“Mary Dickens”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Mamie Dickens was born at the family home in Doughty Street in London^[2] 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.^[3] In December 1839 the Dickens family moved from 48 Doughty Street to 1 Devonshire Terrace. Of her childhood here she later wrote:

She and her younger sister Kate were taught to read by their aunt, Georgina Hogarth, who was now living with the family. Later they had a governess. In her book Charles Dickens by His Eldest Daughter (1885), she described her father's method of writing:

In 1855 Charles Dickens took his two daughters to Paris. He told his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts that his intention was to give Mary (then aged 17) and Kate (aged 16) "some Parisian polish". While in France they had dancing lessons, art classes and language coaching. They also had Italian lessons from the exiled patriot Daniele Manin.^[5]{{Better source|reason=spartacus is not a reliable source per various discussions in WP:RSN|date=February 2013}}

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 from 16 June 1855 at Tavistock House, Dickens's home, followed by a single performance on 10 July at Campden House, Kensington.^[6] 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.^[7]

In 1857 Dickens was visited at Gads Hill Place by Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, who was invited for two weeks but who stayed for five. Andersen described Mary as resembling her mother.^[8] 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."^[9]

After her parents separated in 1858 Mary Dickens and her aunt Georgina Hogarth were put in command of the servants and household management. She did not see her mother again until after her father's death in 1870.^[10] Of her father's alleged affair with the actress Ellen Ternan, which has been stated as the reason for the break-up of Charles Dickens' marriage, biographer Lucinda Hawksley wrote:

Because Mary 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."^[12] When Dickens decided to burn all his letters in 1860 in the field behind Gads Hill Place it was Mary 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. Mary asked her father to keep some of them, but he refused, burning everything.^[13]

In 1867 Mary 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.^[14]

Mary Dickens 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. 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. However, Charles Dickens had hoped she would eventually marry and have children. In 1867 he wrote to a friend that Mary had "not yet started any conveyance on the road to matrimony." But he hoped that she still might, "as she is very agreeable and intelligent". He had suggested to her that his friend Percy Fitzgerald would make a good husband, but Dickens later wrote, "I am grievously disappointed that Mary can by no means be induced to think as highly of him as I do".^[5]{{Better source|reason=spartacus is not a reliable source per various discussions in WP:RSN|date=February 2013}}

Later years

After her father's death she lived with her brother Henry Dickens and her aunt, Georgina Hogarth;^[15] In his will her father had written, "I give the sum of £1,000 free of legacy duty to my daughter Mary Dickens. I also give to my said daughter an annuity of £300 a year, during her life, if she shall so long continue unmarried; such annuity to be considered as accruing from day to day, but to be payable half yearly, the first of such half yearly payments to be made at the expiration of six months next after my decease."

Georgina Hogarth found living with Mary difficult, complaining that she was drinking too much.^[16]{{Better source|reason=spartacus is not a reliable source per various discussions in WP:RSN|date=February 2013}} With her aunt she edited two volumes of Dickens's letters, which were 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 after leaving her aunt's she lived for a period with a clergyman and his wife, Mr and Mrs Hargreaves, in Manchester, a "scandal" which was kept a secret by her family.^[17] Later she lived alone in the country. Mary Dickens went on to write My Father as I Recall Him (1886),^[18] and a novel, Cross Currents (1890).

On Mary's death her aunt, Georgina Hogarth, wrote to Connie Dickens, the widow of Edward Dickens:

Mary Dickens died in 1896 at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire and is buried beside her sister Kate Perugini in Sevenoaks. She was buried on the same day as her eldest brother Charles Dickens, Jr..^[15]

Publications

Childhood

Later years

Publications

See also

Notes

External links