- Mary Dickens
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Mary Dickens 
Mary 'Mamie' DickensBorn 1838
LondonDied 1896
Farnham Royal, BuckinghamshireNationality 
Great BritainOccupation 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
Biography
'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]
Mamie Dickens (left) with her sister Katey and their father Charles Dickens at Gads Hill Place c.1865
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]
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.
Later years
After her father's death she lived with her brother Henry Dickens and her aunt, Georgina Hogarth[12], they editing two volumes of Dickens's letters together, which was published in 1880. Later she lived alone in the country. Mary Dickens went on to write My Father as I Recall Him (1886).[13]
She died in 1896 at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire[12] and is buried beside her sister Kate Perugini in Sevenoaks. She was buried on the same day as her oldest brother Charles Dickens, Jr.[12]
Publications
- 'The Charles Dickens Birthday Book' Published by Chapman & Hall, London. Illustrated by Kate Perugini (1882)
- 'The Letters of Charles Dickens' Edited by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter 3 vols. Published by Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1880)
- 'Her Inheritance', in All the Year Round, third series, Vol. 1, Nos. 24 & 25, 1889. This was not credited on publication, but the later 'A Valiant Ignorance' shows her as author of this.
- 'Margery', in All the Year Round, third series, Vol. 2, Nos. 33-35, 1889
- 'Kitty's Victim', in All the Year Round, third series, Vol. 2, Nos. 51 & 52, 1889. This was not credited on publication, but the later 'A Valiant Ignorance' shows her as author of this.
- 'A Social Success', in All the Year Round, Christmas Number, 1889
- 'A Mist of Error', All the Year Round, Extra Summer Number, 1890
- 'Cross Currents', a novel serialized in All the Year Round, third series, Vol. 5 & 6, 1891
- 'An Outstanding Debt', in All the Year Round, Christmas Number, 1891
- 'Out of the Fashion', in All the Year Round, Extra Summer Number, 1892
- 'Taken on Trust', co-authored with Margaret Moule, in All the Year Round, Christmas Number, 1892
- 'A Valiant Ignorance', a novel serialized in All the Year Round, third series, volume 9 & 10, 1893
- 'Miss Keturah', in All the Year Round, Summer Holiday Number, 1893
- 'The Last Witness', in All the Year Round, Extra Christmas Number, 1893; co-authored with Margaret Moule
- 'Mere cypher', New York & London, Macmillan, 1893
- 'Some Women's Ways', New York, R. F. Fenn, c1896
- 'My Father As I Recall Him' Cassell & Co, London (1896)
- 'The Love That Was', Chicago & New York, Rand McNally, 1897
See also
Notes
- ^ [1] Dickens Family Tree website
- ^ [2] 'The Letters of Charles Dickens' on Project Gutenberg
- ^ [3] Lucinda Hawksley website
- ^ Peter Ackroyd 'Dickens' Published by Sinclair-Stevenson (1990) pg 452
- ^ [4] The Lighthouse website
- ^ 'Charles Dickens' by Una Pope Hennessy Published by Chatto & Windus, London (1945) pg 360
- ^ Ackroyd, pg 782
- ^ Ackroyd, pg 877
- ^ Henessey, pg 392
- ^ Ackroyd, pg 842
- ^ Ackroyd, pg 882
- ^ a b c 'The Family Tree of Charles Dickens' by Mark Charles Dickens Published by the Charles Dickens Museum (2005)
- ^ [5] The Children of Charles Dickens
External links
- Photographs of Mary Angela Dickens at the National Portrait Gallery (London)
- Full text of 'My Father As I Recall Him' by Mamie Dickens Published by Dutton & Co. 1897
- 'Christmas With Dickens' By Mamie Dickens
- Mary "Mamie" Dickens on Find A Grave
- Article by Mamie Dickens in The New York Times March 17 1884
Categories:- 1838 births
- 1896 deaths
- Charles Dickens
- Women of the Victorian era
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