelist given to secrecy and burdened with memories of past he worked hard to conceal, behaved inconsistently. According to John who knew him better than any other man does, or ever will, hints and scraps of information emerged, orally and in writing no longer extant, about aspects of his childhood found troubling. These revelations, communicated during first decade of their friendship, gradually expanded, degree of intimacy increasing to point in November 1846 when made Forster an explicit offer: Shall I leave you my life in MS. when I die? There are some things in it that would touch you very much, and that might go on same shelf with first volume of Holcroft's (Letters 4: 653). No record of Forster's response exists. But proposal from must have set him thinking, both professionally and perhaps more searchingly about nature of his friend's past. As author of one biography (The Lives of Statesmen of Commonwealth, 1840) committed to second (The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith, 1848), prospect of writing about surely crossed his mind, while reference to Thomas Holcroft, whose Memoirs (1816) recount youthful struggle with poverty, neglect and self-education, would have resounded with little of Dickens's past Forster already knew. Further conversation on these matters seems to have been suspended until February 1847. No precise timetable is possible, but we can infer that exchanges continued until by chance Forster asked in March if he ever remembered the elder Mr. Dilke, his father's acquaintance and contemporary and former clerk at Somerset House. An evasive Yes in reference to meeting Charles Wentworth Dilke at house of relative prompted Forster to push further, point of which was to say that he had learned from Dilke of Dickens's having had some juvenile employment in warehouse near Strand. responded by remaining silent several minutes, whereupon Forster concluded that he had unintentionally touched a painful place in his memory and resolved never to speak of it again (Life bk. 1, ch. 2). It was Dickens, however, who broke silence few weeks later. First orally in frequent interchanges and then in writing, vivid account emerged of how he had been so easily thrown away, poor little lad at age of ten. material supplied served Forster well, endowing his three-volume Life of Charles (1871-74) with twofold legacy. By making use of MS pages had left to him, Forster achieved an impact that may have surprised him. Never, perhaps, has fragment of biography wakened more interest and amazement than first chapters of Mr. Forster's biography, wrote one reviewer of first volume in February 1872, already in its ninth edition within months of its publication (Collins 579). Less conjectural is enduring importance of his decision to supply those passages [of Dickens's childhood] omitted from [David Copperfield], which, ... present to us picture of tragical suffering, ... unsurpassed in even wonders of his published writings (Life bk. 1, ch. 2). By publishing the fragment of autobiography of Dickens left to him and by augmenting it with recollections of conversations and letters, Forster laid foundation for his own Life. Doing so, he also provided keystone to every biographical study published since. The story of Charles Dickens' childhood is dominated by single narrative, mostly written down by himself, then edited, arranged, and supplemented by John Forster, writes Michael Allen. Over history of his own childhood and of his time at Warren's Blacking, he continues, exercised supreme control. …