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1872, two years after the death of Charles Dickens, a so-called 'portrait' of the
writer appeared, written by the best-known Dutch critic of his time, Conrad Busken
Huet2. The reason for its appearance was the publication of John Forster's Life of
Charles Dickens. At that time, Busken Huet lived in the Dutch East Indies and was
probably sent the first part in the Tauchnitz Edition by his friend Potgieter3. He
would have read it with amazement, even shock amazement in particular at the
painful personal details about the neglect Charles Dickens suffered as a boy at the
hands of his parents. Forster, but even more so Dickens himself, who had told
Forster about it, deserved censure for revealing this, according to Busken Huet, and
that censure was all the more deserved because Dickens had profited from the
neglect. It had turned into a veritable goldmine for him. This moral stance was
typical of Busken Huet. In France, André Maurois made the same observation:
"En vérité, si des parents avaient voulu former un grand romancier et avaient
cherché pour lui la carrière la plus propre le modeler, ils n'auraient pu concevoir une
plus ingénieuse, ni plus complète(4).
The difference is that Maurois made his remark without the moral outrage of Busken
Huet, typical not only of Busken Huet but of all Dutch critics of the time.
Nevertheless, Busken Huet was a bit of a loner. He had initially been a vicar of the
Eglise Wallonne, but began to suffer doubts and resigned his post. As is often the
case with apostates, he exchanged revealed religion for pietistic morality. In Dickens
he recognised a kindred spirit also trying through his writings to separate Christian-
ethical values from religious institutions and the dogmas of belief. However, this
like-mindedness clouded his view of Dickens's literary qualities. Not only did he
disapprove of the revelations about the neglect of the youthful Charles by his
parents, he also seriously disapproved of the separation of Charles and his wife. This
disapproval meant that he forgot to apply his own strict rule when making a literary
portrait. What was this strict rule? It was that every literary work should satisfy the
condition of objectivity(5). By this Busken Huet meant that the writer behind the
work should be invisible. Although Busken Huet was interested in the character and
ideology of writers, this was important only insofar as it emerged through their
work. Although biographical details may contribute to a better und of the literary
doppelganger of the writer, his persona poëtica, knowledge about the life of the
author should never stand in the way of an evaluation of his work.
The difference between the persona poëtica and the persona realis propagated by
Busken Huet was not adhered to by him in his portrait of Dickens. He spends a lot of
time discussing Dickens's unhappy marriage and compares it, inter aliawith the
virtually impossible marital fidelity of Stephen Blackpool in Hard Times, who does
not leave his alcoholic wife. He writes: 'reading David Copperfield must have been
torture for Mrs Dickens; and more was required of her than of any other woman,
when it was expected that she should suffer in silence in her own house the dear
preference shown to her sister Georgina.' It is a contradiction, he says, that the same
man 'was the beloved of the entire nation and at the same time an object of aversion
for his own wife'. How can we explain this contradiction? Busken Huet's answer is
remarkable. He says:
