'Oh Lord'said my aunt
she marched to a corner of her garden,
and stopped to dig up some little root
there. Then, without a scrap of courage,
but with a great deal of desperation, I
went softly in and stood beside her, tou
ching her with my finger.
'If you please, ma'am,' I began.
She startled, and looked up.
'If you please, aunt.'
'Eh?' exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of
amazement I have never heard approached.
'If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.'
'Oh Lord!' said my aunt, and sat flat
down in the garden-path.
I have always found this sitting flat down
symbolic of the defeat of the evil-doers
Dickens attacked in his books. Like Aunt
Betsey, they are knocked out and left
defenceless by the innocent approach of
Dickens's little heroes. In this way, thro
ugh his children, Charles Dickens made
life bearable, he also made life enjoyable
for thousands and thousands all over the
world. He has provided entertainment for
us who live a century later and he has
done this by the creation of another child,
the first and biggest child of them all, I
mean of course Mr. Pickwick whose heart
was born at least twenty five years after
his body. The creation of this man with
the body of an adult and the soul of a
child was Dickens's definitive answer to
the adverse circumstances he had person
ally experienced not long before - Dickens
was only 24 years old. It is typical Mr.
Pickwick was born before all his other
children and that by the adventures of
Pickwick and his friends he mastered the
painful experiences of his immediate past.
At this point I will recall to mind our
unforgettable Godfried Bomans. He did
more for the promotion of Dickens in the
Netherlands than anyone and in 1945 he
immediately saw the possibilities of Pick
wick as an answer to the adverse circum
stances brought about by the war. He
wanted to change the negative mood of
despondency and embitterment that had the
population in its grip and thought of the
idea of launching a series of cheap poc-
ketbooks - quite a modern invention in
those days - that became extremely popu
lar in this country, the Prisma series. It
contained what one might call the great
works of world literature and more than
one thousand titles appeared in it. But it
made its debut with the works of Dickens
and the greatest success in the first issue
were The Pickwick Papers in Bomans's
own translation. An excellent translation
according to all the experts, evoking in the
broadest sense the Pickwickian atmosphe
re. I recommend this Dutch Pickwick to
you, not least because if ever you need
any explanation of the English text you
can always turn to the Dutch text of God-
fried. Thus Godfried formed part of a tra
dition of Dickens-lovers that began its
official life with the founding of the Dic-
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