| Mary Dickens | |
|---|---|
Mary 'Mamie' Dickens |
|
| Born | 1838 London |
| Died | 1896 Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire |
| Nationality | Great Britain |
| Occupation | Author |
| Known for | Daughter of novelist Charles Dickens. |
| Signature | |
Mary 'Mamie' Angela Dickens (6 March 1838 – 23 July 1896) was the oldest daughter of English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine.[1] She wrote a book of reminiscences about her father, and, with her aunt Georgina Hogarth, edited the first collection of his letters.[2]
Contents |
'Mamie' Dickens was born at the family home in Doughty Street in London[3] and was named after Mary Hogarth, who had died in 1837 and who was the sister of her mother, Catherine Dickens. Her godfather was John Forster, her father's friend and later biographer. Mary was nicknamed 'Mild Glo'ster' by her father.[4] She never married, although it is believed she received a proposal of marriage, which she refused because her father disapproved of the suitor. As a result she suffered a prolonged bout of depression. She appeared in a number of amateur plays directed by her father, including Wilkie Collins's The Lighthouse in which Charles Dickens also acted along with Collins, Augustus Egg, Mark Lemon and Georgina Hogarth. The production ran for four nights at Tavistock House, Dickens's home, from 16 June 1855, followed by a single performance on 10 July at Campden House, Kensington.[5]
In January 1857 she appeared in The Frozen Deep, again written by Collins and performed at Tavistock House before the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Houghton, Angela Burdett-Coutts and Edward Bulwer-Lytton.[6]
Dickens was visited at Gads Hill Place in 1857 by Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, who was invited for two weeks but who stayed for five. Andersen described Mamie as resembling her mother.[7] Author Peter Ackroyd described her as being "...amiable, somewhat sentimental, but high-spirited and with a love for what might be called the life of London society. She seems to have attached herself to her father with an almost blind affection; certainly, she never married and, of all the children, she was the one closest to him for the rest of his life."[8]
After her parents separated in 1858 Mary Dickens did not see her mother again until after her father's death in 1870.[9] Because Mamie and Katey decided to stay with their father rather than with their mother they experienced a certain amount of social coldness. A relative of their mother wrote, "... they, poor girls, have also been flattered as being taken notice of as the daughters of a popular author. He, too, is a caressing father and indulgent in trifles, and they in their ignorance of the world, look no further nor are aware of the injury he does them."[10] When Dickens decided to burn all his letters in 1860 in the field behind Gads Hill Place it was Mamie and two of her brothers who carried them out of the house in basketfuls. These included correspondence from Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and George Eliot. Mamie asked her father to keep some of them, but he refused, burning everything.[11]
In 1867 she was asked to name and launch a new ship at Chatham Dockyard, where her grandfather John Dickens had previously worked. She became a local celebrity in Kent, being the first woman there to be seen in public riding a bicycle.[12]
Mary became the official hostess at Gads Hill Place in Kent, Dickens's country home, staying with her father for the rest of his life. Her portrait was painted by John Everett Millais.
After her father's death she lived with her brother Henry Dickens and her aunt, Georgina Hogarth'[13] with her aunt she edited two volumes of Dickens's letters, which was published in 1880. Later she seems to have embarrassed or angered her family, who largely cut themselves off from her. Much of her life after her father's death in 1870 remains unknown, but for a period she lived with a clergyman and his wife in Manchester, a 'scandal' which was kept a secret by her family.[14] Later she lived alone in the country. Mary Dickens went on to write My Father as I Recall Him (1886).[15]
She died in 1896 at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire[13] and is buried beside her sister Kate Perugini in Sevenoaks. She was buried on the same day as her oldest brother Charles Dickens, Jr.[13]