ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

December 23, 2005

"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour."

- Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812 - 1870) 

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Landport, Hampshire. This was the new industrial age and the change created in society during this time gave birth to the theories of Karl Marx. Dickens's father was a clerk in the navy pay office and while he made good money he often spent more than he made. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens worked for some months at a blacking factory to get his father out of debtor's prison.

In 1824-27 Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and at Mr. Dawson's school in 1827. For a short time, he was a law office clerk. He learned shorthand and became a shorthand reporter at Doctor's Commons. Dickens soon gained a reputation as "the fastest and most accurate man in the Gallery".

His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays to appeared in periodicals. In his daily writing, Dickens followed his own rules of regularity. 

The Pickwick Papers were stories about odd individuals and their travels. They were sold in monthly installments at 1 shilling and opened up a market for similar inexpensive books. Many of Dickens's novels first appeared in monthly installments.

In the 1840s, Dickens founded Master Humphrey's Cloak and edited the London Daily News. He spent much time traveling and campaigning against many of the social evils with his pamphlets and other writings. He wrote A CHRISTMAS CAROL in 1843.

From 1858-68, Dickens gave lecturing tours in Britain and the United States. By the end of his final American tour, Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. Dickens died of a stroke on June 8, 1870.

His business sense matched the interests of his audience with their pocketbook as following excerpt from A Christmas Carol demonstrates:

The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.

His stories have created traditions and images that will last for centuries because they are based in the faith that one person can make a difference.

"It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death."

Wishing you wonderful holiday season.

Sincerely,