20
can feel the backdrop of the night sky. And this in the end is perhaps what makes
him so great.(28)"
Dickens created a world of his own, a proper universe which is never stale but
fascinates us because it is described with an inimitable sense of humour. Humour
literally means fluid and all of his books are soaked in this fluid. It is in my opinion
the reason why after more than 150 years the characters of this universe are real in
more than one sense and forever young.
1I have deliberately confined myself to well-known writers who played a role or stil play a
role in Dutch literature. 1 have not included theses or academie articles.
2. Busken Huet (1826-1886) studied theology in Leiden and became a ministerof the Eglise
Wallonne at Haarlem. After he resigned to become a journalist and writer, he stayed in the
Dutch East Indies where he founded a newspaper and wrote most of his Literary Fantasies'and
Criticisms, which made him famous and much feared. His ambition was to become a great
novelist but in this he failed. Today he is still known by his criticisms and by his broad work on
the arts and culture of the Dutch Golden Age: The Land of Rembrandt. Busken Huet never
returned to the Netherlands and died in Paris
3. J. Potgieter(l 808-1875) was the writer who introduced Dickens to the Dutch public in 1837.
See inter alia A. M. Zwaneveld, 'Dickens' entree in de Nederlandse letterkunde, 'De
aardmannetjes en de koster". Een sprookje', in The Dutch Dickensian, vol. 10. 2943; J. C. van
Kessel. 'Dickens in het Nederlands'.in The Dutch Dickensian, vol. 6,31-51; Kees van Steynen,
'Dickens in Nederland", in The Dutch Dickensian, vol. 9, 4-52; Bernt Luger, 'Dickens
populariteit in Nederland in de negentiende eeuw', in The Dutch Dickensian, vol. 9, 55-75;
idem, 'Dickens in the Netherlands', The Dutch Dickensian, vol. 14, 34-41
4. André Maurois, Etudes anglaises, Paris 1927, p. 25. 'In truth had his parents wished to form
a great novelist and sought the most appropriate career for shaping him, they could not have
thought of anything more ingenious or perfectly adapted.'
5. See on this the dissertation by 0. Praamstra, 'Gezond verstand en goede smaak', Amsterdam
1991.
6. Quoted from Rosalinde Supheert, 'Groote verwachtingen en populaire Victoriaanse
romans', in The Dutch Dickensian, vol. XXV, 2005, 13.
7. G. Bomans, Dickens waar zijn uw spoken? Amsterdam-Brussel, 1972, p. 17.
8. M't Hart, 'De nomans van Charles Dickens', in Bijvoegsel Vrij Nederland, 14 juli 1979,
vol.28, p. 21.
9. According to the critic S. J. van den Bergh (1864-1952), the 'plebeian' aspect of his work
even stretched as far as Dickens's name. In Merkwaardige Mannen, schetsen voor jongens he
writes 'The solicitor's clerk and world-famous writer, the magician who conjured up Sam
Weller, Sarah Gamp, Marcus Tapley and Tom Finch Out of nothing, Charles Dickens, a name
that does not sound either aristocratic or eminent bul instead rather plebeian to the ear. Bui
which name in all England, nay, in the whole wide world, is better known or loved?' Cf. also
A. H. van der Feen, Dickens en wij, in Apollo 1948: 'Whoever reads Dickens and can
appreciate him to the full is a cultivated person, but the opposite is not truc'. Quotes from Kees
van Steynem, 'Dickens in Nederland', in The Dutch Dickensian, vol. 9, p. 4 if. Coenen goes
even further when he describes Dickens's mother in his book Charles Dickens en de romantiek
(1911, p. 31): 'Dickens never says much about his mother, but it is said that certain character
traits of Mrs Nickieby were inspired by her. However, 1 have the feeling that she was some
sort of middle-class woman, such as those scattered by Dickens through almost all his books,
silly women, gossipy, with a fondness for sweets, full of motherly love for their children and
contemptuous of Man, whom they never leave alone in their conversations, extremely narrow-
minded and suspicious...' Bomans, whose copy 1 have, wrote in pencil in the margin in high
dudgeon: 'What right does Coenen have to speak 50 about Dickens's mother'.
