IN MEMORIAM CEDRIC CHARLES DICKENS
THE TIMES February 22, 2006
Cedric Dickens
September 24, 1916 - February 11, 2006
Convivial and energetic guardian of the memory of his great-grandfather's most congenial creation, Mr
Pickwick
CEDRIC DICKENS was the living embodiment of one of his great-grandfather's most enduring and
best-loved characters: Mr Pickwick. He radiated bonhomie and charm and made friends all over the
world in his long quest to promote the love of Charles Dickens's mighty oeuvre.
Well hidden behind the benevolent and studiedly bumbling persona, however, was a brilliant manageri
al brain. He treated everyone he met with exactly the same courtesy, yet he had an uncanny knack of
getting people to do things they did not think they were going to do or even could do.
He worked indefatigably to save the George and Vulture, the historic inn in the City which Charles
Dickens used in his fiction as a frequent venue for Pickwick's peregrinations and in his own life as a
favourite watering-hole. (They still have the cheque for £11 the novelist gave them after entertaining 34
friends there in 1837).
Cedric worked ceaselessly to preserve the heritage of Gad's Hill, now a girls' school, the last home of
Charles Dickens, and he was a firm ally of the house in Doughty Street, now a museum, where his great
grandfather first lived as a young married man.
Cedric Dickens was born in 1916, the grandson of Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, sixth of Charles's ten chil
dren, an eminent lawyer and Common Serjeant of London, and his wife, Marie Roche, a Frenchwoman
who saw to it that French was the first language Cedric spoke, though he claimed to have forgotten it.
His father was Philip (Pip), a chartered accountant who became the first secretary of ICI at Billingham-
on-Tees.
He lived with his parents in Durham from 1924 to 1929, spent Saturday mornings at the works with the
head engine driver, and as a boy he once travelled to London on the footplate of the Flying Scotsman.
He went to Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and after taking three trips to the West Indies by
banana boat joined the British Tabulating Machine Company in 1937. He liked to say later that the com
pany took it amiss when he joined the RNVR in 1939 as they saw it, to enjoy himself instead of work
ing on decoding at Bletchley Park. In fact, he had an adventurous war, ending it as a first lieutenant.
While serving at Portsmouth he met his future wife, Elizabeth, when the sight of her as a young Wren at
the wheel of a truck caused him to fall off his bicycle. She stopped to help, and he liked to claim that he
had been literally picked up by the most beautiful girl in the world. They were married in 1948 and had
two children, John and Jane. It was a radiantly happy marriage that was to last 58 years. After demob
Cedric rejoined his firm, which after several mergers became ICL (International Computers Limited)
where he became director of communication.
Cedric organised a series of luncheons for influential City men who were potential customers for the
new technology. He took them to the George and Vulture, to which his French grandmother had intro
duced him at the age of 17 when he was already under the thrall of The Pickwick Papers. It proved a
fruitful venue.
On a lighter note, he organised a series of cultural tours to London hostelries that had a Dickens connec
tion. The tour would take in five pubs on the south side of the Thames and a further five on the way
back. At the first pub, Cedric would typically call for a Guinness and order another for the landlord.
After two minutes Cedric would give the order "everybody out!" and the party would move on to the
next pub where he would order a different drink. Not surprisingly, most of those exposed to one of these
cultural tours had only a confused memory next day of where he had been; Cedric knew precisely.
When Cedric retired in 1976, the company decided not to continue the lunches and cultural tours. By
