Charles Dickens, The Haunted Man?
J.A.Ebbinge Wubben.
The Haunted Man is het vijfde en laatste afzonderlijk gepubliceerde kerstboek van Charles Dickens.
Het werd gepubliceerd in december 1848. De Haunted Man wordt opgejaagd door een geest, die in
uiterlijk geheel gelijk is aan hem zelf. Op kerstavond verschijnt deze geest weer.
Wij vinden deze klacht over de vreemdeling, die de plaats van zijn vader innam terug in een van de
autobiografische fragmenten. Daarin schrijft Charles over zijn eerste verblijf in Londen:
Over zijn moeder:
En over de verwaarlozing door de ouders:
Dit slaat op de ruzie tussen John Dickens en Lamert, waardoor
Charles door de laatste ontslagen werd uit het
schoensmeerfabriekje
'Look upon me!' said the Spectre. 'I am he, neglected in my youth, and miserably poor, who strove and suffered, and still
strove and suffered, until I hewed out knowledge from the mine were it was buried, and made rugged steps thereof, for
my worn feet to rest and rise on.'
'I am that man,' returned the Chemist.
"No mother's self-denying love," pursued the Phantom, "no father's counsel, aided me. A stranger came into my father's
place, when I was but a child, and I was easily alien from my mother's heart. My parents, at the best, were of that sort
whose care soon ends, and whose duty is soon done; who cast their offspring loose, early, as birds do theirs; and, if they
do well, claim the merit; and if ill, the pity."
father to be as kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of
:t to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has
ight and day, unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any business, charge or
he did not zealously, conscientiously, punctually, honourably discharge. His industry has always been untiring.
jJoud of me, in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic singing. But, in the ease of his temper, and the
straitness of his means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have utterly put
from him the notion that I had any claim upon him, in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a
morning, and my own; and making myself useful in the work of the little house; and looking after my younger brothers
and sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living.
My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel(a), and did so next day. She brought home a request for me to return
next morning, and a high character of me, which I am very sure I deserved. My father said that I should back no more,
d should go to school. I do not write resentfully or angrily: for I know how all these thing have worked together to
make me what I am; but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for
my being sent back".
It is wonderful to me, how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me, that, that even after
my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me - a
child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally - to suggest that something might have
been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take, were tired out. No
one made any sign. My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty
years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge.
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